Page 15 of Forgotten
“Next time? I have to go.” It’s definitely too late now and I stand up in a rush, grabbing my bike.
Ford’s face falls a little, but he forces a smile out. He looks sad but I don’t say anything about it.
Instead, I offer, “I’ll make you a drawing tomorrow. At school. So next time we meet I can give it to you.”
His brown eyes light up and he pushes off the sidewalk, coming to stand before me.
“And I will make you a drawing, Ash,” he says with a solemn tone, and then insists we shake hands on it.
I’m back on my bike and on my way home down the street when I hear Ford’s voice.
“Hey, Ash! Wait up,” Ford screams at me.
I come to a stop a couple of houses before mine. He’s breathless when he catches up to me. “Did I forget something?” I ask and Ford tells me no, he just wanted to let me know…
“I never had a best friend,” he declares out of nowhere.
I am ten years old when Ashford Hale makes my heart skip a beat for the first time. I am his best friend and nothing will ever change us. “I never had a friend,” I respond, because it is my one truth for his one truth.
Chapter 7
2024 - Ashford
In hindsight, I’m not surprised.
Deep down, I’ve always known Ash would have children. He hated them too fiercely for it to not turn into the complementary feeling.
I remember the first time Ash’s school friends Sydney and Darshi discussed having children. They were twenty-three and Darshi’s parents were pushing for an arranged wedding. Coming from an extremely conservative family, Darshi’s family had been insisting on an arranged marriage with a young man from Jaipur ever since she turned twenty. Ash had listened to her night after night as she thought of every way she could fuck up her parents’ plan. In turn, I had listened to Ash refer it all back to me.
In Darshi’s words, she had only two options: move back to India, get the fantastic wedding to the stranger and forget about happiness forever; or pick one of her straight friends and get pregnant.
Naturally, her choice had fallen on her oldest crush, Sydney.
They had spent months circling each other,dating without dating, having sex without ever labelling it. Until one night, Sydney had given Darshi an ultimatum: he had always loved her, did she want to be with him?
Yes, she did, of course she did. Only, how did Sydney feel about marriage and children? I remember how disgusted Ash had looked as he narrated the story later, “and Sydney answered, ‘I want everything with you.’ Can you believe that simp? So straight.” Ash had dragged thesofor some uncomfortable seconds as I stared at him.
“You don’t want children?” I had asked him then.
“Children? So what, they can grow up as fucked up as I am?” Ash had changed topic then, but I remember clearly how his jaw had tightened; the flash of sadness in his eyes; the longing.
And when Sydney and Darshi gave birth to a wrinkly baby boy with a thick head of black hair, angry fists and unstoppable lungs, Ash had gone above and beyond to make sure he was the favourite gay uncle (or ‘guncle’ as I preferred to call it, which always made Ash worry for the future of the English language). He had gone from “get that whiny demon away from me” to “I can babysit on Saturday night.”
As I stare at the white ceiling of the empty hospital room, the banging of my heart louder than the one at my temples, I’m not surprised Ash has kids. I’m not even surprisedAsh and Ihave kids.
My head is killing me. I didn’t even have time todigest one big revelation. Fuck, why couldn’t Iremember the last two years of my life as well as I remember these random bits of the past?
Time goes by slowly without Ash by my side. Doctor Parker and his magic team come and go with words of praise for my quick progress standing, peeing and wearing pants. I’m promised a transition to a brace that will allow limited or gradual movement as healing progresses and I’m dying at the thought of finally being able to scratch my skin.
“Please keep engaging the fingers and the right wrist,” Doctor Taylor recommends, ever-worried about strengthening and straining and muscle atrophy and allof that.
“Of course,” is my dutiful reply.
“How’s the memories?” It’s the very last question at the end of the visit. Doctor Carter the Neurologist is not as impressed as the other two doctors.
I press my lips together so I don’t have to tell the neurologist how shit all of this is. How totally crap it is that my body is doing great, but my brain forgot not only an entire year of my life but an entire relationship with my childhood friend. And not just that. I zip my mouth so I don’t have to admit I have no idea how I ended up with a child, a whole person whose existence I don’t remember.
My personal team of doctors offer me three matching smiles and leave with the same stupid recommendation: “Take it easy.”
