April

“Oh God, oh God,” I moan into a hard, warm chest. What the hell happened last night?

I can’t afford to forget things that just happened when I’m still trying to remember everything from the past. Feeling embarrassed and confused, I sit up, pinching the bridge of my nose and shutting my eyes. My head feels like there is someone inside my brain using a jackhammer. As I look down, I hear an equally pained groan coming from Matt.

I pull on the long T-shirt I’m wearing—it smells just like the man I was just snuggling with—but I can tell that I’m completely nude underneath it. Then I look down at Matt. He has an arm covering his eyes and the sheets have fallen low on his abdomen. I’m tempted to lift them to see if he’s wearing something underneath. But instead my eyes roam over his bare body.

Tanned, toned, every single abdominal muscle etched out like a Greek statue. I notice that he has a small word tattooed on his side, and I lean down to read it.

Panic, it says.

Moving his arm from his face, he opens one eye and then slowly the other. When his eyes meet mine, he shuts them tightly and groans, “Fuuuuck.”

Well, that’s a blow to my ego.

Running a palm down his face, he sits up and throws his legs over the side of the bed. I can now see he’s wearing a pair of navy blue gym shorts.

“Did something…did we do something last night?” I ask, trying to focus on the memories. Vodka, wine, rum, gin, beer, whiskey. We tried it all in order to jolt me into remembering what other drinks I liked. It did nothing to help me remember and everything to help me forget whatever happened after the white wine.

He looks over his shoulder at me. His face is a mask, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Is he mad I’m here? Does he regret us sleeping together, even though I think we didn’t actually sleep together? I wish I could get inside his mind. He’s facing forward now, his head hanging low. There’s a tattoo on his shoulder blade of the scales of justice, the image distorted, making it look as if it’s melting down his back. As I’m wondering what it means, he stands up and without looking back at me says, “Woman, if we had fucked, I guarantee you’d have remembered.”

Woman.

A motorcycle.

Balloons.

I’m smiling deliriously.

I’m happy.

The way he says “woman” does something to me. It’s familiar. He’s called me that before. And somehow that triggers scenes to flash through my mind. Like waking up from a dream you want to hold on to, but when you start to think about it, you can’t really make it out. Just flashes of images.

“But…I don’t remember,” I whisper, mostly to myself.

He stops as he is about to step out of the room and turns to look at me. I think he thinks I’m criticizing his abilities in the bedroom.

“Excuse me?”

“We’ve had sex before. Of course we have. Why didn’t I think about that before?” How can I not even remember that?

He just stares at me, and suddenly I’m furious at his reticence. I’m starting to hate this secretive part of Matt, I know that there’s more that he’s not telling me. I can feel it. “Guess it wasn’t so memorable,” I say snarkily, and walk right past him to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. But before I can lock it, he opens it and stalks toward me. My heart begins to beat faster and faster, and I take a step back and then another one until my back hits the sink. “You’re back,” he says in a deep voice.

Now it’s my turn to look confused.

He runs his palm sweetly down my cheek and then down my throat and around, until he’s gripping the back of my neck, forcing my head up so that I have to look into his eyes. “This is you. Feisty. Full of fuckin’ sass. I don’t care what you pretended to be back then, but woman, that sass, that shit was all the real you.”

“Matt,” I whisper, my mind racing in tempo with my heart and my libido. His eyes are wild and he looks predatory. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means you didn’t lie about everything.” His face goes from serious to a big dimpled smile that warms my heart. He kisses my forehead before he lets go of my neck. “Makes me damn happy. Damn happy,” he repeats, almost to himself, before he closes the door leaving me alone, confused, hungover, and—damn it—horny.

After brushing my teeth and trying my best not to throw up, I pad to the kitchen, where I find Matt downing aspirin. “Here,” he offers, handing me two along with a glass of water.

“What the hell happened?”

“You don’t remember?” he asks, dropping two slices of bread into the toaster.

“Well, yeah. Sort of. We drank too much and we stumbled back here.”

“You needed help taking off your shirt. You said your ugly clothes needed to be burned. And then you sat on my bed and just sort of conked out.”

I cringe, and he smiles. “I wasn’t too far behind you—I fell asleep almost immediately too. It was a fun night.”

“It was,” I agree. “Thank you. I think I needed that.”

“We both did.”

“Can you explain what you meant just now, please?”

He gestures to the chair, and I sit. Just then the toast pops up.

Handing me one of the dry slices, he takes the other one and sits across from me. “I don’t know if telling you this is a good idea, but I’m going to do it anyway. I met you at my club, and the short version of the story is that we started dating. I fell for you hard. Like…” He shakes his head as if he’s trying to banish something from his mind. “Like I’ve never fallen for another woman. Except you told me your name was June Simpson and you were a pharmaceutical rep. For the better part of a year that is what I knew about you. You traveled for work, but when you weren’t traveling we were mostly together. I thought you felt the same about me. In fact, you told me you did. Then one day you just disappeared, and I didn’t see you again until a week before you were attacked. When we had a nasty fight.”

The small gnawing feeling in my head quickly turns into a locomotive ramming into my skull. “What? I disappeared? June? I don’t…I don’t understand.”

“Damn it,” he curses, quickly walking around the table and kneeling next to me. He grabs my hands and looks me in the eyes. “I didn’t want to upset you. Maybe I shouldn’t have…”

“No, no, please. Tell me. I need to know.”

“April—”

“Matt, please. Tell me. Keep going,” I plead. “I don’t know who I am, and now you’re giving me a different name and a different profession, and it’s just confusing me so much. Please.”

“Okay, okay.” He takes a breath, pulls the chair close to me, and sits back down, then grabs my hand again. “I don’t know the entire story or your version because—I’m not going to lie—I was an asshole when I saw you again, and I refused to listen. But apparently you were an undercover cop.”

“I knew that about myself already. Dean told me.”

“But you were working my club. Your information is what brought down my father.”

I let go of his hand as if it’s a live snake about to bite me. I stand up, pushing back the chair as I do. “What?”

“My dad, he’s in prison.”

“In prison? For what? For how long?”

“The charges were drug trafficking, conspiracy, and racketeering, and he’ll be in there for the rest of his life.”

“Oh. My. God,” I exclaim, running my hands through my hair. “I had your father arrested and given a life sentence?”

“No, not exactly. He doesn’t have a life sentence, but he’s old and the reality is he’ll probably die in there.”

“Why are you being so blasé about this?”

“I’m not. I’ve been angry, sad, then back to angry for a year now. I’ve had time to process it. You haven’t.”

“And it was me? I was the one that did this? You’re sure? No wonder you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You should,” I exclaim. “I want more information. Why would I do that to you? That’s so…so…cruel.”

He doesn’t say anything back. I’m guessing he agrees with this statement. “I’m sorry,” I say at last.

“You can’t apologize for something you don’t remember having happened.”

How can I have done this? It’s so heartless. Did I lead him on? Did I really love him? I mean, he obviously loved me, but I can’t remember how I felt about him. And if what he’s saying is accurate, I may not have loved him back. I was just playing him. God, I’d hate me too. The nausea I was fighting roars back. “Oh, God,” I cry, gripping the edge of the table. “I—I…” I can’t finish the statement, and I run as quickly as I can to the bathroom before I throw up. I can’t think of anything but the way I feel. Confusion. Embarrassment, Sadness. When I’m done, I blindly flush the toilet and lay my head on the cold tile floor, which feels like the only good thing in my life at the moment.

Strong hands pull me up from the floor. “Come on,” he says once I’m on my feet. He hands me my toothbrush with paste already on it, and once I’m done, he gives me some 7-Up. “Slow sips.” I stand there waiting for my stomach to settle, and even though it eventually does, my emotions by no means do.

“I—I—” A sob escapes my lips. “I’m so sorry. I know you don’t want to hear it, but I am.”