The Lost Fisherman

by Jewel E. Ann

  I met his gaze that was just inches from mine. “I wasn’t in Denver that long. And I knew Angie. We went on a triple date. Remember? I told you that. And I met Teagan. She was an orthodontist. Remember her?”

  He shook his head, eyes narrowed.

  “Well, you slept over at her place more than once.”

  “Then there was Tiffany the interior designer. Remember her? Rose fixed you up with her.”

  Another slow head shake.

  “I met your harem. I knew you enjoyed your women. So what do you think? Do you think your friend’s daughter, the eighteen-year-old virgin living in your basement, knew that you liked her? Do you think you took time out of your sex life to bond with her over crossword puzzles?”

  “Yes.” He nodded slowly.

  He was so close to remembering. I just wanted him to do it. I wanted to be there when he remembered more about me than my Happy Meal deliveries. I wanted him to say “I loved you.” I didn’t want to tell him that he loved me. So I gave him the inch he was searching for, maybe the inch, the nudge he needed.

  “I was having a rough day. You took me to your parents’ house and showed me your boxes of crossword puzzles. Nerd status on full display. So if that meant you liked me …” I shrugged. “Then I guess you liked me.”

  Fisher did that squinting thing, a painful expression. His brain tried so hard to remember, to repair the connections, to bring back the images and the emotions that went with them. “I liked you so much … I hate that I can’t remember that feeling. But it’s the only explanation. I must have been scared out of my mind to tell you. Or maybe it was Rory. She would have killed me. We’ve seen that.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek while returning a single nod, trying to hide my disappointment.

  He liked me a lot.

  Was that emotionally a step above getting Angie pregnant? Puzzles over a baby?

  “I’m going to go home and think about this.”

  “Okay.” I drew in a breath and held it along with all my emotions.

  “If I don’t get to see you before Thanksgiving, have a good one.”

  “Yeah, thanks. You too.”

  “Love you.”

  I nodded as my heart ached.

  Tell him!

  It was such an agonizing predicament. Tell him and feel heartbroken when he didn’t remember. Don’t tell him and drown in the anxiety of wanting him to know. Angie told him everything or nearly everything and she received zero satisfaction in return.

  “Love you.” I slid my hand into his hair and leaned forward, pressing my lips to his.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I had to make an actual trip to Target after McDonald’s with Fisher so I didn’t show up empty handed. It wouldn’t have mattered. Rose and Rory had a much better distraction sitting at the kitchen with an open bottle of wine and three glasses.

  “Hey,” I said with fake enthusiasm after preparing myself when I saw her vehicle.

  Three women in yoga pants, sweaters, and fuzzy socks. Three women with their hair in various ponytail positions. And not a speck of makeup.

  “Join us. I’ll grab you a glass. Angie just needed a little girl time.” Rory’s hard gaze was a little more intense at the moment. Angie’s visit resurrected her anger. Rose nervously chewing her lips confirmed it.

  “How have you been?” I took a seat, feeling overdressed in jeans and damp panties from Fisher’s hand down them. Yes. I absolutely thought about that while smiling at his fiancée. Ironically, I found it easier to feel sorry for her when I wasn’t in the same room, except the wedding dress day. I fell victim to that trap like everyone else.

  “I’ve been better.” She rolled her eyes.

  Maybe Rose and Rory thought I’d feel uncomfortable. Guilt-ridden. It wasn’t my fault that Fisher loved me.

  “Oh?” I curled my lips between my teeth and smiled at Rory when she set a wine glass on the table and slid the wine bottle toward me.

  “Fisher wants to postpone the wedding. And I don’t know what to say. I’ve done everything I can to help him remember me, remember us. And he is getting some memories back, but it’s not enough to give him the bigger picture, to make him feel what he felt before the accident.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” I felt Rory’s judgmental gaze on me, but I didn’t give her a single glance. My brain was caught on the word “postpone.” Cancel and postpone were not the same thing. So who was telling the truth?

  “He’s just been really distant with me. I moved out. We agreed to ‘date.’ We were intimate. Things were back on track. Then it all came to a sudden stop. It’s hard to fall in love with someone when you never see them.”

  They were intimate? Once? Right? Just once?

  “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I tried that on for size. It received three out of three frowns.

  “I think I need to try a different tactic. I’ve requested a room with a king bed instead of two queens on our trip to Costa Rica. And I’ve scheduled a couple's massage the day before the wedding. Maybe the issue is I’ve been trying too hard to get him to remember how he used to love me and not enough time making him fall in love with me now. You know?”

  Yes, I knew. That was my MO. Except I didn’t try to make him love me. He just did. It was effortless and inevitable. Was that enough to thwart temptation on his horizon?

  “I shopped for all new lingerie for the trip. Maybe spice things up a bit? He can’t say no to lace and satin, right?”

  Rose cleared her throat just as I opened my mouth to speak. I had a lot to say on the matter.

  “Just don’t set yourself up to be disappointed. I really don’t think the issue has anything to do with physical attraction. You’re beautiful. What man wouldn’t be attracted to you?”

  Rory slid her gaze to Rose, and I had to stifle my giggle. Rose was taking it too far, making Rory a little jealous.

  What woman wouldn’t find you attractive?

  Angie nodded. Of course she knew she was attractive. No need to show even a little bit of modesty.

  “Have you considered the possibility of there being someone else?”

  I eyed Rory with caution. Where was she going with that? She didn’t look at me like I was supposed to fall to my knees and confess. Maybe she was gently preparing Angie for what I’d hoped would be the inevitable. And I kinda loved my mom for that.

  “Wow …” Angie’s eyes widened like two brown saucers.

  Nope. She hadn’t thought about that.

  “No. I mean …” She shook her head. “No. That’s not Fisher. He wouldn’t do that. Did he say something to you?”

  Rory shook her head. “No. He’s never said a word to me.” I didn’t miss the hint of bitterness in her tone. “But if he doesn’t remember his past with you, he might not feel…” Rory pressed her lips together, searching for the right word “…committed.”

  “No.” Angie didn’t care for that possibility. “Not Fisher. We’ve been friends for too long. He knows this has been my dream. And before the accident it was our dream. Besides, who would it be? Nobody. He goes to work. Comes home. Hangs out with you guys. No.”

  “Maybe he’s on a dating app. Just hooking up. Meeting his needs without the pressure of remembering his past or leading you on.” I grunted and flinched when Rose kicked my shin.

  “What?” Angie seemed to find that possibility even more appalling than the idea of him simply being with someone else.

  I personally viewed a random hookup for sex much less threatening. That was just sex.

  I, however, wasn’t just sex to Fisher. Angie should have wished for that. Instead, she was going to lose Fisher to the adorable and cute girl she never saw coming. The way she never noticed our magnetism on the triple date to the concert or her complete unawareness that while she slept in Fisher’s bed that night, he had the head of his cock pressed between my legs on the pool table.

  They were destined to always be friends (if she was lucky) and we were destined to always be lo
vers, no matter how destructive and shameless our path to each other ended up being.

  Man … I sure hope that’s our destiny.

  “I don’t think you know Fisher very well.” She scoffed.

  Rose wrinkled her nose. “Well, I don’t know about now. But when you and Fisher weren’t together, he was …” She shot Rory a quick look as if she’d offer some backup.

  “He was a … virile young man with an active dating life.” Rory for the win.

  I was getting tired of Angie’s string of shocked expressions. Even at eighteen, I hadn’t been that naive. Whether I liked it or not, I had to acknowledge Fisher liked sex, and he wasn’t the godly man who worried about love or marriage before sticking his dick into someone. Or part of his dick, in my case.

  Angie drained the rest of the wine in her glass. “You know …” She twisted the stem of her glass in one direction and then the other. “We weren’t exactly being careful about birth control before the accident. Which was crazy. I had a wedding to plan. A dress purchased. But part of me …” She shook her head and laughed. “I wanted to get pregnant. I was even late with my period and thought … this is it.” Her grin vanished. “But it wasn’t. I got my period the week before his accident. And I know it’s stupid, but had I been pregnant, I think, even with the accident, we would have been married by now. That’s just Fisher. Maybe he’s not the exact same person he was before the accident. But at his core, he’s still the same good man. He would have done the right thing. And I know … I just know we would have eventually fallen in love again because it’s us. It’s always been us.”

  I had to hand it to Angie. She unknowingly brought her A-game. It wasn’t the orphan standing in front of a full-length mirror, but it still packed a punch. My desire to keep my hands up, fisted in front of my face, dissipated. Maybe because it was easy to forget that Fisher didn’t remember our love the way I did. His love for me spanned months, not years.

  Was I getting too comfortable? Too confident? Could four days in Costa Rica derail us?

  I finished my wine and pushed my chair back a few inches. “I’m going to finish cleaning my bathroom.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving if I don’t see you before then.” Angie smiled.

  “You too. Do you have plans?”

  “Fisher’s parents’ house, of course.” She shrugged like, duh.

  Duh indeed.

  I should have known. I think I did know. But ignorance really was bliss when it came to my boyfriend and his fiancée.

  “Tell them hi for me.”

  The woman they don’t know they’re supposed to love yet.

  “Sure thing.”

  I sulked to the bathroom. Scrubbed the hell out of the shower and then the floor with Matt Maeson’s “Hallucinogenics” blasting through my earbuds.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  My grandparents were scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, a nice buffer between Rory and me. Things were better, but she wasn’t completely giving up all her anger. I had let it slide, but if she didn’t shake out of it by Thanksgiving, we were going to have a “You Went To Prison” talk. For the rest of my life, I reserved the right to play that card. She abandoned me during the most delicate and influential years of my life.

  Basically, all my imperfections would be blamed on her temporary absence. Okay, not really. But I did have every intention of using that excuse when things got rough. And since the incident, things had been rough.

  “Fisher’s coming over,” Rory announced Wednesday morning as I read a book on the sofa while Rose knitted something that resembled a scarf from the chair next to me.

  “Okay,” I said in a controlled tone, even if inside she’d lit a fire of anticipation with her news. “Why? Are you two back on speaking terms?”

  “He’s coming over to quickly install a rail by the toilet. My mom can’t get on and off the toilet that well right now. Her knee is bad.”

  “Nothing like waiting until the last minute,” I said.

  “She wanted him to do it last week, but she stopped talking to him, so he had no way of knowing,” Rose said, tossing my mom a wry grin.

  “Anyway, I’m just letting you know. He’s coming over to work.”

  With wide eyes, I nodded slowly. “Okay. Thanks for telling me. Otherwise, I might have thought he was coming over to have sex with me since you spoiled my last chance at it.”

  Rose snorted and quickly covered her mouth. Rory narrowed her eyes at me.

  Biting my lips together, I kept a fairly straight face.

  Seconds later, there was a knock at the door. My tummy flipped several times and my heart did its crazy thing where it liked to skip a few beats.

  “Hey,” Fisher said to Rory when she opened the door.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Rory said almost begrudgingly.

  “Sure. I would have done it sooner had I known you needed it.”

  “Well, I’ve … been busy.” Rory led him to the bathroom.

  But Fisher glanced back and saw me and Rose in the living room, and his face exploded into what I’d decided was his Reese Only smile.

  I bit my lower lip, but it hid nothing.

  “Fisher, are you coming?” Rory all but barked at him.

  Rose sniggered as did I.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Fisher said.

  While he installed the bar, Rory made stuffing to be cooked the next day and Rose worked on pies. I had no cooking jobs yet, so I meandered down the hallway to the bathroom.

  “Leave him alone so he can finish up,” Rory instructed.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I pretty much ignored her. I was twenty-four not four. “Need help?” I asked, standing in the doorway as Fisher finished drilling holes in the wall.

  “I’m good.” He stayed focused on his task.

  I loved watching focused Fisher. It was foreplay for me. The stern focus on his face. The bend and stretch of his arms and large capable hands. The way his tongue would make a lazy swipe along his lower lip when he was measuring something and marking it with the pencil he kept behind his ear. The fact that his jeans rode low but only showed the side waistband of his briefs instead of plumber’s crack. Poor plumbers … it wasn’t like they all had big guts, poorly fitting jeans, and seemingly no underwear.

  “Whatcha thinking about?” He caught me off guard when he shot me a quick glance over his shoulder.

  I smirked. “You don’t want to know.”

  Fisher’s gaze made a quick, appreciative swipe along the full length of my body. “Don’t be so sure.”

  “I was thinking about plumbers’ cracks.”

  “I don’t have a plumber’s crack.”

  “I know.”

  “Because you’re staring at my ass?”

  “Yes.”

  He chuckled without turning toward me again. “How’s it look?”

  “No comment. Rory probably has the room bugged. I’d hate to be in timeout for Thanksgiving. Have you uh … remembered anything new since I saw you on Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  He screwed the plates onto the wall. “I remembered my senior prom.”

  “That’s … interesting. Did something prompt it?”

  “Yes and no. I think there was a trigger, but the memory wasn’t immediate. It came to me later while I was sleeping.”

  “What triggered it?”

  “Angie stopped by and showed me something. And I think that did it.” He attached the bar to the plates.

  “That’s vague. What did she show you?”

  “The dress she bought for her cousin’s wedding and the coordinating tie she bought for me to wear.”

  They were going to wear coordinating outfits to her cousin’s wedding. How vomit-worthy. “And that triggered memories from prom?”

  “Yes. The coordinating outfits.”

  “So you dreamed of what? Shopping for a bowtie, cummerbund, and pocket square to match her dress?”

  “Not exactly.” Fisher tested the rail, usi
ng it to help him stand, pushing down on it with his weight.

  “Then what exactly?”

  “You’ll take it wrong.”

  “I doubt it,” I said reflexively.

  As he returned his tools to his tool bag, he blew out a slow breath. “We had a hotel room that night. A friend who graduated two years early, but also went to prom because his girlfriend was younger, got the room for us when he booked one for himself and his date. I remember staring at her light pink dress on the floor the next morning and yes … my matching bowtie and cummerbund.”

  The next morning. I swallowed past the thick lump in my throat. He was two for two. Both of his memories thus far about Angie involved sex. It wasn’t exactly how he presented them to me, but I could read between the lines.

  They had sex … she got pregnant.

  They had sex … the next morning he stared at their clothes on the hotel room floor.

  He was remembering sex with Angie while remembering Happy Meals with me.

  “See…” he derailed me from my train of thought “…you’re taking it wrong.” He brushed a little drywall dust off his shirt and jeans.

  “I’m not taking anything wrong. You’re remembering sex with Angie.” I lifted a shoulder and dropped it like a ten-pound weight. “Was it good sex?”

  Resting one hand on his hip, he dropped his chin to his chest and pushed another long sigh out his nose. “I don’t want to have this conversation with you. You asked me a question. I wanted to be honest with you. But I don’t want the strange cherry-picking of memories my brain seems to be doing to drive us apart. Just … don’t let it go there.”

  Go there. I wasn’t supposed to let my brain go there, but his brain could go wherever it wanted to go. “I don’t feel like that’s an answer to my question.” Self-destruction was a lit fuse.

  You saw it.

  You sensed its impending urgency, it’s impending doom.

  You felt panicked.