22
ASH
The walk I’d hoped would clear my head hadn’t worked, and by the time I got back to the house I’d been anxious and wired with the anticipation of seeing Lily. When Maya told me she’d come and gone, I exploded. “What do you mean, she left?” I yelled. “How could you let her go?”
“Calm down, Ash,” Maya said. “She needs time to get her head straight. She’ll be back in the morning.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said, my voice increasing in both volume and intensity. “You should’ve made her stay. Told her to wait until I got back.” I felt my fists clench into tight balls, the muscles in my neck straining. It was at that point I noticed Maya’s wide eyes, the way she’d taken a step back, as if she was scared of me. And who could blame her? What kind of a person acted this way, yelling and screaming at someone who’d done nothing but help? I thought back to what Maya had said, that my increasingly irate behavior was because of the situation, and my amnesia, and hoped she was right. I could barely keep my frustrations at a simmer and not only did it make me hate myself right then, but also I felt ashamed.
“Can you please tell me what you two talked about?” I said gently.
Maya relayed their conversation, ending with, “Surely you can see how this has to be really hard for her?”
“Yes, I can,” I said, my anger dissipating some more.
“Anyway,” Maya continued, “you’ll talk to her tomorrow. It’ll be fine, I’m sure.”
“Maybe I should go and see her now.”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You don’t know how she’ll react. You could end up pushing her away. Look, let’s try to relax and talk things through some more. I need a drink. Want a beer?”
Given the circumstances, I would’ve happily downed an entire keg. As Maya got our drinks I headed to the bathroom, where I reminded myself to get a grip. Lily needed some more time to think things through. Understandable and no big deal. Except it was a big deal because I wanted to see her.
Back in the living room Maya handed me a bottle of beer, some unfiltered stuff with licorice or something. I’d examined it earlier and put it straight back in the fridge in favor of a soda. When she saw my raised eyebrow she said, “You love this brand. It’s local stuff, you can only get it around here.”
I shrugged and took a sip. It tasted bitter and smelled worse than dog crap, so when Maya turned her back I poured most of it into the only houseplant we had, hoping I wouldn’t kill it.
After dinner we watched some television, but I could feel Maya observing me, so I feigned heavy yawning and headed upstairs only to toss and turn in bed as my nerves built.
A few hours until Lily would arrive, and I was expected to hold a proper conversation with her, my partner. Thinking of her that way felt odd. What would I do when she arrived? Give her a hug? A kiss? If it was the latter, on the cheek or the lips? Or should I be formal and shake her hand? Her not coming until the morning was a good thing after all because I needed more time, too. The situation was bizarre enough, but what compounded it further was the fact I found Lily attractive. Exceedingly so. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise seeing as we were a couple, but realizing we’d been together—including intimately—and I had no recollection of her, made me feel a combination of angry and helpless, anxious and sad. I wondered what she’d seen in me when we met, what I’d been like as a boyfriend. Had I been as foul-tempered with her as I was with Maya? The thought made me shudder and I added the question to my growing list and included another: Why did she want to have anything to do with me now, considering my lies?
I wondered if I should’ve been writing this stuff down in case my memory morphed into even more of an unpredictable animal. I clenched my jaw tight, squeezed my eyes shut. Dr. Adler would give me the results of the second batch of blood tests soon, and it would’ve been a lie to say I wasn’t worried. What if there really was something more wrong with me? What if my amnesia had less to do with whatever happened on the beach that night and more with a cancerous tumor eating away at my brain? I flopped around in bed for another while before giving up, but trying to ignore everything wrong with the inside of my head became impossible.
The house was quiet—I’d heard Maya go to bed a while ago—and I sneaked past her bedroom and down the stairs, avoiding the third one from the top because I now knew it creaked. Maya had told me how she’d figured it out the first time she and Ophelia stayed in the house, when she’d sneaked down to the kitchen for a midnight snack. My dad had heard footfalls, and when he’d found Maya with her nose buried in the fridge, he’d made her a giant hot chocolate complete with sprinkles and marshmallows, and two slices of peanut butter toast.
“I loved your dad,” she’d said. “He was the dad I’d dreamed about when I was a kid. Our family was perfect. It was everything I’d ever wanted.”
I’d made some excuse about having something in my eye because the thought of my father being such a good man, of whom I only had filaments of memories, made me
