Don't Forget Me

Chapter 25

I swing into a parking space on Main Street right outside the Dinor and make a beeline for the double swinging doors of the kitchen. As soon as I step through, it feels like a different place altogether. The wood doors turn into tan tile with dark grout. The quiet of the dining room instantly turns to pans clanging in the wash sink, fans venting smoke off the flattop, the cook's laugh booming across the kitchen. But I shut all of that out until I find him.

Oliver.

He's standing there looking at me, a plate ready to be served in each of his hands. I feel like I'm going to pass out, but I move toward him anyway, ignoring how suddenly silent it's gotten.

This is it. The moment I've been so scared of for the past few weeks. The moment that's going to fill my chest with air and prove that I'm not... like her.

I plant my right hand on his side and slide my left hand along his jaw until my fingers reach his silky black hair.

"Roseanne, what are you—"

I start leaning into him, and I don't stop until my lips are pressed up against his. I stand up on my tippy-toes while his hands stay outstretched to the sides as he tries to keep the plates balanced.

I step in closer to him, press harder, hoping, waiting for that feeling.

It has to come.

But it won't.

"Roseanne," he tries to say as he leans his head away, his brown eyes looking at me
horrified. The exact opposite of what you want to see from the person you just kissed. I step back, finally looking around at his coworkers, who have all stopped what they're doing to stare at me.

"Uh, Oliver, why don't you take a break, man," the cook says, flicking his spatula toward a red exit sign glowing above a dented metal door.

Oliver sets the plates down and takes my hand. Then he leads me outside, next to the dumpsters, where the fan is blowing hot, smoky air up into the sky.

Okay, it must've just been weird because everyone was watching. I throw myself at him again, but he holds me back, away from him.

"Roseanne, wait, what are you doing? What's wrong?" he asks, confused.

I wrap my hands around his bony arms and look up at him, trying to sound as genuine as possible. "I just... like you. Okay? I like you," I tell him.

"I—I like you, too," he replies. "Maybe, like, we can kiss a little slower and... not in front of my coworkers." He huffs out a laugh, but then his eyes soften and he's tilting his head toward me.

I let him kiss me this time.

As our lips meet and his arms wrap around me, I try to ignore that he smells like onions and burger grease. I try to ignore the way his spiky upper lip makes me curl mine. I try to ignore how... wrong all of this feels.
Because now I know what a kiss is supposed to feel like and that scares the shit out of me.

My breathing hitches and I pull my lips off his as I stumble across the alley to lean on the opposite building.

"Roseanne, please just talk to me," he says from behind me. "What is going on?"

"Do you like me?" I ask, unable to look at him.

He stutters for a while. "Wh-what? Yeah."

"What's it feel like?" I ask, my throat aching with every word.

"It feels... good. I mean, I don't know." I can hear him step off the curb, coming toward me.

"No, Oliver." I meet his eyes as his face searches mine for answers. "I mean, what does it feel like when you're with me?" I ask.

I remember the way it felt just sitting on the curb outside the coffee shop with Lisa. Like just being near her calmed me down somehow.

"When you're close to me?"

The excitement and safety of being pressed up against her on the back of the four-wheeler.

"When you look at me?"

The way my breath caught when her eyes locked onto mine at the fence line.

"When you hold my hand?"

The way my hand felt in hers, like nothing could ever feel more right.

"What does it feel like to kiss me?"

My skin burns like oxygen on hot embers at just the memory of her lips against mine.

He stands there with a lingering shrug in his shoulders. "Roseanne, why are you
asking me all of this? I don't understand. I don't know how to answer any of that." He takes in a deep breath and lets it out in frustration. "I mean, we just started hanging out and I'm leaving in a month."

And that's exactly the problem. He doesn't understand.

Because he's not the one for me.

"I have to go. I'm... I'm sorry," I reply, shuffling backward down the alley, toward the street.

"Wait!" he yells, but it's too late. I'm already around the corner, in my car, and gone as quickly as I came.

........

That night, I pull my covers up over my head and try not to think about the shoe box or the lies, our kiss in the eld, or my life before the accident.

After all this time of trying to remember, all I want to do is forget. But I can't. As many times as I force it out, everything just comes flooding back in again.

It was one thing to know that I had a hole in my life.

But it's a completely different thing to know exactly what was missing. Especially when what was missing is something I can never let myself have again.