Chapter 6 : Jogging A Memory

**Callan

"Bro, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm the driver?" Roman said, booting me over into the passenger side of the golf cart.

Roman was pretty much my best friend. We were cousins who grew up together on the same street, and we even went to the same college. Some people joked that we were soulmates, two halves of the same person.

It actually made a lot of sense, considering how opposite we were and how well we got along despite that. And as far as I knew, even soulmates could irritate you.

I let him push me over since I didn't have the stamina to fight him all day. I'd had a terrible night's sleep because I kept waking up from the same dream of the girl on the fire escape.

Every time I closed my eyes, we were kissing, we were looking up at the stars, we were swinging our legs off the side of the fire escape.

This little dream was beginning to feel less like a dream and more like a curse. Her face was fuzzy, or maybe I just wasn't able to recall her upon waking up. Maybe THAT part was the curse.

Roman drove us to hole nine and picked out his club. I climbed out of the cart and took in a deep breath of the freshly cut grass. It was unseasonably warm for the beginning of October, but there was a bite of wind in the air that helped to uncloud my mind.

"I know it's Sunday, but you're slow as hell, man," Roman whined. I didn't even hear him take the first swing. "Your head up in the sky or something?"

I waved my hand at him and pulled out a driver from the bag. As I squared up to the tee, I could feel him glaring at me.

"What?" I grumbled.

"You're unnaturally quiet today," Roman said. "I mean, you usually let me do all of the talking, but today you've said a total of fourteen words."

I breathed out and swung hard. The ball landed along the edge of the green.

"Maybe I'm just putting all my focus into the game," I said with a smirk. I knew he hated it when I won.

Roman squinted in the direction of the hole then looked back at me. "Is it your dad?"

I rolled my eyes. Not this again. He always had to bring up my father.

"No," I grunted, sliding the driver back into the bag.

"Then… he's good?"

"I don't know," I said, trying to hide my irritation. "I haven't spoken to him in a minute. I don't have to talk to him every day, you know."

Roman and I headed for the green in silence. Just when I thought he was going to let the subject go, he peeked over at me. "Really? Because if my dad was half-dead with depression, I'd want to check in on him a little more often than—"

"Would you just quit trying to guilt trip me?" I spat. "Really, man. There's nothing I can do to help him. I've tried. All he'll do is ask me how the company is doing, and I'll have to tell him the same thing. It's not the same. Then he'll think I blame him, even though I don't."

"Damn, Cal. You didn't have to get all emo on me there," Roman said, stepping out of the cart. "Let's change the subject then.... How is the fiance/girlfriend situation going?"

Again, another topic I'd rather not discuss. I gave him a scolding, sidelong glance. "Let's not talk about that either."

Roman putted his ball closer, about six feet from the hole. "C'mon, man, your love life is what keeps me going. It's my guilty pleasure."

I ignored him and went to my ball. If that were true, it would be pretty sad. I was not the playboy the sentence made me out to be.

Just as I was about to swing, Roman yelled across the green. "You mean you don't even want to talk about the girl from a couple of weeks ago?"

His unexpected question surprised me, and I clipped my ball, sending it about three feet to the left of the hole. I huffed and looked up at him.

Roman was smiling goofily. "I'll take that as a yes then."

"I don't even know what you're talking about," I said.

He stared at me blankly. "C'mon. You know… I convinced you to go out drinking, you got lost for like two hours, and when I found you, some hot chick in a tight little mini skirt was seeing you off...."

He was leading me to remember something that frankly seemed impossible. "I probably talked to a lot of girls," I said.

"Yeah, yeah," Roman scoffed. "You're just playing it cool. When we started drinking again you kept talking about her and stars and blubbering all kinds of cute shit."

I laughed. Seriously. What was he talking about?

"Maybe if you didn't make a barely-sobered-up lightweight drink more and more, I could remember what happened during the night, yeah?" I said snarkily.

"You really don't remember?" he asked, genuinely confused.

I shook my head. Most of that night was fuzzy. It had started off that way. The only solid thing I could remember was getting to the bar and being dared to drink a bunch of sour alcohol.

"You know, I do recall how you forced a bunch of Apple-whatever down my throat and immediately ditched me afterward. That's not cool…"

Roman blushed. "Hey, I got busy, just like it seemed like you were, coming back with lipstick all smudged on your face. But at least I remember my girl's name."

Again with the guilt-tripping… I putted my ball into the hole and stalked back to the cart. Roman followed quickly behind me.

"Can you just let it go?" I said when he began staring at me with a creepy smile. "I said I don't remember, okay? Now I'd rather not pat myself on the back for hooking up with some random, nameless chick, so can we drop all this?"

Roman huffed and started the cart up again. "You're no fun. What are we supposed to talk about? Football? The size of our… shoes?"

***

I discovered several years ago that I was a night runner. There was something about the quiet—well as quiet as you can get in the middle of Seattle—and the hazy darkness along the sound that made me feel stronger, more motivated.

I supposed I was just a night owl. I never slept earlier than one AM, and I was lucky to fall asleep by three if I didn't run. No matter what I tried, I just couldn't make myself fall into a healthy sleep cycle, so I just adapted.

When I was young and my family and Roman's family lived a bit further out of town, my mom would take me outside to look at the stars until I got tired. Instead of making me sleepy, it sparked my interest.

That's probably where it all started.

There was a light drizzle at 10:30, my usual running time, when I started my route along Pudget Sound. The air off of the water was especially cold, and I could barely make out the little white triangles in the moonlight, each sailboat like a ghost.

I looked up at the sky, but of course, it was too cloudy to see anything other than the blurry blackness of the night.

When I made it back home around midnight, I stripped out of my wet shorts and T-shirt and took my shivering body into the shower. It felt good just to stand there and feel my body come to life again.

After eating the meal my cook Bea made for me, I plopped onto the couch and turned on the TV. I let some crime show play in the background while I stared up at the ceiling until my eyes grew heavy.

Unfortunately, lately, when my eyes got heavy, the girl in that dream began to bubble up in my mind. Instead of tossing and turning to fight it, I let it happen. There had to be something I was missing, something my brain wanted from this that I hadn't quite grasped yet.

Maybe if I finally gave in to it, it would leave me alone. It was hard to control your dreams, but this felt like all that I could do.

Soon enough, before I even realized it, I was standing on the rooftop with a woman, no, with Isa standing before me, looking at me with hooded eyes, her hands resting on my biceps with her fingers lightly clutching my suit jacket.

Isa Loveless. Yes, it was definitely her. But wh—

I shot up on the couch, my stomach flopping and my heart racing.

'What an idiot!' I thought to myself.

I chuckled and raked my fingers through my hair. My phone was tucked under a pillow, so I dug it out and pulled up my text messages with Roman.

"The girl from the bar," I typed. "It turns out she has a name after all...."