Sweet Pussy

...

"Mr. Hayes has lost his memory. He won't come back with us."

"But we've reached out to the top neurologist. He'll get his memories back soon."

The conversation was identical to the one from my last life, when I found the missing Ethan Hayes.

This time, though, I felt no excitement or urgency.

I turned it down and did two things.

First, I went to the hospital for a full-body checkup.

Second, with my ALS diagnosis in hand, I went to Ethan's parents to call off the engagement.

His mother, Gloria Hayes, grabbed my hand and shook her head. "We can't call it off. Ethan loves you so much. He'd never marry anyone else."

I stayed quiet and showed them a photo.

In it, Ethan gazed at a woman playing a mermaid at the aquarium, obsessed.

"Rather than force him to marry a terminal patient like me, let's keep things as they are," I said. "Let him be with whom he loves. I don't want to hold him back anymore."

In my last life, after Ethan vanished in an accident, I searched for him for five whole years.

I found him living sweetly with Hanna Schultz, who had taken him in. Against his wishes, I forced a hypnotist to restore his memories.

The day he remembered, Hanna jumped off a building and died. From then on, a chasm opened between Ethan and me that we could never bridge.

In my past life, the initial phase of our decade-long marriage had been filled with coldness. After I got ALS, he cared for me for seven years, feeding me, bathing me, praying for me, and seeking doctors for me.

But I knew he had done it out of husbandly duty, not real love.

Fighting back my tears, I choked out, "Ethan and I have no future."

In this life, I refused to repeat the mistakes.

Leaving the Hayes Mansion, I went to find Hanna Schultz.

She quickly sent Ethan away, explaining, "I didn't hide him on purpose."

"Whether you did or not, you know the truth," I said.

Unable to fool me, she bit her lip and broke down. "I know it. His heart has always been with you. Once he remembers, he'll ditch me and run back to you. But I fell for him on the first day of high school. I've loved him for years, but I had never gotten a scrap of attention from him. Finally, I got this chance."