Please, Remember Me

Epilogue - Try to Love Me

Kieran Smith kept his promise to me.

He showed up the next day and the one after that.

For two months he showed up, every day, staying past Christmas and New Year's. He showed up and showed me normal and, in a way, easy.

I won't lie to you and tell you it was all easy after that, because life never is. And a life like ours, a love like ours, absolutely never is. At least when it's forming and becoming what it'll eventually be.

It took me a good, long while to even start trusting him a little, to deal with the fact that he was truly here and meaning to stay until I told him otherwise.

The thing was, I kind of never wanted to tell him otherwise.

He took me to breakfasts, he showed up almost every day I worked and sat through my shifts with me. Sometimes bringing a laptop and doing some work, but very rarely. He seemed okay with just being, hanging out, getting to know the people I called friends.

They were all skeptical in the beginning. They'd see the epic throwdown, they saw my black and blue face, matching his own, and they sort of shunned him in the beginning. But after a while he became part of their routine as well as my own.

Nigel would come upstairs sometimes and exchange a few words with Kieran. Andy and Stefan sent him food without thinking about it. And sure enough, he managed to voodoo and charm his way into their good graces. Even though they'd witnessed what losing this man could do to a person.

Lizzie was mostly skeptical about me and what would happen between us, understandably so. The fact that she'd essentially lied to me for a very long time, and about something like this, wasn't an easy thing to get over.

But we spoke about it, I refused to treat her and them the way I had up until now. I wasn't going to pull away and sulk and stew in my hurt or confusion. I was going to communicate and deal.

So, she explained what had happened. How Kieran had texted her for a week straight in the beginning, begging for some type of information because he was sure he'd made a mistake, and Lizzie flat out refused to contact him. Until the day Adam told her what had transpired when he came to me. Adam had given her a, when it comes to him, detailed description of my state and mindset during those crucial days.

That's when she answered his texts with one of her own that read; Fuck you.

You've got to love the girl for that.

Having made contact, Kieran was emboldened and started attacking her with texts, looking for information, looking for any knowledge about where my head was at.

Lizzie dug in, keeping true to Girl Code and properly hated on him in my honour. But the more we drifted apart, the more pain I showed, the more she'd given him.

The night after Adam and I slept together and she and I had our spat, she'd called him in tears. She reamed him out, yelled at him that he broke me to the point where none of them could handle or even recognize me anymore.

Kieran talked her down and listened but still insisted on her sharing about me. She got annoyed and told him about me, all about me.

Well... All that she knew.

They kept in contact, she'd watch me from afar while we weren't speaking and saw me dissolve more and more.

Eventually, when I found the Facebook thing, she called him and yelled again. She declared him to be the scum of the earth for keeping in contact with her and still keeping it up with Cindy. Kieran told her he didn't know what she was talking about and checked his Facebook while on the phone with Lizzie.