None of that sounded familiar. I wanted to laugh; the image of Philip as a high school teacher was that humorous. He was so stuffy, always wearing a suit and tie, even to classes where the professors themselves were dressed in jeans and flip-flops. The image of him in a tie in front of a bunch of disrespectful teenagers was just that comical.
“I’m gonna go see what Jonnie left in the fridge for us to eat. Make yourself at home.”
“Xander?”
He paused in the archway between this room and the next. “Yeah?”
“Thank you for everything you’ve done. I guess I haven’t really said that yet.”
He studied my face for a long minute, his expression unreadable. I felt like I should know what he was thinking, that I should be able to read the emotion in his eyes. But I couldn’t.
“You would have done it for me.”
He turned and walked away before I could respond. I turned back to the windows, staring at the swimming pool that was barely visible through the shrubbery. I tried to remember swimming in that pool, but I couldn’t. The last distinct memory I had of swimming was when my college roommate and I went to the indoor pool on the university campus a couple of weeks…well, no, I guess it was a couple of years ago.
This wasn’t working for me. I didn’t like not remembering. It was like it was all just right there, but I simply couldn’t decipher it. It was frustrating.
***
We had lunch together, but the conversation was stilted and awkward. He would start to say something, but then he would stop, realizing that I didn’t know who or what he was talking about.
“Did you know Shelly and Charlie?”
A slow smile slipped over his full lips. It was a nice smile, the kind that could make a girl have thoughts that weren’t altogether Christian. I found myself wondering if it was the smile that made me go out with him in the first place.
“I know them well. You took me home with you for Christmas last year and we spent an entire week enduring their questions and crude jokes.”
“I think I can figure out which was which.”
He laughed, a nice, deep chuckle that came from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Shelly really is the complete opposite of you.”
I smiled, thinking of my kid sister—only twelve in my mind. She was obsessed with that new British boyband, One Direction. It was all she talked about when I went home over the summer.
“She would be in high school now,” I said as much to myself as to him.
“She is. She’ll start her senior year here in a few weeks.”
I shook my head, trying to imagine it. “Did she lose the braces?”
“And she has contact lenses now. She’s quite proud of them.”
“I bet she’s a real beauty.”
“Just like you.”
I blushed as I suddenly became focused on pushing the food around on my plate.
“Charlie’s going to be a senior at UT Austin this fall. And he’s been seeing the same girl for the last three years. You thought he might propose at his graduation if they’re still together then.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. Apparently he came to you and asked if you thought that would be a good way to handle it.”
“That’s how I thought Philip was going to do it.”
Xander nodded. “Instead, you found out about his engagement a week before graduation.”
I looked up at him. “Does it bother you? Talking about my…” I started to call Philip my boyfriend, but—then again—he hadn’t been that for a long time. And that was so odd.
I was stuck in May of 2010. But Xander was in August of 2015.
Surreal.
“No. We talked about Philip on our first date.”
“We did?”
“Yeah. You were teasing me about the number of women you assumed I’d dated, so I made you tell me about your dating history. Philip was pretty much the whole sum of that experience.”
I blushed, the heat burning my cheeks so that I pressed my palm to them in an attempt to cool them slightly.
“You did that then, too.”
“I blush a lot. My father used to say it was because I was born under the Christmas star. Something about Christian shame, or something.”
“I always thought it was pretty cute.”
I felt the blush deepen. I had to admit, Xander was really good looking. He was not the kind of guy I’d ever imagined myself being with. I’d always been attracted to the class nerd, the kind of doughy guy who knew all the answers but had this sort of vulnerability about him. There didn’t seem to be anything vulnerable about Xander. In fact, he was the complete opposite. Confidence seeped from his pores. And that cocky smile was as gorgeous as it was infuriating. I felt like he was teasing me each time it came out. But it also made me feel like I’d suddenly become the star in some sort of drama…I don’t know, it was hard to explain even to myself.
“My parents still have their vet business?”
“Yes. Your father announced last Christmas that he never intends to retire and your mother rolled her eyes at him. But they’ve been training a young vet, David something or other. I think your mother’s hoping he’ll take over some of your father’s duties in the next few years.”
“David Garcia?”
“That might be it.”
“He used to hang around the house a lot when we were kids. He liked watching my dad work.”
“He seems like a nice guy. He got married last year to Rachel Thomas? You said she was your friend in high school.”
“Rachel?” I smiled. “Yeah. Good for her. She always had a crush on David.”
“She works with your mom in the office now, taking calls and scheduling patients.”
I nodded. “I guess that should make Charlie feel better about choosing human patients over the animal kind.”
Xander suddenly burst into laughter.
“What?”
He shook his head. “That just reminded me of an argument your father and you got into at Christmas. Your father was lamenting the fact that none of his children chose to walk in his footsteps and you said something about how a father should want his children to follow their own chosen path. You were so angry afterward…”
“And that’s funny?”
“No, not that part. It’s funny because afterward you and Charlie snuck a bottle of brandy out of your father’s stash and got drunk in the barn. I found the two of you curled up on a hay bale, snoring so loudly the horses were kicking restlessly at their stall doors.”
“I don’t snore.”
“You do, babe. When you’re drunk, you do.”
I couldn’t help the smile that jumped to my lips. I kind of liked when he teased me.
“But then you were so hungover the next day, your mother threatened to call the doctor because she thought you had food poisoning or something. You finally had to break down and tell her the truth. She wouldn’t speak to you for the rest of the day.”
“Sounds like my mom.”
“Your parents are a piece of work. When you told them you were moving here to live with me, I thought their heads were going to explode.”
“I really lived here with you before the wedding?”
Something about his expression changed, as his eyes moved slowly over me. It made my belly turn to liquid and my bones threaten to melt. And when he reached over and slid a finger over the back of my hand, it felt so familiar that I was pretty sure my body was remembering it—even if my mind couldn’t.
“It took a lot of discussion to convince you to do it. But once you agreed, you were ready to do it immediately. We couldn’t get your house packed quick enough.”
“I had a house?”
“A nice little cottage on the outskirts of town. It had a metallic building out back that you turned into a studio. You constantly complained that there wasn’t enough light inside of it despite the many windows you had put into the sides. You said you needed skylights to get the
light just right and then your paintings would be as perfect as your skill could make them.”
“That’s sounds like me.”
“That’s where I found you, the night of our first date. I knocked on the front door for fifteen minutes before I made my way around back. And there you were, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and a tank top that was covered in so much paint that it looked like you’d rolled in it.”
His voice deepened slightly as he talked. And the way he was looking at me…I don’t think anyone had ever looked at me quite like that. Not even Philip. It made my heart do something funny in my chest.
“Anyway,” he said, sitting back and clearing his throat a little, “we’d spent six months living in two different states. I think you were just anxious to begin a new life together.”
“We’re we engaged when I moved here?”
“No. I didn’t ask you until a couple of weeks later. I didn’t want you to think I’d done it just to get you to move out here.”
“That was thoughtful.”
He shrugged. “I wanted you here. I wanted you always in my life. That was my priority at the time.”
“We dated six months?”
“We met in June of last year. We dated long distance until the end of November. You moved here the first of December, and we got engaged right before we flew to your parents’ place for the holidays.”
“Did they make us sleep in separate rooms even though we were living together already?”
“They did.” He chuckled again. “But you snuck down the hall to my room every night after your parents went to bed.”
I blushed again, as an image of the two of us curling up in the guest room of my parents’ house burst into my mind. It wasn’t really a memory, more of a figment of my imagination. But it was vivid enough it could have been a memory.
Xander was watching me, concern coming into the lines on his face. “Maybe that’s enough for one day,” he said softly. “Why don’t I show you to your room?”
He stood and pulled me away from the table, pushing my wheelchair back through the hallways that led to the main entryway. We crossed that and moved into a new hallway that led around to the back of the house. He pushed open a door at the very back that exposed a beautiful room that was filled with an amazing amount of natural light thanks to the sliding glass doors that led out into the back garden.
“This was a sun room, but you thought it was so beautiful that you insisted we turn it into a guest bedroom for when your sister came to visit. You thought she would love it.”
“Did she?”
I could see him shrug in his reflection in the glass. “She hasn’t come to visit yet.”
He pushed the wheelchair over to the bed and set the locks. “You should probably rest for a while. The doctor said you should take it easy the first couple of days, try not to do too much.”
He touched my shoulder before he moved back toward the door. “If you need anything…”
The way he was looking at me, the way the sun was glowing around him, it set off something in my head. I had a flash of him standing just like that, but there was something different about his expression. He was upset. Not angry. Sad.
Why would he be sad?
And then it was gone.
Chapter 9
Xander
I closed the door and left her alone. It was nice to talk to her like this again. I’d missed the back and forth we used to share so easily. Before everything changed, it’d always been so easy to be with her.
I had to believe we were going to get back to that.
I went back to the sitting room and poured myself a drink. I stood there and stared at it for a while, thinking about everything that had happened. Had I done everything I should have done? Should I have tried harder to contact her parents? I knew they’d be angry when they found out what had happened, that I didn’t try everything I could to get word to them. But they were the ones who insisted on taking these cruises without their cellphones. They made it clear they didn’t want to be disturbed under any circumstances.
But I knew these were special circumstances and they would have come home immediately had they known. And then they would have taken Harley back to Texas with them.
That was the last thing I wanted. It was bad enough that she couldn’t remember me. I didn’t want them making sure that was a permanent condition.
I stepped out onto the back porch and made my way slowly down to the pool. How many times had I stood out here these last few months, thinking about Harley? Thinking about everything that had happened and everything that should have happened? How many times had I stood on the balcony outside of our bedroom and watched her swim here? I didn’t even like to swim, didn’t like the chlorine clinging to my body. I planned on having the pool filled in from the moment I bought the house; I just hadn’t gotten around to it. But Harley was so excited to see it when she moved in. And it was an amazing sight to wake up to every morning, the sight of her in a bikini, cutting through the water in perfect form. Almost as amazing as waking to her sleeping form pressed against my body.
I missed her. I wanted my Harley back. The doctor assured me that her memory would like return with time. I wasn’t sure if I should be hoping for that, or if I should just hope that she would fall in love with me all over again, the past gone and forgotten.
I swallowed my drink and turned to go back inside. I had phone calls I needed to make. Things at the office had become chaotic during my impromptu absence. But then I caught sight of her sitting by the sliding glass doors in her room, watching me.
What was she thinking? Was she afraid of me? Was she curious?
I tried to imagine how I would feel in her place. But I couldn’t.
***
“She’s here?”
I leaned against the front door and stared down at Margaret. “Where else would she go? She can’t remember the last five years of her life.”
“Home? Don’t you think she should be in Texas with her family? With the people she does remember?”
“I’m her family, too.”
“But she doesn’t remember you, Xander. And when she does, do you really think you’re the one she’s going to want to find herself dependent on?”
“Go home, Margaret. The doctor said it wouldn’t be a good idea to introduce her to too many people at once.”
I started to close the door, but she pushed against it, brushing past me as she burst into the house.
“Where is she?”
“Resting.”
“Where? Upstairs? Don’t you think it’s a little soon for a reunion?”
“She’s in the guest bedroom out back.” I shot her a dark look. “Do you really think I’m that cruel?”
“I don’t know. We’ve had a few interesting experiences in our time together. I wouldn’t put it past you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her. “What do you want me to do, Margaret? I’ve already bled for you. There isn’t much more I can do.”
She ignored me, going to the small bar in the corner and pouring herself a glass of wine.
“Help yourself.”
“I always have.”
Margaret was a handful. She always has been.
We’d known each other since we were kids. Her father was a named partner in the law firm my mother had worked for since I was little. Thirty years she put in there, and she was still going strong. My mom would take me to work sometimes when there was a school holiday and she couldn’t arrange for a babysitter. When my mom’s boss caught me hiding under her desk one afternoon, he mentioned that he had a kid whose nanny wasn’t always as efficient as he would have liked. He suggested that my mom inform him when she was going to bring me to work so he could bring in his daughter and we could hang out together.
It was the beginning of a volatile relationship that I was afraid would never end.
We fought like cats and dogs, but if someone tried to separate us, we would turn our claws on them.
As we grew older, we started going to the same schools. Margaret’s father arranged for me to get into Margaret’s private schools on scholarship because he said I was the only thing that could control her. We were inseparable. We were brother and sister, friends, lovers. We were just about everything to each other two people could be.
And now she was trying to play my conscience.
“I don’t need you marching in here, telling me what I can and cannot do.”
“Someone needs to. Does your mother know what’s going on?”
“Of course.”
“She can’t be terribly happy about it.”
“She’s just worried about Harley. Like the rest of us.”
“I’m worried about her, too. That’s why I think this is a terrible idea.”
“Harley loves me. We were supposed to be married this summer. She’ll remember that in time.”
“I’m sure. But I’m also sure she’ll remember some of the other things that happened this summer. And what will you do then?”
“I’ll deal with it when it comes up.”
“When what comes up?”
I turned, my heart sinking. Harley had just rolled her wheelchair into the room.
And she was staring at Margaret with something like recognition.
Chapter 10
Harley
It was the woman from my dream.
It was so vivid…me standing in a bridal store, wearing a dress I would never wear in a million years. And she was sitting in a chair, watching. She never said anything. She just watched. But I knew…I just, I felt her judgment as she watched.
“Who are you?”
The woman seemed a little surprised that I knew how to talk, or something. She was holding a glass of wine, but the glass was shaking a little. I didn’t understand why she should be so nervous to see me.
“This is Margaret,” Xander said. “She’s an old friend of mine.”
“Margaret.” I thought it might feel familiar on my tongue, but it didn’t. But I knew her. Why else would she have appeared in my dreams if I didn’t?
“You were working on a project with her,” Xander continued. “You were painting a mural in a community center she was renovating for the kids in West Hollywood.”
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