Unforgettable Love

by Kelsey MacBride

  “Well, I’ll be happy to do the dishes in a few minutes. I’m going to put on the clothes your sister left me. I don’t like lounging in pajamas.” Julie tugged at the oversized sweatshirt and sweatpants that she knew were his, but couldn’t help feeling slovenly in them. “I really want to get to work on the internet. Maybe someone has placed a missing person or something like that.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Aaron said, his cheeks flushing crimson. “I’ve got a few things I need to get done before I head out to work, myself.”

  Julie slipped past Aaron and headed back toward the bedroom to get dressed. As soon as the door down the hallway shut, Aaron let out a deep breath.

  He had watched Julie every second as she crossed the kitchen to sit down, every bite she ate or sip of coffee she took as she gracefully stacked the dishes in her arms to when she smiled at him, and he decided he wanted her. This was not just some girl who came into the restaurant and batted her eyelashes or flipped her hair. This girl washed up on his beach, for heaven’s sake. That wasn’t just chance. It was a sign. And how envious were his friends at the restaurant going to be when he told them how he met Julie?

  In his mind, Aaron went through the entire scenario. He would escort Julie in just to get a look at the place. He’d prop her up in the middle of the bar so everyone would see her. Then he’d go to the back to have Kyle the chef cook her something nice while the other waiters came back asking about her.

  “She just washed up on my shore, brothers. She needs some help and I told her I’d give her a job here so you all can look but don’t touch. Not if you want to keep your jobs.” His shoulders bounced a little as he chuckled confidently. But in his fantasy he was dead serious, instilling fear and jealousy into the hearts of his male employees.

  Then, after giving Julie a job and a place to live, she would want to repay him. She was that kind of girl, he could tell, who didn’t want to take any handouts. She had pride, and when someone did her a favor, she would return it. All Aaron wanted by way of recompense was a kiss, he’d tell her. She would melt into his arms and ...

  Jumping slightly at the tinkling sound of bells, Aaron scowled at his ringing phone. He pulled it from his pocket and saw the number was his sister, Karen’s.

  “Yeah,” he barked, cracking his knuckles.

  “Well, hello to you. How’s our guest?”

  “She just got through eating. Why?”

  “Calm yourself, Aaron. She needs our help. Not a date to the prom.”

  Aaron blushed a little as Julie emerged from the bedroom and slipped in behind him at the sink to start washing the dishes. His sister had worn the khaki pants Julie had on, but he never realized the snaps on the backside pockets were silver. The white blouse she was wearing also had a pretty lace trim down the front he had overlooked a million times. But now that Julie was in it, he couldn’t help but stare.

  “Aaron! Did you hear what I said?” Karen yelled into the phone.

  “Stop! No! What did you say?”

  “I said, tell Julie that when I get home around four o’clock we’ll take a ride to the police station and see what they have to say! So if you guys go anywhere make sure she’s back at a decent time. I don’t want to go shuffling around the po-po station late at night.”

  “Yeah. Whatever.”

  “Aaron! What’s wrong with you?”

  Aaron blinked as if he suddenly realized his name was being called at the doctor’s office.

  “I’m sorry, Kar. I’m in another world. Yes. I gotcha. We’re good and ready for lift off.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you in a little bit, and tell Julie to just relax.”

  Hanging up the phone, Aaron thought about what his sister said. Taking Julie to the police seemed a little drastic to him. He was sure if she just stayed with them for a few days, she would remember things. Perhaps she would even learn new things like what a great guy he was and how she should hold on to him tightly with both hands if she didn’t want him to slip away.

  “Was that Karen?” Julie didn’t turn around as she washed the dishes and neatly stacked them in the dish rack on the counter.

  “Yeah. It was.”

  “What did she have to say.”

  “Nothing. So, you said you are going to search the web and see if the newsfeeds have anything to say about a beautiful blonde missing from somewhere.” He cracked his knuckles again. “Maybe someone posted pictures of you on phone poles and on street corner lights like they do when they lose a pet dog.”

  “Maybe someone did.” Julie had stopped scrubbing the dishes as she heard those words. When no apology came, she continued washing and stacking as before.

  “Well, I’ll be happy to drive you around town to take a look. Afterward, we can stop at my restaurant and have lunch. Maybe even catch a movie.”

  Aaron stood there waiting, but Julie didn’t reply.

  “Well, you think about it. We’ve got all the time in the world.” He shuffled his bare feet across the floor and went down to what Julie assumed was his own room. She didn’t think he was trying to be mean. He just didn’t know how to communicate. It was that simple. To blow any of it out of proportion would be useless. Besides, Julie was one hundred percent sure she worked at a restaurant once and that rose bud on the table might have been from it. But her gut was saying it was from a different place. A special, safe place.

  Chapter 2

  “She’s amazing. I mean, I’d never gush like this to her face. I’d ruin my manly reputation, but she’s just so ...”

  “Mr. Stewart, it sounds to me like you’ve been love struck,” Maggie, the stewardess of United Airlines Flight 1082 said to Mark as he asked for another orange juice. He had been making the flight from California to New York for months. It was only a matter of time before some of the flight crew started to recognize him.

  “Oh, no. I think you’re right, Maggie. Cupid shot me right between the eyes. That little naked troublemaker.”

  “Well, there are worse things than that. Here’s your orange juice. I’m not going to offer you anything stronger. You could have probably flown yourself to New York on the wings flapping in your heart,” she teased. “Tell me more after I check on the other passengers.”

  Maggie was an older woman who was very stunning for her age. She spoke clearly and precisely, and that seemed to set her a rung above everyone else, including the captain who stuttered, ummed and awed his way through the status of the flight.

  Mark was happy Maggie was working on the plane this trip. He had to talk to someone. Miss Julie Peterson had been on his mind since she left his apartment just twenty-four short hours ago. And Maggie had an honest, motherly nature to her. She wasn’t going to just blow smoke. Mark had the feeling that if she heard something she didn’t approve of, she’d raise the corner of her left eyebrow in suspicion or maybe her lips would purse together like she were biting down on a pill of advice she would wait until asked to give. The other thing was, she had a few years on her. She wouldn’t act like the other women who would be more apt to ask what Julie looked like and where she lived. Maggie would ask the hard questions like the one she asked as she took her seat at the stewardess’s station while the plane bounced through a little turbulence.

  “So, she is something special. I get that. What sets you apart, Mr. Stewart? What do you think you’ve got that is making her ramble and blubber all over someone like you’re doing?”

  “Well, I cooked her dinner. And no, not a bit of it was frozen or carry-out.”

  “Very good. That is a start. A man who can help in the kitchen is hard to find. What else?”

  “Gosh, officer, I didn’t realize I was going to be questioned in this manner. You can do a background check on me, I’m clean. I swear.” Mark put up his hands in surrender as Maggie laughed.

  “I just might, Mr. Stewart. Right now, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, especially with that honest looking face.” Maggie tried to suppress a further smile.

  “Aren’t I though? I was
honest with her. It was easy to be.” Mark’s eyes got a little distant as he quickly looked out the window thinking of how he explained his past to this girl he had only known for a few days. “Of course, I didn’t give it all away up front. But the important stuff? Got it all out on the table up front.” He swept his right hand across the space in front of him.

  “Did you make her laugh?” Maggie asked, her voice low and almost serious.

  “Yeah. She seems to get my jokes, and she’s pretty funny at times herself.”

  With a huge grin of approval, Maggie unfastened her seatbelt.

  “That’s the key, my friend. If you can make her laugh, you’ve got a woman who likes you for what you are. And those kind of women can be very hard to find.” She placed her finely manicured hand on Mark’s shoulder as she walked past, continuing on with her stewardess duties as the plane leveled out and the seat-belt sign flickered off with the ping of a bell.

  Stretching out a little in his seat, Mark thought that Maggie’s comment was very true. It brought him back to his last serious relationship that he had briefly told Julie about. With a thoughtful expression, he tried to remember what Kimberly’s laugh sounded like. He couldn’t remember. In fact, as he thought back he couldn’t remember a time when she really laughed. She chuckled or chortled. But never in all the time he knew her did he recall her cracking up over anything.

  Maggie was more right than she knew. Had Mark gotten that advice two years ago, it might have saved him from months of heartache. Still, the pain he went through still made him cautious. He could dream about Julie and her laugh and her voice and her stories all day long. But the truth was when he saw her he was still going to hold back just a little.

  “No,” he mumbled out loud. “God didn’t give us this beautiful thing called love if we weren’t supposed to struggle just a little bit for it. Nothing good comes easy.” He looked at the sleeping passenger next to him as if he had forgotten the man was there. He didn’t want to wake him by conversing with himself.

  “Let her run just fast enough for me to catch her, Lord. I’ll leave it in your hands to set the pace.” Folding his arms behind his head, Mark closed his eyes, smiling.

  He thought about Kimberly. It really wasn’t easy when she had broken up with him. She was pretty and smart and all the things a prospective wife should be. But, as Mark looked back, he was surprised at all the tarnish that he saw on the relationship with twenty-twenty hind vision. In fact, as he studied it for the first time without the pang of broken heartstrings, without the pull of regret in his gut, he realized the relationship was wrong from the beginning.

  She had the tendency to be inconsiderate, leaving Mark alone at parties or not calling if she was going to be late. She was never very interested in remembering his birthday or the anniversaries of romantic dates or first kisses.

  That was just how she was, Mark thought. She just didn’t get wrapped up in that Romeo and Juliet kind of dreaminess. He accepted her that way. But when he popped the question and the ring became the focus, then the dress, then the honeymoon, he hated to admit it, in fact, he completely denied it to himself that he was having his own set of doubts. But what did he know? He had never been engaged before. Who knew what kind of roller coaster ride your emotions went on? So, he blinded himself to any reasons for doubt.

  When she said she was going with a friend of hers to their church mixer, Mark trusted Kimberly completely. She was engaged to him. He had confidence in her. She was just going to help support her friend who was not so lucky in love as he and Kimberly were. No harm in that. Nothing wrong with helping a friend. The last thing Mark would have ever thought was that she would meet someone else there.

  It took a couple of weeks, a few months maybe before she came clean to him. Mark had never seen Kimberly cry so hard and apologize with shaking hands and a gaze that barely crept up past his collar.

  It hadn’t been her intent at all, she said. She never meant to hurt Mark. But she couldn’t marry him. It wasn’t right, and it wouldn’t be fair to either of them to continue trying when she didn’t feel the same anymore. The keyword there being “she.” Mark still loved her and had she said, ‘please forgive me, let’s try again,’ he would have not thought twice about it. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she said good-bye.

  What could Mark do? He could have screamed. He could have called her names or made her feel like trash. There was a part of him that would have liked that. That sliver of him would have enjoyed the chance to be cruel and break her heart as she had done to him. That part of him was loud and strong in his head, but it was such a small piece. It was just his ego piping up.

  Instead, with his own eyes filled with tears, he put out his hand to hers. When she took it, he pulled her to him, hugging her gently. They stood there for a moment, and she hugged him back.

  “Good luck,” he whispered kindly in her ear.

  “To you, too, Mark.”

  Those were the last words they ever spoke.

  After she was gone, the reality of the situation settled in. Mark realized he would be telling everyone he knew he would not be getting married, he would not be going on a honeymoon to see the night sky of Montana and share a sleeping bag with his new wife, and a deep depression nestled into his chest.

  On a particularly lonely night, Mark lay awake in his bed and tried to fight off the horrible thoughts that kept coming to him. He was lonely. He found himself questioning every decision he was making. Every day brought the weight of more sadness and more failures, and soon he was asking what was the point of it all.

  “God,” he whispered in the dark as the sounds of the neighborhood kept up their symphony outside his window. “God, please tell me. What should I do?”

  He heard the words go to sleep as if they were spoken by someone in the room. Except there was no one else in the room with him. Those were the instructions he received. And when he closed his eyes, he fell instantly to sleep. When he woke up the next day, Mark saw the beautiful blue sky. He heard birds and children running around outside. Horns honked. Trains rattle by on distant tracks. It was a new day. A good day. A brand new beginning.

  Remembering this made Mark smile. How blessed he was. How thankful.

  “Lord, let Julie have a great day today,” he mumbled, waking up the passenger next to him, just as Mark, himself slipped into a peaceful doze.

  Chapter 3

  Julie had spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon scouring the internet for anything in the local news that could point her in the right direction or rattle a memory or two loose. But there were no notices of missing persons on the Catalina Island or surrounding big cities that made any mention of a girl with her features. However, she did come across someone who had misplaced the cremated remains of their pet Great Dane, Boulder, and was willing to pay reward, no questions asked, for the pooch’s safe return.

  Aaron had left her alone for most of the time, peeking his head once or twice into the living room where the laptop was, to ask Julie if she needed anything.

  When the girls came home, Julie jumped at the commotion, staring at the clock in disbelief. The whole afternoon had slipped by.

  “I wasn’t bothering that guy on the bus,” Cindy scoffed, squeezing in through the kitchen door with a huge purse bulging with papers in one arm and a duffle bag of gym clothes in the other.

  “Well, he looked pretty annoyed to me,” Karen stated loudly as she came in behind her. “You just shouldn’t ask such personal questions. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Aaron was standing against the stove as he was that morning and folded his arms over his chest.

  “What did you do now?” he asked, wiping his face with his hand as if he were about to hear his car got scratched or dinged or that she lost her paycheck and the rent was due.

  “Hey, he was the one who said he was going to the police because of his neighbor’s cat. All I did was sit next to him. He wanted to tell me the story or else he wouldn’t have brought it u
p.”

  Karen jerked her thumb at Cindy while looking at Julie, who crept quietly into the kitchen, happy to hear about their lives and weird tales of the day.

  “Don’t you remember being told never to talk to strangers?”

  “Oh, nice thing to say considering we’ve got one who just walked into our kitchen at this very moment. Way to make her feel welcome, Karen.” Cindy walked up to Julie and gave her a playful bump with her hip.

  “How was your day, Julie? Any luck?” Karen put her hand up to her sister as if to block her from view and smiled at Julie.

  “Nothing. Not a darn thing. I keep seeing a few flashes of things. Places. A few faces. I keep seeing water, which I suppose narrows things down to a coast somewhere. How’s that for a breakthrough? And I keep remembering rose bushes. Maybe I’m a florist or gardener or something.”

  “No. Your hands are too soft and manicured for that. They’d be a lot rougher if you worked outside,” Aaron said, coming across bossy and a bit arrogant. He instantly looked down. He didn’t mean it to come out the way it did.

  “You’re probably right about that,” Julie’s voice was sad but not unkind. At this small gesture, Aaron perked up.

  “But hey, maybe you managed a store or had roses around your house or apartment that you loved. Maybe they are your favorite flower.” Aaron used his hands in circles and sweeps to smooth over his previously curt comment.

  Julie looked at his face. Never before had she ever seen a guy try so hard to impress her. At least she didn’t think she had. She couldn’t remember. But it made her smile at Aaron, and for the first time he gave her a genuine smile back.

  “Maybe you’re right, Aaron. Maybe I have a huge garden estate with prize-winning rose bushes that are the envy of all the ladies in the women’s auxiliary.”

  “Yes,” Aaron nodded his head, widening his eyes as if he just solved the mystery of where she came from. He pointed his finger at her. “Yes, the women’s auxiliary plotted against you to get you out of this year’s rose bush competition because you’ve won for the past three years.”