Chapter One: I Met You Yesterday, I Loved You Today
June had forgotten again.
The sunlight filtered through the thin curtains of her studio apartment, casting pale gold streaks across the worn wooden floors. Her eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the dimness. The first sensation was confusion—a dull ache behind her eyes, like waking from a dream, you're not sure you had.
She sat up slowly. The bed was unmade. Her room, a collection of muted colors and scattered sketches, whispered stories she couldn't remember. The coffee mug on the nightstand was still warm. It scared her how often she woke up like this—with fragments instead of memories. Like someone had quietly walked through her mind overnight, pulling threads loose.
Her laptop chimed.
She turned toward it, blinking slowly as the notification lit up the screen. The blinking icon read:
"Lighthouse Forum – Whispering Threads of the Mind"
A strange name.
She didn't recall visiting the site before. But the tab was open. The window was active. The cursor blinked where she had apparently left it last night. Her hand hovered over the track-pad. She clicked.
The page opened to a thread titled: "If I forget you, please remind me of who I was."
She read the words aloud.
Her own name was there, under the title.
Posted by: junestorm_
Her breath caught.
"I wrote this?" she whispered.
Below her post, there was one reply.
"If I forget you, please remind me why I stayed." — C
A tremble passed through her.
Who was C?
The words had the weight of a thousand remembered things. Like déjà vu wrapped in grief. Like someone calling her from the middle of a dream.
She pressed a hand to her chest. Her heartbeat fluttered.
And then she saw it—her notepad. Open on her desk. Scrawled across the top page in rushed ink:
Lighthouse = safeC knows8:08 p.m. = check in
June stood abruptly. Her chair scraped the floor. She scanned her apartment, looking for answers. There were sticky notes on the fridge:
"You like your coffee with cinnamon.""Don't trust the fog. Trust the thread.""Your name is June."
Her knees weakened.
What is happening to me?
She didn't cry. Not yet. She was too stunned. Too wrapped in the strangeness of it all. It felt like someone else had lived here. Someone who looked like her. Someone who knew her better than she knew herself.
7:59 p.m.
She returned to the screen.
She didn't know who it was for. Maybe no one. Maybe everyone. Or maybe… for herself.
Her fingers hovered.
Hi, C. I don't know if we've spoken before.
I don't know why I wrote that post.
But I think… I think I need someone who knows who I am.
Send.
The message vanished into the void of the forum.
June waited.
Outside, the sky turned indigo. Thunder growled distantly—just enough to be poetic. The kind of storm that stayed on the edge of your memory.
Then—ping.
A reply.
We spoke yesterday. You said your name was June. You paint storms because you feel safe in them. You forget things. So do I.
I wrote myself a note to check in today. I'm glad I did.
She read the message three times before replying.
Do you remember everything about me?
No,Just that you felt important.
She closed her eyes. Let the tears come this time. She didn't know why she was crying. Just that this stranger—this digital ghost—had reached into her soul with a single line.
What should I call you? she asked.
C is fine. That's what you called me last night.
I don't remember last night.
I know. It's okay. I wrote this for you this morning, in case we started over again.
He pasted a quote:
"Even if you forget, I'll remember enough for both of us."
June clutched her chest.
There was a knock on her heart.
And he had the key.
That night, she couldn't sleep.
She kept re-reading the thread, trying to trace his voice, trying to feel the shape of who he might be. She searched her phone, her gallery had screenshots of conversations she didn't remember, audio notes titled "June & C - Day 3," sketches of two shadowed figures holding hands beneath a storm.
The digital thread became her lifeline.
Each night, they spoke. Sometimes briefly, sometimes for hours.
In the days that followed, they created their own rhythm.
June and C didn't talk like new acquaintances. They weren't flirty or shy. There was no small talk between them.
There were only questions like:
What does love mean when memory doesn't last?
What do you think is the first thing you'll forget about me?
If you had one hour to remember me, what would you say?
Each message from C was like a lighthouse beam—cutting through fog, steady and slow, always returning.
He wrote:
You told me you used to leave yourself voice notes. Little reminders. Like breadcrumbs. "Brush your teeth, June." "The boy with the cedar scent is real." "You are not alone."
You said sometimes you woke up and didn't believe your own handwriting. So I sent you a picture of my face. A video of my voice. "This is me," I said. "This is you. You call me C. You tell me things you don't tell anyone else. And I remember you, even when you don't."
June saved that video in four different folders.
She watched it every night.
The memory loss wasn't regular.
Sometimes she could remember for two weeks.
Sometimes she lost everything in three hours.
They called it the "Fog."
A cruel, unannounced storm.
There was no pattern. No warning.
One morning, she woke up in a stranger's house. The stranger was her brother. She didn't remember him. He handed her a letter.
"June, I'm writing this to you because I know one day you won't recognize me. I'm Eli, your brother. You used to sing songs with me when we were kids. You made a game out of forgetting. But it's not a game anymore, is it? Call C. He helps. He's real."
She called.
His voice was tired, but warm.
"Hey," he said softly.
"Hi," she whispered. "I forgot again."
"It's okay."
"I don't remember your face."
"I can describe it. But I'd rather remind you how you feel when you hear me."
"How?"
"You said once that my voice sounds like thunder behind a mountain. You said it makes you feel like you're not lost, just… drifting."
She sobbed. He didn't interrupt.
Together, they built a library.
A Google Drive folder titled "Truth."
Inside:
Photos.Voice recordings.Notes to themselves.Letters to each other.
Each file dated, labeled, color-coded.
If the fog comes, read this first.
Reminders – June loves blue skies, hates scrambled eggs, paints with her fingers.
June's Letters to Future June
One day, she wrote:
Dear Future Me,
If you're reading this, you've probably forgotten again. It's okay. Breathe. There's a boy-C-he's kind. He's soft in the places where you are sharp. He makes the forgetting feel less lonely. Let him help you. Let him love you."
She never sent it.
But she kept it.
Because even if she forgot, the letter would stay.
And one day, when she remembered, she told him:
"Every time I lose myself, it's like dying. But you… you're the rebirth. You're the hand pulling me out of the dark."
He replied, "Then I'll keep pulling."
Chapter Two: We Built a Love That Memory Couldn't Hold
June hadn't slept in nearly 24 hours.
She sat curled up in her window alcove, arms wrapped around her knees, her face glowing dimly in the pale blue light of her laptop screen. It was the second day in a row her memory had held. Two days of clarity. Two days of recalling C's voice without needing the recordings. Two days where coffee still tasted like something instead of an empty ritual.
She feared sleep would undo it all.
She feared waking up to find her name missing again.
But what she feared more was not remembering him.
The screen pinged.
A message appeared in their Lighthouse thread.
C: "Day 2 for you. You still with me?"
She smiled softly, the kind of smile people reserve for old letters and new hopes.
J: "Still with you. Haven't slept. Afraid I'll wake up a stranger."
C: "Then I'll be the stranger who brings you back."
She typed, deleted, typed again.
J: "What if one day neither of us remembers?"
C: "Then maybe the universe will remember for us."
Their love lived in repetition.
Not routine. Repetition. Intentional retellings.
C sent her the same playlist every week, titled: "Songs You Said Felt Like Us."
He had a voice memo labeled "Your Laugh at 2:14 a.m." that he listened to when the fog crept in too thick. June had drawn a sketch of their first conversation—a series of tangled threads floating between two shadowed figures, each trying to reel in the other.
They were historians of their own story.
Because if they didn't archive themselves, no one would.
On the fourth day of remembering, June tried something new.
She recorded a video diary.
The camera shook slightly in her hand. She sat on the kitchen floor, back against the cabinet, hair still wet from a shower she didn't remember taking.
"Hi," she whispered. "I'm June. If you're watching this, you're me, and you've forgotten again."
She paused.
"You're scared. It's okay to be scared. But you're not alone. There's someone named C. You love him. Or maybe you did. Or maybe you will again. He makes you feel like the color between rain and sunlight."
She laughed softly.
"That made more sense when I thought it."
She bit her lip. Her voice dropped.
"You paint. You write. You forget. But you come back."
She held up a drawing—a charcoal sketch of two hands almost touching.
"You come back for this."
She ended the recording and named it: "Proof of Love."
Meanwhile, across the city, C was having a worse day.
His memory had frayed overnight. Not gone entirely—but dotted with gaps.
He woke up to dozens of notes on his phone. Most in his own voice.
"It's Day 19. June remembered yesterday. You held her hand over video. You played her your piano piece. She cried."
He didn't remember the music. Or her tears.
He stared at the note until his eyes blurred.
Then another memo:
"You love her. That's the truth."
He pressed play.
His own voice answered:
"Don't panic. Breathe. Make coffee. At 8:08, check the Lighthouse thread. She'll be there. If she's not—wait. She always comes back."
C set the kettle. He stared at the ceiling. He waited.
8:08 p.m.
June messaged him first.
J: "Hi. Do you remember me today?"
C: "Not all of you. Just enough to feel like I'm home."
J: "Then let me remind you."
And she did.
She wrote everything she remembered: how they met, what he said, how he called her "stormlight" once and she'd painted the phrase into a skyline. How she had told him that his silences felt safer than most people's words.
She reminded him of his scent, his playlist, the exact way his voice dipped when he read poetry.
When she finished, he replied:
"I don't remember any of that."
She paused.
"Does that hurt?"
"No. Because I believe you. And that feels like remembering, too."
That night, he played piano again. Slowly, carefully. He sent her a video.
She listened to it six times.
On the seventh, she added it to the Truth folder, under: "Melodies We Might Forget."
June's fifth day ended in fragments.
She forgot her own address.
She walked home from the grocery store and couldn't find her apartment.
She sat on the curb, clutching a bag of lemons, eyes stinging.
She dialed C's number.
He picked up on the first ring.
"J?"
"I forgot where I live."
"Okay. Okay. Are you safe?"
"I have lemons."
"That's a start. What street are you on?"
She told him. He stayed on the line.
He didn't laugh. Didn't pity her.
Instead, he said, "Tell me what you see."
She described the peeling red mailbox, the flickering streetlight, the sound of jazz through a cracked window.
"That's your place," he said. "You live there. You called it 'the softest corner of the city.'"
She stood, heart thudding.
And as she opened the building door, she whispered, "How do you remember so much?"
"I forget, too," he said. "I just… leave clues better now."
They grew closer in the margins.
Not in the grand moments, but in the re-discoveries.
They wrote letters to their future selves.
June started a journal titled: "Ways C Made Me Feel Real."
Page One read:
"He never asked me to be whole. Just honest. Even if that honesty was: 'I don't know who I am today.'"
C made a collage of June's voice—clips from their calls, laughter caught in static, silence filled with presence.
He called it: Remembrance Symphony.
One afternoon, June forgot in the middle of a conversation.
They were talking about books. She paused.
Then stared blankly at the screen.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Who are you?"
C's breath hitched.
But he didn't falter.
He smiled, gently.
"I'm someone you like talking to. You've done it a lot. I make you playlists. You make me laugh."
She stared. Confused. Mistrustful.
Then whispered, "I want to believe that."
"You don't have to," he said. "You just have to let me stay."
She nodded.
And they started again.
Their love wasn't linear.
It was a constellation of moments. Scattered. Some burned out. Some flickering bright.
But still there.
Still theirs.
Because even if the stars forgot their names, the night sky never stopped holding them.
Chapter Three: What If We Were Meant to Forget?
June woke up surrounded by sticky notes.
The yellow squares covered her mirror, her fridge, her window, and her chest. She blinked, bleary-eyed, at the one taped to her palm:
"You are June. You're safe. You are loved."
She sat up slowly. Her room looked unfamiliar. Soft morning light poured through the blinds, turning everything gold, but the warmth didn't reach her chest. There was a hollow space, just below her ribs, where something used to be.
She read the note again.
Then another from the windowpane:
"Check the voice memos. Start with the file marked 'If You're Scared.'"
June picked up her phone, hands trembling. Her thumb hovered over the memo. She hit play.
C's voice spilled into the room, low and steady.
"Hey, June. If you're hearing this, it means you woke up forgetting again. That's okay. Breathe. You don't have to know everything right now. You're not broken. You're just rebuilding."
"And I'm still here. I always am."
"You love painting. You love rainy days. You like the smell of oranges, and when someone reads aloud to you. You call your coffee mug 'Eleanor' and talk to her like a friend. You're weird. And wonderful. And I adore you."
She clutched the phone like a lifeline.
Tears welled up in her eyes.
He was real.
She didn't know his name yet. But she knew his voice felt like home.
Across the city, C stared at his notebook.
It was filled with drawings of June. Little sketches of her profile, her laughter, her asleep on a call with her mouth slightly open. He'd drawn her from memory, but today—he couldn't remember her.
He'd forgotten again.
This time, the forgetting came not like a fog—but like a door slammed shut.
He opened his files. Scanned the timeline.
He watched a video titled: "Us on Day 54."
In it, she danced barefoot in her apartment. He was reading poetry aloud—something by Mary Oliver. She twirled with her arms out, laughing, mouthing the words along with him.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
He paused the video.
"I want to spend it finding you," he whispered.
He pressed record on his phone.
"Hey… June. If you're watching this someday and I'm not myself—if I ever forget how your voice softens when you say my name, or the way your eyelashes brush your cheeks when you're tired—I want you to know I didn't stop loving you. My memory did. But I didn't."
"Come find me again. I'll wait."
The two of them forgot in cycles. Sometimes hours, sometimes days.
But in between those lapses—they created.
They left trails.
June started building a memory wall. Polaroids, post-it notes, strings connecting events to emotions. She labeled one corner "True Things."
There were photos of C's face blurred by movement, a poem she wrote about his silence, a screenshot of the first time he said, "You make the forgetting feel like a detour, not a disappearance."
Every morning, she stood in front of it and read aloud:
"I am June. I am not alone. I have loved and been loved in return."
One day, the forgetting happened to them both.
They logged onto the platform at the same time, strangers again.
C: "Hey. You look familiar. Have we met?"
J: "Maybe. You feel like déjà vu."
C: "That's poetic. Are you a writer?"
J: "I think so. I don't remember. Are you an artist?"
C: "Maybe. I draw what I can't name."
They talked for three hours.
They laughed.
They didn't recognize each other.
But somehow, their souls leaned forward.
After the call, June opened her journal. A sticky note fell out.
It read: "If you ever forget him, just talk to the one who makes your heart feel like it's waking up."
She gasped.
She looked at her call log.
It was him.
C found a poem in his notes that he didn't remember writing.
"She was the lighthouse. I was the storm. And yet, we danced."
He blinked. Re-read it. His chest ached.
He scrolled up.
Dozens of poems. All about her.
He didn't remember the moments. But the feeling—it rushed in like a tide.
He messaged her.
C: "I think I loved you before I knew it."
J: "Then let's fall in love again. Just in case."
Their love became a cycle of rediscovery.
Some days, they ached.
Some days, they laughed.
But always, they returned to each other.
Like a story told in a hundred different ways, but always ending with:
"You. It was always you."
Chapter Four: The Places You Left Yourself Behind
C sat at his keyboard, staring at the worn black and white keys. Each note had a label—written in June's handwriting. "Your favorite." "The one you hum when you're anxious." "The one that made me cry."
He didn't remember writing the music. He didn't even remember learning to play.
But his fingers knew.
And that was enough.
He played for hours.
Not to remember—but to feel.
Because feelings, unlike memories, had roots deeper than words.
A week passed.
June's memories returned in shattered glass—images, flashes, sensations.
She found a note folded inside her coat pocket:
"Visit the bench at Willow Park. We kissed there the first time. You said it tasted like storms and safety."
She went.
The bench was damp from the rain. But she sat.
An old man walking his dog passed by and paused.
"You're the girl from the stories," he said kindly. "The one who keeps forgetting."
June looked at him, startled.
He pointed at a carving on the bench.
J + C = memory in progress
"Been seeing you two here for months," he said. "You always find your way back."
She traced the carving with her finger.
She didn't remember doing it. But it felt like her.
C discovered a folder on his computer titled "Fragments of June."
Inside: audio files, saved chats, poems, screenshots, even a scanned napkin doodle of two stick figures holding hands beneath a caption: "We're forgettable, but not forgotten."
Each file told a different version of her.
She was stormlight.
She was silence.
She was the rhythm in his unfinished symphony.
He opened a document labeled "Truths."
It read:
-You love her.
-She loves you.
-Sometimes, that's enough.
He added one more line:
-Sometimes, it has to be.
They started mailing letters to each other's future selves.
Handwritten. Tangible.
In case technology failed. In case minds did.
June's first letter arrived folded in the shape of a paper crane. C opened it carefully.
"Dear C, if you're reading this and can't remember me, here's what you need to know: You once said my eyes looked like constellations. You made me believe forgetting didn't have to mean the end. You helped me become a person I wanted to remember."
"Please come find me again."
C held the letter to his chest and cried.
One night, they both remembered—fully.
The miracle of clarity.
They video-called. Each saw the recognition in the other's eyes.
"You look like every version of home I've ever wanted," she said.
"And you look like the one place I never want to leave," he replied.
They talked for hours. About nothing. About everything.
She told him about the old man at the park.
He told her about the poem he forgot how to finish.
"Then let me finish it," she said. "Together."
They wrote, line by line.
A poem stitched from shared silence, half-memories, full hearts.
"We are not lost, Just misplaced in time. Not broken, Just built to restart. Not fading, Just learning how to shine in fragments."
C forgot again two days later.
June left him a voicemail.
"Hi. It's me. We're in love. Or… we were. Or maybe we will be again. Either way, I think you're worth rediscovering."
"You said once that love isn't the memories—it's the space between them. The echoes that linger."
"I'm here. Echoing."
They lived a hundred lives in a single love.
Some days, they were strangers meeting for the first time.
Some days, they were two halves of the same heartbeat.
But no matter how many pieces they lost, they always found their way back to the place they left themselves behind:
Each other.
Chapter Five: If You Forget Me, Love Me Louder
It was autumn when C forgot her for the longest time.
Fourteen days, maybe fifteen.
Long enough for June to stop leaving him messages every morning. Long enough for the ache in her chest to take on a quiet, resigned rhythm.
But not long enough for her to stop hoping.
June sat in their usual coffee shop with a fresh notebook in her lap. She was writing him—again. Not because she expected him to remember, but because some part of her needed to keep the story going.
"C, today the trees looked like fire. You once told me that autumn was your favorite because it reminded you that even endings could be beautiful. I think about that every time the wind strips another branch bare."
She looked up as the door jingled.
He walked in, hesitant.
His eyes scanned the room like a tourist in his own life.
They landed on her.
Something flickered.
Then faded.
"Hi," he said cautiously.
June forced a smile. "Hey."
He sat across from her. Looked at the notebook. Then at her face.
"I don't know why," he said, voice soft, "but I think I've dreamt about this exact moment."
She nodded. "That's because you have. Or maybe… because we lived it."
He swallowed. "Do I know you?"
"You did. You will."
C began to recover flashes.
Not full memories—just feelings.
He stood in the apartment they once shared, looking at the fridge covered in notes. One caught his eye.
"You used to hum when you cooked. You said silence in the kitchen was too loud without me."
He walked to the stove. Picked up a wooden spoon. Closed his eyes.
A tune came to him. Something faint. Familiar.
He hummed.
He didn't know the song.
But his heart did.
Meanwhile, June explored an old video diary on her drive.
They had recorded it after their first shared "memory blackout."
In the video, C looked into the camera, nervous.
"Okay, this is for Future Me. The forgetful guy with messy hair and too many questions. That woman behind me—that's June. If she's still here, you're lucky. If she's still smiling at you like that, don't screw it up."
"You love her. You made her laugh so hard last night she snorted orange juice. Don't ask why. Just know… she stayed."
June laughed through her tears.
She hadn't seen that video in months.
Maybe he hadn't either.
She texted him the link with one sentence:
"Come back to me through this."
Days passed. Then a week.
And then, on a quiet Sunday morning, he showed up at her door.
He was holding a canvas.
"I didn't know why I painted this," he said, "until I remembered your voice."
He turned it around.
It was them—sitting on a rooftop at sunset. Her head on his shoulder. His hand in hers. The city behind them blurred, like an old dream.
June reached out and touched the dried paint.
"You remembered."
"I remembered how it felt," he said. "And the feeling brought everything else."
They made a pact that day.
If one forgot, the other would love louder.
They even wrote it on the mirror in red lipstick:
"Memory fails. Love doesn't."
C recorded more voice memos.
June left drawings in his sketchbooks.
They planted a tree in the courtyard and tied a red ribbon around it—so they'd always know where their story had roots.
They started over a hundred times.
But every first felt like the best version yet.
Then came the storm.
A real one.
Power outage. Phones dead. Notes soaked. Sticky reminders peeling off the walls like ghosts.
And C—lost in his mind again.
He didn't know her.
He panicked.
June held him as he cried. As he fought her touch. As he shouted questions into the dark.
But she stayed.
And when he finally calmed, she whispered:
"You don't have to remember me right now. Just know I'm not going anywhere."
The power returned.
He read every letter. Watched every video.
He clutched a note in trembling hands:
"If you forget me, love me louder next time."
He did.
He made her coffee the next morning just the way she liked it.
He kissed her forehead like it was routine.
He played their song—on a ukulele he didn't remember owning.
He looked into her eyes.
And said, "I think I loved you into memory."
June smiled.
And replied:
"You didn't love me into memory. You loved me into existence."
Chapter 6: The Last Page Before We Vanish
June sat curled on Cal's couch, legs tucked under her, wrapped in the softness of a hoodie two sizes too big — his hoodie. The rain outside whispered against the glass, and the room was soaked in dim amber light from a desk lamp. Cal had stepped out to pick up some late-night coffee, his words lingering in the air like a promise.
"I'll be right back. Don't fall asleep without me."
She smiled. "No promises."
He left.
And the apartment fell quiet.
Her eyes wandered — to the shelf cluttered with notebooks, to the frames turned backward, to the laptop left open but idle on the desk.
Cal's laptop.
She wasn't trying to snoop.
It started as a click — a search for their shared photos folder. She wanted to see the video he took of them trying to make pancakes that morning, where she ended up covered in flour and he pretended to faint from laughter.
But instead... she clicked the wrong drive.
And there it was.
A folder.
Tucked between system files and backup logs.
IF I FORGET AGAIN
Her heart stuttered.
She hovered for a moment, uncertain.
But something in her stomach tightened. A cold, distant ache — the kind you feel before the weather changes or before your life does.
She clicked it.
The folder was filled with subfolders, spanning years. Dates. Locations. Headlines. Images. Handwritten notes in scans. A few of them with her name.
Her breath slowed. Her fingers trembled.
She opened a file titled "Accident_Report_FINAL.pdf."
And everything stopped.
Two cars.
One flipped.
One overturned.
Fatality confirmed: Amelia Everhart (Passenger).
Survivors: June Everhart (Driver – critical), Calvin Reyes (Driver – critical).
She stopped reading.
Stopped blinking.
Stopped breathing.
There were pictures.
Fragments of her car.
A coroner's report.
A photograph of her mother's sunhat caught in the wreckage.
She slapped a hand over her mouth, choking back a sound not meant for the living. The room tilted.
Then she found it—
A video file.
"Voice Note_Cal_Memo"
Her own voice came from the speakers, a little distant — from a hospital bed, maybe.
"They said I was driving… but I don't remember. Mom told me to slow down, I think… I didn't listen. I didn't think—"
Then Cal's voice followed, hoarse and broken, like he recorded it with shaking hands:
"If I forget again… if she forgets again… I need to remember this is my fault. I chased her. I shouldn't have. I distracted her. Her mom died. She almost did too. She can't know. If she remembers, it'll break her."
"So if you're hearing this, June…
Please forgive me. I tried to carry it so you didn't have to."
She stared at the screen, the words echoing like thunder in a canyon.
Their Past Connection -
The afternoon sun bathed the sleepy neighborhood in gold, casting long shadows on picket fences and rusting bicycles. A breeze carried the scent of cut grass and spring rain, and somewhere, a dog barked twice before falling silent again.
Cal leaned against the hood of his car, sipping flat cola from a paper cup. Across the street, June stood at her mailbox with her mother, keys jingling in her hand like a nervous tick. She laughed at something her mother said — Cal couldn't hear what — but it made the edges of his heart fray.
They were neighbors. Familiar. Close.
And yet... not close enough.
He had never told her how he felt. Every summer since they were sixteen had been punctuated with glances and almosts. There were long drives where their shoulders almost touched. Cold colas shared under blinking streetlamps. Rainy afternoons where silence was loud with unsaid things.
But nothing was ever said. And time, like water through fingers, just kept slipping.
That afternoon, something in June looked different. Her hair was tied back hastily, cheeks flushed, like she'd run through the house gathering herself together. Her mother carried a woven bag and wore her usual sunhat, but her brows were furrowed.
"You sure you're okay to drive?" her mother asked, hand on the passenger door.
"I'm fine, Mom. It's just the farmer's market, not Mars," June grinned, sliding into the driver's seat.
As she started the car, her eyes flicked up—caught Cal watching from across the street.
And then, like it was instinct, like it was coded into her DNA to tease him, to spark something between them that had waited years to ignite—she winked.
Then gunned the engine.
Tires squealed softly as her car lurched from the curb and down the road.
Cal straightened. His cup dropped. He climbed into his car without thinking, ignition turning over with a growl.
"She wants me to follow," he said aloud. And he did.
The chase was innocent at first. Cal kept a distance, watching the way her taillights danced through the dusky streets. Every now and then, she'd glance into her rearview mirror and laugh.
Inside her car, June's heart was thudding—not with fear, but joy. Her mother sat stiffly beside her, gripping the seatbelt.
"June, slow down," her mother warned, voice tight.
"I'm not speeding," June lied.
"You're going 70 in a 50 zone."
"He's behind us," June said softly, a smile tugging at her lips. "He's chasing me."
Her mother sighed. "June—this isn't a game."
But to June's fluttering heart, it was.
She wasn't ready to stop pretending. She wasn't ready to say it out loud.
If he caught her—maybe she wouldn't have to say anything at all.
Up ahead, the road curved sharply — a turn she knew, but underestimated.
The street narrowed, tree-lined and slick from rain earlier in the day.
She took the bend too fast.
A scream.
Her mother's voice.
The world spun sideways.
Tires shrieked as June's car hit the shoulder, spun, flipped.
In a surreal blur of moments, Cal, only seconds behind, slammed his brakes, but it was too late. His car veered, caught the debris—June's rear bumper—and rolled violently into the ditch.
Metal bent like paper. Glass sprayed like rain.
And then—
Silence.
Weightless, terrifying silence.
The door clicked.
She turned her head slowly, eyes hollow.
Cal stepped in, holding a coffee in each hand. He froze the moment he saw her face.
"June?" he whispered.
She said nothing.
He dropped the cups. They hit the floor and rolled, coffee spreading like spilled secrets.
"What did you find?" he asked, but he already knew.
Her voice was sandpaper. "The accident."
"June—"
"You followed me?"
He took a step forward. "It wasn't— I didn't know— I didn't mean to make you—"
"I killed my mother, Cal." The words were knives. "I killed her."
"No—"
"Yes!" Her chest heaved. "You knew. You knew all this time. And you didn't tell me."
"I was trying to protect you," he said, voice cracking.
"I needed the truth."
"I couldn't watch you break."
"But I broke anyway," she whispered.
Silence filled the room like smoke.
She stared at him, tears balancing on the brink. "All this time… I felt something inside me was wrong. Something missing. I thought I was broken. But it was just buried. And you buried it deeper."
"I thought if we started new, maybe we could be happy."
June wiped her cheeks. "We were never new. We were just pretending."
She left that night.
She didn't scream.
Didn't shatter plates or slam doors.
She just looked at him like he was a stranger again.
And walked out into the rain.
Past Scene-
Blackness.
Not the kind that comes with closing your eyes, but the kind that wraps itself around your bones. The kind that hums inside your ears like a low tide of forgetting.
Cal floated in it for what felt like centuries — soundless, formless.
And then, a breath.
Sharp.
Alive.
He gasped and sat up too fast, a chorus of beeping machines and voices dragging him back to the surface of the world.
"Easy, easy—" a nurse rushed to his side, pressing a cool hand to his shoulder.
His throat was dry. His body ached like he'd been shattered and glued back together wrong. But his eyes, bloodshot and searching, darted around the sterile room.
"Where…" His voice cracked like old vinyl. "Where is she?"
"Who?"
He didn't know.
But he did know.
June.
He tried to sit up again but couldn't. The world swam. A monitor beeped wildly. The nurse pressed another button. Then, stillness again.
He drifted in and out for days, questions whispering behind his eyelids: Why do I feel like I lost something I don't even remember?
When the doctor finally came, Cal stared at him like he held the secrets of the universe.
"You were in a car accident. A bad one. Do you remember anything?"
Cal blinked.
Fog.
He shook his head.
The doctor nodded solemnly. "Amnesia isn't uncommon after trauma like this. Your memory may return... piece by piece."
Piece by piece.
Like fragments of a mirror — each one sharp enough to bleed.
Two weeks later.
He was strong enough to walk. The hallway outside his room was white, quiet, and cold.
That's when he found her.
Room 314.
The door was ajar.
June lay still in the hospital bed, tubes weaving through her skin like porcelain vines. Her face was bruised, her lip cut. But to Cal, she looked heartbreakingly familiar.
A tremor ran through him. He didn't know why, but the sight of her sent something cracking open inside his chest.
He stepped closer.
The nameplate read: June Everhart.
June.
A soft name. A memory almost forming — of laughter, of sunlight.
The nurse appeared beside him, voice gentle.
"She was in the car in front of you."
"In front?" he asked.
The nurse hesitated. "Her mother didn't make it."
The words were a blade.
And Cal didn't know why...
But it felt like he had held the handle.
He couldn't remember it — not really.
But when he closed his eyes, flashes came.
Her eyes, daring him through a rearview mirror.
Her laugh, disappearing into the wind.
A voice screaming "slow down."
Then —
metal.
blood.
screaming tires.
And her mother's face — he had seen it once before. In that moment before the crash.
He began to investigate obsessively. Hospital reports. Local news archives. Tire marks. Car damage patterns. He saved everything to a folder on his laptop called "If I Forget Again."
Because he was terrified he would.
And he did forget—
More than once.
But the guilt never left. It bloomed in the hollow of his ribs, in the silence between heartbeats.
He came to believe it was his fault.
I chased her.
I distracted her.
If I hadn't followed...
He visited her room every day. Even when the nurses stopped asking. Even when she didn't wake.
He read to her.
He whispered names.
He cried once, quietly, when no one was there.
"Please wake up," he once said. "I don't know who I am without you... but somehow I know you."
Three months later.
She opened her eyes.
And just like him, she remembered nothing.
They were strangers again.
Strangers, tied by fate.
Strangers, severed by silence.
And so when they met again years later, through a threadbare online platform with pixelated chats and tired usernames — it wasn't coincidence.
It was gravity.
Chapter Seven: The Future Remembers Us First
Two Months Later
Central Train Station, Platform 4
The world had a way of softening sharp memories over time — like water smoothing jagged glass. But some shards always remained beneath the surface, waiting.
Cal sat on a cold metal bench beside a flickering vending machine. His podcast mic was clipped to his coat lapel, voice recorder glowing quietly on the seat beside him. In front of him, the tracks stretched like lines in a palm — fortune and fate and missteps, all etched in metal.
It was early evening. People came and went. Some hugged tightly before parting. Others left without goodbyes. It was that kind of place — where beginnings looked like endings, and endings like beginnings.
Cal lifted the mic to his mouth and spoke softly.
"Day Sixty…
It's funny how much we try to preserve things that memory won't keep. I remember the way she laughed with her entire face, like the joke was never in the punchline but in the sharing of it.
I remember she liked chamomile tea but always drank coffee because she thought tea made her too 'docile.'
I remember how she'd sit cross-legged on my kitchen counter like it was a throne, telling stories about books she didn't finish.
And I remember…
I remember that I forgot her too many times.
And when she remembered everything —
She forgot me."
He paused. Closed his eyes. Swallowed something bitter.
"I don't blame her.
Some memories are too heavy to carry.
And some hearts… just want to rest."
Across the station, a woman walked with cautious steps, arms wrapped around herself, as if holding something invisible together. Her eyes were searching for something she didn't have the words for.
June.
Only she didn't know that was her name anymore.
Not really.
After the night she discovered the truth — after her world folded inwards like scorched paper — her mind fractured. It wasn't sudden. It was slow and cruel.
One day she couldn't remember how she got home.
Then she forgot why her bookmarks felt so distant.
Then came the wipe — all files deleted, all records cleared.
The only thing left was a hollow ache.
And yet…
When she walked into that station, her chest tightened.
Like she'd been there before.
Like something waited.
She paused in front of a man sitting alone with a microphone and a coffee that had long since gone cold.
Cal looked up at her.
Their eyes met.
Nothing in her face said recognition. Not even a flicker.
But he…
He saw everything.
The way her brows still knitted when she was nervous.
The way she tilted her head as if trying to decode his soul.
She sat beside him, unknowingly returning to a life she once lived.
Silence stretched between them. Thick. Familiar.
Then she said it — without knowing why, without understanding where it came from:
"I don't know why… but your voice sounds like home."
Cal's breath caught.
And something shattered gently inside him.
He didn't tell her everything.
Didn't remind her.
Didn't burden her again with truths too sharp.
He just offered a soft smile.
A lifeline.
"Then stay a while," he whispered.
"Maybe it'll come back."
The train pulled in.
But neither of them stood.
Not yet.
For a brief moment in a world of forgetting and vanishing, they simply sat in the warmth of a memory neither could name — but both could feel.
And maybe that was enough.
Final Line -
Some love stories aren't remembered — they're felt. Etched in bone, stitched into breath. Even if the names fade, the ache remains.