Page 24 of Forgotten
It’s light. Winnie is very light. She smells… nice. A sweet perfume I recognise as soon as it hits my nostrils: it’s my baby. My home.
“Her birthday?” I ask Ash.
“Yes. Winnie is turning two today.” He looks at her with a smile. Then, he adds, “Bergman-Hale.”
The moment it rolls out of Ash’s lips, it makes sense. Of course. That tip-of-the-tongue sensation is gone and I relax.
“Why both?”
“Because you really wanted her to be ours.” Ash is so close now and I stare at him blankly, Winnie’s weight perfectly balanced at my left side. “I was okay with giving up my name.”
My heartbeat fastens, my hands grow sweaty. Winnie is calm and content in my grip. She’s not fallingdown. She’s soft and pretty and I can’t stop looking ather.
But at the same time, before me, Ashley’s never looked sexier. His sweats are loose on his legs and tight around his waist. His colourful t-shirt is wrapped around the newly discovered biceps and it makes me wonder what other delicious secrets 2024 Ash is hiding from me.
I close my eyes, once again confused at my sudden interest in Ash. “So, Miss Ashwin Sarah Bergman-Hale. Winnie. Hello Winnie, happy birthday, Winnie.” I try to keep the conversation going, taking deep breaths. How can I not remember an entire child? There is no way this is actually my future. “Two years old is a big birthday.”
“To be fair, you never call her that.”
“I don’t?”
“Nah. She’s usually ‘Baby’, cause, you know, she’s a baby. Sometimes ‘Angel’, or ‘Honey’. One time she dropped a bunch of your stuff on the floor and you called her ‘Dude.’”
“And you’re okay with me calling our… Hum, ‘dude?’”
Ash shifts his weight from one heel to the other and clears his voice. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on in that pretty brain of yours. But this isn’t some paralleluniverse you’ve landed in, Ford. This is still us, I’m me and you’re you.”
Ash waves his hand in the air in exasperation. “You call Winnie what you want because it makes you giggle. And if you giggle, she giggles. And if you all are happy and laughing, it doesn’t make me wanna slit my wrists.”
His words are hard, real. They bring me back to a scary past, a time when every day with Ash felt like it could be the last. Sensing my discomfort, Winnie wiggles in my arms and I instinctively start bouncing, like I have seen Ash do.
Then, for good measure, I push out a tentative, fake laugh to soothe her.
Immediately, Winnie looks up, interested. It’s a couple of seconds before she starts laughing too, and I feel insane as my laugh turns into a real one and then Ash is joining us. His hand lands on my arm and his fingers twitch at the contact, but he doesn’t move it away. I imagine what it would feel like if I kissed him.
Annoyingly, as usual, Ashley reads my mind.
“You know you can kiss me if you want. You’ve been kissing me for a while now.”
Suddenly, saliva is hard to swallow and the few inches I have managed to put between us feel like miles.
Winnie is quiet again at my hip, almost as if she was born to be there. Lost in Ash’s eyes, I feel heady.
“Still not sure this isn’t a prank. I wish it wasn’t.”
“Trust me. I wish it was.” Reaching into his back pocket, Ash extracts an object and hands it to me: aphone. He then eyes Winnie, silently asking for a trade.With one last squeeze, I return Winnie and take the phone in exchange.
“I had the store set everything up for you.”
There’s no recommendation to take things easy and remember slowly. No warning, no worry. Only trust.
I’m not sure what to do with it. I hold the device in my hand, new, different. I roll it over and stare at the bitten apple, happy at least this hasn’t changed.
As I look back at Ash and at Winnie in his arms, a warm and fuzzy feeling stirs in my chest. Before I can change my mind, I lean in. I don’t close my eyes and neither does Ashley and it should be weird, kissing someone with eyes open. It should be weird kissing your best friend, in a future-present year 2024, while he’s holding his baby. No. Holding our baby.
But it isn’t.
I peck Ash’s lips lightly and they taste like home.
