Turning around, I walked toward the building and took a seat on the steps where I could see everything and everyone. Giani sat beside me, close enough for our shoulders to brush.
Sitting here was perfect. If something were off, I’d catch it before it got too close. Though everything looked normal, I still didn’t trust it. I kept my eyes moving, scanning faces, windows, parked cars, anything that could hide somebody watching me.
“You still doin’ that too,” Giani murmured.
I looked at her again.
“Watchin’ everybody,” she explained quietly. “You never liked sittin’ with your back to people.”
She was right. I’d been doing it the entire night.
Even without my memories, parts of me were still moving on instinct, but none of it was new to Giani. She spoke about those habits like she’d seen them a hundred times before. Thatshould’ve scared me, but instead, it made me feel connected to her.
For the first time since waking up in that hospital, I wasn’t sitting beside a complete stranger pretending to know me. I was sitting next to someone who actually did.
“You can have a piece of my love (Oh, oh, baby).”
The song switched, andPiece of My Loveby Guy blasted from the speakers.
“Ooooh, this is my shit,” Giani laughed as she set her plate down and stood.
She closed her eyes, her hips swaying from side to side, when a man walked over and grabbed her hand.
“Come dance with me,” he said, pulling her toward him.
Giani laughed and went willingly, relaxing against him as he wrapped an arm around her waist and guided her into the crowd.
I watched their bodies sway to the beat as everyone around them laughed, drank, and sang along. The way she looked at him caught me off guard. There was comfort in her eyes, trust, too.
Watching them stirred up a feeling so deep and familiar that it almost hurt. For a second, I found myself wondering if someone had ever looked at me that way before. If I had ever been in love enough to forget everything around me and just exist inside a moment with another person.
Then my vision blurred. One moment I was sitting on the steps watching Giani dance, and the next I was somewhere completely different.
A garden.
Roses climbed a white trellis, their petals deep crimson against the morning light. The air smelled like them, sweet and heady, mixed with that same cologne that always made my knees weak.
Booda was here, standing at the center of everything, like gravity. It was his birthday, and I was throwing him a party.
He wore black slacks and a white dress shirt, collar open and sleeves rolled up. He seemed different in that moment, softer but still just as strong. His eyes were gentle in a way I hadn’t seen before, and when he looked at me, I felt like I was the only person that mattered.
The yard was crowded with people in suits and dresses. Some I loved, some I just put up with, and some I hadn’t seen in years. They were all laughing and drinking under the warm lights of an evening I had created from scratch.
“Come here,” he said, extending his hand.
I walked toward him, my bare feet sinking into the soft grass. The garden felt as if it were outside of time, holding us in a moment that was both impossible and meant to be.
When he took my hand, his touch sent a jolt through me and made me catch my breath. He pulled me close, his other hand on my waist, and we swayed together to music I couldn’t hear but could feel deep inside.
“I love you,” he whispered against my temple. “You know that, right?”
I nodded, unable to find words big enough for what I felt right then. Everything was perfect. He was perfect. We were perfect.
Booda pulled back to look at me, moving his hand from my waist to my back and holding me closer. He searched my eyes for something, and whatever he saw seemed to make him happy.
“Then marry me,” he said, and the world stopped.
Not figuratively either. Everything actually stopped. The music I couldn’t hear went silent. The people around us froze mid-laugh, mid-sip, mid-movement. Even the wind died, leaving the roses perfectly still.
