Page 26 of Brendan (The Doherty Mafia)
There was no way I was turning down a request like that.
Rosalie was silent for a while as we walked together, and I gave her the time she needed. It seemed like she was lost in thought over something.
“You really don’t remember me, do you?” she finally said.
Fuck. I should have known. We knew each other from somewhere. Did we fuck before? A one night stand gone sour when I kicked her out of my apartment? How was it possible that I didn’t remember her? How could I have forgotten a face and a body like hers?
“What happened?” I asked.
Rosalie brushed her hair back then tucked it behind her ear. I noticed she had a small dainty nose that matched her small heart-shaped mouth.
“We met at a house party four years ago. I guess we were both too drunk to think straight because you would never have been interested in a girl like me if you were sober.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Rosalie? I followed you into the store room literally half an hour after we met that night,” I exclaimed.
She smiled faintly then shook her head.
“But back then I was a nerd and awkward. I wasn’t expecting you to be interested in me. Nobody at that party expected you to be interested in me.”
I had been to a lot of parties, and especially four years ago—most of that time of my life had been spent through a drunken haze.
“So we banged?” I asked.
Rosalie stopped in her tracks and stared at me. I must have said the wrong thing because her cheeks flushed red. She was losing her temper with me again.
“Yeah. We did. Are you happy now? You know the truth. We had sex four years ago. A dirty one night stand after which we never saw each other again. End of story.”
I wanted to reach for her face and pull her to me—explain to her that I was a drunk idiot back then. Maybe I was still an idiot, but I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t know what I wanted from her but I knew I wanted her to keep talking.
“But that isn’t where our story ends, right? Here we are, four years later.”
She shook her head slowly like she was very disappointed in me.
“Yeah, that’s a funny joke. At least it’s funnier than that stupid joke I told you.”
“What stupid joke?” I asked.
She breathed in deeply and looked away before she spoke again.
“Michael Jackson moonwalks into a bar,” she replied.
Michael Jackson moonwalks into a bar. It was a joke I had heard before. It was a line I’d repeated to myself over and over again in the past years—and just couldn’t remember where I’d heard it first.
And now that Rosalie stood there beside me, saying it casually with a shrug of her shoulders—it all started to fall into place.
I saw her face as it was four years ago. Her hair was longer back then. She had bangs that almost covered her blue eyes. She was swaying to the music playing in the house while she stood by the pool in the backyard.
“Yeah, it’s not funny,” Rosalie said, interrupting my montage of memories.
“I thought it was the first time I heard it,” I replied.
She looked surprised.
“So you do remember me!”
“I just remembered now. I remembered the joke but somehow everything else about that night had been wiped from my memory.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her chin up.
“So my joke was more memorable than I was,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“I was drunk, Rosalie. Back then, every night of my life ended like that. Drunk and passed out somewhere.”
“In bed with some new girl,” she added.
I said nothing because it was the truth, but I didn’t think she would have wanted to hear that.
“Why did you disappear?” I asked.
Her brows furrowed in surprise.
“Excuse me?” she snapped.
“I remember leaving to go get a few drinks and when I got back, you weren’t in the room.”
“You came back?” she asked, gulping.
“I had to leave the house and go to the nearest gas station because all the alcohol at that place tasted like piss. I remember it now. When I got back to the house and went to the room, it was empty. I left after that because I figured I would never see you again. Then I pushed you out of my memory like a trauma I was trying to get over.” I spoke with a smile on my face but it wasn’t funny.
The more I thought about it, the more the pieces fell together. The more I could remember now.
Rosalie’s lower lip trembled as she stared at me.
“I went looking for you because you’d been gone for a while. Other people told me they saw you leaving. I left because I was embarrassed and insulted. I didn’t think I would ever see you again either. I thought you did a runner,” she said.
