by Kealohilani
“Yes I can.”
Jharate smiled widely. It warmed her to see his smile again. She felt the lock click on the hiding place for her doubts.
“I have some things I want to share with you about myself, and I think the quickest way would be to show you some of the moments in my life. They are nothing as special as what you shared with me, of course, but they are part of me.
“Just to warn you my mind jumps a lot and you already know I talk too much sometimes. So I’m guessing that my memories might be a little disjointed and may be too long. I’m sorry in advance if they are.”
“I am honored to see anything about you, Lani. I love you, and— if I could— I would spend all day long listening to you or looking at your memories. You can never ‘talk too much’ and the privilege of looking at your past could never last too long.”
He said this so sincerely that Lani’s heart swelled with love and gratitude. She couldn’t believe that a man like this existed!
“Close your eyes and visualize the first memory. When you are finished with that one— visualize the next one you desire to share. I will be able to see what you see. Simply picture black when the memories that you wish to show have concluded.”
They did the “closed circuit” grasp again and he closed his eyes. She closed her eyes after him. She knew exactly where she was going to take him to in her mind. She started with the first day that she had met Raoul.
Vulnerable
Chapter Twenty-One
Lani felt a rush as she easily directed the memory. Everything was in 3D living color! And she could see herself too. How can I see myself? Was Jharate able to see himself as a little boy when he shared his memory with me? Or did he see the memory the same way he saw it as a child? Perhaps being able to see oneself was just the way his gift worked. It was trippy and surreal— and awesome.
She and Jharate watched as the younger versions of Lani and Raoul stood outside of Vista High School waiting for the school bus to take them home. Raoul’s thick curly hair had been longer at the time and stuck almost straight up in the air. He wore baggy white pants with an oversized t-shirt— both much too big for his body— and carried a grey and yellow backpack.
“Do you wanna get shocked?” Raoul asked the young girl he saw in front of him.
Lani was even shorter than she was now. Her hair was cut to her shoulders and she had a teal backpack on. She looked at the boy curiously and warily at the same time— as if she wasn’t really sure if she had heard him correctly.
“What?”
“Do you wanna get shocked? See this thing right here?” he asked as he pointed to a small black object in his other hand. “If you touch it, you’ll get shocked.”
“No thanks,” Lani answered, as she took a couple of slow and easy steps back, while keeping her eyes locked on him.
“Okay!” he shrugged. “My name is Raoul. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Lani reciprocated cautiously.
Lani concentrated on the next memory she wanted to share. It was a few months later. The background phased from the schoolyard into a classroom full of desks and books— with a middle-aged-hippie-looking woman sitting at her desk grading papers.
The younger versions of Lani and Raoul sat in two of the desks— eating lunch across from a group of boys who had pulled their desks into a circle and were concentrating hard on their card game. The cards had drawings of men and fantasy creatures and had lots of writing on them— all in medieval style.
Within that group was the young version of Justin, whose incontrovertible energy made him stand out from the rest of the crowd. He was tall and super skinny, with a slight Afro, and he was speaking like a punk.
“ ‘Moted!” Justin yelled at the top of his lungs to one of the boys as he threw his card down in victory. “You just got ‘moted!”
Justin noticed Lani and Raoul across the room and crossed over to them.
“Hey, my name’s Justin. Who are you?”
“I’m Lani, and this is Raoul.”
“Nice to meet you. Hey Lani, you wanna play chess? I have my own set.”
“Sure…”
Justin reached into his pocket and pulled out an extremely small chess set.
“Look, it’s magnetic!”
“Cool,” Lani giggled. “Raoul, you want to play on my team?”
“Yeah! Thanks, Lani!”
The three of them began to play.
The classroom now changed to reveal Lani’s living room. Justin and Raoul were sitting at opposite ends on the couch. Lani was on the loveseat— which was set at a ninety-degree angle to the couch they were on, and across from the unlit fireplace. Justin was staring at the light patterns from the pool on the ceiling and making popping sounds with his lips.
Raoul kept nodding off and when his chin would fall to meet his chest he would jump up and say, “I’m awake… I’m awake.” Lani had her history book in her lap— trying to finish the last page of her assigned chapter.
Suddenly, Lani clapped her book shut and left the room silently. Raoul and Justin both looked at each other curiously and cranked their heads to see where she had gone.
When she came back into view she was holding an extremely-tall stack of white paper cups with purple flowers on them. Once she set them down on the hardwood floor in front of the sliding glass door, the stack came nearly to her waist.
She looked at Justin and Raoul with a mischievous smile rising on her face. They jumped up and ran for cover as she proceeded to throw the cups at them. Justin and Raoul did fantastic dodges and flips, acting like they had The Matrix skills. They grabbed the fallen cups and launched them straight back at her— while she ran for cover, firing back the whole time.
Lani laughed to herself as she watched this memory. She couldn’t help but miss the way their friendship had been in those days. It had been so long since they had done anything like that. She turned to see Jharate laughing at the scene before him as well. Her heart warmed at how engaged he was in her history.
But she realized that she needed to get off of the fun nostalgia and get on with the uncomfortable stuff. However, there was still a little bit more that Jharate would need to know of her background with Raoul and Justin for the rest of it to make any sense.
She took a deep breath and suddenly they were outside Lani’s house. Lani’s younger self stood on her porch and Raoul was close by, standing on the grass. They were a little older now— Lani was about sixteen, making Raoul somewhere around eighteen. Both of them had tense and uncomfortable expressions. Raoul was gesturing wildly and Lani’s arms were crossed.
“But I asked you to junior prom!” Raoul argued angrily.
“Yes, you did. But then you told me that you wanted to ask Jennifer, so I let you. It isn’t my fault that Justin asked me once you decided not to take me.”
“But Jennifer said no!”
“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about that. You can’t tell me you’re going to ask someone else and then expect me to wait around just in case your first choice doesn’t work out.”
“Yeah, well have fun with Justin! I can find another date!”
“You go do that.”
That memory was almost as painful for Lani to relive, as it had been the first go around, because she and Raoul did not speak for six months after that. Lani wondered what Jharate was thinking about all of this, but figured she had better try to speed things up just in case this was getting too lengthy.
Lani’s junior prom was held in a country club ballroom with large chandeliers. Lani became acutely aware that she could now smell all of the food in the memory— even the chocolate fountain. Oh for the love of yum! Can chocolate be tasted inside a memory?! Never mind. No time. Focus, Lani!
Lani focused on the sights surrounding her first date once again and noticed that her sixteen-year-old-self looked more like she did now than the other younger versions of her had. She wore a simple raspberry-colored satin dress, which was fitted at t
he bodice to the point of being almost corset-like, with an extremely full and flowing floor-length skirt and butterfly sleeves.
She smiled as she saw herself wearing her first-ever imitation-diamond tiara. It glittered beneath the light and the small, interspersed white faux pearls glimmered. Her sun-kissed golden brown hair, which now flowed to the small of her back, was half-up and half-down.
Lani was holding on to Justin’s offered arm. He looked sharp in his black tuxedo and he had matched his bowtie and cummerbund to her dress. Justin was smiling from ear to ear. Lani noticed that she looked blissful too, as she and Justin began to dance.
Lani jumped to the next memory, which was about a year later. The three musketeers had been reunited again. Raoul had been talking to them again for a while at this point and the three of them were each dressed in a cap and gown, walking to their graduation. Lani laughed quietly as she watched her seventeen-year-old self nervously reciting her speech.
“I hope you’re not nervous,” Justin teased with a laugh.
“Thanks a lot, Justin!”
“What, it’s not like you’re about to give a valedictorian speech in front of over two thousand people… Oh wait, you are!”
Justin laughed harder this time. Raoul bit his lip to keep from joining in.
“Very funny,” Lani said as she lightly pushed his shoulder.
“Just don’t choke!” Justin exclaimed, as he put his hands to his throat and pretended to choke. He laughed again before continuing. “Remember, since you’re my girlfriend, what you do reflects on me too, ha, ha!”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Lani said, rolling her eyes, but still smiling.
“Nah, just kidding. You know I love you no matter what and I’m always proud of you.”
“Ohhh! You can be really sweet when you want to. I love you too.”
Lani kissed Justin on the cheek.
“PICTURE TIME!” Raoul exclaimed.
Raoul set the camera on a low wall and set the timer. He ran into the frame, between Lani and Justin, and the three friends posed with huge happy grins on their faces— their eyes looking excitedly toward the future. Lani concentrated and skipped the memory to the end of her valedictory speech.
“… and stay true to yourself and to your own values no matter what the world says. Always follow your dreams and never sacrifice your integrity to get what you want.”
Lani sighed a stressed-out sigh as she directed her mind to reconstruct the next memory. She didn’t want to go here. This was the beginning of all her ferocious luck— but her whole purpose for sharing this with Jharate was to open up, not to hide from him or even from herself.
She wanted to follow Jharate’s example. She watched anxiously as her living room appeared before them once again. This time it was only Lani and Justin sitting on the loveseat, facing each other. Justin looked worried and Lani looked tense and nervous.
“Justin, I was waiting right there for you at the graduation party just like you asked me to. You said that you’d be right back, but I waited alone for five hours. You didn’t even answer your phone. And you had all my money, so I couldn’t even play arcade games while I was waiting for you.”
“You should have come and found me.”
“I was afraid to leave because I thought we wouldn’t be able to find each other again in that huge crowd! There were hundreds of people and I knew you knew where I was, so I thought it was best to stay where you left me. You got there like five minutes before the buses came to take us home again! I can’t believe you did this to me.”
“I’m sorry but—”
“And I could totally let even that slide— with a really good apology— if it had been the only thing that had happened lately. But you’ve been taking me for granted for the past six months— ever since you asked me to senior prom. It should have been even better than the first prom because we are in love with each other!”
“It was great though.”
“Everything was great for the first six months of our relationship! So great… I could have stayed with you forever… But I can’t just keep begging you to treat me right and to go back to the way things were.
“If you wanted to fix things, you would have done it by now. I keep trying to make this work but it’s obvious that you aren’t willing to do what it takes to have a relationship.”
“What are you saying, Lani?”
“I’m saying… I’m saying I can’t do this anymore, Justin. I will always be your best friend, but I can’t be your girlfriend.”
Justin’s face fell and his body language said the rest. He looked totally devastated. He ran his hand nervously through his hair and looked around, avoiding eye contact at all costs.
“Fair enough. I need to go… I’ll talk to you soon though, okay?”
Justin kissed her on the cheek and walked out without waiting for an answer. Lani stayed where she was on the loveseat and hugged a pillow as the tears began to fall freely down her cheeks.
Lani tried to ignore the kick in her gut that reliving this memory had just caused. She skipped through memories with increasing speed now— showing one boyfriend after the other. She figured if she went fast— like a quick montage in a movie— it wouldn’t hurt as much. And so she picked the shortest “snapshots” she could.
The first of these “snapshots” was of her second boyfriend. He was shorter and darker than Justin and the memory showed Lani walking in on him kissing another girl and Lani running away crying.
She cut that memory there and jumped to a curb at the airport when she was saying goodbye to Justin and Raoul as they went off for their service abroad— Justin to Japan and Raoul to Indonesia. She looked at her eighteen-year-old self with pity. She didn’t know that this moment meant that she wouldn’t have her two best friends to help her through what was coming next.
Lani started picturing the memories faster and faster. No matter how fast she relived it, there was still a gut-wrenching twang, or a jolt to her heart with each one. But she pressed on— determined to get through this so that her heart would be completely on the line for Jharate.
The next memory showed Lani on a date with a boy who tried to pressure her to do more than just kiss him. Lani said no because she was saving that for her wedding night, and ran away from him when he refused to listen.
A few other disjointed fragments showed the guys who had insisted that she was perfect for them and then promptly tried to change and control her after they got her to be their girlfriend.
Another memory showed a man pinching her rear end in the hallway at college and her slapping him in the face instinctively before she walked away.
Lani cringed as she saw three of the guys get down on one knee and ask her to be their wife. She flipped faster and faster through the memories attached to each man.
The first one left her crying four days before the wedding with a stunning pure-white wedding dress hanging from her door, tons of papers with details for Lani to take care of, and hundreds of well-wishers congratulating her on a wedding no longer happening.
The second one proposed one day and then said that it was “too soon” the next day— even though he had proposed to her.
And finally the third one broke up with her because he was jealous of Raoul and Justin— even though Lani assured him that they were just friends, and reminded him that they weren’t even in the country!
Lani bit her lip and sighed sharply. In-between those bitter fragments, she showed a few different moments of her family members comforting her.
“Why would he leave me, Tyler? Why? What did I do to deserve this?”
Lani saw the love in her brother’s eyes for her— as he held his sobbing sister— and his anger against the man who had hurt her. She smiled. Tyler was the best little brother in the world!
“I don’t understand, Mom… Why would he ask me to marry him and then take it back the very next day?”
Her mother held her tenderly and Lani felt a tear fall down her face as she
watched this memory. She missed her family so much!
She wanted to detour her memories to several wonderful family moments, but that wasn’t the point— and she could share those later if Jharate wanted her to. She had to get this over with. The memories just kept coming. This time Lani was talking to her sister Jenna right after a break-up.
“My heart keeps getting broken. But I can get over it and keep going. What I really hate is what it’s making me look like! I look like I jump from one guy to the next and can’t stay committed! It makes me look like a flake!”
“Anyone who knows you won’t think that, Lani. You are such a one-man woman. If it had been up to you, you would have married Justin.
“But I am really proud of you that you are smart enough not to marry someone just because you’re invested in the relationship and everyone else thinks you should marry them. I’ve seen too many people make that mistake. You’re right to hold out for your Prince Phillip.”
“I agree… But the problem is my reputation is being ruined. That could keep me from getting to meet him.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. I really think that people who are worth your time aren’t going to judge you like that. So maybe if it does keep some people away, it’s a good thing. It’s just weeding them out for you.”
“Maybe. But this process is so painful. It seems like each new guy comes up with a new way to impersonate a prince. And then— as soon as I believe— he pulls the rug out from underneath me and says, ‘Surprise! Ribbit, ribbit!’
“It’s getting harder to wait the more times I come ‘close’ to finding him. It’s like I’m Sleeping Beauty without the benefits of anesthesia!”
Jenna laughed at her sister’s sense of humor, which helped Lani to laugh too. The memory faded into the next— and Lani was at Jenna’s wedding, standing next to her. They were in the reception line together when Jenna leaned over and whispered to Lani.
“You’ll find your guy too. You deserve the best. Don’t ever settle for less. It’s so worth it!”
Jenna threw the bouquet and Lani caught it with a smile on her face.