After My Boyfriend Pretended To Have Amnesia

As I turned around the corner of the hospital hallway, a girl in a white dress blocked my way.

"Lucy, please don't be mad at Jack. It was me who forced him to go for a ride," Ivy Langley pleaded. Her eyes had turned red. "I didn't know that we would be involved in an accident that caused him to his memory about you …."

"Okay, okay …. Stop your acting. I'm not standing in your way," I said irritably, waving her off before walking around her.

Ivy was a girl Jack saved a few years ago during one of his missions. At the time, Jack mentioned to me how much Ivy reminded him of me, the girl that he had crushed on during high school. According to him, I was a shy, quiet girl, with that intoxicating air of mystery.

However, after all these years, the mystery had worn off. What remained between Jack and me was only boredom and indifference.

I returned to the house where Jack and I had lived together for almost ten years. Not wanting to risk running into him if he sneaked back from the hospital to make trouble for me, I hastily packed a single suitcase. After all, when you died, you could not take anything with you.

Besides, I only had two months to live on this earth.

So, I reckoned this much luggage was enough for me.

"This time, I won’t come back," I murmured to the empty house.

No one replied. No one asked me to stay. And that was fine, at least I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving.

The old apartment in West City was a bit run-down, but I had it cleaned monthly. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to live, but it would do.

As soon as I made my bed, my phone rang.

"Lucy Goodman, why didn't you come to my office this week?" Dr. Robertson's cheerful and relaxed voice came through the line, without a trace of frustration or anger in it, "I thought you were going to come and I waited for you all afternoon! When we meet, you owe me a coffee for standing me up."

"How about tomorrow? Are you free?" I replied. "I’ve got some things I need to discuss with you."

The next afternoon, I arrived at the café thirty minutes in advance than we agreed on. As so happened the Sunshine High School across the street was on the break. The students in uniform in groups of two or three were gossiping about celebrities and complaining about their teachers. I overheard their chatter and thought of something I’d once heard, when life gets tough, we start to long for the past.

This café used to be a simple breakfast joint. Back in high school, I ran into Jack here twice. The first time, it was shortly after I started school and I saw him surrounded by a group of students. It felt like I was watching a monkey in a zoo.

Later, a friend told me that Jack was a legendary senior at Sunshine High School. The second time I saw him was in June of my sophomore year, right after he’d taken the college entrance exam. He dropped a letter in front of me as I was eating my dumplings and then walked away without a word.

A year later, I secretly changed my college preference to the city where Jack was studying. When he saw me with my suitcase on campus, he laughed and cried like an idiot.

"Sorry for waiting for so long, Senior," I said while beaming at him in his arms.

"I’d wait ten more years if I had to," he promised, his eyes were bright and firm.

However, in the ten years that followed, four years of college and five years of marriage, the promise was finally broken.