Forget Me Not by Julie Soto
26
Elliot
TWO YEARS, NINE MONTHS, ONE WEEK, AND ONE DAY AGO
New Year’s Eve
Iwalk through the hallways of the Sutter Club in a daze. There are a lot of corners and doors and plenty of places to lose yourself, but I walk in circles trying to figure out what just happened.
I proposed.
I proposed, and she broke up with me.
She broke up with me, but made me question whether we were really even together.
And I regret it with every ounce of myself. I couldn’t have been content hearing her say she loves me? I had to take it one hundred steps further?
I try calling her twenty times. I text her. I know if I just keep wandering the Sutter Club, I’ll find her. We’re in the middle of one of her weddings. She can’t be too far away.
When I pass the dance floor again, searching for her head along the perimeter, my mother sees me. I give her a wave and keep moving. I’m in another alcove when Mom finally catches up to me.
“What’s wrong?” she says immediately.
I feel like a child again. I’m miserable, and she’s an angel in white who will make everything better again. I don’t know what to say to her because I proposed to her sounds ludicrous now. It sounds absolutely mad.
“I saw you dancing with Ama,” she offers, stepping forward. “You make a fine couple—”
“We’re not.” I leave off the obvious “anymore.” Mom has been surprisingly good about not pushing for details and not giving her opinions.
But I can see it on her face—the same pity she had when I’d come home from fifth grade, bruised and beaten. Back then, she would rally into Senator Gilbert, looking for places to shed light on injustice, calling the school, calling parents.
Now it’s just pity. There’s no higher power to which she can file a complaint. No bill she can pass.
“That’s fine,” she says after a moment. “You work together, after all.”
It slices through me. As if everyone could see why it was a bad idea except for me.
The DJ calls for my mother to come throw the bouquet, and I wave her off with a smile. But as soon as she’s gone, I lean on the wall next to a closet, and I let myself cry.
My chest shakes with it, as if it won’t ever be full again. Just this morning I’d held her as she slept, and I knew everything was perfect. I’d squeezed myself into her life, but it was working. I fucked it up.
I can’t breathe with the ache, and my throat is tight with unvoiced screams. I take one of Dad’s old hankies from my pocket and clean my wet face. I stare at his embroidered initials and wish he was here to tell me what to do.
When I can breathe again, I step off the wall and go find more wine. All night I hope I run into her, but she never comes back. I text her over and over and clean up the wedding by myself, as if it was in the plan all along, lying for her when the vendors ask after her.