Say You'll Remember Me

Chapter Four

We took Aimee and Grant back to her house after the movies. I got to see where she lived and she told me to call her whenever I needed to talk since I was being forced to share a house with all boys. I thanked her for today and told her I would call her so we could hangout and have a girls day. I was pretty excited for a girl’s day. It was nice to finally feel like I had a friend.

I don’t remember much about living with my Grandmother, but I remember the story she used to tell me about falling in love with my grandfather. I don’t remember the entire story, because I would alway focus on her. Whenever she told the story her eyes would go big and bright and her cheeks would flush. It was like she was transformed back to the time and place where she fell in love with him. All the magical feelings that clouded her when she first met him were right there again as she told the story to my little self. That story stayed with me, and even while I had a hard time meeting people, I realized how much I wanted to feel those things my grandmother told me about my grandfather.

I wanted to fall in love with someone who loved me, someone who would look at me and make me feel the way my grandmother did. I wanted to sit around the fire and tell my grandchild how much I loved their grandfather and it was all because we fell in love that they were here with us. I carried that desire with me, but this world started to make my heart cold and hard. I lost the desire to fall in love and found the one to survive.

But here with Hunter I felt those feels overwhelm me. I remembered the way I loved listening to my grandmother’s story and the butterflies I felt for her. I wanted him to be the man who looked at me the way she said he would look at her. The pictures of them together, they were so beautiful. That was the life I wanted, I wanted to have someone beside me and know that he was beside me for the rest of my life.

Maybe that’s what I had been searching for. I mean I was pretty sure of who I was and what I wanted in life. Maybe I was always running because I was looking for someone to share that with. Someone who would hold my hand and promise me that even if I didn’t believe it, everything would be okay. I needed someone to stand beside me and hold my hand while I tried to put back the pieces that had been taken from me over the years. And I wanted that person to be Hunter.

I glanced over at him and he was smiling as he sang along to the radio. His voice was pretty and I wondered what he sounded like when he was singing his songs. The sun was getting lower in the sky, and I knew that once we got home it was going to be colder than inside this car. I had fallen in love with this car over the last two days. This car was the place where Hunter let down his guard, even if it was only for a few seconds at a time. I shook my head, getting caught up in everything I wanted, and knowing that it would never happen.

I would find a way to screw it up, I always did.

Hunter was driving slowly down the street and my hands started to shake. I don't know why but when I glanced out the window my heart stopped. There on the sidewalk was a flash of dark brown hair. I knew the chances were slim, but I swore he had that same hard look in his eyes. That same build that pushed me down and hovered over me. All of a sudden it all came back to me, and I was back there in Texas where it had happened. The smell filled my nose and the bile came back up my throat.
It was all so intense I forgot I was in the car with Hunter. I felt the tears in the corner of my eyes and I tried to push away the memories, but then my vision turned while and I realized I couldn’t catch my breath. I struggled to inhale, but it wasn’t working. I couldn't breathe, my second panic attack since it all happened. Tears gathered in my eyes and I looked away from Hunter, but I could feel him staring at me. I gripped the handle to the door as tightly as I possibly could, but it wasn't helping. I felt like screaming, I felt like I was suffocating and I couldn't scream.

The tightness in my chest took over. It felt like a heavy boulder was sitting on the passage way to my lungs, and it wasn't going to move. I coughed, but that only made it worse as I tried to fight off what I knew was about to happen. I was too far gone, fighting it off only made it worse. But I couldn’t stop fighting it, that’s who I was. I didn’t let things happen to me, like what he had done. I fought until the very end.