Lost and Found

by Lilian Carmine

  It was Josh’s turn to speak up on their behalf. “Sorry, Joey. Guys, we should trust Tristan’s judgment. He has faith that she’ll get her memory back, so we should as well. The big guy is usually right about these things. Let’s give him a vote of trust, yeah?”

  “A vote of trust about what?” Tristan’s head suddenly poked through the doorway, his expression curious. “Is this about my idea for the next tour?” His gray eyes lit up in expectation.

  “Noooooo!” they all chorused in unison. “We’ve told you that’s not gonna fly, man. Forget about that, already!” Josh said, looking a bit peeved.

  “Oh. All right, then. I know when I’m outnumbered . . .”

  “Apparently not, since you keep bringing it up every chance you get,” Sammy grumbled from his spot by the bed. “Let it go, dude. It’s not gonna happen.”

  “Fine! I’m letting it go,” Tristan said, and then turned to me. “So, my lovely fair maiden Isolde. Are you ready for our date?”

  “Is it time, already?” the boys all gasped together.

  “We hardly had any time to prep her!” Sammy complained.

  Tristan had proposed we had a date tonight, to help me unwind and maybe fire up some memories from our time together in the past. I had been silently freaking out since I had agreed to this. I was trying to act cool in front of the boys, but I really appreciated their help. They had kept me so distracted with their silly comments that I had completely forgotten about freaking out, up until now, when Tristan had come back into the bedroom.

  “You have been great keeping her company while I got some things done for our date outside, guys, thanks. But now you are released from your pre-date-prep duties. I can take it from here.”

  “Oh, but I’m not ready yet! I picked whatever dry clothes I could find in my bag, but I wasn’t thinking about choosing an outfit for a date . . .” I flustered in panic, trying to stall for more time.

  “Yeah! We didn’t even get to help her choose some nice lingerie for the date!” Sammy protested, while I blushed profusely and Seth whacked him on the back of the head.

  “You’re being weird again, Sam! She doesn’t know you’re joking! Stop!” Seth ordered.

  “Sorry. I’m stopping,” he muttered, walking out of the room with his tail between his legs.

  “That’s okay, Sam. It was pretty funny,” I said, as he passed by me. “Deeply inappropriate, but funny.”

  He grinned broadly and nodded before walking out of the room.

  “Your clothes are fine. Don’t worry about it, buttercup,” Tristan reassured me, with a warm smile, and extended his arm for me to take it. “If you would be so gracious as to accompany me, milady.”

  I smiled shyly and took his arm. “What’s with the medieval talk, if I may dare ask, dear sire?”

  “Oh, when we first met, I used to joke and talk to you like that. Because of the book, you know?”

  “Book? What book?”

  “Tristan and Isolde.” The tone of his voice was so sad, as if my question was hurtful to hear.

  “Oh! I love that book!” I said, and realization finally dawned on me. “Your name! It’s because of the book!” And he looked sad because I didn’t remember it. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry, Tristan.”

  Way to go to start off a date, Joey – forgetting the reason for his name.

  “It’s okay,” he said, still trying to be reassuring. “It’s not your fault.”

  “What did you cook for her, Halloway? It smells a-ma-zing!” Harry exclaimed, sniffing the air. “Can I have a taste? Just a small bite! Just let me have a quick look inside the pan, then! Please? I swear I won’t stick a finger in the food, this time!”

  “Hold on a sec. If you’ll excuse me, I have to take care of this first. You may not remember, but they will eat everything they can get their hungry little hands on, and leave us nothing, I swear. I must be swift and brutal about this extraction. Our meal is at stake,” Tristan said, already dragging two of the boys by the arm towards the front door, and ordering the two remaining ones to follow him outside.

  “All right. Where were we?” he asked, after shutting the cabin’s front door with a loud bang and turning to me. “Oh, yes. Our dinner awaits, milady! Follow me, please.”

  I chuckled at his overly polite manners and followed him to the cabin’s back door. “They are a fun bunch. A bit weird, but fun. I can see why we are close friends.”

  He paused before opening the door and turned to me. “They are not just ‘close friends’. They are family,” he corrected, before flicking a switch on. “That is why they are so gutted. It’s like you forgot about your own brothers.”

  “Oh. I see. That really sucks. I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I’m only trying to explain, so you won’t think of them as weird.” He pushed the back door open, extended his hand gently towards me, and, hand in hand, we walked outside.

  “Oh, my God. This is so beautiful!” I gasped as I saw the small backyard. There was a wooden patio table beautifully set for us, with a rustic candle in the middle and some wild flowers in a tin cup. But the most beautiful of all decorations was a string of fairy lights hung above our heads, coming from the cabin and connecting the trees surrounding us. It gave a magical aura to the place, as if we had plunged into a fairy tale’s summer night.

  There was wine in a couple of glasses, and a steaming pot set next to the plates. Tristan, true gentleman that he was, pulled up a chair for me to sit down. “I made your favorite dish. You don’t remember it’s your favorite, so I hope you like it.”

  I quickly sat down, because I was swooning so badly, I might have started to float around at any second, with stars bursting from my eyes. It was the most romantic candlelit dinner anyone had ever prepared for me!

  I really had struck gold with this guy.

  “This is amazing, Tristan! You didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me.”

  “It’s no trouble,” he replied charmingly, his beautiful gray eyes twinkling as bright as the fairy lights above us. He sat down in his chair. “Anything for my girl.”

  Major. Epic. Swooning. Here.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to ask. What are you hiding from me?”

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked, looking startled.

  “I mean, what is your problem? Like, are you a psychopathic murderer, or something? You must have some serious creepy secret like that! No one can be as perfect as you are! It’s not possible! I refuse to believe you’re real, then.”

  He laughed heartily at my flustered face. “Trust me, I’m real, sweetheart. But I’m far from perfect. If you need to feel more reassured about me, you have my word that you don’t need to worry. I have plenty of flaws and my fair share of secrets, too. You know them all and you have accepted them, too.”

  “Lucky for you, I can’t remember either the flaws or the secrets.”

  “Yes, but despite them all, I truly am a man of my word. And I once swore to you that I would never lie to you. We always tell the truth to each other. So believe me, love, you’re safe with me.”

  “Okay, fine. I believe you. I’ll trust you that you’re not perfect, even though it really looks like you are,” I agreed playfully.

  But as the night progressed, I was having trouble believing his protests. He had cooked me the most delicious pasta I had ever tasted in my life. Now I had to believe that this gorgeous man who could cook like heaven was not perfect? Yeah, right.

  After we’d finished our meal, he put the dishes away and, when he returned, he turned the fairy lights off, leaving just the lights coming from the cabin. Then he pulled a blanket from a wood bench and unfolded it on the grass.

  “What are we doing now?” I asked curiously, watching his silent preparations.

  “We did something like this for our first date.” He patted a place on the blanket for me to sit. “I thought maybe this might jog your memory. Come on, don’t be scared. We’re just going to lie down and watch the stars.”
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  “We stargazed on our first date?” I asked, sitting down at his side.

  “Yeah. The sky that night didn’t have as many stars as right now, but I wasn’t paying too much attention to the sky back then, anyway.” He smiled at the memory. “I was so nervous, trying to impress you. I had promised you the best date of your life. It’s a lot of pressure for a guy, you know.”

  I chuckled. “That’s so sweet. Where did we go for the date?”

  “Well, I kept it a secret while I planned the date, because I wanted to surprise you. So I fed false leads to the boys, knowing you’d harass them to tell you what I was up to. Seth ended up telling you I had dinner reservations for a fancy, posh restaurant near our school, and you bit the bait as expected.”

  “Oh, God. Really? I hate posh restaurants! I’m glad it was a false lead.”

  “I knew you hated them. I was trying to trick you. The main goal for that night was to surprise you.”

  “But where did you take me, then?”

  He smiled, leaning back and resting on his elbows. “I picked you up a little earlier than I’d said I would, before you could put on fancy clothes and uncomfortable heels, and told you some bogus story about wanting to talk to you in private. I still can’t believe I managed to fool you so easily, that day!”

  “I was probably worried sick about not making a fool of myself in that fake posh place you’d pretended we were going, you trickster! But where did we go? Tell me!” I asked, eager to hear the rest of his story.

  “I took you to this secret terrace in our old school. I thought it would be a nice, private place to have our date. I’d decorated it with tea-lights and lilies – you probably don’t remember, but they were your favorite flowers – and had set out a couple of blankets, just like this one here, and I had a picnic basket specially prepared, full of all sorts of junk food that I knew you loved, for our dinner. Oh, and an acoustic guitar so I could sing you a song later on.”

  “SHUT. UP! You didn’t! That is the best idea ever!” I exclaimed excitedly. “I can imagine my surprise. I must have adored it!”

  He beamed broadly. “You did. More than I’d imagined you would. I was really nervous, because I wasn’t so sure you’d like it. And I didn’t have much money back then, so it was really the only option for me. I kept thinking you were going to laugh at my face for such a cheap date. I tried to act confident at the time, but I was worried sick you’d hate it.”

  I gasped in outrage. “I would never! That is the most romantic date I’ve ever heard of! I’m sorry, but even this amazing dinner beneath fairy lights on a summer night by a cabin by the woods is not as nearly as romantic as that date sounds!”

  “I know. You told me you loved it, but I could already see in your eyes how much you truly did. I will never forget your face that night. You have no idea how happy I was. I couldn’t believe my lucky stars.” He lay down and crossed his hands under his head, watching the night sky with a contented smile. “And even though I was a nervous wreck, you somehow put me at ease so effortlessly . . . Five minutes into the date, I couldn’t even remember why I’d been so nervous in the first place. It was like having a date with the love of your life and your best friend all at once,” he confessed.

  “I always thought you could only have the one or the other, you know? You have love or friendship.” He reached out for my hand and interlaced his fingers with mine. “But with you, I have both. I am truly the luckiest man alive.”

  “Even now, with a wife that doesn’t remember you?” I asked quietly.

  “It’s temporary, sweetheart.” He squeezed my hand in reassurance.

  Suddenly I felt so sad. How could I have forgotten a guy as incredible as Tristan? “So what else happened on our first date?” I asked, trying to keep at bay the tears that were prickling my eyes.

  “Well, we lay on a blanket, just like we are doing now” – he pulled me down to rest beside him, and wrapped an arm around me – “and watched the stars for a while and just . . . talked. We talked about our plans for the future, our dreams . . . how we hoped we’d be still together when the year was over. It was the night I started believing that could really happen. You gave me true hope that night, Joey. I will treasure it forever.

  “But the memory I treasure the most isn’t of our first date. It’s of our engagement party in Italy. In our hearts if felt like that was our wedding day. We exchanged vows and rings.” He raised our clasped hands to show me the white gold wedding band on his finger. “And we celebrated with our close friends and your mom. I’ll remember that day forever.”

  “I still can’t believe I’m married. It seems so . . . unlike me,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know. It took a while for you to accept my proposal. You were dead set against a traditional marriage, but we made a very unorthodox celebration. There wasn’t a priest, or a walk down the aisle or any of those traditional things. It was kind of crazy.” He chuckled. “The only tradition you agreed was on the dress. God, when I saw you in that dress . . .” He paused, his voice shaking a little with emotion. “I don’t even have words to describe it, Joey. You were radiant like the sun, the most beautiful I’d ever seen you. I couldn’t speak or move, I was stunned by the sight of you.

  “It was like all of who you are, your love, strength and courage had merged into a state of pure beauty. When you walked towards me dressed in that perfect white dress, your soul was shining so brightly and you looked so happy . . . I made a vow to myself then and there, that I would try to make you happy for as long as I lived, so I could always see you shining as you did on that day.”

  He glanced down, startled when he noticed me shaking. “Joey? Sweetheart? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

  “I’m so sorry, Tristan. I’m sorry I can’t remember that date, the marriage or our life together. I’m so, so sorry!” I cried softly, while he sat up and scooped me into his arms.

  “All those memories will come back to you, love. You have to be patient.”

  “How can you be so sure? How can you have this absolute certainty? How?” I protested, scared that I might never remember him again.

  “Look, don’t worry about this any more, okay? You’re putting too much pressure on yourself, and that only makes things worse. We won’t talk about the past any more. How about we just enjoy this lovely evening together, and think about nothing else? How’s that sound?” he proposed, trying to calm me down.

  “I’m sorry. I’m tired. And my head is hurting again. I want to go back inside and rest a little.”

  He hugged me tight before he agreed. “Okay. We can do that. Come on.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Welcome Back

  OUR DATE WAS officially over. Tristan picked up the blanket from the backyard and locked the back door behind us, while I shuffled tiredly into the bedroom. But I couldn’t bear to see the resigned sadness on his face as he grabbed his pillow and started to get ready to sleep on the couch.

  “The couch is really uncomfortable, isn’t it?” I asked, moving quietly to stand in the living-room doorway a couple of minutes later.

  He glanced up, startled to see me there. He thought I’d gone to bed by now. “Hmm, no, it’s . . . all right.”

  “You said you promised never to lie to me.”

  He sighed. “Okay. This thing may be pretty, but it’s goddarn uncomfortable. That’s the truth. I was only trying not to upset you any more. I’m doing a terrible job so far, I know.”

  “You’re not upsetting me, Tris. You’ve been wonderful and patient and perfect throughout all this . . . Look, you can sleep in the bed with me tonight, okay?”

  “Really?” he asked, clearly surprised.

  “Yeah. I feel really bad for not remembering our past; please don’t make me feel even worse for making you sleep on this awful couch. Come on,” I pleaded.

  He hesitated, torn between giving me space and finally being able to have a good night’s sleep in a real, decent bed. “Okay. Thank you,” he said, grabbing
his pillow and walking to the bedroom. “I promise I will stay on that side of the bed. Nothing will happen, you have my word. You can go to sleep peacefully on your side, okay?”

  I nodded, seeing the honesty in his eyes.

  “All right, then. Good night, Joey.” He turned his back to me and snuggled his face into the pillow, while I stared at his broad, smooth, muscled back.

  It took me a long time to relax and manage to drift into sleep, though. Tristan’s warm presence next to me kept me on edge and made my heart beat faster.

  How could I relax when the most handsome man I had ever seen was lying right next to me, in the same bed, half-naked and within arm’s reach?

  When I’d managed to quieten my frantic heart and finally drift off to sleep, my consciousness slipped to where lost memories were hidden in my dreams.

  There was a glass castle in a glittery, silver ocean; an eerie gothic girl standing on a sand hill next to someone wearing a majestic gray hood, his eyes flaring with a cold white light, while snowflake crystals danced around his stilled frame. Then fireworks exploded in the night sky, and when I looked back down, the sand hills were gone and I was standing in a deserted cemetery. There was snow pilling over the tombstones, but as I twirled around, a warm light started to melt all the snow away.

  I could hear boys’ laughter and music playing in the background. The music and laughter intensified, merging into one big chaotic cacophony of cheers, chanting and shouting in the distance.

  I looked at myself and realized there were flames in my hands. The fire spread, running all over me, consuming me whole, like I was a born star. I felt big, invincible, as powerful as the sun. The whooshing sound of consuming fire filled my ears, and along with it came rattling chains and angry whispers. I cowered on the ground and shut my eyes, letting out an anguished whimper. The noise was maddeningly loud: too much for me to bear.