“Sounds like a charming guy. The doctors said there was a whole cocktail of drugs in my system,” he said. She nodded.
“Yeah. We were ... we were pretty crazy.”
“Were?”
“I haven't touched anything since that night,” she said in a solemn voice. “No drugs, no alcohol, nothing. I never even took anything stronger than Tylenol for my ankle.”
“I've had a couple drinks since then,” he admitted. “Smoked a couple cigarettes, but that's it. I don't even have any desire to use.”
“Good. That is so good to hear,” she breathed. There was another long silence, then she gave an awkward cough. “I saw your ... girlfriend. She's very pretty.”
The subject he'd been at once dreading, yet also dying to cover.
“Kitty?” he asked. She nodded.
“I guess – Katherine? That's what Mrs. Sloan said.”
“Yeah, Katherine. Everyone calls her Kitty for short. We volunteer at a community center together.”
“Volunteering, wow. That's amazing. I'm so ... I'm so proud of you. And she seems like a great girl for your life now.”
He took a deep breath.
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Were you once a great girl in my life?”
Another silence, so long he wondered if she'd fallen asleep. But she hadn't. She was staring down at her hands in her lap, taking deep breaths.
“I think ...” she whispered, and he could see a tear falling from her face. “I think I really was. One of the greatest.”
He tilted his head forward and realized what she was staring at – a huge mood ring was on her left hand. Identical to the one he owned. He belatedly realized he must have given it to her, or they must have exchanged them. They meant something important to the two of them.
One of the greatest.
“Stop crying,” he urged in a soft voice. She laughed and finally lifted her head, wiping at her cheeks as she moved.
“I'm sorry,” she wept. “I told myself I wouldn't get upset, and that if I did, I'd leave so I wouldn't upset you.”
“Stop,” he stated, then he didn't even think about what he did next. He just scooted over to the right, as much as the tiny hospital bed would allow, and held his arm aloft over the left side. “Come lay down.”
She stared at him for a second, her bottom lip trembling. He stared back. He didn't know what was right or what was wrong, but he needed this moment. And he thought maybe she did, too.
She stood up out of her chair and climbed into the bed. Rolled onto her side and curled up against his chest.
“God, I missed this,” she whispered, pressing her face into his hospital gown.
“I think ...” he started to whisper back, and he gently rested his hand on her head. “I think I missed it, too.”
11
“Her name is what?”
Jon rolled his eyes at Kitty, then continued pacing back and forth.
“I told you, Delaney. Delaney Carter.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“I don't know, the kind of name people in Connecticut give.”
“And you really recognized her?” Kitty asked. She was sitting at the foot of the hotel bed, watching him wear out the carpet.
“Yes. I don't know, maybe. It's so hard to explain. It's like ... you know when you have a dream?” he asked, finally stopping and turning to face her. She nodded.
“Yeah, sure. Are you saying this girl is your dream?” she asked.
“No, jesus. Look – sometimes you have a dream. And you can see it in your head, but when you go to describe it, there are just no words. It's bizarre and frustrating and you can't figure it out. The feeling and the tone and the emotions, they're all there, but you just can't say it. This is just like that. It's like ... I've never seen her before in my life, yet I know her, but I just can't explain why. I can't find the words,” he broke it down. Kitty was silent for a second, then she crossed her arms.
“I don't like this,” she sniffled. He was blown away.
“Don't like what? Me getting my real identity back? My family? Are you crazy?” he snapped. Her face fell and he instantly felt bad.
“I sound like a monster when you put it that way. No, I want all those things for you, but this girl ... I just know she was a girlfriend. Someone special. Are you going to leave me for her?” she demanded, wiping at her eyes.
“Kitty,” he sighed, and he squatted down in front of her. “I know you. Right now, I don't know her. And I really don't know what tomorrow brings. But I know I care about you and I would never do anything to hurt you.”
His words seemed to pacify her, which was good. They only had fifteen minutes. Jon changed his shirt for the hundredth time and Kitty went into the bathroom to clean up her face. She'd just shut off the water when there was a light knock at the door. Jon walked across the room and opened it.
“Hello, hello!” Mrs. Sloan sang out as she brushed past him Delaney followed behind her, holding a box in her hands. “It's a mad house down there! Have you seen it?”
The press really wanted Jon/Jay's story. Kitty's family had put him up in a hotel, figuring it would be better than staying at the halfway house, and would allow him a little more privacy. It was nice, having a gorgeous suite all to himself which Kitty had twenty-four access to, but he also kind of missed living with the guys. Missed his shitty little room.
“Yeah, I made the mistake of going for water earlier,” he chuckled, then he turned his attention to Delaney. “How are you?”
She smiled back at him and hurried to a sofa across the room. They'd spent the whole night wrapped around each other in the hospital, and they hadn't touched since then.
“I'm fine. I brought some of your stuff.”
Sloany and him sat on either side of the tiny girl. Kitty hovered for a moment, then sat on the armrest next to Jon.
A laptop was pulled out first, which Delaney deposited on the cushions behind her. Next was a leather bound journal, which she handed over to him. He glanced in the box and saw several just like it.
“You liked to write,” she explained. “These are all your personal journals, filled with stories and observations, everything.”
“You've read them?” he asked, turning the small book around in his hands.
“Yeah. We didn't have a tv, no cable, so most nights we would just lay around and you would read to me from them,” she explained.
“Wow. I thought journals were supposed to be private,” he chuckled. She shrugged.
“It seemed natural, we always told each other everything. We didn't really keep secrets, not from each other.”
She said it so simply, yet it landed in the room like a grenade. He could feel her tense up on one side of him, and Kitty tense up on the other. He awkwardly cleared his throat and looked down at the feather tattoo on his hand.
“So, I was a writer, huh? I guess that's what this is for,” he said, wiggling his thumb around, making the tattoo bend and move. She nodded.
“Yes.”
“What about the one on his chest?” Kitty interrupted. “He's got some Latin script there, a doctor translated it for us. But we don't know what it really means, like why he would get something so random?”
Delaney dropped her head and started scrounging through the box, but Jon could see the blush on her cheeks.
“He never explained it to me,” she said quickly. “Oh, look – one of your dreadlocks!”
She was a real good sport, Delaney. She handled everyone's questions well, never cracking or getting upset. Jon absentmindedly wrapped his arm around Kitty's hips at one point, then instantly felt guilty. Delaney was looking at them, but she just smiled and passed around some more stuff.
Once the box was empty, the laptop was brought back out. She'd uploaded all the pictures from her phone and his old phone onto it so they could see what his life had been like before. As the machine booted up, Sloany suddenly jumped to her feet.
�
�Well! I am thirsty. C'mon, Kitty, let's go get some drinks down at the bar.”
“What?” Kitty's jaw dropped. “No, I want to see what Jon -”
“Kitty, maybe it's for the best, you and I can -” Jon started to pipe up.
“Really, it's fine,” Delaney spoke above them all. “I didn't ... the pictures are separated into folders. It's okay.”
Kitty finally caught on to why Jon and Sloany didn't want her there. Pictures of Jayson Fairbanks and Delaney Carter together might be awkward to look at. She shut her mouth and walked out of the room, grabbing her purse along the way.
“Half an hour okay? I'm not sure I can hold her longer,” Mrs. Sloan said as she hurried after the blonde. The door slammed shut behind them.
“We don't have to -” Del started speaking when he interrupted her.
“Show me all of them.”
The man in the pictures was completely alien. She'd organized them chronologically and was starting with when they'd first started dating, almost exactly one year ago. He hadn't had dreadlocks then, but his hair had been shaggy. Long and unkempt.
“Wow,” he breathed, leaning close the the screen. She smiled and clicked to the next picture.
“Yeah. You are so different now. You were always so skinny before, but now you've kind of filled out. And your hair! You look so clean cut, I'm afraid I'll get you dirty,” she teased. It was the same kind of joke he often made at Kitty's expense. He didn't like it when the joke was on him, though.
After the two month mark, there were a lot more pictures. He could tell it was hard for her to look at them, but she continued on. Smiling away and answering any of his questions.
“I can't believe you dated this guy,” he mumbled, gently touching the screen.
It was a photo of them together, outside of some nightclub. Delaney looked great in a cute outfit, with her hair up in a bun on top of her head. The guy with her, though, this Jayson character, looked completely untrustworthy. He wore a long olive green jacket with a black knit sweater underneath, a pair of jeans with holes in them, and a large pair of boots. He'd just gotten his hair dreaded, and he stared dead eyed into the camera, not even a hint of a smile.
They weren't all like that, though. There were lots of them smiling together. Being silly together. At parties, at stores, at restaurants. One of them playing Guitar Hero together made him laugh, and she informed him he sucked at the game.
They were almost through all the pictures when he realized he hadn't seen any with them kissing. Lots with their arms around each other, but nothing truly intimate.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he said. “I said I wanted to see all of them.”
“These are all of them,” she insisted, tilting the screen towards him. He shook his head.
“No, Delaney. All of them.”
She stared at him for a second, her lips in a hard line. Then she sighed and opened a different folder.
“I didn't want to upset your girlfriend,” she said in a soft voice. The thumbnails were too small for him to see clearly.
“My girlfriend isn't here, so I'd like to see them.”
“I ... I don't know if I can,” she whispered, and he glanced at her. “It was hard enough separating them. I'm sorry, Ja-, I mean, Jon.”
“It's okay. Do you mind if I look?”
“No, I saved them for you.”
She got up and walked to the bathroom. He shifted to the center of the sofa and balanced the laptop on his knees, then he clicked on the first picture.
They were standing next to the entrance to a subway stop. He had her face in his hands and he was kissing her. Even through the pixels, he could feel the passion. Her mouth was parted, her bottom lip caught between both of his. It sent a shiver down his back and caused his stomach to sink.
You wanted to see these pictures, you asked for this.
There were so many. Most of the selfie variety, but there were a bunch obviously taken by friends and then sent to them. Kissing in restaurants, bars, taxis, trains. Everywhere. Anywhere. Holding each other, touching each other. There was one of her straddling his lap while they were in a booth at some bar. She was standing on her knees and he had his hands up the back of her shirt, and they were staring at each other so intensely, it took his breath away a little.
How could I possibly forget something like that?
But if he thought that was intense, the next batch were even more so. Taken in a dark room, the flash had lit them up like beacons, leaving everything else in the shot to be drowned in blackness. They were on a mattress which was flat on the floor, if he wasn't mistaken. All at awkward angles, yet still beautiful in odd ways. He'd been the one taking the photos – Delaney's mouth was in the top of one shot, her bright red bottom lip trapped between her teeth. Her arms were raised, disappearing out of frame. She'd been wearing some sort of tight, lightweight, gold knit sweater, no bra, and a pair of black underwear. She was again straddling his lap, and his free hand was under her shirt, cupping her breast.
He stared down at his right hand, at his palm. Could feel it tingle. Could swear he remembered the softness of her skin.
In the next shot she was bending over and his hand was on her ass, and the next she had switched positions entirely. She was between his legs, her back against his chest. His arm was snaking down the front of her body, his hand inside those black panties.
The tingling sensation grew.
She wasn't wearing a top in a couple of the pics, and it gave him weird feelings. Like he was violating her privacy by seeing her in such a state, yet also like he deserved to see it. Like her breasts belonged to him every bit as much as they belonged to her. He ran his fingers down the screen, then instantly felt guilty.
His favorite picture, though, was surprisingly tame in comparison.
They were in a men's bathroom somewhere – it was very clear they'd had no shame whenever they'd been together. Delaney was holding up her phone, taking a picture of their reflection in a full length mirror.
She was against a wall, arching her body away from it and pressing herself to him. He was leaning over her, such a tall imposing presence compared to her tiny one. He had a hand in the hair at the base of her skull, and he was pulling. Quite hard by the looks of it. His other hand was on her hip, holding her pelvis flush with his. Her mouth was open in a gasp and he had her bottom lip trapped between his teeth, pulling it slightly away from her.
No nudity. No sex. Yet still. It was like the picture held in it everything he'd been missing for the past five months. Sensuality, aggression, pleasure, passion, dirty, raw, naughty, nasty, love.
I loved this woman.
Jon's pulse was pounding in his ears. The pictures weren't bringing anything back, not in any literal sense. He didn't know where the shot had been taken, couldn't remember that bathroom, and had no idea why they'd been in there.
But something was happening.
He slowly stood up and started walking across the suite. Delaney had left the bathroom door open and he could hear the faucet running. When he got to the doorway, he looked down at her.
She had her hands on the vanity top and was bent over the sink. Hot water was flowing out of the faucet, causing the mirror to fog up at the bottom and steam to rise. It was curling around her bowed head. She was taking deep, steadying breath, and though he couldn't see her face, he knew her eyes were closed. She didn't seem to realize he was there.
He let his eyes wander over her, committing everything to memory. Again. She was familiar to him in a strange, indefinable way. Her hair was up in a messy bun. Despite the fact it was cold outside, she was wearing a loose brown tank top over a black sports bra, black skinny jeans, and she'd taken off a pair of black ankle boots while they'd been going through the pictures. As she stood in front of him barefoot, he was surprised at how small she really was – she could practically fit inside him.
That wasn't the most surprising thing about her, though. When she'd first arrived at the hotel room, she'd been wearing some
sort of sports jacket, with the zipper pulled all the way up to her chin. She'd taken it off in the bathroom, he could see it on the floor at her feet. The tank top exposed a lot of her smooth, pale skin, and his eyes zeroed in on a tattoo on her back, sitting right at the base of her neck.
He didn't question what he was doing, didn't stop to think if it was appropriate or not. Didn't think about anything. He stepped forward so he was right behind her and he laid his palm against her back, right next to the black ink. Delaney didn't move, didn't even flinch. She must have known he was standing there the whole time.
“You lied,” he breathed, reading the scrawling script.
“I know,” she whispered back.
In Love We Trust
Delaney's tattoo was in English and Jon's was in Latin, but they were the same words. The same font, even. He stepped closer to her, staring down at the tattoo like it could give him all the answers.
Tell me who this girl is. Remind me.
“Why?” he asked, and she let out a chuckle, then lifted her head enough to look at their reflection.
“I'm trying really hard here, Jay -, I mean, Jon,” she said. “But it's not easy for me. Some things are sacred, you know? And that you don't remember ... it makes it seem not as special. Some things I guess I want to keep sacred.”
He was silent for a long time, still looking at the ink on her skin. She was wrong – it was sacred. Maybe even more so now. It was like an icon. A relic. One of the only things tying him to a way of life he didn't remember.
She abruptly let out a shuddering breath and her head fell back. She wasn't looking at him, just the ceiling, and she was rapidly blinking her eyes. Her gorgeous blue eyes were shiny and bright with unshed tears, and it made him sad. That he was the one making her cry, it caused his soul to ache. He didn't know how or why, but he wanted to comfort her. Wanted to take all her pains and fears away.
He turned his gaze to their reflection and his body once again went on autopilot. The hand he had on her back slid over her shoulder slowly, and then went across her chest. While he watched in the mirror, her eyelids fluttered shut. His hand kept moving over her skin, sliding under her tank top and bra strap, then hooking around her side, his fingers under her arm.
Muscle Memory Page 13