The Memory of Us: A Standalone Soulmate Romance

by Claire Raye

  “Just in case you ever forget why you wanted to be a writer,” I murmur, my lips just inches from hers and I lean in and kiss her gently.

  It’s fucking insane the connection I have to her the minute my lips touch hers. It’s powerful and while I would normally be thinking about how I could get her pants off, that’s the last thing on my mind. I just want to be close to her. I want to be with her forever.

  When we separate, she looks down at what I’ve written on her arm:

  write what you love

  “Thank you,” she whispers, her hand resting on my cheek as she leans in and kisses me again. It’s as intense as the first time, but neither of us takes it any further. For some reason, I feel like I have the rest of my life to be with her, but tonight I’ll learn everything about her.

  “Come on,” I say, grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet. I’ve never been happier than I am right now.

  I’m running down the beach toward my tower with Nora lagging behind me. She’s giggling and it’s an amazing sound that stops me suddenly. I take her into my arms, hers wrapped tightly around my shoulders as I spin her around just listening to the melodic sound of her laughing.

  The warmth of her skin is pressed against my neck and her lips press small soft kisses between each of her giggles. I can’t get enough of her.

  “Nora, you make me want to know everything about you. Tell me everything. Your deepest fears, your biggest regrets. I want it all.”

  I set her down and run up the ramp to my tower, leaving her alone on the beach for a few seconds. I grab some blankets even though I know what I’m about to ask her is a long shot. I’m willing to try anything just to keep her near for as long as possible.

  “Do you want to sleep out under the stars?” I ask when I return and without even a breath in between she immediately answers, “Yes.”

  Since we’re in for the night, we head over to the convenience store a few yards from the beach and pick up some things. A buddy of mine is working the counter and he slips me a fifth of Jack and gives a little nod toward Nora, as she looks at a magazine. She’s stunning even in the hazy lights of the store and when she looks up and smiles at me, I nearly fall to my knees. She makes me weak.

  When we get back to the beach, I lay the blanket on the sand and Nora sits down as I take a seat next to her. Covering our legs with the other blanket, she moves close to me and I wrap my arm around her.

  I’m the first to take a drink from the bottle and I pass it to Nora and watch her shoot back as much as me. We continue to pass it back and forth, each of us taking long swallows until I feel it go to my head. Nora is drunker than me and I hear it in the way she speaks, carelessly and effortlessly.

  She talks and I listen as she tells me she’s afraid of the dark and that she’s eighteen years old and she loves the smell of coconut. She could never have an abortion but she’s pro-choice and she wants to live all over the world and travel and see the Great Wall of China and the Great Barrier Reef, eat in the cafes of Amsterdam and walk the streets of London. She wants to get married to someone who loves silence as much as her and she wonders if she could live without human contact. I memorize everything about her, committing everything she loves to memory, everything she’s told me is important and wonderful and perfect just like her.

  The beach is quiet now. There’s no one left but us and we finish off the last of the Jack. She’s laughing at me now and it’s sexy as fucking hell. I tell her I want to live off the grid in Alaska and she pokes my side, teasing me, telling me a California native has no place in the tundra.

  “You’ll never make it,” she says, hiccupping at the end, letting me know just how drunk she is, but she doesn’t seem to care. I love her casualness, the relaxed comfort she has by my side. I laugh back at her comment playfully, but decide to take things a little further.

  “And you would?” I say, challenging her as I straddle her hips and pin her arms above her head. “You just admitted to me you’re afraid of the dark.”

  As she’s pinned beneath my body, her arms stretched above her head and her dark brown hair spilling out around her, I’m certain I’ve never felt this way about anyone. My attraction to her is beyond words and I’m overcome with a need to protect her, to keep her safe and to make her mine.

  Nora tilts her head up, exposing her neck to me, she closes her eyes and I lean down pressing my lips to her neck as I trail kisses along to her ear, I whisper, “Don’t worry, I’d protect you.”

  I don’t expect what happens next as Nora’s lips crash into mine, bruising me with their force, but fuck if I don’t want her just as badly. Her hands are on my shorts, undoing the button and the touch of her fingers against my skin makes me feel like I might explode. I’m hard as a rock now and I know there’s not a chance she can’t feel what she’s doing to me. I shift nervously, but she pulls me close, her mouth colliding with mine once again. She slides her hands under my shirt, dragging her nails down my back making me gasp out loud at her touch. I want to be as close to her as possible, so I slip my hands under her shirt, caressing her skin as I kiss her neck, tasting her, taking in every inch of her. I want her so fucking bad and with each moan that leaves her lips, it drives me closer to her. I need to be inside her.

  Nora’s hands return to my shorts and I stop her before she can push them down. We’re obviously both drunk and I need to be certain this is what she wants before we go any further. I pull my wallet from my back pocket and the condom that happens to be stashed in there. It’s cliché as fuck, but I’m grateful it’s there.

  “Are you sure?” I ask her before opening the condom. I need her to be sure. I don’t want this to be something she regrets later. It’s something I will remember the rest of my life and I want her to feel the same way.

  I’ve slept with more girls than I care to admit to, but right now Nora is the only one who matters. I wait for her response, my heart beating recklessly in my chest, my breathing erratic as I hear her breathe out the word, “Yes.”

  Her hand slips into my shorts and my breath catches in my throat as she wraps her soft hand around my dick and begins stroking gently. I’m going to lose it soon, so I remove her hand and replace it with the condom.

  She moans loudly and when she exhales, she says, “Yes,” once again. There’s no mistaking that we both want this. I look down and our eyes lock and I see in her eyes all the desire and need that I’m feeling.

  Her hands tangle in my hair as I slide mine underneath her, undoing her bra. Right now I wish we were somewhere else. I want to see her beautiful body, I want to take her in and taste her and worship her.

  I slide her panties to the side, my fingers trailing down the inside of her thigh as I slowly enter her. I groan out loud at the feeling of being inside her and I pull out and slide back in a second time.

  “Fuck,” I moan and Nora claws at my back, her hips grinding against mine as if she needs more. “Slowly, Nora,” I murmur, needing to savor every second with her.

  “I need you, Elliot,” she says, breathlessly, her chest rising and falling rapidly beneath me.

  I begin to move, slowly at first, but as the need takes over I find myself driving into her, each moan that falls from her lips makes me even harder. Her legs are wrapped around my hips as I move faster. I reach between us, my fingers finding her because I’m not going to last much longer. And in that second, we come together.

  I’m exhausted, collapsing next to her; I cover us both with the blanket and listen to the quiet stillness of the night. The stars dotting the blackened sky as Nora breathes softly next to me.

  “Why does it feel this way?” she whispers, her head resting on my chest as I run my fingers through her hair. “This intense.”

  I don’t even have to think about my answer. I’ve known it since I first saw her at the party, I knew it when she left with me and I still know it. “Because I was meant to find you,” I tell her, completely certain about my words. Nora is the girl I’ve been looking for. She was
always supposed to be mine.

  Her eyes close and her breathing slows, and when I think she’s asleep, I whisper, “I think I’m falling in love with you, Nora.”

  I fall asleep wondering if you can truly fall in love at nineteen with someone you just met.

  The answer is yes.

  The sun is just beginning to rise when I wake up and find Nora still asleep beside me. I’m smiling so much my cheeks hurt. I guess I thought she might have disappeared before morning, that maybe just maybe I dreamed the whole thing. I’ve never met someone who makes me feel this way, like I want to be around her always.

  Soon the beaches will be filled with tourists and surfers, lifeguards and people walking their dogs. I need to get Nora back to my apartment, but I’ll let her sleep a little longer. We still have some time.

  “Don’t wake up. Sleep, my beautiful girl,” I say, whispering in her ear as her eyes flutter open. I run my fingers down her cheeks and her eyes close slowly, but a small smile tugs at her lips. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get coffee.”

  I kiss her softly as she mutters, “No. Stay, please.” It’s a plea that makes it so fucking difficult to walk away from her, but I need her to know this isn’t just a one-time thing for me. I need to show her that even though we just met, she means everything to me.

  “I promise, I’ll be right back. I can’t live without you, Nora.”

  I jog away from her, looking back a few times until she’s no longer in view. I hit up the convenience store, grabbing two cups of coffee and two donuts. I’ve had a huge fucking smile on my face since the moment I met her and I’m sure it’s not going away anytime soon. I know there’s a small flower stand about one block over, the opposite direction of where I left Nora on the beach, but I’ll make a quick stop and get back to her.

  I pick up a bouquet of daisies and quickly make my way toward where we spent the night. As soon as I hit the sand, I scan the beach for her, for the place where I put down the blankets but there’s nothing. No sign of her. Just the empty blankets.

  I feel my heart stop in my chest, a dull ache of panic takes over. I call her name, my voice strained as I call again and again.

  But nothing.

  I search the blanket for a note, something to tell me where she went, why she left, but I still come up empty handed.

  Maybe it wasn’t what I made it out to be. Maybe I fucked up along the way, drove her away. Maybe it was just a one-night stand. But I know that isn’t true. There was something between us and there still is.

  I need to find her.

  I stand staring out into the vast emptiness of the ocean, my chest tight and my hand clenched around the flowers. This isn’t over for me, and after what we shared over the last few hours; it wasn’t over for her either.

  The flowers fall from hand, the waves pulling them out into the ocean. They disappear from my life just like she did.

  Chapter Eleven

  Present Day – Chicago

  I roll over and find her still asleep beside me. This is a first. She’s usually gone before I even wake up—a luxury of working from home. I silently mouth the date out loud to myself. It’s been twelve years since I lost Nora. I make it sound like she died. It’s fucking pitiful. I should’ve moved on by now, I guess in theory I have, but in actuality, I’m living a life that everyone around me thinks I should have.

  Next to me in bed is my fiancé, Bridgitte. We met about three years ago. One of those chance meetings in a bar, that somehow led to something more. We were both drunk and I watched her sing a sloppy karaoke version of “Goodbye Earl”, fancying the adorable way she slurred her words so confidently. I approached her following her less than Grammy-worthy serenade and offered to buy her a drink. She giggled and turned me down, leaving almost immediately afterward. But I wasn’t swayed and when she showed up at the same bar with the same friends the next weekend, I tried again. It was just as big of a failure.

  Weekend after weekend, she’d end up at the bar and so would I, because by this point, I knew she’d be there and it had become a game to me. There had to come a time she’d agree to a date, to let me buy her a drink, or to even sit down and talk to me. She wouldn’t keep coming back each weekend, especially knowing I’d be there if she wasn’t interested. My perseverance proved accurate and after a month, I scored a date.

  There was a part of me that believed she kept returning to the bar because I was meant to meet her. But even I knew that was bullshit. Fate isn’t real, because if it were, I’d have found Nora already. After meeting Bridgitte, I swore I’d give up, that I’d stop looking, but even I knew I was lying. Bridgitte became a distraction that turned into more.

  I proposed a couple of months ago and she was over the moon, but I also felt like she wanted it more than I did. She became consumed with getting engaged and after a while, I gave her what she wanted, but I often wonder if it even mattered who it was that proposed to her. If it was the idea of getting married she was so enthralled with, yet I have no right to criticize her methods. The horrible part of it all is, while she was thrilled, I was thinking about Nora the entire time. I was down on one knee, looking up at Bridgitte wishing she were Nora, but it’s been too long to wait anymore.

  I tried to find her. Searching every Nora in the greater Boston area, but with only a first name and nothing more to go on, it proved quite difficult. Fucking impossible, actually. And in my insane obsession to find her, I found myself traveling to the places she longed to visit. All of it fueled by the false hope that I would just happen upon her, like fate or destiny or some ridiculous string of amazing luck. I spent two weeks at the Great Barrier Reef the summer after I met Nora, staying in hostels and learning to scuba dive, and with each trip out to the reef, I begged for her to be on my boat. Obviously it never happened. But that didn’t stop me from spending a week scouring cafes in Amsterdam the year I graduated from college. I’d drink coffee and eat stroopwafels waiting for her to walk by, to stroll through a door or to notice me from across the street. Yet, I found nothing. You’d think I’d have given up, but no. I made it to China and then to London, all with no luck. They were all entirely pointless trips, but somehow completely necessary. No one knows why I chose those locations or why I insisted I go, but in the end, I knew.

  It all came back to Nora. It always comes back to Nora.

  Bridgitte knows about Nora, but she doesn’t know the depths of my obsession. No one does and no one ever will. The fact that I’m obsessed with a girl I spent twelve hours with one August night, is pathetic and sad, even more so now that I’m getting married. Bridgitte thinks it was a crush, just a random blip on my radar like all the other girls that came before her, and I want it to stay that way. She doesn’t need to know, because in the end I’m never going to find Nora.

  My family still lives in San Diego, as does my best friend, Matt, and when I visit, I go to the beach, to the exact spot where I fell in love with Nora. I leave a note at the lifeguard tower in hopes that one day she too will return and find it. It’s so fucking ridiculous, and while Matt doesn’t know the full extent of what continues to consume my life, he knows enough to mock me every chance he gets.

  It is stupid and I know it, but I still do it.

  Twelve years later.

  I’m leaving for San Diego in a few hours and Bridgitte stirs beside me. That explains why she’s still home. She’s waiting until I leave before she heads to the office. She wants to say goodbye. She’s good like that, thoughtful and kind and while I try to be, I’m anything but.

  “Good morning,” she mutters, her voice hoarse with sleep. She’s the kind of girl who wakes up looking like she stepped out of a magazine. Flawless skin, shiny blonde hair and blue eyes the color of the ocean—a beach beauty trapped in the city. She is a polar opposite of Nora and maybe that’s how I ended up with her.

  I sound callous and cold, but it isn’t that way. I do love Bridgitte, but in my life I’ve found that while you can love many people, there is just one who holds
your heart, one who owns a piece of you.

  “Good morning,” I answer back, slipping from the bed before she has a chance to persuade me to stay. “My flight leaves soon. Gotta get in the shower.”

  “I can come with you,” she says. She’s propped up on her elbow with her blonde hair swept over one shoulder as she smiles sweetly.

  Bridgitte thinks I’m going to San Diego for work and it’s not entirely a lie. I do have to meet with a few clients regarding an acquisition that occurred last month, but it’s mostly because of the anniversary. I left that part out when I told her I was traveling.

  How would I even approach that to begin with? By the way, I’m going to San Diego so I can leave a note on a lifeguard tower near where I fell in love with a random girl who I banged on the beach. I’m still currently obsessed with finding her, but no worries, I still wanna marry you. Something tells me that would go over like a fucking lead balloon.

  “Thanks, baby, but it’s going to be boring. I have a few meetings, have lunch with my parents, dinner with Matt. You know, the usual,” I say, casually blowing off her offer.

  “When do you get home again?” she asks and this time I can see the disappointment in her eyes.

  “Thursday, only gone two days. I think my flight gets in early, like around noon.” She isn’t appeased by the two days gone so I add, “How about the next time I travel you join me?” I smirk at her before walking over and kissing her on the lips while she lies back on the bed.

  “Okay,” she says and just like that, things are right in our world.

  Five hours later I’m in San Diego and Matt is texting me that he’s here to pick me up. I step outside and flag him down as he coasts to a stop along the curb. I’m sure he’s been circling the airport for the last hour rather than park. It’s just what he does and I can’t complain. He picks me up every time I need him to.