Ellie had been working with a specialist for months to get her memory back, or at least get her back to a spot where she could try relearning about her missing years. By Christmas, she was ready to hear about everything she'd missed at home. Her mom had a lot of pictures to catch her up on what she'd missed. However, there was one thing they left out: Harry.
Any mention of him seemed to upset her, so he wasn't brought up unless necessary. Instead, they showed her the video of the Penguins winning the Stanley cup, of her college graduation, pictures of her first apartment, and that bookstore she'd worked in. Slowly, Ellie was able to piece together the last few years, but their was still a huge part missing: Harry.
On a rainy April afternoon, Ellie was home alone while her parents were out at work. She wanted to fix a button that had fallen off her favorite cardigan, and went searching for her mother's sewing kit. She thought it might be in the spare bedroom, but when she opened the door, she found the room was filled with boxes, boxes with her name on it.
'That's odd...' she thought and opened the first box: clothes. Clothes she did not recognize. She opened the next box, and the next few boxes: all clothe she did not recognize. She pulled an 'ugly Christmas' sweater out of one box and laughed, because she knew she'd never worn one of those before. She opened the rest of the boxes one by one, and they contained various things, mostly random stuff and odds and ends, most of which she had no memory of.
'This must be from the missing years,' she thought, and decided she was feeling well enough to go through some of the stuff. She pulled each item out and looked at it, trying to spark some kind of recognition. For most of them, it was a bit like having deja vu, except she couldn't recall the first time she'd seen them.
She came across a bunch of letters tucked away in the bottom of a box, and the handwriting on the envelopes felt so familiar it almost made her cry. 'But why? Why do I know this handwriting?' she thought, and carefully slipped the letter from the first envelope.
Dear Ellie, May 21, 2016
I thought I would write you a letter, as if I were actually a soldier in WWII. Sure, we text every day, but I thought it would be more realistic, and romantic. Writing love letters is something that should never have gone out of style (no pun intended)....
....Love, Your Frog Prince
Ellie put the letter down and felt her eyes stinging with tears. 'Who is my Frog Prince?' She wasn't sure why she felt this way, but she had to keep reading. There were about fifteen letters, and she read them all carefully and with anticipation, hoping something would spark her memory. Whoever this guy was, he loved very much, and judging by the pain in her heart, she had loved him too.
When she got to the last letter, she saw it was unopened. Thinking that was strange, Ellie checked the date on the post mark: it had been delivered the day she received her concussion. 'So, even pre-memory loss Ellie had not read this' she thought as she looked the envelope over. Thinking there could be no harm in it, she tore the envelope open and read his last letter.
It was just like the others: cute, but contained many references she didn't understand. And like the others, he hadn't signed his name! Each time it was something different, like Frog Prince, or 'Your very damp soldier', which made no sense to Ellie, or even just 'H'. She wracked her brain to think of any boy she might have known with the first initial of 'H' but no one stood out, or fit the other qualifiers mentioned in the letters.
Not wanting to give up on them, Ellie brought the letters back to her room and read them on a daily basis. Each time she looked for something new, something to trigger her memories of this 'Frog Prince', but there was nothing. She just kept falling deeper in love with this mystery man.
Ellie sat at the bus stop listening to music on her phone as she waited for the bus. She absent mindedly looked at the ads posted in the bus stop, and as usual, it was nothing interesting.
'Wait,' she looked back at the poster to her left. 'That's him.'
She stood up and walked over to get a closer look. He was wearing a light blue suit, and he appeared to sitting in pink water. The ad was for Harry Styles' new album, out May 12th.
May 12, that was...yesterday. Ellie quickly hopped on itunes and downloaded his album without thinking about it. She did not fully understand why, but she was compelled to hear it immediately.
She sat on the bus home listening to his album, one song at a time, and nearly missed her stop. She didn't care that strangers saw her having some kind of emotional fit each time she realized a reference in a song
'Meet me in the hallway' she kept thinking, over and over, as she tried to remember why that should mean something to her. She had a feeling that it had something to do with standing on top of a building, but nothing quite added up.
She nearly cried hearing 'Two Ghosts' because somehow, inevitably, she knew it was about her. 'How did he know how empty she felt?'
The line 'can't take you home to mother in a skirt that short' from 'Only Angel' was familiar. Someone had said that to her once, but she couldn't quite figure out who, or when.That ugly Christmas sweater she'd found in one of the boxes came to mind for some reason.
When 'Kiwi' started playing she stopped dead in her tracks. She'd heard this song before. Months before, maybe even a year ago. Bits and pieces came flashing back at her, and she recalled asking someone if he'd knocked a girl up, maybe a girl from New Zealand.
Ellie got off at her stop and stood still as 'Ever Since New York' played, and she was reminded of a week spent in New York with her mystery Frog Prince, a week that changed them somehow. She walked home and went straight to her room to find those letters. Listening to the album on repeat, she re-read the letters, and slowly things started to come back. Not everything, just bits and pieces, and feelings of memories.
She texted Scott, but of course he was preparing for a game and would not see his phone until later. Ellie sighed, and put the letters away, and left to join her parents in the living room to watch Scott's game together.
The Penguins game against the Ottawa Senators was particularly tense in the Wilson household, because Ottawa was their home team, but Scott played for the Pens. The game was pretty intense, and ended up going into sudden death overtime. The Pens played hard, but in the end Ottawa scored, ending the game with a 2-1 lead.
Devastated by the loss, Scott and some of his teammates went out for a drink after the game. It was only game one of the semi-finals, but a loss is not a good way to start a playoff series. By the time he got home, his phone was dead and he was too tired to notice Ellie's message.
The next morning he was awoken by his phone buzzing, with Ellie's face showing up on the caller ID. "Hello?" He croaked, his head still fuzzy from last night.
"Scott!!" Ellie shouted. "Why didn't you tell me I dated Harry Styles??"
He sat up straight in bed and shook his head to clear his thoughts, making sure head heard her correctly. "Sorry, what?"
"My Frog Prince, it's Harry Styles, isn't it?"
Scott didn't know what to say. "I don't really know what to say, but, yes." He had no idea what she was talking about, but assumed it was a nick-name she'd had for him.
"His album, Scott, I remember. Not everything, but I remember," she sounded like she was crying, and he realized how hard this must be for her.
"Okay, I will let him know-" Scott started.
"You have his number?!?!" Ellie interrupted.
Harry was quite busy. He'd had countless interviews, a secret concert, dozens of phone calls. So when he had five minutes to himself, he was a little ticked off when his personal cell rang.
"What?" He grumpily answered the phone.
It was quiet. "Is this Harry?"
He froze. He'd recognize that voice anywhere. But could it really be her? Was the stress of releasing an album catching up to him, and his mind was playing tricks on him?
"Yes," he said quietly, and felt his breath hitch as his heart sped up.
"So it's really you, my Frog Prince. You're the one who wrote the letters," Ellie said, and Harry felt like he was going to have a heart attack.
"Yes, I'm your Frog Prince," he laughed, and wiped a tear off his cheek. "Ellie, you're back? All of you?"
"Not quite. But now that I've found you, it's like a huge part of me has returned, and everything makes so much more sense now."
Harry took a deep breath to steady himself. He knew he had a lot of media obligations over the next few days, but he would do whatever it took to see Ellie again as soon as possible. "Where are you?"
"I'm at my parents' in Ottawa. But Harry?"
Hearing her say his name was like getting a reviving shock to the part of his heart that had been dormant since Ellie's concussion. "Yes?"
"Aren't you busy with your new album? I wouldn't want to get in the way..."
"Ellie, without you there wouldn't be an album. Trust me, I can make time for you."
He had to leave soon for his next interview, and instructed his assistant to schedule him on the next flight to Ottawa.
It was very late when Harry finally made it into Ottawa. He rushed to the place where he and Ellie had decided to meet up and hoped she hadn't been waiting too long. It only made sense that this was where they would meet again, since it was where it had all started, a year and a half ago.
She was standing in an aisle, holding a book, when she heard him approach. The book fell from her hands when their eyes met and she froze. Harry moved closer, but not too close, remembering how she'd yelled at him the last time he saw her. He wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms again, but he didn't want to do this wrong and scare her off.
He picked up the book she had dropped. "'Anne of Green Gables'. I don't know why I should have expected anything different," he smiled and handed it back to her.
"I don't think this is the version with vampires, though," Ellie smirked and put the book back on the shelf.
Harry couldn't stop the tears from flowing down his face, and Ellie rushed closer to hug him. "It's really you," he whispered. "You're back."
"Mostly. I don't remember everything specifically, but the feeling is there. It's like when you wake up from a vivid dream that leaves a feeling behind that you just can't get out of your head."
Harry finally leaned back out of their hug. "I have something that might help. Do you still like Chinese food?"
"Of course," Ellie smiled.
"Come with me," he took her hand and led her out of the book store and into the hotel next door. He'd had his driver set up a surprise for them, and Harry hoped it wasn't too cold. "This is where we stayed, when we were in town."
"Who?" Ellie asked.
Harry paused for a moment. "That's right, you didn't know about One Direction."
"Oh, yeah. No I know who that is, now." Ellie answered, and they climbed on the elevator. "You guys broke up soon after we met, right?"
Harry nodded, and couldn't stop smiling. They took a staircase at the end of a hallway up to the roof, and Harry saw their table waiting for them. There were candles, two wine glasses, and of course, the white chinese food boxes. "Does this feel familiar to you?"
Ellie slowly walked toward the table, Harry close behind, and stared down at the city below. "Yes, kind of. 'Meet me in the Hallway', that song..." she turned back to look at him.
"I texted you to meet me in the hallway before we came up on the roof." He pulled out a chair for her and sat down next to her. "So you've heard the album?" He poured them both a glass of wine, before they both got into the Chinese.
Ellie nodded, and finished chewing on her General Tso's. "I saw an ad at the bus stop, and remembered you from the hospital all those months ago. So I bought your album immediately, and as soon as I heard your voice, it brought back so many feelings, and memories."
"If I'd known that was all it would take..." Harry joked, but he could still see her in that hospital room, telling him to stop singing 'Hey there Elloise' to her.
"Harry, I've missed you. I knew something was missing, I just didn't realize what, or how important it was," Ellie reached over and held his hand.
"I've missed you too, El, more than you can imagine." He knew it would take time, for the two of them to get to know each other again. They spent the next few hours on that roof top talking and catching up, until Harry's driver came to retrieve him.
"I'll be in LA for the next week, is there any chance I can ask you to join me?" Harry asked Ellie as they left the rooftop.
"Um," Ellie paused, and Harry worried he'd taken it too fast. "This is embarrassing, but I'll have to check with my parents first. They've been very protective of me lately..."
"Of course, I get it. I don't want to push too much on you at once," Harry nodded.
"Harry, before you go, I have one question. I can't remember if this is something I'm getting mixed up or if it's real, but, do you have a tattoo of crossed hockey sticks?" Ellie asked, and Harry grinned.
"I absolutely do, El, and do you remember where it is?" Harry realized it sounded like he was flirting, something he hadn't done in over a year in a half.
Ellie gave him a cheeky grin and reached over to lift up his shirt, pulling the waistband of his black skinny jeans down far enough to reveal the tattoo he'd gotten for her on his hip.
He carefully leaned down to kiss her gently, and she wrapped her arms around him.
"I don't want to let go of you, ever," he said, with his arms entwined around her. "I don't want to lose you again." He blinked, but couldn't stop the tears from flowing from his eyes.
"I'm not going anywhere, Harry," Ellie replied, face still firmly planted in his shoulder.
He reluctantly pulled away when his driver reminded him he needed to get to the airport. "I'll see you soon, in LA."
He kissed her goodbye, and for the first time since that fateful afternoon in August, Harry finally remembered what it feels like to have a heartbeat.
A/N: Took me forever to come up with a way to wrap up this chapter, but then I remembered 'Two Ghosts' and thought it was perfect!!!!
I think there will be at least one chapter after this, maybe more, what do you think?
Thank you for reading/commenting/voting!! : D