Remember Our Song by Emma South Page A

company.  It’s really changed a lot, unfortunately for our purposes, I was really hoping they hadn’t done too much redecorating.  Does any of it look familiar?”
    “No, I don’t recognize anything.  Sorry.”
    “Well, let me tell you what I remember.”
    Jeremy pulled down the blinds on the glass wall between the boardroom and the hall outside, twisting a rod on each one until the slats blocked off the view between us and the rest of the office.  Moving to the large oval table, he pulled one chair out, then looked at the door and across to the other side of the table before pushing that chair back in, pulling out the one next to it and sitting down.
    “Stand over by the door, would you?”
    “Like this?” I walked over and turned to face him again.
    “Yes… that’s it,” Jeremy paused.  “That brings back some memories for me at least.”
    “What now?”
    Jeremy turned to face the table, and pulled his chair in as if he was talking to some fictional people seated on the other side, closing his eyes as if seeing them again.
    “Old John Bloxham, he was sitting right there,” Jeremy pointed without opening his eyelids.  “He was being stubborn about the valuation of the company.  It was frustrating as hell, but I knew before I came to the meeting that it would be.  He built the company from nothing, so I understood his bias.  My goal that day was to figure out how to show him I wasn’t here to destroy his life’s work, I was here to make sure a good company survived in a new age, and not get myself ripped off in the process.  I had a plan, but he was being even more defensive than I anticipated.”
    Jeremy stopped again, clearly reliving the scene in every detail as I watched, his eyes still closed.  I tried to read what I could on his face, though he wasn’t turned towards me.  I swore I could see the corner of his mouth turned upwards in the faintest of smiles.
    “I remember, out there,” Jeremy pointed out the window, “I could see an airplane flying, and I just wanted to leave and go home.  Then the sun came out from behind a cloud, for just a moment, reflected off the window on that building over there.  I was temporarily blinded, and then there was a knock on the door.  I turned…”
    Jeremy twisted in his seat and opened his eyes.
    “… and there you were.  The first time I saw you, I was right here and you were right there.  I’ll never forget the way you looked at me.”
    “How?”
    “Like you didn’t give a damn who I was, for a start,” Jeremy chuckled.  “But there was more.  Now, I’m not into all that mumbo-jumbo stuff, but I knew that the angel that just walked in the door was the one for me.  I’d never felt anything like it in my life, like every atom in my body was pulling me in your direction.  I thought the chair was going to start scraping across the floor.”
    “What happened next?” I whispered, caught up in the moment, what Ellie would have called the fairy tale.
    “Something was wrong, I could see it in your eyes.  They were kind of glazed over like you were, sorry for saying, like behind the beautiful surface you were dying inside.  One of the charities I’d worked with in the past was involved with helping to rehabilitate wild animals that had been captured and mistreated, forced to perform tricks day in and day out for years in god awful conditions.  Birds, bears, you name it.  They had that same look in their eye, like they’d forgotten what it felt like to fly, like they’d forgotten what it was like to be outside, even.”
    Despite my dehydrating trip to the cemetery in the morning, my eyes started watering again, what else had happened between the time my memory cut off and the day Jeremy was talking about?  I had no idea.  Jeremy continued telling me my own story as the first drops began trickling down my cheeks.
    “I was lost, my plan about how to get a fair valuation for the company was out the window with that airplane.