Remember Me (Jack Maynard)

Chapter 8

"Jack, let me go," I whined as he held onto my arm, leading me up the stairs to the guest bedroom in Joe and Caspar's old flat.

"Mel, honey, you're really drunk right now," Jack said, getting me inside the room and sitting me down on the bed.

"You've had more than I did," I protested, watching Jack as the room started spinning around me.

"I handle my liquor better than you do," he said, and I couldn't take the spinning anymore, as I quickly stood up and stumbled to the bathroom amongst the spinning, knocking several things over in my wake.

I quickly made it to the toilet before vomiting up the contents of the drinks I'd had that evening, as well as the dinner beforehand. Jack was quick to be kneeling next to me, holding my hair away from my face and rubbing my back.

"It's alright princess," he whispered and held me close when I finished throwing up and instead began to cry, which was a common occurrence whenever I had gotten trashed to the point of getting sick. "it's okay Jacky's here c'mon, let's get you in bed."

I barely had any time to respond before he picked me up and helped me to the sink to brush my teeth quick and then getting me in bed, climbing in and holding me close. And I fell asleep to the feeling of him playing with my hair and whispering to me...

I woke up sweating, quickly reaching for my phone and turning it on, seeing that it was 2:38 in the morning. My lock screen was still a picture of me and Jack, and for the first time I recognized the background to be the park we'd gone to on our first date.

Jack.

That was a memory, I was almost sure of it. I knew the place in the dream as being Joe and Caspar's, but it was a different place than the one Joe and I lived in now, so it must've been back when they still lived in the old flat. Guess I wasn't so good at handling my liquor, and Jack needed to help me out.

I got out of bed and pulled my slippers on, padding silently up the stairs and into the kitchen so I wouldn't wake Joe. I quickly got myself a glass of water and drank it, pacing back and forth around the kitchen.

Going back to sleep was out of the question. I'd never experienced a memory in one of my dreams before, the only thing I'd remembered was the feeling of Jack's hand holding mine, so there was no way I'd be able to fall asleep again after all this. Too much going on inside my head.

I could watch a little television and try to see about falling asleep on the couch after awhile, but that again ran the risk of waking Joe. He wasn't a very heavy sleeper, and his room was only one over from here, so it was possible that turning the television on would wake him.

Jack.

He needed to know. And if I told him, I could figure out if that had actually been a memory that I was realizing, or simply just a dream about us.

I quickly pulled up Jack's number and hit dial. After two rings he answered, sounding nervous, panicky, and out of breath.

"Hello?!" he asked, tired, but still scared. "Amelie? Hello?"

"It's me," I said.

"Mel are you okay what's going on?" he asked then, still sounding scared.

"Jack I'm fine," I said, and he sighed in relief.

"Oh thank God," he said, "it's just... it's the middle of the night, and you called. I was scared something bad had happened."

"I think I remembered something," I told him then.

"You did?" he asked, "What was it?"

"Maybe I can tell you all about it tomorrow when I see you?" I asked. "I don't know if I can do all this over the phone."

"I'm on my way over," he said. "let's go for a little drive, and we can talk."

"Okay," I agreed, and he said he'd be there in ten minutes before hanging up the phone.

I was only in a tank top and a pair of fuzzy pajama pants, along with my slippers, so I headed downstairs to throw on a flannel and exchanged the slippers for sneakers. I left a note for Joe in case he came down to check on me for any reason and found me gone.

By the time I came back upstairs Jack was waiting for me in his car outside, and I headed out, getting in and seeing his smiling face. He still looked tired, but happy, dressed up in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, a grey beanie hiding his hair.

"Hi pretty lady," he said, and I hugged him, unable to help the smile on my face. "What did you remember?"

"I was really drunk," I recalled as he started to drive, telling him what I remembered from the dream. "at Joe and Caspar's. You were helping me upstairs, even though I was silly and not cooperating. Eventually I got back up and ran to the bathroom because I needed to get sick. So you held my hair and rubbed my back and told me everything was going to be okay, even when I started crying. Then you got me in bed and held me until I fell asleep. I know it's not much, but..."

"Mellie, that's incredible," he said. "It doesn't matter how small or insignificant that might feel. That's huge."

"So it's real, then?" I asked him. "It wasn't just a dream?"

He shook his head. "It's happened a few times," he said, "you're a bit of a lightweight."

"Sorry," I said, smiling sheepishly.

"Nothing to be ashamed of," he said with a shrug, still driving. "but do you mind if I tell you a story?"

"Go ahead, please," I told him.

"It's the story of our song," he said, "one of my favorites. We've got a bit of a strange love story. We're pretty much opposites, as you gathered when you, erm... re-met me. But we lasted. There's a song that came out last year that just seemed to, well, capture, everything we've worked for. And there's a line in it that really just kinda speaks about us. 'They said we were lost, that we had no future, but you said 'hold on', and we stayed together. These cars full of people, they'll never know what we're about.' People didn't understand us. Joe, Conor, Zoe, any of them. They do now, but it was weird at first. But we were strong, and we stayed together.

"The song's called "Cars Full of People", and it's by the band Good Charlotte. Also fitting, because driving around and taking little road trips is another thing we like to do. Last summer we drove through the entire U.S., just the two of us. Anyways, do you mind if I show you the song while I drive you back home so you can get more rest before tomorrow?"

"Please show me," I said, and he quickly plugged his phone into a cord connected to the car, pulling up the song and making it play through the car's speakers.

While the song played, all I could do was stare at Jack in awe. This song meant so much to him, because it represented us and all the memories that we shared. It was so great, but how much were memories worth if I didn't have them anymore?

Jack looked so tired. Not only tired because it was the middle of the night, but also that he appeared to not have slept in days. This all was taking so much of a toll on him, and it was no one's fault but mine.

He wanted to bring the old me, whoever I was before this accident, back, but what good was it if there was a chance that the old me wasn't coming back? I needed to end this, before we got ourselves any deeper into things than we were now.

"I can't do this to you," I muttered as soon as he stopped the car outside the flat.

"Do what?" he asked.

"Tear you down piece by piece. I'm doing that, I can see that much. Maybe this really is all better left in the past, and we should keep it that way."

"Mel-" Jack started, but I cut him off.

"Thank you for all this, you've been really lovely, but I just can't. Goodbye Jack," I said, quickly getting out and shutting the door before he could protest further, running inside with only the faint sounds of him yelling my name over and over from inside the car behind me.