The Fisherman Series : Special Edition

by Jewel E. Ann

  “Hey. Can I help you?”

  “I … um … was looking for Fisher. But I’ll come back later.”

  “He’s downstairs. We’re playing pool. I just happened to be up here grabbing more beer, so I answered the door. Come in.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m fine. I’ll come back.” I started to back away from the blond dude with dimples and an overly friendly grin.

  “Did someone knock at the door?” Fisher popped his head around the corner from the top of the stairs.

  “You have company, I think. The more the merrier. But she’s a little skittish.” Blond dude chuckled, patting Fisher on the shoulder and disappearing to the kitchen and probably the basement.

  “Speaking of company, I didn’t know you had company. I’m leaving.” I turned.

  “Reese, you can come in.”

  “Nope. I’m good.”

  “Did you need something?”

  “Nope.” I got to my car but the door was locked. I didn’t remember locking the door. And I also didn’t remove my keys from the ignition.

  It beeped. How did I not hear it beeping? Oh, that’s right, I was on a mission until Dimples ruined it.

  “Reese …”

  “Nope.” I needed another word, but suddenly it hurt to be so close to him. Suddenly I wasn’t okay with us being over no matter how much closure I tried to get from him.

  I started down the sidewalk, heading home to get the spare set of keys to my car.

  “Reese …” Fisher was closing in on me, so I took off running. “Jesus … what … why are you always running from me?” He chased me down the sidewalk, but I wasn’t that fast in my snow boots.

  Before I could turn the corner, his hand grabbed the back of my jacket. I stopped and wriggled out of his hold, turning toward him, breathless and a little rabid.

  “I’m always running from you because you are the worst, Fisher Mann. The. Worst. You make it impossible to love you and just as impossible to not love you. But the worst part is you make it impossible to be with you. And you just … let me go. All the freaking time. And you go off to Costa Rica and screw around with Angie and sleep in the same bed and do god knows what else with her. Then you again let me get out of your truck that morning after coffee and you. Let. Me. Go.

  “AND I had to find out from Angie that you broke things off with her. Why? Why did I hear it from her and not you? So you don’t want to be with me. Fine. But have the decency to say something. Don’t be an arrogant jerk who says ‘I know’ when I get the nerve to message you about how I loved you. So yeah … I’m running from you because you are bad for me. And I should have known it years ago. But more than any of that…” I turned and tucked my cold hands into my pockets as I continued trekking toward my house “…I’m running away from you because I locked my fucking keys in the car.”

  “You kept the truth from me when it could have been the thing that gave me my memory back.”

  “Angie gave you the truth. It didn’t give you your memory back.”

  “Why keep the truth from me? Why do it after you already knew I was in love with you?” Fisher stayed a few feet behind me.

  “You wouldn’t understand, and it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Well you drove to my house because something must still matter now.”

  “It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have texted you. I shouldn’t have driven to your house.” I picked up my pace again, but not to a run. “I thought I needed some sort of closure, but I was wrong. Being away from you is all the closure I need.” I batted away the tears and made sure he didn’t catch up to me, didn’t see my tears.

  “Say it. If you don’t say it, you know you’ll regret it.”

  Screw my tears.

  I whipped around. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to remember us and how you felt about me all on your own. And I wanted to be there when it happened. I wanted to see the look on your face. And I wanted it to convey the feelings I had when I realized you were falling in love with me for the second time without ever remembering the first time. I wanted to know if you felt this sense of awe and fate like it was impossible for us to not fall in love at every possible opportunity.”

  Fisher deflated. He couldn’t even look at me.

  So I turned and continued my journey home.

  “We messed around on the pool table. In your bedroom. My closet. My bed. The downstairs kitchen. My workshop.”

  I halted at his words, but I couldn’t turn around because I wasn’t sure if I was really hearing what I thought I was hearing.

  “And we slept on the screened-in porch one night after I went out with Rory and Rose. You tripped at one of my job sites and ended up with a nail in your hand. I carried you to the truck. And the whole way I smelled your hair. And I thought … if I could spend the rest of my life smelling her hair, I’d die a happy man. Did you know that? Did you know how much I liked the smell of your hair and the floral scent of your skin, and whatever you put behind your ears and down your neck? Yeah, that shit drove me crazy insane.”

  I couldn’t turn around. Or blink. I could barely breathe. But I could cry. And I did. So, so much.

  He thought. If he thought. He knew. If he knew. He remembered … everything.

  “Five years ago, I loved you and you loved me. It was really fucking messy … but we were real. It just wasn’t the right time. Our timing seems to always suck. And I’m sorry about that. But you’re here. And I’m here. And my best friend from high school is in town for the next two weeks, and you should come play pool with us.”

  I turned a degree every second, like a ticking clock, until I faced him—that gleam in his eyes.

  “I love you today.” He shrugged a shoulder. “And I’m going to wake up and do the same thing tomorrow.”

  I had so many questions. Did he have sex with Angie in Costa Rica? That was my biggest question, or so I thought. But as I inched my feet in his direction, I realized it didn’t matter. If I wanted to cross that threshold back into his life, it couldn’t matter. If I accepted his love and gave it freely back in return, there were Biblical rules about love I’d have to follow.

  It was never jealous or demanded its own way.

  It wasn’t irritable.

  It didn’t keep record of being wronged.

  Love never gave up.

  Never lost faith.

  Love was always hopeful.

  And it endured through every circumstance.

  However, before I could take that final step back to him, there was a question he had to answer.

  “Were you ever going to come for me?”

  Fisher smiled that glorious, unmatchable grin, and it instantly sent a new round of burning tears to my eyes. It blew my heart up like a balloon, and it rattled my stomach, sending those familiar, tiny wings aflutter. “I was thinking about it.”

  “I found my lost fisherman,” I whispered as I took that final step and wrapped my arms around him, our lips reuniting after too long apart.

  When we pulled back an inch and gazed at each other, he grinned again. “I told you, all you needed to do was go knock on his door.” He wiped his thumbs along my cheeks. “Don’t cry. I don’t want Shane to think I made my girl sad.”

  “You remember.”

  He grinned. “I remember. I just had no idea the memories of us would be so … NSFW. And when it happened, when I remembered the feeling, it felt indescribable, in some way like the universe was laughing at me. How could I have not known? Not like my brain forming the memory, more like my soul tapping on my heart and saying, ‘Yo, dumb ass, remember her? We love her. ‘We will always love her.’”

  I rested my forehead against his chest and laughed. “Not safe for work …”

  “No joke.” He took my hand and led me back toward his house. “You know, I can’t play pool anymore without getting an erection. Do you have any idea how awkward that is when you’re playing against a dude?”

  I giggled.

  When we reached the basement,
Fisher released my hand and grabbed a beer. “Shane, this is Reese. Sorry we disappeared. She’s a little skittish.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Fisher.

  “Nice to finally meet you. This guy hasn’t shut up about you in days. After two beers, everything turns into Reese-this and Reese-that.” Shane sipped his beer in one hand while resting his other hand on the pool stick.

  “That’s not true.” Fisher rolled his eyes while opening his beer bottle.

  My scowl turned into a smirk. I felt ten feet tall, even if he was doing all this thinking and talking about me while I was miserable assuming he no longer wanted to be with me.

  When I turned back toward Shane, Fisher stood behind me, snaking his hand possessively across the top of my chest as he ducked his head and whispered in my ear. “It only takes one beer for me to talk about you. But I think about you all the time. And sometimes…” his whisper got even softer “…I touch myself.” He playfully teased my ear with his teeth eliciting another giggle from me.

  “Who’s playing?” Shane asked.

  “Reese. She’s freakishly good at whatever she does. She kicked Arnie’s ass in ping-pong.”

  I glanced back at Fisher, and he winked at me.

  Over the next two hours, we played pool. Shane told me all about Fisher’s shenanigans in high school. And Fisher called Shane out on a few of his own. I had to resort to college stories, which were much more recent because I went to a Christian academy and therefore had no exciting stories during that time in my life. The most taboo thing I had ever done was pull Fisher’s towel from his waist and give him head in his closet, but Fisher already knew that, and Shane didn’t need to know it.

  “I have to get home.” I glanced at my phone screen. “Rory and Rose were shopping, but now they’re home and looking for me. We’re making cookies.” I returned my pool stick to the rack. “Nice meeting you, Shane. I hope we get to hang out again before you leave.”

  “Yeah, that would be great.” He plopped down onto the sectional and turned on the TV.

  “I’ll walk you upstairs.” Fisher took my hand and led me to the front door. Always … always me following Fisher off a cliff or to the ends of the earth.

  “I have a million questions.” I trapped my lower lip between my teeth and wrinkled my nose.

  “And I’ll give you a million answers. Just not until Shane leaves town.”

  Nodding slowly, I whispered, “In two weeks …”

  “But I’ll answer one now. So pick the one that matters the most.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s not fair.”

  “Ask me.”

  Did you have sex with Angie?

  “When did you remember … everything? And do you remember everything? Do you remember all your memories of Angie?”

  “That’s three questions.”

  “Fisher …”

  He kissed me once. “I remembered after I got drunk off my ass at the wedding … because I was so pissed off at you.”

  I frowned.

  Fisher didn’t. He kept grinning and kissed me again. “And I remember all my memories of Angie.”

  Another kiss.

  “I remember everything.”

  Another kiss, but slower.

  When he released my face, I stood motionless for several seconds. “You knew that morning we had Starbucks? And you didn’t tell me? Not only did you not tell me, you completely played dumb about it. You asked me questions you already knew the answers to.”

  He shrugged. It was an arrogant shrug, like he had every right to not tell me the truth that morning at Starbucks. As I started to protest his arrogance, my conscience got the best of me, halting my words. I slid into my jacket and pulled on my boots.

  “Shane doesn’t know I lost my memory.”

  I narrowed my eyes before returning a small nod. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell him, but I figured it didn’t matter.

  As I opened the door, he grabbed my wrist, and I turned back toward him. A slightly pained expression stole his beautiful smile. “You. I’ve told you about my memory. That’s it. No one else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I didn’t tell Angie. And I didn’t tell my family. Not Rory or Rose. Not anyone at work. Just you.”

  Still a little confused, I added another nod. He wanted to tell them, so he didn't want me saying anything.

  “I’m not going to tell them. You know. And you’re the only one who ever needs to know. Except my doctor. I’ll tell my doctor.”

  “W-why?” I shook my head.

  “I know I hurt Angie. And when I told my family, they were hurt too.”

  That answered another one of my questions. He told his family.

  But did he tell them about me?

  “But it would have been worse for everyone had they known I made the decision knowing how I felt about her before the accident. I think it’s easier for them to believe that I can’t marry her or that I’ve fallen in love with someone else because I simply can’t recall my feelings. They are all so sure that I would marry Angie tomorrow if I only remembered. So that’s the deal. I don’t want them to know. I’m not going to tell them. And I don’t want you telling anyone either. Not even Rory and Rose. Can you do that?”

  I didn’t know. That was a big ask on his part.

  Fisher pressed his lips together and canted his head. “Need I remind you that you kept a big secret from me … because you thought it was for the best?”

  “And look how that turned out.”

  He grabbed the collar to my jacket and brought his lips to mine without touching them. “I am looking at how that turned out.”

  He won. Fisher always won.

  “When will I see you again?” I changed the subject, realizing that I’d lost.

  “Shane’s on East Coast time, so he goes to bed by ten. What kind of cookies are you going to bring me? You know I have a thing for your cookies … your muffins … your whole damn bakery.”

  I matched his grin. He remembered that conversation.

  “Now you’re just flexing.”

  He barked a laugh and released my jacket. “Not yet. I’ll do that for you later … after I eat your cookie. Maybe bring extra frosting. I have an idea.”

  “So you have time to eat my cookie, but I can’t ask you any more questions for two weeks?”

  “Exactly.”

  Grumbling in the naked fisherman style, I headed out the door to walk home.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Spill,” Rory said the second I walked into the house.

  “Spill what?” I unzipped my jacket.

  “You were over at Fisher’s. We drove by there.”

  “Oh that…” I hung my coat in the closet and padded my way into the kitchen to wash my hands and start helping with the cookies “…yeah, we’re back together.” I could not have been more coy.

  “What? How? Who? WHAT?” Rory tossed me a hand towel as she and Rose cornered me.

  My coyness quickly vanished. “Yes!” I fisted my hands at my chest and squealed. “I texted him, basically for closure. And he texted me back this weird, vague response that just … ugh … ate at me. So I drove over there. Some stranger answered his door. Turns out, it’s his best friend from high school who’s staying with him for the next two weeks. That was awkward, so I went to leave and Fisher …” Then it hit me.

  His speech. Our big moment. I couldn’t share it with them because it was all about him remembering us—remembering everything. And how he felt about me. Carrying me to the truck and smelling my hair. Sure it might have sounded weird to anyone else, but it was so romantic.

  AND I COULDN’T TELL ANYONE!

  “And Fisher what?” Rose asked. She and Rory had wide eyes and hung on my every word.

  “Uh … well … Fisher felt really bad for not having called. But after breaking up with Angie and telling his family, he needed some time. And out of respect for both Angie and his family, he thought it was best to keep his distance from me
. And he knew I was angry with him, so he thought we both needed to take some time and space. But…” my enthusiasm rebounded after that rambling version of the half-truth “…he was so excited to see me. And it was like nothing else mattered.”

  They seemed disappointed in my story. And it wasn’t the most dramatic ending to a love story, but it was all I could give them.

  “So you talked? Worked everything out? He told you everything that did or didn’t happen in Costa Rica?” Rory eyed me suspiciously.

  I nodded.

  “And did he have sex with Angie? Because I can’t see you being okay with that.” Rose gave me the same untrusting look that Rory gave me.

  I made my decision before I stepped into his house. I chose us, even if he had sex with Angie in Costa Rica. If I believed the giving of my body to another in that way was the most sacred part of a relationship, the defining characteristic of love, then I would not have given my virginity to Brendon without marrying him. I would not have been interested in Fisher, the furthest thing ever from a virgin, and I would not have been able to love him after he and Angie had sex the night before our Target trip.

  “He didn’t have sex with her.” That was my answer. And maybe that was a lie. Another lie I would never confess to Rory and Rose. And maybe it was the truth. I didn’t know. And it wasn’t going to change my love for Fisher. The second I hung up on him and didn’t return his calls or texts, that was the moment I could no longer call him mine.

  I abandoned him when he needed me the most.

  That worked. They smiled and hugged me. “So happy for you, sweetie. Both of you.”

  “Thanks. So … let’s make some cookies.”

  Mariah Carey belted out the lyrics to “All I Want For Christmas Is You” while we made cutout sugar cookies, chocolate crinkles, and peanut butter blossoms because Rory thought Fisher might like them. I didn’t break her heart by telling her that Fisher wasn’t the peanut butter fanatic he used to be.

  Then we strung popcorn for the tree and used the rest of the popcorn to make a batch of caramel corn. After that, we nearly passed out from too much sugar while watching Last Christmas and Elf.