Remember Me (Jack Maynard)

Chapter 21

I was sitting by a pond in the park watching some ducks float by when Jack finally found me. 

They were calming, the ducks. It was a relief from the thousands of images that had been popping up in my head. Many were changing, just different things about me and Jack, as well as me and the others, but there was one thing that remained constant.

It was an image of me and Jack holding a baby. We were standing in the nursery back at their flat, just watching her with smiles on both of our faces.

"Mel, there you are," he said, out of breath.

"I'm here," I said softly, not looking away from the ducks.

He took a seat next to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. I laid my head on his shoulder, curling up into him as the tears finally fell. He didn't say anything right away, just kept a hold on me, rubbing my back softly and watching the ducks like I had been previously.

"It's not your fault," he said. "the accident."

"How did it happen?" I asked, finally looking up at him, and he then looked away from the ducks, his eyes meeting mine. "The accident?"

Of all the lessons he'd given me, this was one of the few he never had. He'd never talked about how it had happened, we sort of just both knew that it had happened. But I was ready to know, ready for him to tell me. 

"You were on your way home from the bookstore." he said. "We had spoken on the phone before you had gotten in the car. I was about to film, and you reminded me again to be nice to Mikey and Josh, like you then did again when you re-met me in the hospital. I know you think you've changed a lot, but you're still the same Mel.  When I was done filming, I was going to grab some Nando's takeout and we were going to have a movie marathon. If I could pull you away from your new books, of course.

"Anyways," he continued on, "when you were going through an intersection, another car didn't stop for the red light, and came speeding through. They hit you head on." his voice cracked then. "Your head went through the windshield."

"Jack..." I said softly, reaching up and wiping away his tears.

"They called me while you were in the ambulance," he said, "your phone was cracked, but still worked. Conor drove me to the hospital and called Joe and everyone. We had gotten there just before they brought you in."

"You don't have to say it," I told him, but he shook his head.

"We saw them bring you in," he said then. "I had pretty much known Bella was gone, but I wasn't for sure then. When we saw you, I..." a couple more tears fell from his eyes then. "I thought you had died, too. You were really pale, and there was blood in your hair, and on your face, and just everywhere. Your head went through the windshield. When they said you were still alive, I was so incredibly happy. I never left the hospital. Never even had time to grieve over our baby. When you found the nursery, I didn't know what to do. So I panicked and told you that it was for Conor's baby. I'm so sorry."

"You were protecting me," I said, kissing his cheek softly. "I understand."

"You will remember things," he assured me, his eyes never once leaving mine. "I know you're discouraged, because it's been a little bit, but it just takes time. You will get your memories back."

I nodded slowly, finally standing up and bringing him with me. "Jack?" I asked.

"Yeah?" he asked, finally wiping his eyes.

"Will you show me the nursery?" I asked him, and he nodded, taking my hands in his again as we walked back towards the flat.

"Here we are," he said as soon as we'd arrived in the doorway, opening it slowly to reveal the pink colored baby room. He wandered over to the rocking chair and set a hand on it gently. "You used to sit in here a lot and just think. You'd think about how things were going to change in just a few months. We both knew they would. We just thought they'd be changing in a different way than they had."

He left me alone after awhile, saying he was going to make some tea, and I just simply sat on the ground, finally letting the thoughts leave my head. 

I didn't remember my baby, but that didn't lessen the love I had begun to feel towards her once I was aware that she had been there. I was a mother, whether people knew it or not.

Standing up quickly, I wandered into the bedroom and grabbed Jack's MacBook before going back and sitting down in the rocking chair, pulling up YouTube. This had been a long time coming, but I was finally ready.

JackAndAmeliesVlogs

The most recent one had been our gender reveal. It was even titled so. Jack and I were holding up a Pokéball in the thumbnail, and there were little pink and blue squares surrounding it. So I clicked on that video and leaned back in the chair to watch it.

"Hello world!" I said on the screen, holding the camera. I was in the passenger seat of Jack's car, and he was driving. "It's a very exciting day, indeed. So, Jack and I had a poll up on Twitter asking you guys what you thought our baby was going to be, and the results are finally in. It appears..." I said, holding my phone up to the camera until it focused to reveal a Twitter poll. "That about seventy percent of you think that we're having a boy, and thirty percent of you think we're having a girl. Were you right? We're about to find out." I tilted the camera then, showing more of Jack. "Babe, where are we going?" 

"We are headed to Brighton where we're doing the reveal to meet up with everybody." Jack said. "Because my family, the Suggs, and all of our friends, they don't know what it is yet, so it's a reveal to them, too. We're the only ones who know. So my parents, Graham, and Tracey put together a little party for us."

The video cut then to having everybody guess what they thought it was going to be. Conor thought it'd be a boy, as did Alfie, Caspar, Mikey, Joe, Graham, Tracey, and both of Jack's parents. Anna, Zoe, Josh, and Oli were the only ones who had guessed it right.

"Okay, so since we're nerds, we found an interesting gender reveal idea," Jack had said to the camera, holding up the Pokéball with his free hand. "Inside this is colored smoke with the gender. It's like a mini smoke bomb. So when we throw the ball, then it'll break open and reveal. We're going to have it on a little tripod so everything remains steady and we can get everything in the frame." 

"Ready?" I asked as soon as everything was set up, and everyone cheered as Jack and I both took a hold of the Pokéball.

"Baby, we choose you!" we yelled, throwing it up in the air, and it broke on the ground, pink smoke spewing from it as cheers erupted from everybody around us.