Back Into Your Arms

“So this is it” I said to him as we stood in the parking lot overlooking the school.

“Yup” he said hands in his pockets.

I wasn’t sure how to feel. It was a place I had spent 4 years of my life at but remembered nothing of. If I had my memories I’m sure the place would feel nostalgic but to me it meant close to nothing to be standing there. I looked over at John. He was quiet, probably reminiscing, something I wished I could do myself.

“Shall we go inside?” I said interrupting his thinking.

He nodded and we started walking.

The entrance had the name of the school on the top.
I imagined how it must have been to walk through those doors every morning. To see my friends greeting me at the front, to walk together to our first class.

“Let’s go get our passes”

“Lead the way” I said following him inside the main building. The place was bustling with people. Teens sitting there on their phones waiting for their parents to pick them up. I assumed they were either sick, or had been suspended from school. One of them turned around and gave me a sharp look.

“We’d like to go visit one of our old teachers, we were students here 10 years ago” I heard John explain to the receptionist.

“Ah really? Well welcome back, if you could please give me the name of the teacher so that I may write it in the pass”

“Mr. Anderson”

“Oh nice, he’ll be happy to see you” one of the other receptionist said to John. She seemed to have recognized him.

“The name of the lady?” the receptionist asked.

“Melody Riley”

The older receptionist looked my way. She hadn’t paid attention to me earlier.

“My oh my, Melody Riley” she said excited and happy to see me.

“Hi” was all I was able to say. I had no clue who she was.

“You’re still hanging out with this kid? What a life!” she said laughing looking over at John. John smiled shyly and looked over at me then back at the receptionists.

“We’ll head inside” John said to them.

“It was nice seeing you both” the older receptionist said to us.
I simply nodded and smiled politely.
When we were out of the building he told me who she was.

“You used to help out at the office, it was your elective junior year. She’s been working there for the longest, frankly I was surprised to see her, her name is Eleanor Watkinson”

“Ah” I nodded.

“As you can see, she knew about us”

“It seems we were a big deal of a couple”

“Seems like we were”

We began walking through the halls when we heard a bell ring and everyone started pouring out of their classes.

I got closer to John so we wouldn’t get lost in the crowd.

“We’re too old to blend in anymore huh?” I asked.

He just laughed and looked down at me and laughed some more.

“You’re 28 years old Melody Riley, don’t you forget that. You can say that we could probably blend in as substitute teachers. C’mon let’s start walking before we do become noticeable” He said beginning to walk towards a building on the Eastside of campus.
I stayed a bit behind as I looked at the teens walking to their classes. They looked so young and full of energy. I wish I could remember what it was like, to feel like that.

A couple of girls appeared to have recognized John and were already crowding around him.

“Oh my gosh John, do you remember us, we were there at your last concert here in Tempe” one of them said to him.

“Where are the rest of the guys?” Another asked.

“How could I forget! I hope you can make it to our future one’s too” he said to the first girl.

“The guys are in Brooklyn, we are actually in the process of recording our new album”

“What are you doing here then?” another said and giggled.

“I needed a break from them, they are recording drums right now so they don’t need me. I decided to pay a visit to Tempe with a friend of mine”

“Ah, that makes sense, you should come over more often!” the first one said.

He smiled and nodded.

“Girls, I’d love to stay and chat but I believe you have classes to get to” he said to them, they all giggled and nodded. They all hugged him and said bye to him. As soon as they left he looked around quickly thinking he had lost me.

“Well you’re Mr. Popular” I teased walking up to him.

“I forget that I’m in a band sometimes”

“I do too, I still don’t believe it to be honest” I teased some more.
He made a face.

“C’mon, I’ll take you somewhere special” he said extending his hand to me.

I hesitated, we had held hands earlier in the plane but that was different. We were still strangers really, it was just yesterday that he showed up at my class and asked me to dinner. We were going too fast.

“John O’Callaghan, I still don’t know you well enough” I said putting my hands behind my back.

“Melody Riley, I respect that” he said taking his hand back.

“You’re going to have to follow me closely then”

“Wait what?” I said as he began to walk towards the building.

When we entered the building I noticed the halls were quite reduced in size and a lot of people were walking in and out of the building. It was easy to get left behind.
People kept on bumping into me and weren’t apologizing. I could see John further ahead of me only because he was tall.

“John!” I yelled out, he stopped his tracks allowing me to catch up to him. I grabbed onto his hand and laughed embarrassed.

“I think holding hands might not be a bad idea, lead the way”
He looked down at me and laughed.

“Should have grabbed onto my hand from the start” he teased as he led the way to another hall and then up the stairs.
There was a classroom in the middle of the hall with the door open. He walked into the classroom confidently.

“Mrs. Jolie” he yelled out. He let go of my hand as he waved both hands in the air to get her attention. She was a short old lady. She looked over, squinting. Some of the students in the class looked over to see us.

“Do I know you?” she asked, walking over. She then looked at me, and looked at him again.

“John and Melody, I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed joyfully.

“Mrs. Jolie!” John exclaimed bending down to give the old lady a hug. She laughed.

“Oh John, look at you, you’re a man. Tall and handsome too! I’m glad you cut that hair of yours” she said laughing some more. She then looked over at me.

“Melody, how you’ve grown yourself!” she said walking over to me and extending her arms to give me a hug. I couldn’t help but hug her back, she was so cute and old.

“What are you two doing here again?”

“We wanted to feel like teens again”

“Oh, I want to feel that young too” she laughed.

“I wanted to ask you if you still had Melody’s essay” he said to her. I had no clue what essay he was talking about.

“I do, I still use it as example, it was such a well written essay! Would you like a copy of it?” she said to me. I looked at John and nodded.

“I’ll go get it, I’ll be right back”

I watched her as she went over to one of her cabinets and carefully looked for it. She walked back with it in hand.

“Here you go!” she said handing it back to me.

“Thank you!” I said looking at the title.

It was called:

Falling Asleep In Class

“We’re going to visit Mr. Anderson, it was nice seeing you again Mrs. Jolie” he said to the old lady. I smiled and waved as he pulled me out of the room.

“What is this essay about?” I said as we began walking down the stairs, he hadn’t even given me time to read it.

He laughed.

“I’m actually both surprised and relieved that she has kept this essay for about 14 years”

“14 years?”

“14 years, she was our English teacher Freshman year. She caught you falling asleep in class and was going to deduct points off your grade, but you wrote her a persuasive essay on why you fell asleep in class and why she shouldn’t deduct points. It’s quite brilliant really, she laughed so hard when she read it and then read it to the rest of the class. You got a perfect A plus that semester and she began to show that essay as an example to her Freshman students since”

“Wow” I said taking it all in.

“Now we are off to see Mr. Anderson” he said leading me out the building to the other side of campus.

“We used to meet by that tree over there” he said pointing to a tree to my left.

“Why that tree?” I asked him.

He shrugged.

“Most of the other trees were taken”

The school looked different now that the students had gotten back into the classrooms.
It looked empty and peaceful.

“So where are we going?” I asked him confused.

“You’ll see!” he said grabbing onto my hand again.

“I don’t think we need to hold hands again” I complained.
He laughed.

“I know, but it feels nice. We used to walk through here all the time, hand in hand. I just want to stay true to the past” he said grinning.
I shook my head but didn’t let go of his hand but rather went along with it.

We entered the building, went through some doors that led to the outside and then through some other doors that led us back into the building. It was quite confusing. We then stopped outside of a classroom. He peaked inside.

“I forgot they were in class, we are going to have to wait” He let go of my hand and sat down, his back against the wall.
I sat across from him and leaned on the wall too. I began to read the essay and laughed at my silliness. I was surprised that my essay had convinced my teacher to spare me.

“It’s good huh?”

“Too good. I’m glad she kept it”

“Me too” he said and we just stared at each other for a moment.

“You know, I don’t ever remember being here but for some odd reason the place feels familiar” I said to him as I closed my eyes. Breathing in the smell. Imaging what it would have been like. I pictured John with his long hair, and his tight jeans. His arms with no tattoos yet. I imagined myself watching him from my seat, I imagined myself passing notes to him hoping not to get caught.
“It must have been nice” I said opening my eyes and looking at him again.

“What?”

“Our teenage romance” I said blushing.

“Oh it was”

“You know, I’ve always thought of teenage romances as something silly…finding out I was in one makes me feel like a hypocrite” I confessed to him. He looked at me intently and nodded.

“I feel the same way about teenage romances now, I’m not going to lie. However, I feel we were different"

“How so?”

“Well tell me, what seems silly about teen romances to you?”

“Well, they are just kids and yet they feel they are so mature. You see them on dates at restaurants, you see them making out on the streets, they post ridiculous things about being in love on the internet and well I don’t know, it’s silly because it usually doesn’t last, a couple of months later they break up and are with someone else”

He nodded.

“That’s very true and I can’t say we didn’t look like kids because you’ve seen the pictures, we were kids but you see unlike relationships today, our relationship wasn’t based on lust. We had been friends for two years before we decided to date. Our relationship lasted two years, our parents knew each other. We wouldn’t have broken up had it not been for the accident…I guess what I’m trying to justify is that I sincerely believe we were in love then. It wasn’t a phase, it wasn’t us trying to keep up with the norm or having a boyfriend/girlfriend but rather that we really had fallen in love with each other and saw a future together”

“Do you think that we would have still been together today, had I not been in the accident?”

“I wanted to marry you, it would have been tragic had we not remained together”

“Marry me?”

It sounded so strange for someone to say that about me. Someone I had barely met.

“Marry you, even now that I’m older and have dated plenty of other girls, I haven’t wanted to marry any of them, but back then, I was convinced I wanted to marry you”

His voice sounded different when he explained this to me, he was feeling shy himself.
I was still stunned, he had wanted to marry me. How could I have forgotten something like that.

I looked at him.
His hazel eyes looking right back at me.

“I’m sorry that I can’t remember all our history, it’s quite unfair that you’ve had to live with that suffering while the rest of us moved on, while others pretended nothing had ever happened”

“I honestly feel bad for bringing back these problems into your life”

“I honestly haven’t felt better in my life John, I might not be remembering things on my own but being told of how things were, getting shown pictures, being taken to the places I once knew, it helps me fill in that gap, the gap that’s been empty for 10 years”

He nodded as he stood up and walked over to me to help me get up. At the very moment that I stood up, the bell rang and people started coming out of their classrooms again.

“Are you ready?” he said to me giving me a sad smile. We waited for everyone to exit and walked into the classroom.

“Mr. Anderson!” I heard him say to an old teacher that was sitting behind his desk at the end of the room. He walked all the way to him leaving me behind. I examined the classroom.
Instruments all over, from flutes to guitars to cellos and right in the middle was a beautiful black grand piano. I walked over to it and touched it.

I imagined John sitting there in his baseball uniform, me sitting next to him. Watching him as he showed me what every key was called, and teaching me to read music. I smiled, it must have been nice.

“Go ahead” I heard the man say to John.

John walked over to me.

“This is the piano, this is the one you learned with” he said to me as he took a seat and patted the spot next to him. I took a seat next to him.

“Play me something” I said to him.

He nodded and began playing a song.
I had heard that song in my old iPod. I watched him as he played so easily, so naturally.
When he finished he looked over at me.

“You play beautifully John, I see why you are in a band now” I teased.

“Try playing something” he said to me, grabbing my hands and placing them above some keys.
He repositioned my fingers in the right places.
I pressed on the keys, the sound was something so familiar.

“What is this John?”

He didn’t answer me but instead repositioned my fingers to play the next chords and the next.

“This is my own song, isn’t it?“ I said to him removing my hands from the keys.

“It is” he said to me as he played the whole song at normal speed.

“That’s incredible, you remembered it this whole time?”

“You wrote it for me” he said as he played the last note.

“I’ve heard it before, on the iPod, I always thought it was a song that already existed…but if I composed it, that changes everything”

“You were talented” I heard the teacher say from his desk. I looked over.

“Thank you”

“When I found out John was the one that taught you I almost fell out of my chair, you used to come here to play during lunch sometimes” the teacher said to me as he typed away in his computer.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember you” I said to the old man, he looked up to see me.

“It’s usually us the teachers who don’t remember our students” he joked. “But it’s okay Melody, I forgive you”

“Thank you for having allowed us in the past to use your room”
“Not a problem at all”

“If you ever plan on throwing away the piano to buy a new one, please let me know, I’ll buy it” I said to him as I circled the old piano.

“It is nearing the end of its life, we hardly use it now, I’ll make sure to remember to call you. Leave me your number here”

“I’ll leave you mine” John said writing his down instead.
“She lives in New York, you can call me and I can pick it up since I don’t live too far”

“New York, wow, so that’s where you’ve been all this time Melody”
I nodded.

“Far away on my own, but it’s nice to be back”

“You kids are always welcome to come visit”

“Bye Mr. Anderson” we said to the old man as we left the classroom. The old man smiled and waved.

The teens were out at lunch.
We watched them as we walked out.
The teens laughing, the boys flirting, the girls putting on their makeup.
The couples kissing in the corners.
Some kids playing the guitar.

“We’re old”

“We sure are” he replied. I looked back one last time as we entered the office building again. For a moment, I felt sad that I was leaving and I wasn’t sure why.

I felt nostalgia for a place I had no memory of.