Dear Tori

by Renee Fowler

  It stings so damn bad that she can’t remember me.

  Logically I know it’s not her fault, and I shouldn’t take it personal, but it happens anyway. It makes me wonder if Buck and everyone else wasn’t right all along. What Tori and I had was a silly, high school romance. It was just puppy love, the kind of thing that would’ve faded on it’s own over time, but since it ended so tragically and abruptly, I’ve become fixated.

  No, screw that. I refuse to believe it.

  How ever things might have happened, the fact remains, Tori’s arms are wrapped around me right now. Her chin is resting on my shoulder, and her familiar scent lingers like a cloud that the air rushing past us can’t touch.

  By the time I get back to the garage, Buck is gone, but he left the gate open for me. I pull to a stop out front and cut the engine. Tori clambers off the bike. She weaves unsteadily on her feet beside me, and my arm circles around her waist while she regains her balance.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m kind of dizzy for some reason.”

  “It happens to everyone after a long ride like that.”

  The fading, slanted afternoon sunlight catches her eyes, and they glow like emeralds. God, she’s so fucking pretty. I want to pull her closer and press my lips against hers so damn bad, but I know better than that.

  The last time I kissed Tori, she screamed bloody murder. All these years later, I still feel like a piece of shit about it. After the accident, her dad didn’t want me anywhere near her, but her stepmom thought it might be worth a shot for me to visit her in the hospital. She hoped it might help Tori remember. After weeks of wondering if she was ever going to wake up or not, I was overcome at the sight of her, and I did the dumbest thing possible. I rushed over to her side, and grabbed her hand. I told her I was sorry, and I loved her, and I was so fucking glad that she was going to be okay.

  And I kissed her.

  Tori didn’t have a clue who I was. She still didn’t fully understand what had happened, or why she was restrained to a hospital bed. They actually had her tied down at the wrists and ankles because she kept getting confused, ripping out her IVs, and trying to leave. And my dumbass actually kissed her.

  Well, I definitely wasn’t going to make that mistake again, even though she was currently staring at my mouth, giving me this look like maybe she wouldn’t be too opposed to it if I did. But she still doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t even know my real name.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  She nods weakly, and I let go. Tori removes her helmet and holds it out for me to take.

  What now? I can’t just hand her the keys to her car and watch her drive off.

  “Want to take a look around inside?” It’s a dumb suggestion, and kind of weird considering she doesn’t know me, but I know her. Tori loved poking around the garage. She used to hang around for hours after school, asking me a million questions about what this or that tool was for. She was always so curious about how things worked.

  Tori nods eagerly.

  I unlock and roll up the middle garage door. Tori tiptoes in right beside me, looking all around. I turn on the overhead lights and nudge a small, rolling toolbox out of her path.

  “How long have you worked here?” she asks, running her fingertips over the grimy edge of a table that runs the length of the back wall. There’s all manner of junk spread out.

  “Years. Since I was fifteen. It’s a family business.”

  “My family has a business too. Well, a farm, which is like a business.” She picks up a multimeter, turns it over in her hands. “But I guess you already knew that.”

  I murmur my agreement.

  “How much was it to fix my car?” she asks.

  “No charge for friends or family.”

  Her eyes widen in alarm. “We’re not related are we?”

  Trying to suppress a smile, I shake my head.

  “I guess we were friends.”

  “Something like that,” I say vaguely.

  “It still doesn’t feel right.”

  “It wouldn’t feel right taking money from you.”

  “Well, if you’re ever in need of some fresh produce, or eggs, you know where to come. I’m going to be working there now.”

  “You’re staying in Brockton?”

  “I think so. For the time being at least. My stepmom needs help running the farm, and she’s all alone with Brandon now.”

  “Who’s Brandon?”

  “My brother.”

  I blink a few times. “Since when do you have a brother?”

  “Since six years ago.” Tori laughs. She looks down at the dirt and oil staining her fingers and wipes her hands along the front of her jean shorts. “Kind of a huge age gap. Whenever I take him places, people assume he’s mine.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be sticking around. I heard through the grapevine that you were getting married.”

  “I was supposed to, but we’re taking some space. I was going to break up with him, but he’s probably right. I’m kind of emotional right now, with my dad passing away. It’s not a good time to be making any big decisions.” Her cheeks pinken, and she laughs again. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

  “I guess I’m easy to talk to.”

  “I guess so.”

  “So what made you reconsider getting married, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Has anyone said you’re kind of nosey?” she asks with a playful smile.

  “I’ve heard it a time or two, but never from someone as pretty as you.”

  Laughing under her breath, Tori shakes her head. “I thought maybe you were gay.”

  “Me?”

  “I saw your tattoo when I dropped off my car.”

  “Is there something wrong with a heterosexual man who likes rainbows?”

  “Nope. I’ve always kind of liked them too.”

  “I guess that’s another thing we have in common.”

  “What else do we have in common?”

  “We both work at our family’s businesses, and we both love to ride motorcycles.”

  “Love might be a strong word. I’ve only been twice.”

  “Then maybe you’ll have to come out riding with me this weekend, and you can make up your mind for sure.”

  Tori sucks on her bottom lip the way she always did when she was nervous. “I dunno, Buck.”

  “I’m not asking you out on a date.” I force a laugh. Damn, if this isn’t exactly how things happened last time. When we first met back in high school, she had a boyfriend then too. “It’s just a friendly ride, Tori.”

  “That may be, but… It’s weird being friends with people that knew me from before. You probably remember all kinds of things about me, and I don’t know you at all.”

  “Then you can get to know me, and I can just assume you’re a totally different person.”

  “I am,” she says sadly. “I’m nothing like I was before.”

  “Great. Then it’s settled. We’re two perfect strangers going on a motorcycle ride together.”

  Chapter Five

  Tori

  “Thank god you’re here to deal with this,” Maggie says on Thursday evening.

  “They can’t hurt you,” I comment, holding out the plastic container of mealworms.

  “No, but looking at them might make me puke.”

  Brandon gives a mock wretch, and laughs as he takes a few of the writhing, yellow mealworms and drops them down to his geckos.

  Maggie watches from the doorway while we feed Brandon’s pets. “I don’t know how you can stand to touch those things.”

  “They kind of tickle,” Brandon says, watching two wiggle on his palm. He edges closer to his mom, and giggles when she jumps back out of the room.

  It’s the first real laugh I’ve heard from him in two weeks. Maggie still looks sleep deprived and miserable, but her brief smile at the sight of her son enjoying himself appears genui
ne.

  For me personally, a lot of the time it doesn’t feel like Dad’s really gone, then it will hit me out of nowhere. I somehow keep forgetting that I can’t pick up the phone and call him. Every time I remember, I’m so pissed off at myself for not picking the phone up more when I had the chance.

  “Christian called,” Maggie informs me as I replace the lid on Brandon’s terrarium.

  I give her a weak smile as I move past her to wash my hands. I’m having serious doubts about agreeing to term what we’re going through as a break, instead of just calling it what it probably should be, the end. Everything feels weird though, and Christian probably has a point.

  Nothing in my life is clear right now. My dad is dead. I’m back in the house I grew up in, but it’s all been rearranged and redecorated. Apparently I helped paint the hall bathroom this seafoam green. Maggie says I picked out the color too, which I can’t remember, but I do like the color so it’s not that unbelievable I guess.

  I blot my hands dry on a blue hand towel decorated with stitched on seashells, then call for Brandon to come wash his hands too. Once he’s finished, I retire to my bedroom to return Christian’s call.

  Half the time he calls, I don’t pick up. Half the time when I do pick up, I end up regretting it. All he does is hound me to come home.

  Miami doesn’t feel like home, but neither does Brockton. The sound of Christian’s voice is familiar though, and oddly soothing as he blabs on about the details of this upcoming merger that I don’t fully understand. “I’ll be flying to New York next week. You should come with me, Victoria.”

  “I can’t. I’m working at the farm now.”

  Christian sighs heavily. “What exactly are you doing there?”

  “Everything. I’m helping do everything my dad did around here.”

  “And she can’t find someone else to help?” Christian asks in an annoyed voice.

  “I’m sure she could, but… I don’t really want to go to New York.”

  “We’ll have a lovely time, and it’ll give us a chance to reconnect.”

  Yeah, right. I’ve been on these type of work trips with him before. He will be in meetings all day. In the evenings I’ll be expected to dress up and sit by his side at boring dinners. “I can’t just up and leave. My stepmom needs my help.”

  “So you’re going to stay in Brockton forever, riding around on tractors and… whatever you do out there? Is that really all you want out of life, Victoria?”

  “Will you please stop calling me that? No one else calls me that.”

  “You told me to call you that.”

  “I know,” I say wearily.

  “And you didn’t answer my question, Tori. You can’t possibly want to work on a farm.”

  I’d rather be a farmer than Christian’s docile, dress up doll to wheel out when it suits him. “I don’t know what I want right now. That’s why we’re taking a break, so I can figure it out. Besides, it’s giving me a chance to get to know my brother. Brandon is the only family I have left.”

  “But after we’re married, you’ll have a baby like we talked about, and then we’ll be a family.”

  Christian already has it all planned out for us. Two children by the time we’re thirty. Hopefully a promotion for him that will land us either in New York or Chicago by the time those future children are school aged. I’ll be a stay at home mom, of course. Why would I bother working when I’m too stupid to do anything useful?

  “Where do you think food comes from?” I ask sharply. “It doesn’t just appear in the grocery store like magic. You think you’re so much better than other people.”

  “No, I don’t. Darling, you’re upset.”

  “I’m not upset,” I say, although I am. I’m suddenly furious. “You’ve always thought you were more important than me. I don’t understand why you wanted to be with me in the first place. Why don’t you just go find someone… better. Someone that won’t embarrass you, or—”

  “I love you, but I hate when you get like this. You’re being emotional, and irrational. It’s ugly.”

  “Ugly? I’m trying to talk to you.”

  “But you’re not making any sense. Of course I want to be with you, otherwise I would’ve never asked you to marry me.” Christian sighs, and clears his throat quietly. “I talked to your old boss, Shelby. I explained the situation, and she said you were welcome to come back at any time.”

  “I already spoke with her, and told her I wasn’t returning, then you called her behind my back? That’s weird, Christian.”

  “What’s weird about it? I know you enjoy working there, and I wanted to make things easier for you to come back home.”

  “Now you know I enjoyed working there? You used to complain about my job all the time.”

  “I didn’t understand before.”

  “You never tried to understand before. You never listened to anything I said.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Please stop calling the house phone and pestering Maggie. She already has enough to deal with. I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk, but we never talked this much when we lived under the same roof.”

  “And that was a mistake, obviously. It was my mistake, and now I’m trying to correct it.”

  “But you’re still not listening to me. We’re taking a break. That means a break from each other, to give each other some space to think about things. It doesn’t mean you calling me six times a day to tell me to come home.”

  “I don’t need space to think about things.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “So what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

  “The same thing you always did. Work all the time, then come home and watch that channel about stocks all evening. If you hire someone to cook, and you get a mannequin to sit on the other side of the couch, it’ll almost be like I never left.”

  “Victoria, you’re being ridiculous.”

  “You can just have your assistant fill in for all those business dinners. Then you’ll have no need for me at all.”

  “But I do need you.”

  “No, you don’t, and I think that’s been your assumption all along, that I need you, so you can just treat me however you want, and I’ll stick around and put up with it. Well, I have news for you Christian. I don’t need you. I was doing just fine before you came into my life.”

  “Just fine? You were living in a slummy apartment, and driving a car that didn’t start half the time.”

  Speaking with him makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes. “Enjoy your trip to New York. We can talk again when you get back.”

  I end the call before he can say something else to infuriate me further. Resisting the urge to throw my phone across the room, I lurch up off my bed and stomp downstairs. Even if things were perfect with Christian, which they most certainly are not, I can’t abandon Maggie. There’s no way she could manage everything here on her own.

  That’s the thing about a farm. The livestock don’t care that someone died. They still need to be looked after. Work still needs to be done. I tug on my boots and head off to the barn to load up the wagon.

  It’s oddly comforting to fall back into this old, familiar routine. Feeding the cattle, checking the gates, collecting eggs from the hen house. I did all these things before those lost memories, and after for a bit too, until I ran away to start a new life.

  I’ll never be a veterinarian like I planned, but I can still be around animals. Staying here would definitely be an end for Christian and me though. I can never imagine him content in a small town like this.

  But this isn’t the life my dad wanted for me. He pushed me hard to do good in school, to make something of myself so I wouldn’t be stuck here scraping by on this little dairy farm he inherited.

  I think that’s why my dad liked Christian so much. He was my last chance at a better life after I screwed everything up by wandering too close to the top of that waterfall. But he never stopped to question if I was really happy with Chri
stian. Neither did Christian. Hell, neither did I. It seemed like I should be happy. When we went out together, I saw the way other women looked at him, and I felt the envious way they viewed me.

  On the surface everything about Christian is perfect, but there’s something missing. Something not right between him and me, and I’m starting to think whatever the missing ingredient is, it’s been absent the entire time.

  “Wait for me, Tori,” Brandon’s voice rings out from the back porch. “I wanna drive.”

  He hops down the back steps, and flies across the overgrown field. I reach down to help hoist him up and onto my lap. The top of his head smells like shampoo and little kid sweat. He can’t reach the pedals, so I take care of that, but he can already steer and shift the gears all by himself. I’m sure he rode around out here with Dad, just like I did when I was young.

  Brandon is the reason Maggie hasn’t put the farm up for sale yet, and me too I guess. She’s waiting to see what I decide to do. This is the only home Brandon has ever known, and this farm has been in my family for a long time.

  I don’t know what to tell her. I’m not sure if her and I together can really do it, and I’m not talking about the physical labor. The business side of it is a mystery to both of us. Dad always handled that part.

  My brother tries to help as I unload the wagon, but he’s too small. I remind him not to touch the electric fence as we skirt along the edge.

  I can’t really imagine him living in some house closer to town with nothing but a little patch of backyard to play in, but I guess he would adjust. Maggie used to work for the post office a long time ago. Maybe she would go back to doing that.

  I can’t really see that future for the two of them though, and I can’t see any future for me at all. I hated the way Christian mapped everything out for us, rarely pausing to get my input on the matter, but there was a sort of comfort in it too. I didn’t have to worry.

  For the last year I’ve floated through day to day, not fretful of the future. For the last two weeks I’ve trudged through each day, just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. My body isn’t accustomed to this type of work anymore. I go to bed exhausted, and wake up achy and sore, but it feels like I’m doing something. I have a purpose.