Kinsley fell in love with Phoenix Maverick, an NHL player for a team she never imagined supporting. But when Kinsley suffers from a head injury and forgets the last six years of her life, she struggles balancing being the person Phoenix fell in love...
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Late September. 2016
Sadie and I sat at the dining table on Sunday evening waiting for Lottie to come home. The dark wooden oak was covered in scrapbooking supplies. Ribbon, stickers, stencils, paper of all colour and texture.
Sadie had loved scrapbooking for as long as I could remember. Her bookshelves were full of her own editions, documentation of her life, sweetly arranged into aesthetic pages of art.
I had a scrapbook open in front of me, it was pictures and entries from 2012. Pages of college party photos, baby Lottie, terrible hair cuts, Marissa and Alex.
Those were hard to look at. Not because I had fond memories of these people or that relationship, but because Marissa and I looked so close and in the end, she did the one thing you don't do to a friend.
Sadie's table had long bench seats, not the most comfortable for long stretches of time but it looked beautiful. I sat with a large knitted throw wrapped around me and my legs folded while Sadie scrapbooked.
There was something soothing about watching her work, the sound of scissors slicing through thick paper, stickers being peeled from their backs, the smell of glue sticks and sharpies.
Taylor Swift hummed from a Bluetooth speaker in the background, it lit up blue with the beat, the reflection glowing on the plants it sat next to. At least Taylor was consistent. The music she'd made recently was just as good as the music I listened to in my dorm room on a quiet weekend.
Taylor was comfort music, there was a song for all moods and occasions. Love, heartbreak, friendship, sorrow, sex.
"I like this song," I said, tapping Sadie's screen and seeing the title, Wildest Dreams.
"I'm sort of jealous that you get to experience this album for the first time all over again," Sadie said. "You make jokes about that sort of thing but how often does it really happen? I mean, all the movies you could experience again."
"I guess that's one way to look at it," I mumbled. I understood what she meant but I'd gladly take back the last six years of my life over being able to listen to music for the first time.
I cradled a hot chocolate between my hands as I turned the pages, the steam gathering beneath my nose. Coconut milk wasn't bad, it was better than Almond and it didn't give me the shits, so that was an added bonus.
It made me wonder what the hell I did to my body to make it so intolerant to animal product that I couldn't even drink milk or eat cheese without losing my guts.
The room was quiet apart from music, Sadie had her tongue between her lips while she cut around a flower petal.
"I had an epiphany," I said.
She raised a brow, waiting for elaboration.
"I'm not getting my memories back. Well, it doesn't seem like it. I might, at some point. I honestly don't know but I feel like it's a waste of time to sit around and wait for them. I lost this big chunk of time but I didn't die. So, I have to be grateful for that."
