Remembering Us

by Stacey Lynn

  Copyright © 2014 Stacey Lynn

  All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permissions from the author, except for using small quotes for book review quotations. All characters and storylines are the property of the author. The characters, events and places portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Trademarks: This book identifies product names and services known to be trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of their respective holders. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of all products referenced in this work of fiction. The publication and use of these trademarks in not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editing provided by: Taylor K Editing Services

  Cover design provided by: Mae I Design and Photography

  Internal formatting provided by: Angela McLaurin, Fictional Formats

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  My steps are slow and my feet are uncertain.

  The edges of the stairway I’m being pulled down are gray and cloudy from the smoke wafting up from the basement dance floor.

  Kelsey is pulling me somewhere I don’t want to follow.

  Why don’t I want to be here?

  The answer niggles at the edges of my mind, but I can’t pull it to the front. It’s just out of my grasp, like always.

  A sweaty shoulder bumps me into the wall and my hand is pulled from Kelsey’s. Cold, foamy beer splashes out of a red plastic cup and hits my shoulder. Kelsey doesn’t look back to see where I am, and the blonde guy who hit me doesn’t stop to ask if I’m okay.

  I steady my feet and take another step down. The dance floor is packed with people and the music is so loud that the thumping bass rattles my teeth. My eyes scan the dark room - brightened only by the strobe light hanging in the center of the ceiling – looking for someone.

  The lump in my throat disappears when I realize he isn’t here.

  He’s not here.

  A mixture of relief and disappointment swirls inside of me. I smile and reach Kelsey at the bar. The guy next to her fills two plastic cups, but I wave mine away. His name is Zander and he’s in my Statistics class and friends with Adam. I laugh at something he says as he and Kelsey leave for the dance floor. The nervousness returns when I’m by myself, and my eyes scan the room. I should leave now, before he comes.

  But then I see him, and I can’t help but smile. He’s a head taller than everyone else, and as he hits the bottom stair, he has to duck his head to make it through the doorway. A small section of his black hair falls into his eyes and he flips it back. As if he knows I’m here, his eyes find me immediately and he smiles, walking toward me.

  His smile lights up the room and I am no longer worried. Kelsey is gone, Zander is a distant memory, and I don’t know if there’s music still playing.

  When Adam is around me, my brain flees and my heart flip-flops. His kisses make me lose my mind and remind me of dark chocolate, full of all those feel-good hormones.

  He’s a few feet from me when he reaches his arm out like he wants to hug me. I take a step forward, but before my foot hits the ground, I’m bumped to the side. I blink and a tiny blonde is wrapped around Adam. Her legs are around his waist and her arms are around his shoulders. She’s completely latched onto him. He smiles at me. His eyes stay on mine as he kisses her forehead and sets her to her feet.

  “Hi, Amy.” The little blonde scowls at me. Adam’s eyes are laughing at me.

  This. This is why I didn’t want to be here.

  “So who was the girl?”

  I stare at the ceiling, ignoring my therapist’s question. I hate this room. The walls are yellow but not a happy yellow. More like what I imagine baby poop looks like. And the chairs haven’t been updated since at least the sixties. By the time my sessions are done, the only thing that’s changed is the imprint of the scratchy fabric on the backs of my thighs.

  Instead of answering the question, I count the ceiling tiles and multiply the rows. Ironic that I use math at a time like this when it was a math class that got me into all this trouble in the first place.

  Reliving all these dreams every week is almost as exhausting as having them in the first place. Talking about them doesn’t make anything better.

  “Adam?” Dr. Jamison has lost interest in my silence, again, and turns to him. She’s about fifty years old and her faded blonde hair that hangs down to her waist is always braided. She wears flowy, multi-colored hippy skirts and mismatched tops every time I see her. Sometimes I want to ask her if she has a joint, just to see what she says.

  “Tina,” he says softly. I stare out the window at the playground that sits empty at the park across the street. “It was just Tina.”

  “Who’s Tina?”

  “She was a friend from home. We grew up next door to each other. She was in town that weekend visiting friends from our high school that went to college with me. That’s all.”

  That’s all. It’s only two words, but they sound so condescending every time I hear them. It tells me that everything I’m either dreaming or remembering is made up or a half-truth of what the real life events actually were. It tells me that I’m being an idiot for believing them over my boyfriend who loves me. Or so I’ve been told.

  Maybe I’d believe them if I remembered Adam at all.

  “Amy, does hearing this make you feel better?”

  I shrug and cross my arms over my stomach, flinching as my muscles tighten along the gash on my right side that is slowly healing. Nothing makes me feel better anymore because I can’t remember anything that’s happened in the last two years. I have no idea if he’s lying or being honest. “It’s fine.”

  “Fine?” Adam’s voice carries a hint of anger. He flexes his fingers wide open and rubs them down the tops of his thighs. He drops his head, shakes it once, then two times, and releases a loud breath.

  Kelsey keeps telling me that he’s so great and kind and patient and funny and smart and blah, blah, blah. I’ve been hearing it for weeks now and I’m so tired of it. All I see when I look at him is frustration and anger mixed with a little bit of pain.

  “Are we done? I want to go home.” We have at least twenty minutes left in our session, but they’re not helping.

  I’ve been told for the last several weeks that my memory could return at any moment. Before I left the hospital, my neurologist, Dr. Hassen, told me that my memories could return gradually over time.

  Or, everything I’ve forgotten about the last two years could come rushing into my brain like an avalanche within a split second. When he said that, the only thing I could think was that I hoped I wasn’t driving at the time. Doesn’t really seem like a safe place to be when an avalanche hits my brain, and I think I’ve fulfilled my accident quota for my lifetime.

  I think it’d be better if it happened while I was awake. Instead, they come to me at night as dreams and I have no idea what’s true and what isn’t until I have to sit here and talk about them with my new therapist, dissecting them over and over again.

  How in the hell do
I know if they’re true?

  And how do I know if I’m supposed to trust the guy explaining everything to me? He may dress nice and we might live together, but every time I close my eyes I see a different version of him than the one everyone else sees during the day.

  And what in the hell am I supposed to do with that?

  “One more thing before you leave today, Amy.” Dr. Jamison is smiling. She always smiles, regardless of what is said. She has to get stoned. “I have an assignment for you this week.”

  I raise an eyebrow and cradle my casted, broken arm with my free hand.

  “I want you to ask Adam one question this week about something you guys did for the first time.”

  Adam tilts his head to the side. “The first time?” His cheeks are pink, and I think he might be embarrassed.

  Of course he would think about sex. That seems to be the only thing the guy in my dreams does think about.

  Mrs. Jamison just smiles.

  I frown.

  “Any first time. First date. First phone call. Whatever. Just ask him to describe something you think you’d want to know about.”

  “Okay.” I shrug and shift my weight to my good foot. I got a walking cast put on my left foot earlier this week and it’s easier to move around now, but still uncomfortable by the end of the day.

  “And I want you to believe his answer.”

  I make a face. How am I supposed to believe someone I don’t know? Believing and trusting doesn’t happen just because you say so, it happens over the course of a relationship. And from what I’ve dreamed, if we did have a relationship, it was at best, dysfunctional.

  “Fine.” I turn to leave and Adam meets me at the office door, holding it open for me as I hobble through. His hand touches my lower back as I pass by and I flinch out of his way. He lets go as soon as I do but sighs again. If I were to turn around and look at him, he’d be shaking his head. I know this because I’ve seen him do it a lot in the last three weeks.

  I walk straight outside, leaving him to schedule our Thursday appointment. The air outside is fresh. It smells like summer is about to hit, and it makes me smile thinking of all the hours that I’ve spent in the woods, hiking on trails, rock climbing, and white water rafting through the mountains just outside Denver. I’ve lived my entire life in a suburb outside Denver and I’ve always thought it was the best place in the whole world to live.

  A dull pain vibrates through my arm and I close my eyes. I rest my head against the side of Adam’s black Highlander and remind myself that I won’t be doing any of those things this summer. At least not until the casts come off and my wounds heal.

  My booted cast scrapes across the pavement. My ankle hurts and my arm is itchy from my cast. The eight staples in the back of my head were removed last week. In their place, I have a small, square patch of hair that is just beginning to grow back. Fortunately, when the rest of my hair is down, it’s easy to keep it hidden. I have a gash on my right side that runs from my hip bone almost to my breast. It looks like someone tried to slash me open with a jagged-edged knife. The skin is healing, the stitches are innumerable, and every time I turn my torso it feels like someone is trying to rip my kidney out with their bare hands.

  There was a hiking accident. That’s all I know. The rest is being left up to my memory, which my doctors have assured me will return. How in the hell do they know? What if I never remember?

  It’s been weeks since I woke up from my coma, and I don’t remember anything more than the fact that I live with a stranger and I don’t like him when I dream.

  I’m still resting against the side of Adam’s SUV, fingering the back of my scalp, when he comes outside. He stands next to me, crossing his feet at the ankles. We don’t touch. That small whisper of a touch he gave me in the doorway is the first time his hands have touched me since the day I tripped in our kitchen. His arms reached out and caught me. I froze, paralyzed by having his hands on me.

  He shook his head, sighed, grabbed his keys, left the apartment, and didn’t come back for two hours. When he did, the scent of beer laced his breath.

  “I’m sorry I keep getting frustrated with you, Ames.” His head falls against the side of his SUV and he runs a hand down the front of his face. “I just miss you.”

  His voice trembles a little bit and he sounds sad. He looks sad. I wonder what it would feel like to see him smile again like he did the night in my dream. Until the blonde girl, Tina, jumped into his arms, he seemed happy to see me. Was he? Was I a game? If so, why am I still here? I press my fingers to my temples, hoping to stave off the beginning thumps of another headache.

  “Who’s Tina?”

  “She was a friend, I swear.” He turns to me and leans his hip against his car. “She dated my best friend, Mike, in high school and she was excited to see me. It was an innocent thing.”

  “So that was real?”

  Not everything I dream about is real. One night, I dreamed my parents gave me a horse for my seventh birthday. I know for a fact that didn’t happen. Not because we didn’t have the money for one, but because there’s no way my parents would have given me something I so desperately wanted. They gave me what they thought I should have. Mother knows best and all that.

  He nods. “We had our second date the night before and I remember being excited to see because you had told me you weren’t coming. After I let Tina go you threw a beer in my face.”

  I laugh. It sounds like something I would do. It wouldn’t have been the first beer I’ve thrown in an asshole’s face at a frat party. He laughs and I finally see something similar to the smile he gave me in my dream.

  He really is handsome and I can see why I would find him attractive. He’s tall and my head barely reaches his shoulders. His black hair is shaggy, but I don’t know if it’s always this long or if it needs a trim. His body is lean, but toned, and I know from the pictures in the apartment we share that he used to play a lot of soccer.

  He’s handsome. A soccer player. He has a nice laugh. These are the only things I know about him.

  His kisses remind me of dark chocolate, full of all those feel-good hormones.

  My stomach flip-flops and I stop laughing, sobered by the memory.

  “I want to go home. My parent’s home,” I clarify, when I remember that I live with him now and not in the apartment my best friend, Kelsey and I shared our sophomore year of college.

  My therapy sessions leave me on edge and hearing his answers inside and outside of them don’t help me. Everything is different and I wonder if things will ever be simple.

  He sighs and his head drops. I see that happen a lot. It makes me wonder if Adam has always been this frustrated with me or if it’s a new thing.

  “Amy,” he starts, with a defeated tone in his voice, but then stops and shakes his head. “Fine.”

  He opens the door to my side and then closes it harder than necessary once I’ve sat down. I watch his mouth move, speaking curse words I can’t hear, as he walks around the front of the car, roughly running his hand through his jet black hair. Again.

  “These things will just take time.” My mom, Carol, pats the top of my head like I’m her lap dog and takes her seat at the dinner table. They don’t always like me being here, saying they think it’s better for me if I spend as much time as possible with Adam. But sometimes after a therapy session I need to get away from him, and the apartment that we share feels more like a cage than a home.

  You would think my parents would want their daughter, who apparently almost died from a hiking accident, around all the time. But not mine. This is only my third time visiting them since I got out of the hospital, and every time I’m around them our conversations are uncomfortable - more strained than I remember.

  I want to ask them what happened to make them treat me more distant than normal. I have so many questions to ask my parents, but I know better. I will not get answers from them. The Thompson’s do not discuss uncomfortable topics. Never have, never will.

  M
y dad, Don, frowns at my mom and shakes his head, silently telling her to drop it. He used to be a partner at a corporate law firm before he ran for Senate when I was thirteen. He’s been in office ever since. I know he loves me, but his ability to show any type of affection for his youngest of two daughters is about as dry as the stack of tax codes that he used to memorize for fun.

  Some people spend their lives trying to keep up with the Jones’s. From my parent’s perspective, they are the Jones’s and have always reveled in the fact that people try to keep up with them. To my parents - my mom in particular - image and appearance is everything.

  I frown, thinking about this while I ladle some sort of strange looking grain soup into my bowl. Quinoa something or other. It looks like white eyelashes, but it’s supposed to be healthy.

  Why do my parents like Adam then? Is he rich? When I was sixteen, I wasn’t allowed to go out on a date with Jackson Latner. He was the quarterback on our high school’s state championship winning football team and a straight-A student. He was a gentleman and polite and one of the few guys at my school that treated girls with respect. His downfall? He was also a scholarship student at our private school and his parents lived in a fifteen year old three-bedroom duplex. He simply wasn’t rich enough for me to date. He didn’t come from the right kind of pedigree my mom wanted for me.

  Pedigree. She actually used the word as if Jackson and I were show dogs in heat.

  “Mom, why do you like Adam?” I finally ask, taking a risk and interrupting their conversation about someone who embarrassed themselves at the Country Club where my mom spends her morning sipping mimosas and gossiping about all the “lesser” members.

  She licks her lips and takes a sip of her wine. “What’s not to like about Adam?”

  I turn to my dad. He’s not as pretentious as my mom, but his standards for his daughters are high. “He loves you.” His eyebrows turn in and he frowns, almost as if he doesn’t understand my question. “Isn’t that enough?”

  For most people, yes. For my parents, it doesn’t fit. Does Adam have money I don’t know about? We live in a small, older two-bedroom apartment. Our furniture looks like the kind you would expect two, twenty-two-year olds and recent college graduates to own. It’s mismatched and worn down. Our tables have water rings from glasses that didn’t sit on a coaster. There is nothing about the apartment I live in with Adam that should have my parent’s approval.