|photo by Jon Tyson from Unsplash|

Author's note: It's an AIB alternate reality from here on folks. :) In this draft Ally spent a lot more time at Faircrest, resisting the idea of going home. (This is before I learned how to plot. lol) So the rehab center and its employees and residents were a bigger part of the story—and Noah visited her multiple times.

I can't say whether or not Ally recognizes me. But I know she's never looked at me like this—with such blatant admiration, I feel like I should warn her. But damn, I can't say I don't like it. I've always wanted this girl to look at me this way.

"You look good," I tell her. "Healthy."

Healthy? What a dumbass thing to say. She looks amazing.

Ally lifts her hand, works her fingers into her long hair. Right in the spot where her head hit the board. Before she dropped into the pool and sank like a stone.

I take a breath. Through my nose, like my brother taught me. In. Out.

Focus on what's in front of you.

She's here. Alive and beautiful. She asked me to come. 

"I don't remember," she says. So quiet, I'm not sure she meant to say it out loud. But she's touching her scar. So I think it's safe to assume she's talking about the accident.

"I think that's probably good," I say. "I sort of wish I didn't remember."

She drops her hand and tilts her head to the side. It's a classic pre-high-school-Ally look and I... Damn. I want to go back to that summer night when we walked around her neighborhood and I reached for her hand and she let me hold it. This time, I swear to God I'd stop before we turned into her driveway and kiss her. I wouldn't give a damn if it was better or worse than the other guy's. I'd kiss her and she'd know how I felt and that would be that. Good or bad we'd know where we stood.

"How long do you have to stay here?" I ask.

I don't care if I don't deserve it. I want the do-over. I want her back in Summerfield, back in her house, back in my life.

Her head shifts, back and away, like the question offends her. "What I mean is..." I scan the room, look for an explanation. The casings and chair rails—all the woodwork in this house is crazy wide and hand-carved—and that staircase is insane. Halfway down from the second floor, it splits into two identical curved sections that form an arch over the center hall. "This place is huge," I say. "Fancy. Do you like staying here?"

She glances at the front door. Then moves around the foot of the left staircase, climbs the first step and turns back, like she's gonna ask me to follow, only she doesn't say a word.

"Sorry," I say. "I'm sort of nervous and..." I let go of a breath. Relax my shoulders. "I'm really not used to you being this quiet." 

"Oh," she says—but without the sound. It's more of a shape she makes with her mouth. "I got distracted. By the sound of your voice. It's different. The way you pronounce words."

My heart exaggerates a beat, like a warning but I have to keep talking. I have to know for sure. "I moved here from Georgia when I was thirteen and..." I hold the pause to see if she'll crack a smile but she doesn't. She holds on with me, waits for the punch line. "Uh, yeah, so I guess the accent moved with me."

Badumpbump.

"I moved here from North Carolina," she says. Like I don't already know.

Like she never told me how hard it was that first year, starting middle school without one single friend. That's why she was so nice to me when I started in seventh grade. She designated herself as my own personal welcoming committee. And I fell so hard I never recovered.

Shit, what am I doing here?

"I wanted to take you outside and show you the gardens," she says. "But I overslept. And also it's raining." She grabs onto the railing with both hands and perches a foot on the next step. "There's a room at the top of the stairs with a wall made of windows. You can see the lake—and one of the mazes. There are two mazes here..." She opens her mouth, like she's gearing up for more. Nothing comes but a sigh.

I came because she asked me to come. I'm here because I need to know.

Good or bad, I'm committed.

"Okay," I say. "Let's go upstairs."

I'm rewarded for my brilliant suggestion with a smile. It's the exact smile she used to give me when we were in eighth grade and I was seventy-five percent convinced she liked me the way I liked her.

She climbs and I follow—and I do not allow myself to notice how tight her denim shorts are.

Except for the one time. Which was an accident.

At the top of the stairs, I go directly to the wall of windows because right now, I'm all about distraction. It's raining a lot harder than it was when I got out of my car and the view is a gigantic blur in shades of green. "It's nice," I say, turning to face her.

I don't get the smile.

"Maybe the rain will let up soon and I can get a better look," I say and she nods.

Maybe this is a good time to give her the test.

I pull the Raisinets out of my back pocket. "I brought these for you."

She takes the box, holds it in both hands. Her lips move as she reads the name and the words, milk chocolate and California raisins. She flips it over and studies the ingredients; then she looks up at me and says, "Thank you." Polite, but confused.

And there's a shift in my chest, like someone cut the tendons or whatever it is that holds your heart in place. I've watched Ally eat a million chocolate covered raisins. For her fourteenth birthday, I bought a cupcake and covered it in Raisinets—as many as I could get to stick in the icing. She said it was the best present anyone had ever given her.

"Do you want to sit down?" she asks, voice high, eyes wide.

She gestures to a grouping of furniture, crowded together in one corner of the oversized room. I slump into the closest chair and stare at the window. It's like sitting behind a waterfall. Falling down a black hole.

A black hole that smells like brand new carpet.

I take a breath: in through the nose, out through the mouth, reciting my brother's words in my head. "Repeat until you find your center. Repeat until you don't feel like—"

"Noah? Are you okay?"

"No, I'm not."

I bend over and put my head between my knees. I don't know why I ever think this is going to help anything. All it does is make my head throb.

"Maybe if you tell me what's wrong," Ally says. "I could...um...should I call for help?"

"No, I'm good." I take another breath. Then ease my head up, nice and slow.

Ally sort of sinks down onto a little wicker table, shoulders all pulled in like she's trying to make herself smaller. Like she wants to disappear.

If she doesn't remember me, then I'm making a shitty first impression.

"I'm sorry," I say. "It's just...you don't remember me, do you?"

She shakes her head. "So far, I can't remember anything about the move to Virginia—my new house or the people I've met here. I'm sorry."

"No, don't be. I'm the one who's sorry. I thought I could handle this."

I thought it might be a good thing—starting over. But now that I know, I can't stand the idea. Ally doesn't know how much I loved her, how much I hated her. She doesn't know how happy I was when I heard she broke up with Scott. How I couldn't sleep the night before our first shift together at the pool because I was planning on asking her out afterward, and I was so afraid she'd tell me to go to hell.

She looks at the box in her hands and her hair falls around her face like she's hiding.

Like my silence is making her uncomfortable.

"You used to eat those all the time," I say.

Her eyes lift to mine. There's a whole lot of curiosity but there's something else, too. That same warm brown melty look of admiration she was giving me downstairs. But I can't trust it. I don't know what it means—what it could mean.

"Why'd you ask me to come here, Ally?"

"You saved my life." 

Okay, yeah. That makes sense. It's The Hero look. 

I stand up. It's probably a bad idea—another bad idea—but right now I feel like I'm going to lose my shit if I don't move around.

"I'm not just a guy who saved your life," I tell her. Now that I have some space, some distance. "We have a history—four years' worth—and it wasn't always good."

"I know," she says, even more cautious now. I suspect that has something to do with the fact that I'm pacing. And with the way I keep raising my voice like some sort of wacked-out auctioneer.

"My mother told me we were friends," she says. "And then something happened and we weren't? She doesn't know the details."

Well, thank God for that. Unless... Shit. "You asked me here so you could get the details from me, right?"

"Not exactly. I would like to hear the story but it's not..." She exhales and her forehead bunches into a network of lines.

Another familiar look that makes my chest ache.

"I asked you to come here because I wanted to see you in person," she says. "Because somehow..."

She stops mid-sentence, takes a breath and holds it. And she keeps on holding it with her lips pressed together. This is a look I haven't seen before. It's hesitation and uncertainty. And none of that fits with the girl I remember.

"I'm gonna sit back down," I say, heading back to my wicker chair. "I'm gonna take a deep breath..."

I let the thought hang out there and she takes the bait. She lets go of all her old air and starts breathing normal. Then I give her a nod that means go ahead and say what you need to say—because I think my chest might crack open if she doesn't hurry up and finish that sentence.

"Somehow, I know your face," she says. "I've seen it. Before today."

My heart—I swear to God the thing stops dead for a second. Then it's off and running, beating crazy fast and painfully hard.

"I don't know what to call it," she says. "My doctor says it's not a memory. My mom says it's not a vision. But they did an experiment and I picked you out of Summerfield High School's yearbook. So it's something."

"You picked me?" 

"Out of all the boys on the page. I recognized your face. The way it is now."

"What does that mean—my face now?"

She reaches around to her back pocket and hands me a photograph that knocks a seventh-grade-Ally shaped hole in my chest. "This is the picture they showed me during the recognition testing. Because older memories tend to be the strongest. But I didn't remember you."

"But this..." I use my pointer fingers to finish my sentence; both hands directed at my now-face.

"Yes," she says, with a small, sweet smile. "That's the face I saw in my dream. And you should take a breath now. Your cheeks are getting red."

I breathe. Ally breathes. We both just sit there breathing for a while.

Or maybe it's only a moment before she says, "I call it a dream because that's what I thought it was at first. But I don't think that now. Dreams have a story—and they make you feel something, even when you don't understand what they mean. But when I saw you it was like...a glimpse of a moment. I saw your face against a blue sky. And there was a black fence and a smell that my mom said was probably chlorine."

"You saw me at the pool?"

"You were wearing red," she says with a shrug. "And you were smiling, like you were happy to see me."

Ally smiled at me that first morning we worked together and I was surprised by my own reaction. I thought I had put all that crap behind me—the anger, the humiliation. The freaking phone call. But then I climbed up on one of the lifeguard stands and pulled off my T-shirt and there she was, checking me out. And it all came back.

It's not like I didn't want the attention. But part of me also wanted her to know how I felt when she rejected me. So when it was time for my break, I jumped in the pool to cool off—only I did it with a one-and-a-half somersault off the diving board and a how-do-you-like-me-now attitude. Then Ally's break came and she copied my dive. It wasn't half bad but I made sure the look I gave her said, "Really? That's the best you can do?"

And the game was on.

I'd give anything to go back to that day and not act like a dumbass.

"So like I said," Ally says now. "I needed to see you in person. Just to make sure. And I am. I'm sure it was you."

I open my mouth but I can't say anything. It's like all my thoughts are jammed up, like there's a bottleneck junction in my throat and nothing can break loose. Not one damn word.

Something scratches across the wood floor and then someone, a woman's voice, calls out a curse. She's pregnant as shit and trying to drag a big bulky art easel through the small doorway of a storage closet

I jump up to take over. I introduce myself and we talk about the weather while I drag five more easels into the room. And every time the art lady glances at Ally I feel like the biggest douche—the king of douches—because I can't look at her.

What do you say to the girl you love when there's this whole messed-up history between you but all she remembers is a moment?

"Are you staying for lunch?" the art lady asks me.

"No, I have to work this afternoon."

She thanks me, smiles at Ally and makes an excuse to waddle out of the room. "I should probably head out too," I say. "Long drive. Bad weather."

Way to segue, Douche King.

Ally looks up at the ceiling and I'm back across that room before I can even begin to sort out a response. I know what this is—I've seen it before. Ally feels like she's about to cry but she doesn't want to do it in front of me and I don't want that either.

"I could come for lunch on Tuesday," I say. "Or for dinner—or both. I have the whole day off."

She nods and takes a shuddery breath. It's pitiful and so damned adorable.

"Lunch or dinner?" I ask. 

"Both," she says, almost exhaling the word. I smile and she smiles. And there's a twist in my gut because some part of me knows this is a really bad idea.

But that doesn't stop me from saying, "Okay, good. I'll text you Tuesday morning."