“Probably, with the extreme temperatures.”
“It’s not so terribly hot in the summer.”
“Oh, no? Is that another misconception about the desert?”
“I mean, it gets hot. But the nighttime is so much cooler it almost evens out.”
“Interesting.”
“You’ll like it. Summers here, I mean. I could take you to the darkest parts of the desert. You’d see stars you’ve never seen before.”
Cheyenne gave me a funny look – one I couldn’t define.
“What?”
“You and I went, once, a long time ago, to the top of a mountain in Colorado. Drove up after dark. We were the only ones up there, looking at the stars. You, um… I don’t know. It’s just strange that you would bring that up.”
I wasn’t sure why that made my stomach twist with anxiety. “Is it not okay? You can forget I said anything about it, if it’s weird for you.”
“It’s weird, but it’s not bad,” she said. “And who knows? Maybe there’s a reason you brought that up. Some kind of vestigial feeling of a memory or something. No pressure.”
I wanted to tell her that I’d felt something, some kind of clue that showed her I remembered at least a single detail of our time together, before, but I was just as confused as she was. Hopeful, but confused. It was a little depressing.
“The storage unit, though,” Cheyenne said brightly, dissipating the tension. “I’m ready to see it if you’re ready to show it.”
“Let’s go.” I was thankful for the distraction, even if I had been worried about taking her to see it. I’d gone through the contents of the storage unit so many times that I knew everything inside, but I just didn’t have any context for it.
I also didn’t have any idea if any of the things in there were related to Cheyenne. There were precious few photos – maybe I hadn’t been a very sentimental person – and no letters whatsoever. What if she had sent me lots of love letters and I’d never saved them? Would she be offended?
The sun was just going down as I rolled the door open on the storage unit.
“Huh,” Cheyenne said.
“What’s wrong?’
“I don’t know. I kind of thought there’d be more…stuff.”
I shrugged, looking out over the stacks of boxes. “I think it’s a lot of stuff.”
“It’s probably just seeing it like this, condensed into a storage unit,” she said, trailing a hand along a stack of boxes. “All of your life tucked into this one space.”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“I don’t mean to put it in any way,” she said. “This is yours. I’m glad you kept it.”
I smiled. “Even the motorcycle?”
“You always loved motorcycles.” I’d had Chuck repair the wreck of the bike in the hopes that seeing it whole would jog some kind of memory, but it never had. I’d ridden it a couple of times, but parked it back in here with all the other ephemera I didn’t understand yet.
“I started riding, made the club and everything here because of that motorcycle,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy doing it now. But I don’t remember enjoying it before. I thought it was a link that would eventually connect, but it never has.”
“It was a good plan, trying to see if you could make that connection,” Cheyenne said. “You shouldn’t feel bad that it didn’t work.”
I sighed. “I guess what I’m trying to tell you is what the doctors told me: that I might never get those memories back. No matter how hard I try.”
“It’s a possibility that everyone needs to accept,” she agreed, examining a photo in a frame, one of many in an open cardboard box. “Even you.” She huffed a light laugh at another frame in that box. “Look at you and your cousin.”
“You knew my cousin?”
“Yeah, but not very well.”
“I don’t remember anything about him.” Even though we’d served our country together. Even though he’d died a hero. Even though I was pretty sure I’d been dreaming about his death.
“You looked alike, that was for sure,” she said. “That was kind of a freaky thing. Especially when you both got your hair buzzed before your shipping orders. He said something once– Well, I won’t speak ill of the dead.”
“What did he say? I’d like to know.” Especially if it was something that upset Cheyenne. But why was I so eager to jump to her defense against my cousin? Was there something deeper there?
“I don’t know, Jack. It wasn’t polite. Though I guess it’s not fair that it’s one of the only real interactions I had with him, and it colors my whole perception of him.”
“You can tell me. I really would like to hear it.”
She shrugged. “Well, if you must know. One time, probably because we’d all had too much to drink while we were hanging out, he suggested, since the two of you looked so alike, that it probably wouldn’t count as cheating if he and I hooked up.”
I recoiled. “What? Really?”
“Yeah. Really. You and James did look that alike, but your personalities were like night and day – you on the day side, of course. He was funny, but it was dark humor. I don’t know.”
“If he wanted to stand a chance with you, he should’ve proposed a threesome,” I mused with a snort of laughter.
Cheyenne cackled. “Oh my God. That’s just like something he would’ve said. Something about a dream team – two guys who looked exactly like the guy I was in love with.”
“Jesus, I really don’t need to know that I said something he would’ve said. That really messes with my head.”
“Oh, you could be just as raunchy as James, when you wanted to be,” she assured me. “More so, if you’d been spending time with him. I don’t know what it was. The two of you seemed to rub off on each other. That’s not sexual!” I was still laughing. “So immature!”
“You’re the one who told me that story,” I said. “I can’t help where my mind went.”
“You’re the one who insisted I tell you that story,” she said, shaking her head. “Sometimes, I wish you could help where your mind went – oh. I didn’t mean to say… I didn’t mean that, Jack. I’m sorry.”
She had a right to say it. I’d wished it for myself, too. But it didn’t make it easier to get confirmation that my amnesia was a bane for other people, too.
“I’ve been trying really, really hard to make something click,” I said.
She must’ve recognized the desperate tone in my voice, because she looked at me with a healthy dose of compassion. “It’s not worth making yourself sick over, Jack. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“I really want to remember you, Cheyenne. Badly.”
“You know, not many people get a chance to really start over,” she said. “It’s not a bad thing. We can get to know each other again.” She stepped closer, then closer still, brushing her nose against my chin, then along my jaw line. “Get reacquainted.”
My arousal was insistent, but pathos persisted. “When is it okay to accept that they’re not coming back, my memories?”
“Never say never.”
“Cheyenne…” She’d unzipped my jeans, drawn out my erection, was stroking it.
“I thought you would never come back for me, but now we’re together.” She took my hand, worked it down the waistband of her pants. Wet warmth. “So that’s why you don’t say never. Everything is always possible. The trick is to try not to worry about it so much.”
“How can I do that?”
“You find someone to help you not worry so much. Someone to distract you.”
“I would call you a lot more than a distraction.”
“Well, thank you.”
It was cool in the storage unit, but we heated up fast enough, half-dressed, Cheyenne pressed against the wall, legs wrapped around my waist, the two of us doing our best to make new memories together even if the old ones continued to dog us both in different ways. I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to give up my search for my mem
ories, my efforts to regain them. The idea of just giving up, agreeing to the fact that I’d never know, didn’t sit well with me. Cheyenne had been right about one thing, though. Maybe I just didn’t need to worry about it as much. And putting this new, fully-formed memory on top of all of these old, forgotten ones was empowering. It eased the anxiety of not knowing a great deal.
The longer Cheyenne stayed in Rio Seco, though, the more pressing a different kind of anxiety became – the worry of not knowing how long this beautiful thing was going to last between the two of us. She’d agreed to accompany me to Rio Seco to try and help me unravel parts of my past she had access to that I didn’t. But she’d walked away from her entire life in Colorado to do so. I couldn’t ask her to stay here indefinitely, could I? We were having fun. I was falling in love with Rio Seco all over again, only through her eyes, this time. How long would she be able to stay? And could anyone blame me for wanting her to stay longer? I felt at ease around her in a way I hadn’t expected. I loved just to talk to her, to ask her questions about her memories of us. And I loved equally to listen to her, even if I couldn’t sometimes place the people and locations she spoke about.
“You played football,” she told me once.
“What?” I didn’t even like watching football on TV. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “You were wide receiver. Good at it, too. You could’ve gone to college on scholarship, but you decided to go into the Army Rangers instead. Said it would be a better education and less of a waste of time.”
I tried to imagine myself wearing football pads and a helmet, but I failed. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t possessed much respect for the sport. If I’d turned down college because I hadn’t wanted to play football for the school, maybe that was the reason no new synapses fired in my brain.
“You worked at a hardware store in town,” Cheyenne told me another time. “You knew everything about it. Did research some nights, if a customer had stumped you with a question, so you could come back smarter the next day. Soon, everyone would go to the hardware store with crazy questions to try to stump you. It was like a game. Small town, I guess.”
I knew my way around a hammer and nails, but I didn’t think I knew it better than the average person. It was also foreign to think about how much I must’ve cared about looking competent. These days, I generally didn’t give a rat’s ass about what people thought about me. There were things I cared about, like the club and the bar and our fundraising efforts. But a younger version of me with a need to impress people with my knowledge just didn’t jive in my mind.
“Everyone loved you,” Cheyenne told me one night. “People just wanted to be around you. It’s hard to explain. You were charming, but it was more than that. Your goodness just seemed to make other people want to be good, too. I think that’s why your cousin decided to follow you into the Army Rangers. Maybe. Who knows why James did what he did?”
“You said you didn’t know him very well,” I mused, ignoring the strange pangs of melancholy I got at imagining throngs of people following me around to catch some of my good vibes. It didn’t feel right at all. Not the way I was now.
“No, you’re right. I didn’t.”
“You’ve brought him up several times now, though.”
Cheyenne hesitated. “You had a complicated relationship with him.”
“Complicated how?”
“I don’t know. You didn’t talk about it with me ever, and when I tried to bring it up, you’d just shut me down again, telling me that it was a family thing and I couldn’t understand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I didn’t ever take that well.” She smiled and squeezed my hand. “But I know the two of you were close as children. Don’t you have any family you can ask about?”
“Just my uncle.” But there was one of the biggest complications of all.
“You mean James’s father?”
“Yeah.”
“He would be a great source of information. Aren’t you close with him?”
“No. Not really.”
“Why not?”
I pointed to my face. “Because I look so much like James.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How would you feel if someone looking like your dead child showed up, wanting to talk about him?”
Cheyenne sagged a little bit. “Oh. I guess it makes sense, then, that you’re not close. Even if it isn’t fair to either of you. You used to say that family was the most important thing in your life. I guess I was a little bit jealous you felt that way to begin with. You had a great relationship with your father.”
Bit by bit, Cheyenne provided me with a primer of who I used to be, sketching out a picture of the things I used to do and believe in and say. It wasn’t a complete education, especially when some of her lessons clashed so thoroughly with the person I was now. And it got confusing. But I never regretted inviting her to Rio Seco to help me learn about myself.
I was pretty sure I could be forgiven for trying to cling to at least one part of my past.
The only thing that we hadn’t covered, by the time December rolled around, was just how long Cheyenne was planning on staying in Rio Seco. She hadn’t said anything about leaving, and seemed to be having a good time being around my friends and me. But it ate at me, the idea that she’d want to go back to Colorado at some point. Even if it was only natural, only logical.
One night, at the bar, apropos of nothing, I realized that I had to know. I couldn’t keep existing in this abbreviated limbo, full of dread, that one day, she was going to wake up and tell me she was leaving.
“Cheyenne, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” I said, hesitant, toying with my beer bottle. I’d snagged her away from Amy for a moment, the two of them engaged in some deep kind of conversation, leaning against the bar. Part of me was afraid Amy was going to loosely fictionalize my life’s story for her next written masterpiece, but I knew it was stupid to think like that. All of us in the club were afraid of her, a little bit. “Only if you have a moment.”
“For you, all the moments,” Cheyenne said, kissing me on the nose, happily tipsy. It was the perfect time to broach this subject, even if it maybe wasn’t the most honest thing I’d ever done. She was warm and comfortable, happy in the bar, getting along well with the entire Horizon family. I wanted her to stay. But more than anything, I wanted her to want to stay.
“I’m looking to expand the bar,” I told her. “And I want you to work here for me.”
She looked at me quizzically for a second before laughing. “You can’t be the boss of me.”
“Well, technically it would be Brody,” I allowed. “I’m just the owner.”
“Just the owner. Like it isn’t anything. You sell yourself so short sometimes, Jack. This bar is great. Everyone loves it here.”
“They love it because they have to. There’s no other choice.”
“They could always choose not to come here,” she pointed out. “Grab a case of beer and get drunk at home. It would be cheaper. But they keep coming back. It’s the atmosphere. Everyone coming up and talking to you while you’re sitting here in the booth.”
“So will you stay? Stay and work here, I mean?”
“What, as a waitress?” She jerked her chin at Nadine and Haley, who had everything well in hand. “They’re already awesome.”
“But if the bar expands, we’ll have more tables.”
“Nadine’s been talking to that guy for like thirty minutes,” Cheyenne said. “I really think between the two of them, they have the place under control.”
“I’m thinking about adding a kitchen,” I said, almost on a whim. “It’s not like we need the revenue, but during lunch and dinner hours, we could attract more patrons. People who don’t usually come here because they have kids, or they don’t really like to drink. That kind of thing. A wider customer base.”
“You’ve been thinking about this?”
“Off and
on. I think it was originally Brody’s idea, but I’ve been mulling it over.” He’d come up with lots of ideas over the year, most of which I’d shut down. His best ideas came when he was practically living in the office at the bar, avoiding Nadine, during a time of turmoil and shitty communication. Maybe I should’ve taken a page out of Brody’s book. Avoid making the same mistakes he did.
“You could probably do a kitchen well,” Cheyenne was saying before I took her by the chin and kissed her, interrupting her.
“I’m lying to you.”
“Are you?” She smiled sweetly, kissed me back. “I hope not.”
“I’m just casting around for reasons to keep you in Rio Seco. I don’t want you to go back to Colorado.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I really like having you around.”
“Well, I like being around, Jack.” She grinned at me, bit her lip. “Maybe you should just ask me to stay in Rio Seco. See what I say.”
Could it really be as simple as that? “Cheyenne?”
“Yes?”
“Would you like to stay in Rio Seco with me?”
“Hm, that’s something I have to think about.”
“Oh, come on.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Of course I’d like to stay in Rio Seco. You think I’d let you get away again? Hell, no. You’re stuck with me, now. I hope you’ve made your peace with that.”
“You don’t have to work. I have more than enough money to support you if you don’t want to.”
“Are you proposing that I be your kept woman?”
“The position is yours, if you want it.”
Cheyenne kissed me on the nose. “I would go crazy. Tell me more about this kitchen proposition.”
“Honestly, I invented it on the spot to try and convince you to stay.”
“But you said it was Brody’s idea.”
“He probably has a half-assed business plan floating around somewhere in here. It was his idea. Along with lots of other things.”
“But you sold it to me. Appealing to a broader customer base. It’s a good idea. Good business, if you can get it.”
“Have you seen Rio Seco?” I laughed. “There aren’t many other options for people.”
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