Chapter 45: : Chapter 45

Rushing down the stairs, I jog out front, quickly slipping into my mom’s car.

“Sorry.” I wipe the rain from my forehead and buckle up. “Mia had me pinned up on a pedestal longer than expected, trying to get my dress to fit right.”

“When is this dance?” She pulls onto the street.

“Mom.” I laugh. “It’s not high school. “It’s not like prom. It’s basically an end of season award ceremony.”

“That is set for formal wear and in a rented-out hall from what I heard.”

“True.” I smile, looking at her. “Anyway, yeah. It’s next Wednesday.”

“Hm,” my mom muses, her eyes shifting toward me.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Mom…” I turn in my seat, eyeing her.

“Nothing, sweetie.” She pats my leg. “It’s just soon, is all, and school begins the following week, right?”

“Yep. The twenty-seventh is the first day back. Chase is taking me to see my dorm a couple days before. It’s so weird that I have no idea what it looks like, but I lived there for an entire semester.”

We pull into the parking lot of the hospital for my follow-up with the behavioral neurologist. Parking in front of the building, she turns to me. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Chase.”

Heat works its way up my neck, and I shrug.

She tips her head, a tenderness in her gaze. “How’s that going?”

“It’s going.” A low chuckle leaves me. “We’re having fun. Making up for what I assume was lost time. He’s constantly asking me to go with him places, even if it’s just down the beach. At first, it made me anxious, but now it’s, I don’t know…” I trail off, a small swirl stirring in my stomach.

“Exciting?” she whispers.

A smile curves my lips, and I look to her, the creases around her eyes deepening, but she smiles through what troubles her, her hand coming out to touch my cheek.

“It’s strange, it’s like he’s the same Chase, but not. Only, I can’t figure out what’s changed about him, but I feel it, you know? Something’s different.” It’s frustrating, at times, how the invisible fog won’t clear, but constantly stressing over it makes it hard to function, let alone breathe, so I try and keep busy so I don’t have to think past the moment.

I don’t tell her that.

“Have you wondered if maybe it’s not him who has changed?” My mom smiles softly. “That maybe it’s you who’s different?”

“I—” I shake my head. “I’m not different. I lost my memories, but I’m still me, and besides, they’re coming back any time. Tonight maybe. Maybe after this appointment.”

My pulse spikes, and I dig my fingertips into the cheap leather of the armrest.

“I didn’t mean your accident changed you.” She grabs my hand, unease in her tone. “Ari, sweetie, you came into your own at Avix, and sure it might have only been a semester, but that first taste of change was good to you.”

“And soon, I’ll remember all of it.” I nod, squeezing her hand. “I should go in before I’m late. I know they said no one is allowed in the room, but are you sure you don’t want to come up to the waiting room?”

“That’s okay,” she rasps. “I’ll grab a coffee down the road and come back, read while I wait for you. I’ll be right here when you get out.”

Nodding, I slip from the car.

As I step out, my eyes are pulled left, toward a small building beside the main one with the name, Tri-City Rehabilitation Center, in large, bold letters hanging over the double doors.

Pressure falls over my chest as I stare at the dark windows.

“You okay?” My mom’s voice shakes me out of my head, and I force a smile.

“Yeah. See you in a bit.”

I walk into the building, and while it feels like hours of waiting; in reality. it’s only a handful of minutes and then I’m sitting on a velvety sofa, the man who joined Dr. Brian in explaining what might have happened to me sitting behind the desk before me.

He smiles and I sit on my hands, a little anxious all of a sudden.

“It’s good to see you again, Arianna. You’re looking much healthier.”

“Yeah, I can move without feeling like I’m being stabbed now.”

He chuckles, crossing one leg, and I do the same. “So, I read over everything again and—”

“I’m sorry, not to be rude, Dr. Stacia, but can we not do any of the basic lead-up stuff?”

The man offers a small smile and sits forward. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind, and we can go from there? Does that sound all right?”

I nod, stretching past the tension in my chest.

“I don’t remember anything,” I blurt out. “It’s been a month now, and nothing. It’s like I wake up and there’s this layer of fog over my eyes, but I can see just fine. My mind is constantly running, but only with half thoughts. I look at something and lose my breath, but I don’t know why. I hear a sad song and I cry, but for what? I smell familiar scents that aren’t even familiar, if that makes sense, and it’s like my throat swells and I can’t breathe. Almost like everything is on the tip of my tongue, at the tip of my fingers, but when I move forward to grab it, there’s nothing to hold on to.

“There’s this… this feeling I keep getting.” Tears prick my eyes now. “It’s like an overwhelming sense of urgency, demanding my attention, almost like need or awareness. It keeps screaming that I’m missing something, something big. Something that’s a part of me, but I don’t know what it is. It’s physically painful, like beneath the bones painful, where I can’t touch it, can’t find it, but it’s heavy, and the desperation that falls over me when it happens is debilitating.

“It’s so often that now I’m avoiding the things I do know, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that soon and I’ll go crazy. I feel like I was tossed out in the middle of the ocean and if I lie back and try to float, try to remember, I’ll drown, so I keep swimming. I keep busy. But lately, I’m running on empty. My family has been amazing, but that’s because I smile all the time, and I don’t know how much longer I can do that.”

I take a breath, looking up at Dr. Stacia.

The man nods, considers everything I have said, and as he begins to speak, breaking down what I’ve expressed and relating it to my situation in a way that medically makes sense to him, a weight falls over me.

I want to scream, to cry. I want to run away.

But instead, I do what I’ve been doing for the last several weeks.

I push it away, bury it with a smile, and when he lifts from his seat, offering me his hand, I shake it, pacing myself as I walk out the door, wishing I never walked through it.

As promised, my mom is waiting just outside the building, and as I slip inside the front seat, saying not a word, my mother reads it on my face.

Her tears are as instant as mine, and when I turn away, she faces forward.

I zone out, and the next thing I know, we’re pulling up to the beach house, my dad’s truck parked behind Chase’s in the driveway.

When I don’t get out, my mom asks, “Want to come back to our condo?”

Shaking my head, I bite at the inside of my cheek and jump out.

I head inside, my movements jerky, eyes watery, and cheeks red.

Everyone’s sitting in the living room watching TV, but the moment they set eyes on me, it’s paused.

My dad’s eyes fly to my mom, and Mason frowns, leaning forward.

Chase stands, starts toward me, but I throw my hands up, toss my purse to the floor and keep walking.

I need… I need…

What the fuck do you need, Ari? Goddamn it!

I’m out the back door and running for the beach in seconds.

The wind whips my face, burning my skin, but I don’t care. I keep running.

About a half mile down the beach, my throat swells, my tears choking me, and I growl, swiping them away with angry movements.

I jerk to a stop and something has me spinning around, looking forward, and that’s when I see him.

Noah.

My shoulders fall, and as if I spoke his name aloud, he turns, spotting me in an instant.

He frowns, grips the edge of the dock his legs are dangling over, but he doesn’t move when something tells me he wants to.

Before I realize it, I’m four feet from him, and he’s looking up at me.

“I don’t feel like talking right now.” I’m not sure why I say it when I’m the one who walked over, but that’s what comes out.

Noah nods, his brows nearly touching in the middle. “Talking’s overrated.”

A chuckle slips from me, and I sniffle, catching the small twitch of his lips.

Folding my toes in my shoes, I hold a hand out. “We could… not talk together?”

His tongue comes out, running across his lips, and a heaviness settles over me as I wait for his response, but I’m not sure why, because when he nods again, it’s as if I knew what his answer would be before he made it.

Something tells me I did.

Noah

Ari stares down at me, a small smile on her lips, her hand outstretched and eyes red-rimmed. I knew the second I saw her, she was upset, that she’d been crying, but I also knew she wasn’t in the mood to share. She needs time to herself to process her thoughts, just like me.

So, I take her extended hand.

The moment my palm touches hers, it’s as if a needle pricks our skin, and she jolts from the small shock.

A laugh slips from her, and I can’t help but grin as I leap to my feet.

Once standing, I turn, so my body is facing the same direction as hers, and this time, offer her my hand. It’s with a coy smile that she grabs hold.

Her head tips back the slightest bit, so she can see me fully, and slowly, very slowly, a softness falls over her. Her eyes roam along my face, her fingers twitching in mine, and before she realizes, before she grows anxious and pulls away in confusion, as she’s done every other time she allows herself to be close to me, I nod.

“Let’s get to that ‘not talking’ then, huh?”

Ari smiles and leads us down the long dock, but instead of walking to the end, where the wood meets the sand, she turns us halfway.

We leap over the side, the ground not three feet from us.

The second we touch the sand, she looks to me and the glimmer in her brown eyes has my muscles flexing.

I quickly let her go, burying my hand in my hoodie pocket, and she does the same.

With nothing but the sound of the ocean around us, she leads us farther down the coastline, to a boat ramp about a mile away.

She bends and begins untying a two-person paddle boat.

“Should I be on the lookout?”

Over her shoulder, she throws me a smile, and I want to drop to my knees beside her.

“It’s Lolli’s, she won’t mind.”

I nod, jerking closer when she starts to climb in, but she doesn’t need my help.

She’s done this a million times.

I hop in beside her, and off we go, paddling out into open ocean but sticking close to the land.

It’s not for a good hour, and after our second time passing her beach house that she stops peddling and lets her butt fall to the floorboard, her legs thrown over the top, head tipped back on the seat.

She stares at the cloudy sky, and I join her.

“You ever wish you could go to a new place and take on a whole other life? Like tell everyone your name is John and you’re a carpenter with no family and moved on a whim?”

“No.”

Her head snaps my way at my quick, flat response to her wishful notion.

“I’d tell everyone my name is McLovin.”

She laughs, her body shaking, and when she looks back to the sky, it’s with a sigh. “I love that movie.”

I know.

A somberness falls over her and I wait.

It takes a minute, but then she closes her eyes, and when they open back up, they focus on the yellow nail polish she’s now chipping from her thumb.

“I had a doctor’s appointment today, you know, to check on me after the accident.”

I knew this. It’s why I came out here in the first place, to the one place I could feel like I was close to her, even when I wasn’t.

I should have been there with her, sitting in the waiting room, so I could take her hand and hold her when she came out, celebrating the good or comforting through the bad.

A knot forms in the pit of my stomach.

“They, um, they think I’m blocking the memories, they said sometimes people who are… severely depressed do that.” Tears build in her eyes, and she shakes her head. “How am I supposed to know if that’s the problem when I can’t remember if I was depressed in the first place?”

I fight not to let out the shuddered breath lodged in my chest, the pain in her tone too fucking much. Her silent cries shake her body, and she looks away embarrassed.

She’s breaking beside me and I can’t take it. Can’t do this.

She wants to learn things on her own, but she needs something to hold on to. She needs to know she was okay. That she’ll be okay.

My knuckle finds its place beneath her chin, and when my thumb falls to the space between there and her bottom lip, her lips part with a low gasp and her eyes fly to mine before I’ve even turned her face my way.

There’s a plea within them, but goddamn it, my baby has no idea what she’s asking for.

It’s subconscious, her heart and mind knowing I’m right here, dying to take away her pain, to comfort and support her through anything. Always.

Forever.

Her chest inflates, and my lips curve into a small, gentle smile.

“You were hurt, and it felt like the worst thing you could imagine.” Her lip quivers, but she doesn’t dare look away. “You cried a lot, hid away, and pretended things weren’t as bad as they were, but slowly…” I swallow. “Very slowly, the light slid back into your eyes.”

Her blinks grow slow, her tears slipping and rolling down to meet my skin. “Why do I get the feeling you helped with it?” she whispers.

I force my hand to fall and will my eyes to follow.

“Did you help with that?” She tries again.

I know she wants to remember on her own, but I already messed that up by sharing what I did. Now she’s asking for more.

For a tiny piece.

I promised I’d never deny her, so I won’t.

I clear my throat and answer the best way I know how.

“I hope so.”

Her smile is unhurried, and she faces the open waters, murmuring, “I think you did.”

I think I’m losing you…