Imperfect Memories

Imperfect Memories

Ronnie got up once again to heat his coffee. He knew there was no way he should be expected to send this email with cold coffee. It was completely reasonable that while he composed this three to four line message, he should have hot coffee.

Ding, Ding, Ding. The microwave brought him out of his reverie, indicating that time was up. His coffee was hot once again, and he needed to send the damn email. He sat down at his desk chair, opened up the draft, shifted in his seat, took a sip of coffee, shifted in his seat, stood up, walked a few laps back and forth past the computer, sat back down, took a sip of coffee, shifted in his seat and finally reread what he had so far:

Hi Bethany!

I hate to intrude, but now with social media, everyone’s business is out there. I saw that you and Mark broke up about a month ago. I’m so sorry to hear that. I know how difficult relationships can be. Anyway, I’m still in the Ann Arbor area and I see that you are too...would you want to grab a bite to eat sometime?

Hoping to hear from you soon,

Ronnie Dykstra

Ronnie read the email again, leaned back, tented his fingers, read the email one more time, and finally hit send.

He nearly collapsed after this. He had labored over this email for the past week, thinking of little else. Now came a totally different form of stress, with an outcome over which he had absolutely no control: waiting to see if she would respond. 

He decided that he needed a distraction, so he went out for a walk. The walk, however, proved less than fruitful as all he did the entire time was refresh his email on his phone. Mercifully, a distraction came to him in the form of a phone call from his mother.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Honey. How are you today?” 

“Oh not bad. I...finally asked that girl out that I’ve been talking about.”

“AW! Congratulations! It’s Brittany right? From high school?”

“Bethany. But yes. The girl from high school.”

Ronnie and Bethany had been good friends in school. They had never dated, but he’d always sensed that there was something there. He’d always thought that if they had gone to colleges closer in proximity, they would have ended up together. But fate had a funny way of intervening and perhaps now, he thought, they may finally have their happily ever after.

He and his mom talked on for a few more minutes, she about his grandma’s deteriorating health conditions and he, mostly listening and adding in positive minimal responses when warranted. This went on for a few minutes until he felt the long vibration on his phone indicating he had received an email. He stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk and put the phone on speaker. His mother’s voice bellowed out loudly to the crowded street as he frantically opened his email. Two new messages. He was almost too nervous to open it to see whom they were from. If he stayed here forever, he would never know for sure. He could tell himself that he preferred it that way. That he chose not to know. He could play it real cool. But as he was thinking through this scenario in his head, his unconscious brain had already started opening the emails. 

The first was from some suit company. He had gotten on their mailing list somehow years ago and received almost daily emails about their upcoming sales. This went directly into the trash with a deft swipe of his finger.

The second was from Bethany_F@gmail.com.

His breath caught. He could not believe that this was really happening. 

He scrambled to open the email and read its contents:

Hi Ronnie!

That sounds great! I’m such a fan of your work by the way. I didn’t even know that you and Mark knew each other. But yes, let’s grab lunch. How’s tomorrow? Meet you at Piccolo’s at 1:00pm. 

See ya then! Xoxo

Bethany

“…she isn’t able to make it to the toilet on her own now. There’s crap all over the white carpet. Definitely going to need a new one. It keeps getting ground in by the dog too and-”

Ronnie quickly took the phone off of speaker and returned it to his ear. He realized that his mother had been loudly telling the whole street about his grandmother’s bathroom issues while he was lost in a world where his high school crush had just agreed to go on a date with him. And this wasn’t some fantasy world that he made up, it was really, truly happening.

“Uh huh. Oh ya. Oh that sucks,” He responded to his mother, trying to figure out how to get out of this conversation and get ready for tomorrow.

At some point, he had navigated his way to the end of the conversation with his mother. After which he sprinted home to respond to the email from his computer.

Lunch sounds great. See ya then.

No signature. No extra fluff. If an email could wear sunglasses and lean backward against a Ferrari, this email would have done so. And he being the author of the email, was that cool by extension as well. He leaned back in his chair and nodded his head in satisfaction. Then he got to work on picking out his outfit for the big day.

He couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day, and even into the next morning. He barely slept with all of the excitement he had for their lunch date. 

Had he read the email more closely, he may have seen some interesting points that didn’t quite add up. Bethany mentioned that she was a fan of his work. Ronnie worked as a paralegal at a small firm in a rural area near Ann Arbor. Bethany brought up the fact that she didn’t realize that he had known Mark. Ronnie knew both Mark and Bethany from high school. They had had many classes together. Had he noticed a few of these issues, he might have saved himself from the apocalyptic lunch encounter that he was now driving toward.

He arrived at the restaurant about 15 minutes early. It was only about an eight minute drive, but he most certainly was not going to be late. After engaging the parking brake with shaky hands, he made his way into the restaurant. It was fairly empty, so a quick scan revealed that Bethany was already there and seated. She looked just as she had in high school. As beautiful and strong and wonderful as Ronnie had remembered her.

He made his way over to the table, focusing on keeping his breathing under control. She noticed him coming and smiled at him. When he got there Ronnie stood facing her. Unsure of what to do with his hands, and not wanting to prematurely go for a hug or handshake, he folded them in front of himself.

“Hi!” she said warmly. “You know what? I told the other waiter I was just going to have water, but I’m actually going to go with wine. It’s a Friday and I have a long weekend coming up!” she giggled as the realization hit Ronnie: not only did she not recognize him, she thought he was her waiter. Possibilities for how to play this flew throughout his brain, but he eventually settled on the simplest route.

“Ahem, Bethany. It’s me. Ronnie?” He put an upward inflection on his name as if he was also unsure if it was true at this point.

She looked at him horrified. Perhaps at her own mistake. Perhaps at the fact that this was the person she was supposed to have lunch with. Either way, she got up and gave him a big hug, concealing her reddening face in his shirt for a moment.

“I am...SO sorry.” She said with great emotion as they sat down on opposite ends of the table. “To be quite honest, I’ve listened to so many of your songs, but I really didn’t know what you looked like! Music videos are such a thing of the past now, you really only get to hear a singer’s voice and don’t get to see behind the mask, so to speak.” 

Bethany was giggling throughout this whole apology while Ronnie sat, his mouth falling into a wider and wider gape as realization dawned on him that she thought he was the famous DJ/singer Ronnie DykstrUM. Not Ronnie DykstrA, the boy with whom she’d spent countless hours with barely five years ago in school.

At this time, the real waiter came by and took their drink orders. Ronnie agreed to split a bottle of wine. He felt like he was watching this all happen from underneath a deep pool of water.

Bethany continued to talk and he heard what she was saying, and responded on autopilot, allowing her to keep control of the conversation. But after a while, an emotion he hadn’t experienced in awhile began to bubble to the surface: anger.

“Hang on,” He cut her off mid-sentence, barely holding on to his emotions. “Bethany, do you not remember me?”

She cocked her head to the side, puzzled. “Well. No. I don’t remember you. But I mean we’ve never really met before!” She laughed.

“We…” Ronnie stopped himself from exploding there, as an idea came to him. He changed course and laughed too. “I guess you’re right. You know what it just feels like we’ve known each other for so long, you know? Like we’ve been searching for our other missing half for so long and finally found it.” Here he reached out and grabbed her hand softly.

She looked at him in awe, which turned quickly to delight. “I feel the same way!”

He kept up this act throughout lunch as he further formulated his plan. When they had finished eating and were on the last bit of wine, he made his final move. “You know what would be awesome? If you came to the recording studio tomorrow. I’m actually working on a music video right now. Funny that you had mentioned that people don’t do those much anymore. It’s going to be kind of… out there though, so to speak.”

Bethany nodded, leaning forward, “Of course. I’d love to be in it!”

“Awesome. Awesome. So, what I'll need you to do, is pick up a cow outfit. Like it’s gotta look pretty convincing. A good cow costume with lots of padding.”

Bethany nodded very seriously.

Ronnie went on to describe the fake video plans in great detail. He gave her the address of a Furry gathering spot that he had gone to once to depose one of the group at one point. Then he and Bethany parted ways with a hug.

Ronnie felt so many emotions driving home. He had experienced such high highs and such low lows in the past few days. All he wanted to do now was just lay down for a few minutes. When he got home and finally did lay down, he slept for two hours. After getting up, he felt much more rested and much clearer in his thinking.

He walked to his computer and composed an email to Bethany:

Bethany,

I have to apologize, but that address I gave you is not a recording studio. Don’t go there, I set you up to be embarrassed. 

I’m not Ronnie Dykstrum. I’m Ronnie Dykstra. We were really good friends in high school. We spent a lot of time together. But I guess I must have been seeing it all through rose colored glasses and when you do that, you only see what you want to. If you don’t even remember me at all after having lunch for 2 hours, we must not have been friends, I must have just had a crush on you.

I planned to take revenge on you. But I now realize that you didn’t do anything to me, so there is nothing to be avenged.

I wish you all the best,

Ronnie

At the bottom of the email, he sent a screenshotted picture of himself, Bethany and Mark in a chemistry class together, all sitting at one big table. Looking at it now, he saw that he was leaning much too close to Bethany, and she was leaning much too close to Mark.

He laughed to himself looking at the picture now. It was funny how much the brain was capable of: inventing things that were never there and deleting people from memory entirely.