I Forgot Why I Loved You

Thirty?

The number swung like a wrecking ball against my temples.

I floated up from the murky depths of unconsciousness, greeted by the sterile bite of hospital bleach. The first thing to come into focus was Nancys familiar face. She was wearing a simple white dress, her brows knotted together in tight, anxious lines.

Next to her stood Oliver. He spoke first, a heavy exhale of relief carrying his words. "Holden. Thank God you're awake."

"You've been in a coma for over a month. Weve been out of our minds."

But my eyes were magnetically drawn to the space between them. To their hands. Hands that, just a fraction of a second ago, had been perfectly, seamlessly intertwined before snapping apart like theyd touched a live wire.

A laugh bubbled up in my throat. "I take a nap for a month, and you two finally stop dancing around it and make it official?"

I shifted, wincing slightly. "I told you guys we shouldn't have hiked that ridge. Glad you made it out okay, though."

I blinked, panic suddenly spiking. "Wait, my senior thesis please tell me you didn't get so caught up in the honeymoon phase that you forgot to submit it for me?"

Nancys voice suddenly spiked, cutting through the air, thick with suppressed fury. "Holden! Snap out of it! You're thirty years old! What damn senior thesis are you talking about?!"

The words drove into my skull like an ice pick.

Thirty?

In my head, in my bones, in my absolute certainty I was twenty-two.

01.

The hospital room dropped into a silence so profound you could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights.

It was only in this breathless quiet that I truly looked at the two people hovering over my bed.

Nancy didn't look the way I remembered her from before I passed out. The girl I knew was gone. The woman standing here was sharper, more polished. She looked so much like her mother now. The dress she wore didn't look like a teenager playing dress-up in adult clothes anymore; it draped over her with expensive precision.

And Oliver. Oliver, standing quietly by her side, was no longer the scholarship kid I remembered, the one who practically lived in faded band tees and frayed denim.

My gaze drifted down to his lapel. Pinned to the crisp, tailored fabric of his jacket was a vintage gold designer pin.

I remembered owning one exactly like it. My dad had given it to me for my eighteenth birthday.

I remembered the day Oliver was chosen to give the speech as the student representative. I had offered him that very pin. He had looked down, a shy, overwhelmed smile breaking across his face, his dimples catching his quiet panic.

Holden, I can't, he had said. I can't go up there wearing something that costs more than my rent for the year.

Yet here he was. Wearing a beautiful pin, holding a leather briefcase that easily cost five figures, sporting a luxury watch. He even smelled expensivea subtle, cedar-wood cologne.

Oliver must have felt the weight of my stare. His mouth opened, a panicked explanation forming on his lips.

But I just smiled. "Looks like our boy Oliver finally got the life he always wanted."

"Congratulations, man."

"Enough!"

Nancys shout shattered my memories. Her perfectly sculpted eyebrows drew together in a fierce scowl. "Holden, how long are you going to keep up this crazy act?"

"Do you honestly think playing dumb is going to make me love you again?"

"Let me spell it out for you. Its never going to happen."

I stared at her, genuinely baffled. "Why would I want you to love me?"

"Aren't you and Oliver together?"

Oliver finally found his opening. For some reason, his eyes were rimmed with red. "Holden, listen to me."

"Nancy and I it's not what you think."

"We we aren't"

The door swung open, and the doctor stepped in, cutting him off.

"Mr. Garrison, how are we feeling? Any immediate discomfort?"

I shook my head slightly, the rustle of my hair against the pillowcase sounding unnaturally loud.

"I'm fine. But why do they keep saying I'm thirty?"

"It's 2018, isn't it?"

"Doc, tell them to stop. Why are they messing with a sick guy like this?"

The doctor's face fell. The practiced, bedside neutrality vanished, replaced by a heavy, grim realization.

Eventually, Nancy and Oliver were asked to leave the room.

What followed was a revolving door of doctors, nurses, flashlights in my eyes, and endless questions. Finally, as the sun collapsed below the skyline outside my window, they delivered the verdict.

"Mr. Garrison, you have amnesia."

"You've lost everything from the hiking accident in 2018 right up until you fell down the stairs a month ago."

I watched the doctor's mouth keep moving, but the sound had been dialed down to zero.

So

I really was thirty years old.

02.

Despite the missing eight years, my body was structurally sound. After a few more days of observation, I was cleared for discharge.

Nancy came to pick me up.

I didn't know why, but her attitude toward me was freezing cold.

Truthfully, I had never told Nancy this, but before Oliver stumbled into our orbit in college, I had always assumed we were the inevitable endgame. We were the childhood sweethearts destined to figure it out.

I watched her pop the trunk, carelessly toss my duffel bag inside, and thenwith begrudging courtesyopen the passenger side door for me.

I held up my uninjured hand in surrender. "Have mercy."

"I'm not trying to treat you like a chauffeur."

"But you have a boyfriend now. It feels a little weird for me to ride shotgun, don't you think?"

A flash of pure, unadulterated rage crossed Nancys face. "Holden! Are you ever going to drop this?"

I had no idea what she was so furious about. I just stood there, my hand still raised in that ridiculous surrender pose, staring at her for a long moment.

Then, I walked around her, fumbled with the rear door, and slid into the back seat.

Nancy didn't say another word. She just slammed her door so hard the entire chassis shuddered.

She drove like a maniac the whole way, taking corners aggressively, as if she were hoping to just floor the gas and send us both straight into the afterlife.

The scenery outside the tinted glass was jarringly foreign.

This wasn't the town where we went to college. Our university had been nestled in New England, all red brick, cobblestones, and quiet coastal charm.

This was our hometown. A sprawling midwestern city.

Through the dense thicket of high-rises, I caught a glimpse of the old abandoned warehouse Nancy and I used to claim as our secret base when we were kids.

Except it wasn't abandoned anymore. It was a sleek, glass-paneled luxury loft complex, standing cold and indifferent in the center of the district.

Maybe buried somewhere in its concrete foundations were all the stupid, beautiful promises Nancy and I had made back then.

We had promised to go to college together.

We had promised that when we grew up, we'd adopt a cat.

And Nancy, her cheeks flushed with the heat of summer, had once looked at me and said, Holden, just wait. One day, Im going to marry you.

The SUV jerked to a violent halt.

The violent lurch ripped me out of those golden-hour memories.

"Get out."

Nancy pulled my door open. Her silhouette cast a pale, slate-grey shadow over me. "When we go inside, you are going to drop this amnesia act."

"Don't think you can play me the way you played those idiot doctors."

Suddenly, she reached in, her manicured fingers gripping my chin with bruising force. "If you scare Tommy, I will make you pay."

A sharp, searing physical pain shot through my jaw, but strangely, it was my chest that cracked open. A sudden, inexplicable ache rushed up my throat, stinging the back of my nose.

A single, heavy tear dropped, unbidden, right onto the back of her hand.

She flinched like shed been burned by acid, instantly ripping her hand away.

I bit my lower lip. Between the unrecognizable version of Nancy standing before me and the overwhelming sensory overload of this brand-new world, black spots danced at the edges of my vision.

I practically dragged myself up the front walk to the sprawling suburban house.

I didn't know why, but with every step I took toward that front door, the suffocating pressure in my chest grew heavier. The tears I couldn't understand kept coming, spilling over my lashes in a steady, silent stream.

By the time I stood in the foyer, my vision was nothing but a kaleidoscope of blurred shapes and refracted light.

But even through the blur, I saw the little boy running toward me.

He had Nancys eyes. Exactly her eyes.

Instinctively, I crouched down and opened my arms to him.

But he slapped my hands away, sprinting straight past me to bury his face in Nancys legs.

"Mommy! Why did you bring him back?!"

I froze. A sudden wave of awkwardness washed over me, and I took a clumsy step back.

"Tommy!" Oliver hurried out from the hallway behind him, looking flustered. "You can't talk like that!"

I managed to scrape together a broken, ugly smile for Oliver. "Oliver, it's fine. It really doesn't make sense for me to stay here."

"I'll just go find an apartment to rent."

"I shouldn't intrude on you three."

03.

Nancy let out a sound that was half-scoff, half-ice.

"Holden, go back to your room."

"I want to see exactly how long you can keep this up."

"You want to play the amnesia card? Fine. You're staying right here. Whenever you decide to magically remember who you are, then we can talk about you moving out."

With that, she took the little boyTommyby the hand and brushed past me.

As her shoulder clipped mine, she dropped her voice to a lethal whisper. "I just hope that when the time comes, youll actually have the guts to leave."

I was left standing alone in the cavernous, echoing living room.

The moment I had said the words intrude on you three, Oliver had slapped his hands over his face and fled down the hall.

Crying, apparently.

A minute later, I could hear the muffled sounds of a woman and a child soothing him through a closed bedroom door.

I was perfectly fine with being ignored. I took the opportunity to wander the house.

The built-in shelves in the living room held framed photos. Pictures of the three of them.

There was one of them at Disney. A massive, brilliant burst of fireworks lit the sky behind them. Nancy was leaning into Olivers chest, her smile soft and radiant. Tommy was holding Olivers hand, looking up at both of them with a look of pure, unadulterated joy.

I saw a trophy with Oliver's name on it. Matching his-and-hers coffee mugs. And framed on the wall, a school essay written by Tommy, titled My Dad.

In clumsy, blocky childhood print, it read: My dad is Oliver. He is a handsome and independent man.

I took it all in, piece by piece, yet the suffocating ache in my ribs was growing exponentially worse. I didn't understand it.

By the time I reached the final framed photo of Nancy and Oliver, the phantom pain was so severe I actually doubled over, gasping for air.

Just then, the front door clicked open. A middle-aged woman carrying grocery bags stepped inside.

She took one look at my pale, sweating face, dropped the groceries on the floor, and rushed to catch my arm.

"Mr. Garrison! You're home from the hospital!"

"Oh my lord, you're drenched in sweat. Come on, let's get you to the sofa."

My clammy hand rested lightly over her forearm. "I'm okay."

"Could you just show me to my room?"

"I don't actually know which one is mine."

The housekeeper stared at me, horrified. I offered her a weak, trembling smile. "The doctors said I have amnesia. I can't remember much of anything right now."

She guided me down the hall, past the beautiful, sunlit rooms, all the way to a door tucked into the furthest, darkest corner of the house.

When she pushed it open, the smell of dampness and settled dust hit me, making me cough.

The woman looked deeply embarrassed, as if she knew how pathetic this space was for the supposed man of the house.

But she didn't offer any explanations. As she pulled the door shut behind her, she simply murmured, "Maybe it's better you forgot."

I stumbled over to the narrow, twin-sized bed and sat down. The wooden frame groaned in protest.

It was only then that it fully clicked in my mind. She had called me Mr. Garrison.

But shouldn't the 'man of the house' be Oliver?

My mind was a chaotic tangle of noise and confusion from the past few days. But as my eyes swept the barren room, they landed on a fountain pen tossed casually onto the corner of a cheap desk.

It was my mother's pen. A family heirloom. I never let it out of my sight.

If it was here, then this depressing little box was definitely where I lived.

But why was I living like a ghost in someone else's house?

Didn't I have a home of my own?

Fighting through a sudden, blinding migraine, I dragged myself over to the desk.

Inside the top drawer, I found a leather-bound journal.

And a wedding band.

A band that was an exact match to the one I had just seen resting on Nancys ring finger.

A second later, I flipped open the cover of the journal. Folded neatly against the first page was a stack of legal documents.

A divorce settlement.

The petitioner was Nancy Lawson.

And the respondent was me.

04.

I stared blankly at the divorce papers.

The shock was absolute, so massive it temporarily paralyzed the physical throbbing in my skull.

I read the text line by line.

The parties share one minor child, Thomas Garrison. Full physical and legal custody shall be awarded to the Petitioner, Nancy Lawson.

Irreconcilable differences have caused the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.

At the bottom of the page, Nancys sharp, elegant signature was already inked. The line above my name was empty.

Frowning, I opened the journal.

It was thick, having been written in for years. Only a fraction of the pages remained blank.

But the pages that were filled they were warped. The ink was bled out into ugly, blue-black Rorschach blots, damaged by water.

No, not water.

Even though there was only half a book of writing, it felt heavy enough to hold a lifetime of tears.

I read the entry where a younger me wrote about the sheer ecstasy of Nancy confessing her feelings after a mudslide trapped us on that college hiking trip.

I read about the disbelief of her proposing to me.

I read about Oliver standing as my best man, crying uncontrollably at my wedding.

Then, the tone shifted. I guess the anatomy of infidelity is always the same.

I read about her coming home at dawn.

I read about the foreign cologne on her clothes. About the photos Oliver would post on his social media, the two of them looking just a little too close.

And just when the man writing this journal had finally braced himself to ask for a divorce she got pregnant.

I read about the agonizing nights she suffered through severe hyperemesis. How the man writing these words sat beside her, clutching his mothers pen, documenting every terrifying detail, desperate to protect the difficult pregnancy.

Then, Tommy was born.

I read an entry where I wrote about holding my sleeping infant son, begging Nancy not to walk out the door. Begging her to remember our childhood, our history, the years we spent as kids building a world together.

I looked at those blurred, tear-stained letters, and I just felt disgusted.

With only the memories of my twenty-two-year-old self, I couldn't comprehend how I had let myself become this hollowed-out, pathetic shell of a man, begging a woman who clearly despised me.

The day I had tumbled down those stairsthe accident that wiped my memoryI had already made the decision to sign the papers.

The universe had just hit pause on the execution.

The smell of cooking garlic and onions drifted through the crack beneath my door.

I closed the journal. Looking up at the single, dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, I pressed a hand flat against my chest.

"Thank God," I whispered to the empty room. "Thank God I'm twenty-two again. The Holden who doesn't give a damn."

I stayed in the house.

Partly because, having lost nearly a decade of context, I needed a minute to recalibrate to the current year.

But mostly because I realized this divorce settlement was a joke. There was plenty of room for renegotiation.

Nancy had committed adultery. She deserved to walk away with absolutely nothing.

And I just needed time to gather the proof.

I lived in that house like a silent shadow. The only person who spoke more than two words to me was Martha, the housekeeper.

But even she walked on eggshells, meticulously avoiding any mention of Nancy or Oliver.

My first real collision with the 'happy family' happened on the day I was scheduled to go to the hospital to get my arm cast removed.

It also happened to be Open House night at Tommys elementary school.

The kid, who had glared at me like I was a cockroach since I got home, suddenly knocked on my door the night before, his little hands anxiously twisting the hem of his shirt.

"You have to take me to school tomorrow."

His voice was stiff, commanding. It lacked any of the sweet, childish vulnerability he used when talking to Nancy or Oliver.

"No."

I didn't even look up. I was busy reviewing the bank statements my attorney had subpoenaed from Nancys accounts.

"Don't you want Oliver to be your dad?" I asked flatly. "Tell him to take you."

Tommy suddenly erupted into a shrieking, earth-shattering wail. "No!"

"Everyone at school says Oliver is a homewrecker! They say I'm the son of a homewrecker!"

"None of the kids want to play with me anymore!"

"It's all your fault!"

The little boy charged into my room, ramming his body full-force into my casted arm. "If you didn't steal Oliver's spot, they'd still play with me!"

I sucked in a sharp breath as white-hot pain flared up my arm.

Without a second thought, I raised my good hand and slapped him across the face.

"Get out."