“Uh-huh. What else?”
“The Valentine’s Day fundraiser for the animal shelter is going to be pretty good.”
“I agree. What else?”
“You’re here with me.”
“Always.”
She said it so fiercely that it took me by surprise, and I enveloped her in a hug.
“Happy New Year,” Cheyenne murmured against my neck.
“Happy New Year.” I was going to make it so.
Chapter 7
We broke ground on the new kitchen addition to the bar with a little fanfare just after the first of the year. The county newspaper sent out a photographer, who made us pose for cheesy photos in a ceremony that was more of a waste of time than anything else.
“It’s good publicity, just like the coverage of the toy drive,” Amy coached me. She was the club’s resident media expert, after all. “Just go with it.”
“You don’t have a ceremonial shovel?” the photographer complained, snapping a couple of shots of me turning the dirt over with a battered tool Chuck had lent me.
“Not very useful for some of us who actually work,” I groused back, tossing over a shovelful of dirt with a little more force than I’d intended.
“If you make me restrict your access to the media, I will start billing you for being your public relations director,” Amy warned me. “Don’t push your luck.”
So I smiled for a few more pictures, got Cheyenne to give the photographer a quote to include with whatever writeup they were including, and got Amy to give them contact information for further questions.
The real work lay ahead.
“I think we should think outside the box with our menu,” Cheyenne was saying in a meeting with Brody and me being conducted in the office so Katie wouldn’t complain about Cheyenne getting to sit in the club booth. Of course, that probably meant that Katie was currently gleefully sitting in the booth herself with no one out there to tell her not to, but that was just something I was going to have to tolerate.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Bar food is a specific genre of food that caters to people’s tastes. If you drink enough beer, you want chicken fingers. End of story.”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t have classics on the menu,” she said, glancing at Brody. “But we should do something fun. Try different things. Have a features menu, or chef’s specials. Push people a little out of their comfort zone.”
“You mean push me out of my comfort zone,” I grumbled. “Like you and your beer, Brody.”
“We could work out beer pairings for menu items,” he said. “It would be super popular.”
“I trust you all, whatever,” I said, waving my hand at them. “I’m going to go check on the booth. I can practically feel Katie out there, eyeing it.”
“Don’t walk away because you’re upset about it,” Cheyenne urged. “This is a space you can argue your point. What if we have fancy chicken fingers? Different flavor options and sauces for platters of fries?”
“Whatever you do, I’ll love,” I told her. “Work it out with Brody. I’m going to go have a beer.”
“Don’t worry,” I heard Brody assuring her as I walked out. “He does this all the time when I talk beer nights with him. He’s not a creature of change.”
I missed whatever Cheyenne had to say to that as I ignored the booth completely and plopped down at one of the barstools directly at the bar. I sank delightfully into it, and I scooted around, trying to figure out why I liked it so much. With a dawning grin, though, I realized exactly why.
“Why is this barstool so comfortable?” I wondered aloud, and saw Ace freeze in the corner of my eye.
“What? No! I mean, all of the barstools are really comfortable,” he said, bustling over. “You just don’t realize that because you never sit in them.”
“Really.” I eyed the seat next to me. “So you’re telling me that if I sit down on that stool right there, it’s going to be just as comfortable as this stool?”
“Yes. We pride ourselves on the quality of stools here at Horizon MC Bar,” Ace said.
“You see, what I’m thinking is that I’ve accidentally found the VIP seat.”
He blanched. “I think no such thing exists, and that it was a game of psychological warfare waged on you.”
“Is that a fact?” I eased out of the barstool and into the neighboring one. “Oh, dear. Not as cushy.”
“I don’t believe you,” he blustered.
“Oh, give it up.” Katie plopped heavily in the seat I’d just vacated. “He was going to figure it out someday. If not by accident, then by thorough testing.”
“You all did a good job hiding it for this long,” I said diplomatically. “I think I’ll drag it over to the club booth and use it to rest my feet on.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Katie hissed suddenly, apparently having a change of heart. “Have a little respect for the VIP seat!”
“Let’s get out of here,” Cheyenne said, emerging from the back hallway. “I’m beat.”
“I’ll never figure out which one is the VIP seat again, will I?” I guessed, standing.
“This incident has taught us that we need to be much more cautious,” Katie agreed.
“See you later,” Ace said, visibly relieved.
“What was that all about?” Cheyenne asked, confused, as we stepped outside into the cold. “That super comfortable barstool that doesn’t match the others?”
“Yeah, the VIP seat. It’s been this long-running thing. Kind of like a prank war.”
“You all need hobbies.”
“Agreed.” I leaned close and nipped her neck. “Can I say you’re my hobby?”
“A person can’t be a hobby, Jack.”
“Why the hell not?”
She giggled, coquettish. “It’s just not right.”
“Can we make it right?”
“How quickly can we get home?”
Very quickly, when I had a reason to put my mind to it. I didn’t know if it was just the excitement of the changes for the bar, or the fact that I was so into Cheyenne that I could barely wait to get inside to start disrobing both of us as fast as I could go. But I wanted her more than ever in that moment, maybe just because of the simple fact that we were together, and we could do whatever we wanted.
It wasn’t until we were in the bedroom, tripping into bed, that Cheyenne stopped.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, chest heaving. “Are you okay?”
“You’ve never taken your shirt off in front of me before.”
I looked down and saw my chest and its cluster of scars out in full view and recoiled.
“No, Jack, please. Stop.” She’d seized me by my arms, and was drawing her face closer to my chest. “I wanted you to show me. I wanted to see. From the first time we were together. Trust me with this.”
“I trust you. I just don’t want to gross you out.”
“They’re not gross.”
“Oh, come on.”
“They’re not! They’re…interesting.” She traced the path of one and made me shudder.
“They make me look like Frankenstein.”
“They do not. You’re just sensitive about them. What can I do to convince you that they’re not big deal?” Without waiting for an answer, she replaced her finger with her tongue, licking along my chest.
“You’re doing a pretty good job,” I managed to say, my voice shaky with desire.
“Hey, look, it’s your tattoo.” She smiled at it after she’d followed a scar nearly to my shoulder, and kissed the ink. “Hello, again.”
She examined the design closer and frowned. “Hang on a second.”
“What?”
“Can you turn on that lamp?”
“Okay…” I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, but flicked on the light sitting on the bedside table anyway.
“What’s going on?” she murmured, drawing the skin taut over my tattoo.
“Cheyenne?” Her eyebrows were drawn all the way toge
ther, the furrow they caused refusing to smooth even as I pressed my thumb against it. “What’s wrong?”
She ran her fingers over my tattoo, drawing closer and closer to it, blinking rapidly.
“I…this isn’t your tattoo,” she said.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean that this isn’t your tattoo.”
“It’s on my shoulder, Cheyenne. I don’t know who else’s tattoo it would be.”
“But this isn’t yours. Yours…you put a secret message in it. For me. I was with you when you got the tattoo, and I still had trouble finding the message afterward.”
“I remember getting this tattoo,” I said. “It’s one of my only memories. The place was a dump, and the guy giving it to me had more ink on him than anyone I’ve ever seen. I don’t remember you being there, though.”
If possible, Cheyenne’s eyebrows drew together even closer. “No, that’s not right. The place was really nice. And the tattoo artist was a woman.”
“Okay.” I tried not to show how disappointed that made me. I was so sure that had been a real memory. It had felt real. I supposed I’d just been fooled by an overly realistic dream. What else had I been mistaken about, then?
“Okay?” Cheyenne stared at me. “I just told you that this isn’t your tattoo, Jack. How is any of this okay?”
“I just don’t really know what you mean by this not being my tattoo,” I said. “Tell me what that means.”
“There isn’t a message.”
“What was the message?”
She flinched from me. “You don’t even remember?”
“Stop.” It was difficult not to lash out, but here I was, trying not to yell at the woman in my bed, the woman who had given me so much hope about my future that the past had started becoming inconsequential. “You know that I can’t dredge a memory out of my brain just because you want me to. That’s not how this works.”
Cheyenne seemed to come back to herself a little bit, sitting up in bed, pulling away from me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I only meant that this is…was important to you. To both of us.”
“I’m sure it was. It’s a tattoo. Tattoos are forever.”
“Well, when you leave out lasers and tattoo fixers and everything, sure.”
“Tell me what the message was supposed to say.”
She leaned forward, studying my shoulder. “It was Cheyenne. My name. Clutched in the eagle’s talons.”
“Your name? Really?”
“Really. You–” her breath hitched “–said it was because you were never going to let me go. Not ever. No matter what happened. The tattoo artist was moved. She said that she tattooed names all the time, but this one was special. She even gave you a discount – contingent on us staying together. You laughed at her. Told her she shouldn’t throw money away like that because we were a sure thing.”
“I don’t remember that,” I said faintly. “I remember a crappy tattoo parlor. A man with lots of tattoos. Being alone.”
“Where is that memory coming from?”
I shook my head. “It’s not a memory. I trust you. If that’s what you said happened, it happened.”
“Jack, you said you’ve been regaining memories in the context of other things.” Cheyenne hesitated, picking her way through all the potential landmines of what she might say next. “Did that not ring a single bell? Was there not a single synapse that fired?”
“I was dreaming about my tattoo,” I said. “When I woke up, I remembered. At least, it felt like a memory. It’s been a long time, though, since I’ve understood what it is to have a memory from before the explosion. To remember something from then.”
“But that’s not how it happened.”
“Then it didn’t happen,” I snapped, losing my patience with this entire situation. How was I supposed to cope with the fact that my brain had misled me? If Cheyenne said she’d been there when I got my tattoo, that there was supposed to be a secret message in it, I knew she wasn’t lying about it. What would she have to gain by lying about it? I was just so disappointed that it hadn’t been a real memory for me, that dingy chair, the smears on the mirror, looking at my own reflection as the tattoo gun buzzed against my shoulder. It had been one of the only things I’d been counting on, and now it just proved that my brain wasn’t to be relied on.
What else wasn’t real? Maybe I needed to go back to the VA hospital for more scans and tests, as much as I hated to be poked and prodded. Maybe the damage was more extensive than anyone had initially suspected. What did it mean that my brain was creating false memories? Could I trust it to do anything correctly anymore?
Or maybe the question I needed to be asking myself was what did it say that I believed things I saw in dreams? My dreams were fucked up. I saw myself die on a regular basis. I knew that people who had been involved in my line of work, in the military, experienced overtly violent dreams. But the vast majority of them weren’t having dreams that starred themselves as the primary recipient of that violence. It was disconcerting.
“Jack? Talk to me. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“You don’t want to know what’s on my mind.”
“I do. I really do.” Cheyenne had taken my hand at some point without me noticing it, and now she gripped it.
“I am having doubts about everything, but this… I thought that memory was a sure thing.” God, I was frustrated. I withdrew my hand from hers, drawing in on myself.
“I don’t know what your dream meant, or why you had it. I’m just trying to tell you that I was with you when you got your tattoo.”
“Okay, fine. You remember it. I don’t. Let’s move on.”
Cheyenne bit her lip. “I don’t know if we can.”
“What?”
“My name isn’t there. It’s not your tattoo.”
“Maybe…maybe it got damaged during the explosion.”
“The scars don’t reach over here.”
“Then what, exactly are you suggesting?”
“There have just been little things, Jack, that don’t add up.”
“Like what?”
“You just…you’re not the same person you used to be. Not really.”
“Cheyenne, I suffered a major brain injury.”
“I know that. It’s only–”
“I don’t remember the person I used to be.”
“That’s the thing, though. I do. And you’ve–”
“No. No. That’s not…it’s not fucking fair, Cheyenne.”
She held her hands up – placating or defensive, it was hard to tell. Maybe a little of both. “There are echoes of you, maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. It’s like…God, this is going to sound stupid, but I don’t know how else to put it. It’s like looking at your reflection in a funhouse mirror. You know the ones. You’re you, but the mirror is bent and warped so that your reflection comes out too tall and thin, or too short and wide, or something that’s just…off.”
I swallowed hard, and it was only anger that staved off panic. “I don’t know what you were expecting of me. But you obviously haven’t done any research whatsoever.”
“Research?”
“They – the doctors – told me this was normal. My new normal, anyway. That because of the nature of my injury and the amnesia, I could have completely different tastes, now. A completely different personality.”
“I get that–”
“I was relying on you to tell me how I was. So I could be normal again. The person you wanted me to be. Expected me to be.”
“Jack, I can’t be your own personal barometer on this,” Cheyenne said. “That’s too much responsibility. Too much pressure.”
“God forbid you suffer like I’m suffering.”
“You don’t think I’m suffering? We loved each other. You promised you were coming back to me.”
“I guess this is just who I am, now. And the sooner both of us accept that, the better.”
She slipped on a shirt
she picked up from the floor. It was mine, but I didn’t think she would appreciate me pointing that out at the moment. “Why did you want me to come to Rio Seco with you, Jack?”
“I thought it would help.”
“Help who?”
“Both of us.”
“Are you sure?”
“You were so upset.”
“And what were you?”
“I was…I was lost.”
“You were lost.”
“I was lost. Looking for something to tie me to who I was supposed to be.”
“But who are you supposed to be?”
“Jack Ryder.”
“Are you sure?”
I stared at her. “Are you going to tell me what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, or am I going to have to guess?”
She flinched away from me like I’d clenched my fist at her, threatening her with harm. “I knew you – I knew both Jack and James.”
Why did it feel like I was about to vomit the contents of my stomach out on the bed?
“You’re going to have to explain.”
Cheyenne opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I think I should go.”
“Go where?” But she’d already hopped out of bed, pulling on her jeans. She had to have noticed her shirt on the floor, noticed how big the one she had on right now was, but maybe she didn’t care. “Cheyenne, you can’t just walk out on me like this.”
“This isn’t working.”
“How was it supposed to work?” I sneered at her, seizing on any emotion I could to tamp down my real one – raw terror. “Was our love supposed to bring my memories back? Is that what you were hoping? That I would be some kind of Disney princess – or a frog – who you could kiss and heal and solve everything and have your happily ever after? You’re delusional.”
“Maybe. That’s valid. I really might be delusional. I thought you’d come back for me after you were out of the Army Rangers. That our love would survive the time and distance and silence. That could be classified as delusional. Most people aren’t strong enough for that. But this – all of this – is a different kind of delusional. Thinking I could be with someone who doesn’t even feel like the same person to me anymore.”
“Because you’re not giving this a chance. You want me to be the person you always remembered when I can’t even remember who I used to be.”
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