by Jenn Burke
Aidan smiled at that thought. Despite Nassim’s gruff-at-times façade and his slight snobbishness, he definitely didn’t seem to be a heavy-handed, imperial sort.
He sat in his chair and nudged the seat to swivel to one side and then the other. On shelves to one side was the geek collection Nassim had referred to—a series of small futuristic figurines with laser guns and a couple of spaceships. He felt like he should recognize them, as though the names of the people and ships were on the tip of his tongue, but nothing came to him. The surface of the desk was completely bare of papers, holding only a pair of monitors, a closed sleek laptop, a phone, and one of those tiny desk calendars with a daily inspirational quote where you tore off a new page for every day. The page currently displayed was for the previous Monday, the day he disappeared. He looked a little closer and found what he’d assumed was an inspirational quote was actually one from Star Wars, according to the logo.
“Definitely a geek,” he murmured.
With a sigh he tore off the page and then the next and the next until he reached the current date. If only it were so easy to get caught up on his life.
Chapter Four
“I CAN’T believe you found the receipts.”
Aidan grinned as he trailed Nassim out of the elevator and into the penthouse, amused by the slight whine in his voice. “Not my fault you and Harshad are blind.”
“I swear I looked in that folder.”
“Did you? Did you really?”
Nassim grumbled, which made Aidan’s smile even wider.
“I’ll fire you,” Nassim promised.
Aidan shook his head and continued down the hall. He’d heard that threat enough throughout the day to learn that Nassim never meant it. He said it because he wouldn’t do it—because his employees were his hoard, Aidan realized suddenly. Was that why the employees of Tuninas felt like such a tight-knit group? Did they even realize a dragon had adopted them into his hoard?
“What are you doing?”
Aidan blinked. He’d been heading down the hall to get changed, but this… this was not his bedroom. And he was still wearing his work clothes. He looked around at the kitchen and the items arranged on the counter—a pan, a rice cooker, a couple of uncooked chicken breasts, and a whole load of spices. He held a knife in his hand as though it were the most natural thing ever.
“Uh….” He swallowed and turned to Nassim, who was watching him with a crease between his brows and concern in his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Muscle memory?” Nassim suggested softly.
Is that what it was? Was it his routine to start on dinner as soon as he got home? But… this wasn’t his home, so how would the muscle memory even translate? It was almost as though he’d disappeared and something else had taken over his body for a few minutes.
Not a reassuring thought.
He let go of the knife, and it clattered to the granite countertop. “I’m, uh… I’m a little freaked out here.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. My body can’t just go and be… be autonomous. Jesus Christ.” Aidan scrubbed a hand over his forehead and into his hair.
“You like to cook.”
Nassim’s gentle words derailed Aidan’s imminent panic attack. “What?”
“You like to cook,” Nassim repeated. “You always bring in leftovers for lunch. You even set up an international food potluck lunch in February.”
“Oh.” Aidan wondered what he’d brought, what Nassim had brought… if anything.
“So maybe just go with it.”
“Huh?”
“Stop thinking and go with it.”
Aidan bit his lip, his gaze roaming from Nassim and back to the items he’d gathered on the counter. “You think?”
“The worst that’ll happen is that it’s terrible and we get takeout.” Nassim shrugged and pushed away from the island. Moments later Aidan heard his tread on the stairs that led to his bedroom and office.
“Just go with it,” Aidan murmured. “Yeah, okay. But body, we need to get changed before we make dinner.”
His body didn’t seem to have any objections to that, so Aidan abandoned his ingredients and utensils for a moment and hightailed it down the hall to get into something more cooking-appropriate.
An hour later he was dishing up a meal on a pair of plates. He’d gone with the no-thinking approach—harder than he’d thought it would be—and the result was a pile of chicken pieces and chopped potatoes in a yellow sauce over jasmine rice. He had no idea what the concoction was called, but it smelled good, and when he sampled a bite, he found it tasted good too.
“Dinner’s ready,” he called.
“I’m here.”
Aidan couldn’t stop the little jump he gave at Nassim’s unexpected presence. “You need to make more—is that a Twenty One Pilots T-shirt?”
Nassim glanced down at his chest. When he looked up, his bronze cheeks were a little darker, and he shifted the laptop he carried under one arm. “Yes.”
“Wait. Wasn’t that the concert you said I went to? You like them too?”
“Yes.” Nassim cleared his throat. “It smells good.”
For a moment Aidan thought he meant the band or maybe the T-shirt. Then his brain kicked back into gear. Dinner, dummy. “Uh, thanks. It’s…. I have no idea what it is.”
“Thai golden curry. One of your favorites. If, uh, your lunches are anything to go by.” Nassim slid into one of the stools and opened up the laptop on the counter. “Do you mind if I get caught up on email while we eat?”
“No. Go for it.”
“Thanks.” Nassim fiddled with the laptop’s touchpad and pulled the plate of rice and curry closer. “I normally wouldn’t, but our West Coast sales team seems to be having a collective apoplexy.”
Aidan settled onto the stool next to Nassim and tried not to notice how close they were sitting. “Nothing serious, I hope?”
“If I answer their questions quickly enough, it shouldn’t be.”
Silence descended as they ate. Aidan sneaked glances now and again at Nassim as he worked through his inbox while enjoying the food. His usual glower was gone. Though now that Aidan thought about it, he’d hardly seen it at all today. Being CEO seemed to agree with Nassim. Or maybe it was just easier than dealing with the uncertainty of an amnesiac assistant.
They were almost done dinner by the time Nassim closed his laptop and pushed it aside.
“Did you cure their apoplexy?” Aidan asked.
“Until the next relapse. My apologies for bringing work to the dinner table. This is really good, Aidan. Thank you.”
The first compliment he could remember made Aidan duck his head. “Glad you enjoyed it,” he said.
“I really did.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How did I know where everything was in your kitchen?”
Although Aidan had tried not to think as he cooked, he couldn’t help but be aware that there was no hesitation in his fingers as he reached for ingredients. He knew what spices Nassim had and their arrangement on the rack. He knew what Nassim’s well-stocked pantry held—or at least his subconscious seemed to. Same with the cooking implements. He knew the location of the pans, the pots, the… everything.
It didn’t make sense.
“Oh.” Nassim seemed at a loss for words. “You did?”
“I did.”
“Huh.”
Aidan waited for Nassim to say something more. Moments stretched out, the silence broken only by the sound of Nassim’s fork tapping the inside of his bowl as he fidgeted with it.
“Nassim?” It’s a stupid question. Don’t ask it. Don’t— “Have I… been in your apartment before?”
Nassim got up from his stool. “That was very good, Aidan. Thank you. I appreciate the—”
“Nassim?”
“I’ll clean up.” Nassim scooped up Aidan’s empty bowl and carried the dishes to the sink. “Truly, thank you. And a
pologies once again for working as I ate.”
“Just tell me.”
Nassim paused, his back to Aidan. “Yes.”
Aidan’s breath caught. “When? Why?”
For a moment Aidan thought Nassim wasn’t going to answer. “At Yule. You helped me with a private party.”
Aidan deflated. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it. “Why not just come out and tell me?”
Finally Nassim turned around. “The doctor suggested I tell you as little as possible so your imagination doesn’t start filling in the blanks of your memories.”
But one visit five months ago didn’t seem any bigger than the fact that Aidan liked to cook or that he liked music or that he liked coffee, all things Nassim had already shared. And it didn’t explain how he would still know, months later, where everything was.
It just didn’t make sense.
“Go.” Nassim nodded at the hallway. “I’ve got this.”
Aidan headed down the hall to his room, his brain still caught up in the puzzle of himself.
I LIKE to cook.
I’m good at finding things.
I make good bets.
I have a good memory? (Ironic.)
Aidan eyed his list of characteristics and bits of information about himself, satisfied with how it was coming along. The picture it was starting to make—well, it wasn’t entirely intelligible yet, but he had hope. He’d discovered this much so quickly, and it had only been a couple of days.
Aidan flipped the notebook shut and opened up his laptop. It still had no password, but it hardly mattered. There was nothing for anyone to find on it anyway, except for that dragon-human porn GIF, and he’d be looking at it again later. For now, he had more searching to do.
He typed “Aidan Bishop” into the search bar. A Facebook and Twitter account popped up, and his stomach jumped in anticipation, even though he had found no evidence of social media accounts in his browser or elsewhere. A quick perusal of the accounts showed they had no connection to him, however, unless he had skipped out on a life of rapping. But that Aidan Bishop looked nothing like him, so no.
He scrolled through a dozen pages of search results but found nothing connected to him other than a tweet from the Ottawa Police about his disappearance and a follow-up that he’d been found. Thankfully they provided no other information for the curious masses.
He went back to the scroll bar and typed in “Aidan Donnelly Bishop.” Again, nothing relevant. He gently tapped his thumb against the space bar as he debated what his next step would be.
What if he didn’t go by Aidan Bishop online?
It was entirely possible, and that made a lot more sense than a twenty-five-year-old not having any social media accounts at all. A lot of people liked the anonymity of an online handle or pseudonym. But… problem. Without his memory, how would he ever figure out what his handle might be?
Back to Google.
How to find someone online even if you don’t know their name.
Jackpot. Aidan scrolled through the multiple returns on that search and selected the first one. It was a rundown of how to find someone on Facebook. All you needed, apparently, was the city they lived in, where they worked, and what their interests might be. Oh, and an idea of what they looked like.
He had all of that.
After half an hour or so of fiddling—and creating a Facebook account so he could access the damned site—Aidan had the process of searching for himself figured out. The problem was that he wasn’t getting any valid results with Tuninas as workplace or location visited. Frowning, he removed Tuninas and tried again. That brought up a ton of possibilities, but he didn’t have much choice other than to plow through them one by one.
He was able to rule out some profiles—the ones with pictures that clearly weren’t him. That left dozens more where the person used a nonhuman avatar, like a picture of an animal or a video game character or some weird symbol. Aidan clicked on each one, skimmed the profile, and then went back to the list. None of them were him.
Just when he was about to give up on the random Facebook profiles in favor of the dragon-human porn GIF—searching for the full video of that would have to be more enjoyable—he came across a profile with the name “H. Washbourne.” Something about that tickled Aidan’s brain, but it was there and gone too quickly to nail down. The avatar was an extralarge Starbucks coffee cup—a venti, his brain supplied—as the profile pic.
He clicked on the profile and reared back as he saw his own face smiling at him.
After a second to catch his breath, Aidan scrolled down the profile, what there was of it. It was locked to friends only, which meant only the items tagged as public were viewable. That turned out to be the name, the city he lived in, one picture, and a post about Tetris. He clicked on Add Friend, hoping it would open up more content, but apparently he was looking at all that was public on the profile.
So he focused on examining the picture.
It was definitely him. His hair was the same unmistakable orange. He wasn’t looking at the camera, but his mouth was stretched in a wide grin. In one hand he held a mug of beer, and the other was draped around a shorter dark-haired man whose face was obscured, since he was turned away from the camera and Aidan’s hand with the mug was partially blocking it. It wasn’t his post. Someone else had tagged him.
Hanging with H! He assumed that meant the poster, Rye G., was the guy in the photo. Aidan clicked on Rye’s name.
His profile offered just as much detail as Aidan’s—as in none. He had only the one picture. Rye—and Aidan would put money on him being the friend, Ryan, who had been mentioned to the cops—looked pretty comfortable under Aidan’s arm. Who was he?
As far as Aidan knew, he was a total stranger. Nothing about his appearance triggered any memories, not even a wisp of one. If Aidan wasn’t staring at a picture of himself holding on to this guy, he would have sworn he’d never seen him before.
He tapped his fingers on the keyboard again as he debated his next move. Friend and message Rye? And say what? No one else had come forward looking for Aidan, so if this guy was a real-life friend of his, he wasn’t a great one. He’d hope a real friend would wonder why he’d dropped off the grid for a week.
Still… Rye was a potential window into who Aidan was.
Okay, plan. He’d friend Rye and send a message. He clicked on Add Friend, brought up a message window, and typed out a sentence. Then deleted it. Then another… and deleted it too.
“Gah.” Aidan took a deep breath and shook out his hands. “It’s not that big of a deal. C’mon, you dork.”
Hi, this is Aidan Bishop. This is going to sound kind of crazy but… something happened last week, and I lost my memory. I found a picture of you and me on the H. Washbourne account (which I can’t access), and I think we might know each other? I’d really appreciate it if you could get back to me and help me fill in some blanks. Thanks.
He hit Send before he could think twice and then closed the laptop. No porn searching tonight. He’d be tempted to continuously check Facebook to see if he had a response. He settled into bed with one of the books he’d retrieved from his apartment and tried to put a friend named Rye out of his mind.
Chapter Five
“HEY, Aidan, have you seen Nassim?”
Aidan looked up from the presentation he was formatting for a meeting later in the week to see a short Chinese woman with a sweetly round face standing in front of his desk. “Rebecca, right? From sales?”
She smiled. “Yeah, that’s me. Awesome. Getting to know everyone’s names again, eh?”
“I’d never forget a great smile like that.” He grinned as she blushed. A glance behind him confirmed Nassim wasn’t in his office. “I don’t think he has anything in his calendar….”
He didn’t. And now that Aidan was thinking about it, he hadn’t seen Nassim since before lunch. “Huh. I’m not sure where he is.”
“Probably the cave.”
Despite
Jasper mentioning that on Aidan’s first day, he hadn’t had a chance to discover what exactly it was. “Do you know where that is?”
Rebecca huffed a laugh. “Everyone knows where that is. Oh… except you, I’m guessing. Jasper didn’t show you?”
“My tour got interrupted.”
“Crap.” She tapped her fingers against her arm, obviously considering her next steps. “Okay, look. If Nassim’s in the cave—and I assume he is, since I instant messaged him like an hour ago and he didn’t respond, which is unusual—then normally I’d leave him alone because clearly he needs some time to himself. But I’ve got papers he needs to sign before three thirty so I can get the originals couriered to arrive at the client’s offices tomorrow.” Her smile morphed into something pleading. “Could you go get him? Please?”
“What, me? I don’t even know where the cave—”
“It’s easy to find. Go down that hall, and it’s the door at the end. You’ll need to swipe your key card.”
“But—”
“Please, Aidan.”
“Why don’t you go?”
“Nope.” She popped the P and shook her head. “Nassim is a great boss—the best—but if he’s having alone time in the cave, you couldn’t pay me enough to disturb him.”
Aidan’s brain went places with the mention of alone time, places it shouldn’t go but had been going off and on since he realized what an amazing ass Nassim had. “Seriously, you should ask Jasper or… anyone else. Really.”
“You’re his assistant.”
Okay. She had him there. Aidan sighed. “Leave the folder on his desk. End of the hall, you said?”
Rebecca beamed. “Thank you, Aidan.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Rebecca deposited the folder and left with a bounce in her step now that someone would be taking care of her problem. Aidan closed Nassim’s office door behind her, checked to make sure his key card was attached to his belt, and started down the hall.
