by Jordan Marie
“I don’t have a real job?”
“Running the motel is a real job,” she defends.
“Jesus. Maybe I can’t remember shit about my life because I’m a fucking loser who lives off his old lady.”
“Old lady?”
“My woman, my wife, you know… old lady.”
“Umm…I’m not old and I don’t particularly like being called your woman.”
“What did I call you before the accident?”
Her nose scrunches as she thinks for a minute and I have to say that’s adorable. I’m starting to think I was a loser. All signs are pointing to it, but apparently I at least had good taste in women, because Hope is a fox. She’s got this long caramel colored hair, these amazing tits that I’ve been dying to squeeze in my hands since the moment she leaned over my hospital bed. Her ass is just as luscious, too. The kind a man could throw over the bed, pull up in the air and plow into balls deep. Which actually brings another thought to mind.
“You called me darling,” she answers, and I frown this time.
“Darling?” I repeat, the word foreign on my lips.
“Yep.”
“What was our sex life like?”
“Anyway, we should get out and— Our what?”
“Our sex life. What was it like?”
“We uh…well, I mean, it was okay… good…I guess… We don’t really have sex that often.”
“We don’t have sex?”
“Not a lot no…”
“Why the hell not?”
“Well…”
“Are you cold?”
“No, it’s kind of warm in here actually. We should go outside and—”
“I didn’t mean that, I meant are you a cold fish? Do you hate sex?”
“Why do you assume our lack of sex is an issue with me?”
“Because, it’s always the woman’s issue.”
“It’s always the woman’s…. How do you even say something like that? You don’t even know your own name!” she huffs and she’s getting upset now. I can tell by the way heat is rising in her face.
“Are you saying it’s not.”
“I am! I’m definitely saying that it’s not.”
“So you’re not the reason we don’t have sex?”
“I didn’t say we don’t have it, just that we don’t have it very often and that the reasons are definitely not my fault.”
“So they’re my fault?”
“The truth is Aden, you just don’t like sex.”
“I don’t…”
“You have… issues.”
“Issues!?!?! What the fuck are you talking about?” I roar, there’s no other word for it, I literally roar the question.
“The doctor gave you some medicine, but it hasn’t helped a lot.”
“The doctor gave me…”
“Let’s not worry about it right now. Let’s go get you settled.”
I get out of the car and follow her to the motel. I don’t have a lot of hope things are going to improve. At this point I’m kind of wishing the accident had killed me because apparently I’m a pansy who calls his wife darling. I’m a loser with no job, who lives off his wife, and has a limp dick he takes medicine to shtup his wife once in a blue moon.
Fuck, no wonder I forgot my life. I want to forget it now.
24
Hope
There’s a slight—huge—chance that Daria was right and I didn’t think this through. Not to mention the fact that Aden is following so close behind me as we walk through the front door of the motel, I feel like I’m sitting on a case of dynamite. In truth, that’s a good analogy because this could all blow up in my face anytime.
As he steps in, I reach behind him and close the front door. He looks around for several minutes, not saying anything. He looks as if he is searching for something and I guess he is. My heart speeds up. The hospital was new to him… what if being here…
“Anything look familiar?” I ask, and I wonder if he can hear the panic in my voice. Didn’t the doctor tell me that once Aden was back in familiar surroundings his memory could come back. I didn’t understand all the technical terms concerning his amnesia, but that I remembered easily—probably because it terrified me.
“Not even a little bit,” he sighs. I feel guilty at the disappointment that is etched on his face.
“I’m sorry, Aden,” I whisper, touching his bicep gently.
“I would have thought you hated me,” he responds, and there goes those warning bells again.
“Why, what do you rem—what makes you say that?” I ask, catching myself from opening up a whole can of worms.
“Hope, I forgot you. My wife. I can’t remember anything about our time together. You have to be hurt or upset…something.”
“Oh. Uh… well I mean it’s not like you can help it, Aden. I mean, people do things all the time that hurt others and they don’t do it because they want to punish someone, or because they dislike them, or even because they’re mad at them. You know.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he answers, looking confused.
“Like, a person can be entirely innocent, and it’s just circumstances, or life, that causes the whole problem. Don’t you agree?”
“I must still be having issues with my head, Hope, because I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“Oh. I was just saying sometimes things happen and you can’t control them and it doesn’t make people bad or evil. They certainly shouldn’t go to jail or lose their lives because of it. Right?”
“Uh…right. Maybe you should lay down. I think my accident has taken a lot out of you.”
“Oh… no that’s okay. My friend Daria is bringing Jack back soon. I was about to make dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Starved, hospital food really sucks. Do I know these people that are coming by?”
We’re walking to the small kitchen and I stop walking all at once at his question. I stop so suddenly he bumps into me from behind, sending me stumbling a couple of steps before I can finally right myself.
“Oh,” I gasp, holding onto the wall to keep from ending up on the floor.
“Damn, Hope. Are you okay? I’m sorry. You stopped so suddenly.”
“I…yeah I’m fine. It’s just… well I thought of something I need to tell you about.”
“What’s that? Is it bad?” he asks, probably because of the look on my face.
I’m feeling sick to my stomach. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that he was going to meet Jack and have questions. I’m guessing because I’m stupid and I suck at lying.
Ironic since I’m caught in the biggest web of lies in the history of lying!
“Sit down at the table and I’ll make us some food and we’ll talk,” I tell him, glancing at the clock. I should have plenty of time to talk to him before Daria shows up. Now if I just knew what in the world I’m going to say to him.
“You’re making me nervous, Hope.”
“There’s no need,” I lie. He doesn’t answer. What he does do is take a deep breath that sounds ragged and stressed.
“Tell me what you’re feeling, Aden.” I insist, while going to the fridge, and pulling out a pack of hamburger.
“Lost, dar—Hope. I’m not calling you darling. I don’t know what kind of ass I was before, but I’m not the kind of man to call a woman darling.”
“How do you know?”
“I feel it in my bones.”
“Oh. Um…well… you could just call me Hope?”
“Then, I feel lost, Hope. That’s how I’m feeling.”
“I imagine,” I whisper, turning away from him to wash my hands. “How do you feel about hamburgers?”
“I don’t know. Do I like them?”
“I…”
“Christ, I don’t even know if I’m allergic to them.”
My hand shakes at his answer. Are there people out there who are allergic to hamburger? I’d imagine there would have to be. Could Aden be? Shit. What happens if I feed him something that kills h
im?
“Though, I did eat ground beef in the hospital so I guess I’m not. God this is so frustrating.”
“I know, Aden, but—”
“But you don’t know. I’m taking so much on faith here. I know the paramedics and doctors said we were married and you were there when I fell, but how do I know? How do I know we’re married? That we even know each other? You could be some psychotic—”
“Daddy!”
My eyes cut to the door, Aden’s words still ringing in my head. Jack comes bursting through the kitchen and he screams out Daddy the minute he sees Aden. Then without so much as glancing at me, he makes a bee-line for Aden, wrapping his little body around Aden’s leg and thigh.
Color drains from my face, as I watch Aden stare down at Jack in horror. Slowly he moves his hand clumsily down to Jack’s back and pats him. My heart has stopped. Color has drained from my face. I have no idea what to say. I have no idea how to stop this avalanche of horror.
“I guess that answers that. We have a child?” Aden whispers, his voice hoarse and almost shaking.
“Uh… I got called into work early, so I had to bring Jack back sooner…” Daria says from the doorway. Her gaze goes from Aden and Jack and then cuts back to mine.
The fear in her eyes mirrors mine.
I’m screwed.
25
Aden
I’m a father. I stare at the sleeping child and there are so many emotions going through me I can’t begin to describe them. Hope tried to convince me I wasn’t the child’s father, but it was kind of hard to deny when Jack is screaming for me and calling me Daddy, drowning out her denials.
I had been on the verge of telling Hope she was lying about being my wife. How can she be my wife, when nothing but the scent of her—which is a common enough smell—is familiar? I was about to disengage from the entire situation.
I was so close.
Three things held me back.
One… if I don’t belong here, I have nowhere to go. I belong nowhere. I have no memory. I have no idea who I really am.
Two… I can deny a lot, but when I’m close to Hope… it feels like my body remembers her, even if my mind can’t. I’m trying to do my best to hold onto that, because right now I need to feel like something is familiar, no matter how intangible it is.
Finally, the third reason I just didn’t load up and disappear. This little boy. Even if Hope was somehow lying to me about being my wife, having a child run in unannounced and proclaiming me his father… that shit is real. That can’t be made up…right?
Which means… I belong in this shit town, in this damn motel that looks like it belongs in the past, with a woman I apparently called darling, with a limp dick I take medicine for and a son… a son who calls me Daddy and begs me to play blocks on the floor with him—which we did... for hours.
“Aden?” Hope calls softly from the door.
I look over my shoulder toward her. Her face is etched with concern and worry. I swallow down my own doubts, my own fears, because whatever this is—besides a huge fucking mess—it has to be just as hard on Hope. What would it be like to be married to a man who doesn’t even recognize you? Her world must be as upside down as mine is… well almost.
At least she can remember her own son.
“He looks like you,” I tell her honestly. I’ve looked and looked but there’s very little resemblance to me.
“He does. My father says the family genes are strong, we seem to stomp out all others.”
“He’s beautiful,” I answer, feeling strange all the way around. I walk out of the room and don’t look back, even though I kind of want to.
“It’s late. You should get in bed. You’ve had a rough day,” Hope says, and for some reason she’s avoiding looking at me.
“I’m sorry I’m putting you through so much.”
Her gaze cuts to me and she looks surprised. “Trust me, Aden. You don’t owe me an apology for that.
“Where are we going?” I ask her, only just realizing that she’s heading us back to the reception area of the motel.
“To your room,” she answers, still avoiding my face.
“My room?”
“Yeah. I mean under the circumstances... You’re staying in room seven,” she says—still avoiding looking at me.
“If we’re married, shouldn’t we be sleeping in the same room.”
“Aden, you don’t even know me.”
“Well, I doubt me sleeping away from you, away from my home will help,” I grumble and I don’t really know why I’m annoyed. I was just wanting time alone earlier today. Plus, she’s right. I don’t know her. Still, the fact that she unilaterally pushed me into one of the motel rooms pisses me off—and if I want to be a hundred percent honest, does some damage to my pride.
“Aden, don’t…well, I mean, this is where you slept before the accident,” she says and I stop walking. I reach out and pull her hand so that she stops walking too.
“Are you saying we don’t share a bed?”
“We haven’t for quite a while,” she answers.
“Why the fuck not?”
“You have a deviated septum,” she says after a moment and I blink.
“A deviated—”
“Septum,” she finishes. “You snore, Aden.”
“Hell woman, I’m sure a lot of men snore. It’s not a reason for a husband and wife to sleep in separate rooms.”
“You don’t just snore. You are so loud you scare Jack.”
“I…scare Jack?”
“Yeah. You’re really loud. It terrifies Jack. In fact, you’re the one who agreed to start sleeping in another room.”
“Let me get this straight. I have no fucking job, I can’t get my dick up without medicine, I don’t sleep with my wife, and I snore so loud that I terrify my son?”
“Well—”
“How the hell did we even have a child, if I can’t get my dick hard?”
“You uh…work fine if you take Viagra.”
“Motherfucker.”
“Though you don’t do that anymore.”
“I don’t?”
“No. Not since the incident,” she says, and she starts walking, so I follow her out into the cool, Idaho air. I follow alongside her and we make our way to the far end of the motel. Apparently she wants to make sure I’m really far away from Jack. Almost afraid to find out, I push the conversation forward.
“What incident?” I ask, just as we stop at the door to the room. Room seven… Irony has never been my strong point—at least I don’t think it is. But, somehow, the fact that I’m staying in a room that is supposed to be a lucky number is almost hilarious—if I wasn’t terrified to hear what bombshell Hope will drop on me next.
“The incident with the Viagra…” she hedges.
“What fucking incident, Hope?” I growl, my patience gone.
Her back goes stiff and for the first time since Jack came running into the room, she looks me in the face. Her face is flushed and she’s pissed, I can see that clearly in her eyes and in the way she telegraphs the emotions as she looks at me.
“You never listen Aden.”
“I…what?”
“You never listen. You never try to understand anyone else. It’s always what you want and when you want it. Patience is a virtue you know, and you do not have it.”
“I…Do you have a point to this little sermon?”
“It was our anniversary.”
“Wait…I thought you said we just got married?”
“I…” she stops talking for a minute and that little wrinkle in her forehead popping back out, before she continues. “We did! But you don’t have to be married to be together and it was that anniversary you wanted to celebrate.”
“How many years?” I ask her.
“How many years, what?” she huffs, her whole body moving as she releases a frustrated breath.
“How many years were we together that I wanted to celebrate?”
“Three!”
&nbs
p; “Okay, so what happened?”
“You took one of the pills the doctor prescribed and we got in bed and…”
“And what?”
“And nothing…nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened?”
“Nope. It was like you didn’t even take a pill. I told you it was okay, but as usual, you wouldn’t listen to what I wanted and you took matters into your own hands.”
“I masturbated?”
“What? Ew! No!”
“Then what the hell are you talking about?”
“You took another pill—even though the bottle clearly said not to do that, and even though I begged you to just let it go. You wouldn’t listen.”
“So then we had sex.”
“Well we might have, except…”
“Except what,” I sigh out, suddenly very tired.
“You know those commercials where they tell you the side effects?”
“No.”
“Oh…sorry I forget there are things you can’t remember. Well anyway, one of the side effects is an erection that lasts longer than four hours.”
“No offense, Hope, but that sounds like a good thing, considering the problem you say I have.”
“Well maybe, at first we were both happy. You even cried.”
“I cried?”
“Big, fat, ugly tears. I’ll never forget. You were so happy. You were all, Darling! Look I’m so big!”
“Christ. I just get worse and worse.”
“We began having fun, but then little Aden…”
“Little Aden?”
“That’s what you call your dick. Little Aden wants to come out and play, little Aden needs petted. Little Aden needs you to whip him into shape.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, holding my head down and pinching the bridge of my nose.
“Anyway he kept swelling, to the point… we thought maybe you had been stung by a bee. It was so huge and distorted. You couldn’t stand for me to touch it either. It was so painful. Then it started turning blue…”
“Oh fuck…” I growl and my hand goes to my dick protectively, just from the thought of what she’s saying.
“After a couple of hours, I finally told you we were going to have to go to the doctor.”