I Dream of Spiders

by Keating, Elle

  “What’s this?” I ask, putting his phone down on the bed next to me.

  “I start work next week. I would feel better if you had this…if you needed me while I was gone.”

  I look in the bag and pull out an iPhone identical to his. “Griffin, I really can’t accept this.” I watch him swig from his beer bottle. His lower lip is glistening from the hearty sip he took. I struggle not to stare at his full lips and imagine what I want him to do with them.

  “I already programmed my number and Trent’s into your phone. I also went ahead and downloaded a music streaming app. I read somewhere that music can trigger memories.”

  “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me? I could be a killer for all we know.” I put the phone down and walk over to the fireplace. I stare at the blazing fire and find myself getting lost in the flames.

  “I’m going to check on dinner,” he says. He grabs his phone off the bed and walks out. I hear him take the lid off the pot and set it on the counter. Frustrated, I follow him.

  “Why, Griffin?” I am met with silence and then the sound of metal clanging against metal. He is stirring the soup with a ladle when I ask, “Griffin?”

  He slams the ladle down on the counter and looks up at me. “Because I know what it feels like to lose everything, at least everything I thought was important.”

  I don’t know what to say to his admission. To this rare glimpse into his life. He retrieves two bowls from the cabinet to his right and picks up the ladle. I watch him dump a ladle full of soup into each bowl and take them to the kitchen table. He kicks a chair out and sits down. Feeling helpless, I go to the oven and take out the biscuits I have warming. I toss them into a basket and bring them to the table along with two spoons. Mumbling, he grabs the spoon and dips it into his soup.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t know what I am apologizing for. For infringing on his life? For making him feel like he has no choice but to help a pathetic stranger?

  “Christ!” he yells. He grabs his bowl, a biscuit, and the Best Buy bag from the couch and escapes to the basement. I jump at the sound of the basement door slamming behind him.

  I no longer have an appetite.

  I need to leave. I’ve overstayed my welcome and it’s obvious that my presence is pissing him off. I have to get my memory back. I cover up my bowl with tin foil and place it in the fridge. I then go to my room, change into a pair of boyshorts and a tank top, more clothes that Griffin bought for me, and I get to work on my new phone. Like I did before, I check the news outlets and again come up empty. Growing more agitated by the second, I decide to try something new and search female names, hoping that popular girl names will trigger something. Maybe if I see a list, I can pick my name out or recognize the name of someone, a female who is important to me. Do I have a mother or a sister?

  No, says a voice in my head.

  The realization brings tears to my eyes. Because I know that voice isn’t lying to me. It has just told me the cold, but much-needed truth. I don’t have a mother or siblings. But I have to have someone. Someone I trust. Someone I laugh with. I can’t picture myself being content to live completely isolated, not when it is so easy for me to trust Griffin. I pull up more lists, but nothing grabs my attention until I stumble onto the J names.

  Jessie.

  Sitting on the couch with a folded-up piece of pizza in her hands, Jessie was talking with her mouth full and being completely disgusting. “You’re such a pig, Jessie.” A pillow came flying from across the room and hit the raven-haired beauty in the gut, which only made her laugh harder. I looked to see who had tossed the pillow and saw a brunette sitting on a breakfast bar stool and drinking beer straight from the bottle. The woman took a swig and then smiled at her friend.

  The woman was me.

  I drop my phone in my lap. I remembered something. Jessie. She’s my friend. I care for her. Then why can’t I remember more? Like her last name? Do we live together? Are we roommates? I will myself to recall more. I go back to search more lists, hoping that another name will shed some light. But it doesn’t and after a while I grow angry and discouraged.

  I decide to take Griffin’s advice. I reach into the Verizon bag and pull out the set of ear buds that came with my phone and pop them in. I look for the music app Griffin downloaded for me. I tap the P icon, shut off the lamp and lie back in bed. I go directly to featured music since I have no idea what I like. I skip a few songs and am all set to skip another when I hear a voice that resonates with me. I close my eyes and listen to the throaty, sexy female voice. Her voice is mesmerizing and…arousing. It makes me think about the guy who has holed himself away in his basement. What would it be like to kiss him…to feel his weight on top of me, covering me?

  My legs shift uncomfortably under the covers. My hand drifts over my t-shirt and beneath my cotton shorts. I’m not wearing any panties, so my fingers slip through my wet curls to my clit. I know how to swirl my fingertips over that tight bundle of nerves. My legs fall apart and I cup my breast in my other hand and pinch my nipple. My back arches and I suppress my moan by biting my lower lip…hard. I may not know my name, but I know I’ve done this before.

  • • •

  Griffin

  I escape to the basement to set up the computer I purchased at Best Buy. I’m impatiently waiting for certain software installations to take place. The moment I’m given the green light, I use my iPhone as a hotspot and connect to the internet. My iPhone allowed me to surf and investigate, but the bigger screen is a lot easier on the eyes. However, after several minutes, I’m aware that my focus is shit and I can’t stop thinking about the woman upstairs. I stand and head over to the punching bag I found hanging from a bar in the ceiling. I start pounding away, praying that the activity will take the edge off.

  I’m still angry and now sweaty when I finish. I steady the bag in my arms and think about the past two hours. I behaved like an idiot, throwing a tantrum and storming off with my dinner in hand, a dinner she made me. When I came home from shopping, I didn’t expect to see her up and around, looking so healthy and so goddamn right in my kitchen. She looked like she belonged there. Like she didn’t care that her mind has been erased, that neither of us know her name. I stopped breathing when she smiled at me and told me that she made me soup.

  And then I showed her the things I bought her. I never saw someone act so appreciative over receiving yoga pants and toiletries. Although Miranda grew up in a single-mom household with little money, she developed expensive tastes in the last year of our marriage. Where I was perfectly content with shopping at Target, Miranda wouldn’t have been caught dead in there.

  When I first met Miranda, she was going to college to be a nurse and working her way through as a waitress because she couldn’t count on her mother’s minimum wage job to support her. I was on leave, in between assignments and having a beer with my brother when Miranda waited on us and took our order. She was cute and funny and flirted with me shamelessly…right in front of my brother. Colin had to jet prematurely because he was called into work, leaving me alone. I left the bar that night with Miranda. She took me to her small apartment where we had marathon sex all night long.

  We kept up that pace for the two weeks that I was home and then I was shipped off again. When I returned six months later we picked up from where we left off, in bed and fucking like animals. A month later, I proposed, not because the sex was so great, because it was, but because she was down to earth and real. She didn’t have things handed to her like other women I had met along the way. She took care of herself and that was one reason I thought our relationship would work. My job would ensure that we would go months without seeing each other and I needed to be with someone who was strong, self-sufficient and could handle being lonely from time to time.

  But as time went on and my assignments became more frequent, she started to change. Her excitement at receiving my phone calls and Skypes dwindled. And when I was home, she appeared distracted, like I was intruding
on her life somehow. In the beginning, when I would come home, we would usually spend most of the time in bed and catching up. We didn’t want to go out and be around other people. We wanted to be selfish and make up for lost time.

  But in the last year of our three-year marriage, she wanted to go out every time I came home. To dinner, dancing, to clubs. She wanted to be around her new friends, not the ones I knew. I noticed that her wardrobe changed. Lord and Taylor and Nordstrom, not Target, were more her speed. I also noticed that she had started to wear more makeup and had begun to wax her nether regions, something I was okay with, but it did make me question why she was reinventing herself. I didn’t want to think that there was somebody else, but my mind went there, especially when I broached the topic of having kids the last time I was home. She told me that there would be time for that, that she wasn’t ready. But I knew that she wasn’t telling me the whole truth, that something else was preventing her from wanting to have children with me, something we had talked about and agreed upon before we even got married.

  I shake my head and punch the bag. The sudden movement makes my chest ache a little, just beneath my scar. It’s a reminder of what happened and a warning for me not to repeat the mistake.

  Don’t ever trust another woman with your heart again. It isn’t worth it.

  I give the bag another round of punches before I decide that I should apologize to my nameless housemate for being such a prick. I climb the basement steps and find the living room empty. I look over and see that the door to my bedroom is closed. I go to the door and knock. After a few seconds, I knock again. Still no answer. I grow nervous. If she is angry with me, wouldn’t she at least tell me to fuck off and leave her alone? I haven’t known her for very long, but I don’t take her as one who opts for the silent treatment when ticked.

  What if she has relapsed? What if her head is still cloudy from the concussion and she has fallen? What if she’s passed out in there, unconscious? Unleashing her wrath for barging in is the least of my worries and I open the door. And feel all the air from my lungs escape me. Lying there, writhing on the bed, with her eyes closed, one hand fisting the sheets, her back arched, I watch her. The faint sound of music and her increasing pants fill the room as she releases the sheets. She cups her bare breast and rolls a nipple between her fingers while her other hand goes to work beneath her shorts. I imagine her fingers spreading her folds and dipping into her tight heat. My cock grows hard as a rock. I picture my fingers there, my tongue, as I make her back bow. I want her whimpers, I want her groans, I want her to unravel because of me. She twists her nipple and then gives the same attention to the other one. Her breathing intensifies and then she explodes. Her body is shaking as she rides out each wave. Her eyes remain closed as she slowly comes back down to earth, as she takes in much-needed gulps of oxygen. Although I fight the urge not to grip my dick and join her, I can’t walk away. I just continue to stare at her, as her body recuperates from such a powerful release.

  Her eyes shoot open and meet mine. The moonlight from outside allows her to see me, to see the lust in my eyes, the want, the need. What I haven’t desired in so long. She rips off her ear buds. Her chest is heaving because she is still out of breath. I have never wanted to fuck a woman so much in my life. I want to sink into her, get lost in her. I want her to erase my memories so we can both have a clean slate. But we can’t. She isn’t mine. And there is a pretty good chance that she already belongs to someone else. With my fists clenched at my sides, I turn and walk out.

  Chapter Eight

  ?

  I feel guilty that I slept so soundly. Because I know what put my body at ease just minutes before I drifted off. I still can’t believe I was so careless, letting him see me get lost in my head and against my hand. With the music pumping through my ear buds, my eyes closed so I could only see Griffin in my mind, touching me, licking me, stroking me, I came so hard. I have no idea how long he was standing there. But it doesn’t matter. He saw the finale, when each wave of my orgasm took over and made my body convulse and quake. The look in his eyes, the way his fists clenched at his sides, I couldn’t tell if he was aroused or pissed off. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame him for being angry. I’m infringing on his hermit lifestyle and just hours ago I got myself off in his bed.

  I throw my legs over the bed and look down. My eyes zero in on the bandage on my thigh. My vision goes blurry and I’m immediately somewhere else, someone else…

  “Fuck!” Pain shot through me as I ripped my leg free. I couldn’t tell how deep the cut was and I didn’t have time to examine the wound and determine if shards of glass were lodged in my skin. My gaze shifted to my bloody shirt. I had to keep moving. I jumped out of the window, only to faceplant in mud, just as the heavens decided to open.

  My eyes shoot open. I’m back in Griffin’s bedroom, with my leg stitched up, not throbbing. Another memory. I need to tell Griffin, not just about how I injured my leg, but about Jessie. I step out into the living room and find him sitting on the couch and stringing up a fishing rod. The fact that he is shirtless registers and why it takes me a moment to remember why I rushed out here. I shake my head, trying to dispel my lustful thoughts and say, “I remembered something.” Griffin leans the rod against the coffee table in front of him and gives me his full attention. I sit next to him. “Last night, well before you…before I… was otherwise engaged…” I know I’m blushing and stuttering, but I have to get past the fact that he caught me masturbating. “I had some sort of flashback. I was sitting on a kitchen barstool in what looked like an apartment or condo and eating pizza with a friend. I knew her instantly. Her name is Jessie. We were laughing and joking and I was… happy.”

  “Do you remember anything else, like what you were wearing? Pictures on the walls? What the weather was like outside?”

  I close my eyes and place my fingers on my temples. Why can’t I remember more? Why wasn’t I more observant?

  “Hey, it’s okay. Your brain is unlocking one memory at a time, that’s all,” he says.

  I need to remain optimistic and not drown in self-pity. Otherwise, I will go crazy. “You’re right. I had another vision this morning. I remember how I cut my leg.” His eyes widen. “I was climbing out of a window and sliced it on a jagged piece of glass.” Suddenly I realize the significance of the vision and my stomach roils. “Griffin, my shirt was already covered in blood before I hurt my thigh…and my head. Which means the blood was definitely not mine.” Oh my God. “Did I hurt someone?”

  “It’s possible. And probable that you did it out of self-defense.”

  I want to believe that. Deep down I know I’m not a violent person, that it isn’t in me to want to hurt or maim others. I remember the image again, the one of me wearing that blood-stained shirt. My head begins to throb and I wince.

  “I’m getting you some aspirin.” Griffin disappears into the kitchen and returns with two pills and a glass of water. I don’t object and swallow them down. “I think I should check your stiches on your leg. Make sure it’s healing the way it should.”

  I get the sense that he is trying to distract me, and I appreciate the attempt. While he retrieves the first aid kit from the bathroom, I roll the hem of my boyshorts up a little so he can tend to the wound on my outer thigh. That is when I notice that my fingers are trembling. I need to get a grip. Why the hell am I so nervous?

  Griffin reemerges. He kneels before me and removes the bandage. Despite the headache, I feel the heat of his touch as his fingertips feather my skin. My breathing hitches and I look up at him, but his eyes remain fixed on my stitches. “No redness or swelling, which is good. A few more days and I can take them out.” He changes my bandage and says, “Now, let’s take a look at the cut on your head.” His touch drifts to my scalp and he peels away the gauze. This time his gaze doesn’t stay on the wound but on my eyes. My cheeks grow warm and I suddenly feel vulnerable. He isn’t doing anything wrong or making a move on me. I don’t know why this gesture feels so intimate, bu
t it does. It also feels completely foreign to me, like I’ve never been touched before. I look at his bare chest, how muscular it is. I spot a scar just above his left pec. I wonder if he was shot in the line of duty. If that is why he is no longer active and now a paramedic in some remote town.

  My thoughts go to last night, to when I was masturbating. No one other than Griffin entered my mind when I touched myself. No memories flickered, no nameless men flashed before my eyes when I made myself come. “Any pain when I touch here?” he asks, his thumb brushing my scalp.

  “No,” I say, barely. I’m feeling something, but it isn’t pain. Griffin’s gentle caress along with me reliving my masturbating session is making me wet.

  I watch him swallow hard and his nostrils flare. He clears his throat and then looks at the wound on my head. “We’ll give these stiches a few more days as well,” he says in a gruff tone.

  I need to stop thinking about him and imagine him doing things to me that I’m not even sure I’ve ever done before. I look away and see the fishing rod. “Were you planning on going fishing today?”

  He gives me an extended look before he reaches for the first aid kit and starts packing it back up. “I was. I was also hoping you would join me. You can get some fresh air and maybe get your mind off things for a while.”

  Putting live worms on hooks doesn’t sound at all romantic, which is exactly what I need. “I would love that. I’ll just go and get dressed.”

  Ten minutes later I’m wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and boots. Much to my disappointment Griffin is also fully dressed and waiting for me in the living room. “This was in one of the bags I had forgotten to bring in from my truck. It’s not fancy, but it will keep you warm.” He is holding a blue fleece-lined jacket, one that looks to be exactly my size. Maybe it is residual effects from my concussion but looking at Griffin standing there holding a jacket that still has the tags on it, a jacket he bought just for me, makes me want to cry.