The Song

Part Thirty-Five

“No buts Ast!” one of the boys said loudly, “We aren’t going to let you lay around and mope for the next few days.”

“No guys…” Aston sighed.

“It’s not healthy!”

“Guys, just hold on,” Aston said, pushing the door wide open.

The boys all caught me sitting on the steps, a surprised look on their faces. “Hey guys,” I said sheepishly.

“What are you doing here?”

“Long story,” I said, standing up and coming to meet them all in the foyer, “Today didn’t quite go as planned.”

“Oh, so you guys are…”

“Together still? Yeah,” Aston said.

“You can come in for a beer or ten,” I said, eyeing up the cases of beer they were carrying.

“We thought Ast might need one,” Marvin said.

“I see that,” I smirked. They literally had enough beer for forty people, and I shuddered to think how much would have been ingested if I wasn’t around.

The group of us sat around the front room, the boys sipping beers as we chatted. I let Aston explain to them what was going on, adding details when needed.

“So you’re going to try this out?” JB asked.

“For now, yeah,” I said, “Aston was right when he said that he knew everything about me. I obviously married him for a reason, so I need to work on trusting him and letting him teach me about myself. Maybe I won’t remember the past, but he’ll help me figure out my life and how to have a future.”

“You’ll remember,” Aston said.

I simply shrugged at him as another beer was opened and the sound of the can distracted everyone from the tense moment that could have erupted.

“So what about LA?” Marvin asked.

“I don’t know,” Aston replied.

“LA?” I asked, looking from boy to boy. No one had mentioned anything about LA to me at any point and I was really confused.

“I’m supposed to go for work,” Aston sighed, “I don’t know what’s going to happen now, can we please just talk about it tomorrow.”

“Yeah…” I said, my brow furrowed at him. This was news to me. I guess I’d never expected that he’d have to leave London any time soon. But of course his job demanded that he travel. It was bound to come up at some point.

The boys stuck around for another hour, and then Aston and I were left alone.

“You hungry?” he asked, “I never ordered the take-out I promised.”

“Yeah,” I shrugged, sitting down at the kitchen table.

“Don’t worry about the LA thing,” Aston said, “I only agreed to it when I thought you were adamant on going away and finding yourself or whatever, and even then I didn’t really want to go in case something happened.”

“But… it’s your job,” I said, “You shouldn’t have to get out of it.”

“I know, but right now your health is more important,” Aston said, grabbing out a Chinese menu from a drawer, “Do you wanna pick or should I just order your usual.”

“What’s my usual?” I asked.

“Orange chicken and some of those crab things,” Aston said without hesitation.

I couldn’t help but smile when he said that, of course he knew my Chinese order, “Sounds good.”

“Told you, I know everything,” Aston said, grabbing his phone and wandering off to make the order.

I sat at the kitchen table and traced circles on the wood, eventually getting up to go sit at the piano. I’d left the songbook there, the one with the song I’d written Aston for our first anniversary, and as I sat down I flicked it open and started playing it slowly.

I was convinced there were hints in the song, hints to other pieces of the whole five-part masterpiece. Good composition would mean it would be fluid from part to part, and I knew myself well enough to know that I would have followed that.

I don’t know what it was about this set of songs, but I just had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that they were the key to something big. So relentlessly I’d play through the one song I had, again and again, trying to remember something else.

“Chinese is here,” Aston said about a half hour later.

“Ok.”

Not shutting the songbook, I slipped off the bench and wandered back to the kitchen where cartons of hot food were waiting for me.

“Tell me about LA,” I said.

“What do you want to know?”

“I’ve been?”

“Yeah quite a few times actually,” Aston replied, “We bought a little apartment there late last year so we’d have a place to stay, instead of living in hotels.”

“Wow.”

“It’s nothing fancy,” Aston shrugged, “There’s a keyboard where you’d write songs at, and a little kitchen so we could eat in. We let our friends and family use the place when we don’t need it, so it doesn’t sit empty all the time.”

“I want to see it.”

“What?”

“This place, I want to see it,” I replied, “What if it triggers memories or something?”

“I don’t know…” Aston sighed, “I’m meant to be over there for a few weeks, I don’t want to just leave you alone in a foreign country while I have work.”

“Well you’d be leaving me alone here if you went without me,” I said, “And you’d be neglecting your job if you didn’t go at all. So how about I just come with?”

“Jess…”

“And maybe while I’m in America I can go see my Dad?” I said, “That might be good too.”

“I’ll think about it,” Aston said, “I just think it might be too soon after everything to be going that far away.”

“Well I want to go.”

He let out a loud sigh, rolling his eyes at me as he sat across the table from me to eat his food. I could tell that he didn’t really want either of us going all the way out to LA yet. It was far from my doctors and the family and friends who’d so far helped us through this whole thing.

“About sleeping arrangements…” I teased later that night as I was getting ready to go to bed.

“What about them?” Aston asked.

“That bed is too damn comfortable for me to go back to the other room,” I said.

“So you want to kick me out of the master?”

“I was just suggesting, unless this is weird… maybe we try sharing? Just one night? It’s such a big bed and sooo comfy…”

“Yeah yeah,” Aston said, “I get it, you like it more than me.”

“Duh!”

I watched as Aston rolled his eyes at me, nodding towards the master bedroom. Victoriously I slipped back into the space I’d vacated when the boys arrived, burrowing into the duvet and letting out a comfortable and content sigh. This seemed so much more right than sleeping on my old bed, even though I loved it so much.

“You know,” Aston said quietly as he flicked the lights out and climbed in, “I never thought that my so-called divorce day would be the day I finally get my wife back into bed next to me…”