Lost in Me

by Lexi Ryan

  Chapter Five

  “So did Max stay over last night?” Lizzy sets a steaming mug of black coffee in front of me and stirs cream into her own, all the while avoiding my gaze.

  “Can I have some of that?”

  “Cream? As in, empty calories? For healthier-than-thou Hanna?”

  I’ve been drinking coffee since I was sixteen, and I’ve been taking cream in it for just as long. I try a sip without and shake my head. My memory loss apparently includes how to enjoy black coffee. “Yes, please.” I snag the cream before she can make any more comments.

  We’re at a table in the front of my bakery, the OPEN sign glowing into the darkness of Main Street.

  I convinced myself not to call her last night. I’d wanted to. I’d been confused and scared, and the most natural instinct had been to call Liz. After the man left my apartment, I ran to find my phone charger and plug in my phone. I stared at the screen as it came to life, but I kept thinking of the way the man’s face had changed when his gaze landed on my ring. My mind kept repeating the deep rumble of his voice as he’d said, “You and Max have a nice life.”

  It wasn’t confusion or fear that made me decide not to call her. As I sank to the edge of my bed and settled my head in my hands, adrenaline still hummed through my veins, but the frantic, clawing fear was gone. In its place boiled red-hot shame.

  “So, Max?” Lizzy asks. She holds up her hands. “Not that it’s my business.”

  There’s something different in our relationship. We could always say anything to each other, though we often didn’t have to. An exchanged glance was usually enough to let her know how I was feeling. But there’s a rift between us now. I can sense it even if I can’t explain it. I noticed first at the hospital—not so much by the way she acted when she was around, but more because of how often she wasn’t around. I kept expecting her to be the one coming into my room to keep me company, but nine times out of ten, it was someone else.

  All my life, people have asked me what it’s like to be a twin. They want me to explain our connection. Trying to explain to someone what it’s like to have a twin sister is like trying to explain what it’s like to have a pulse. I don’t know any other way. All I know is that her smile is attached to my heart. I float when she’s happy, and when she’s sad, my world is a puzzle with a missing piece.

  But right now that connection is gone. I want to blame the amnesia, but I’m pretty sure that’s just the optimism thinking.

  “Max didn’t stay,” I say cautiously.

  She rolls her eyes and mutters something I can’t quite make out. “Goody two-shoes,” maybe? She wouldn’t call me that if she knew I woke up to another man in my bed. “Any progress with your memory?”

  I shake my head. “Not yet. Patience, right?” Patience. I’m engaged to marry the man of my dreams, who I might or might not have been cheating on. Waiting for my memories to return should be a piece of cake.

  “Well, patience isn’t going to run this bakery,” Liz mutters. “In the meantime, I’d better bring you up to speed.”

  She gives me a tour of my bakery. The front area is small but serviceable. It has four tables and a bar along the wall with outlets. “So people who are working on their laptops don’t hog the tables,” Lizzy explains. The glass cases in the front feature everything from freshly baked Italian bread and croissants to cupcakes and fresh pastries.

  “My mouth is watering just looking at all of it.”

  Lizzy snorts. “You don’t touch it. Not a grain of sugar has passed those lips in at least three months.”

  “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels, I guess?”

  “Clearly the amnesia has wiped away all memory of your cheese Danish. Maggie declared it foodgasmic, and she’s not wrong. And your chocolate croissants?” She closes her eyes and bites her lower lip.

  “You’re making me hungry,” I complain.

  Her lips quirk into a lopsided smile. “Good. I didn’t think you were capable of hunger anymore. Maybe the amnesia fixed you.” She leads the way past the glass cases and through the doors to the gleaming stainless-steel kitchen at the back. Ovens line one wall, and another has a row of walk-in coolers.

  “Holy crap,” I breathe. “How did I afford this place?”

  “You didn’t. You had some silent partner backing you, so money wasn’t an issue.”

  “Silent partner? Who?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. You were all mysterious about it. We thought it might have been Asher, but when Maggie asked him, he said he didn’t have anything to do with it. Mom thinks maybe it was Max, but that doesn’t explain why you’d be secretive about it. But somebody came in here and renovated the building and got you your little start-up.”

  “It’s probably in my paperwork, huh?”

  She shrugs. “I guess.”

  “I’m just surprised Mom didn’t try to talk me out of it. You know how she’s felt most of her life about my baking.”

  “She wasn’t thrilled about your choice, but you could pretty much do no wrong in her eyes since you started dating Max.” There’s something snide about the way she says it, as if I dated Max and improved my relationship with my mom all to irritate her.

  “I can’t believe I took the plunge. That doesn’t seem like me.”

  “You haven’t seemed much like yourself for a while now,” she says, but I don’t think the words are for me. She shakes her head and waves away the subject. “You had a wedding last weekend while you were in the hospital. You’d already gotten the cake finished, so Maggie and I handled it for you, but you probably want to call the bride when she gets back from her honeymoon next week.”

  The bride. Because I make wedding cakes.

  “I’ve been taking care of the bread orders for the restaurants and grocers who contract with you. Drew has been keeping up with the baking for the front, but school’s going to start soon. She won’t be able to put in the hours she has been.”

  “Drew?”

  “Cally’s sister.”

  I shake my head. “I know who she is. I guess I’m just surprised she works for me.”

  “She started the week you opened. She’s a good little worker as long as you can keep her off her phone and away from the customers. Customer service isn’t her forte.”

  I grin at the image of Cally’s know-it-all teenage sister struggling to be kind to sorority girls ordering non-fat, sugar-free, extra-hot, double-shot mochas.

  “You have a wedding this weekend, so we’ll need to find time to get the cake made and decorated. I can try to help if you don’t remember, but honestly, the decorating part has always been your baby and I pretty much suck at it.”

  “Wait. So you work with me?”

  She lifts a brow. “I’m pretty sure you think of it as me working for you, but yes. I haven’t gotten a teaching job, and I work for my sister like a loser.”

  “You work with me, and I think that’s awesome.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, you have three meetings with upcoming brides this week.”

  “Wow.” I turn a slow circle. “I can’t believe how quickly it’s taken off.”

  My stomach twists as I scan the gleaming stainless-steel countertops. I’ve been so hung up on my new body and my engagement to Max, I haven’t had the chance to think much about this part of my life. How am I supposed to run my business if I don’t even remember what recipes I use or what clients I’ve promised cakes to?

  “I don’t even know where I buy supplies,” I mutter to myself.

  Lizzy’s cool fingers gently squeeze my forearm. “It’s going to be okay.” Her eyes connect with mine, and for a split second, it’s back—that connection between us flickers like lights in a storm. “You should come to Maggie and Asher’s with me tonight. Asher and Nate are having a jam session and they’re making a get-together out of it.”

  “Nate who?”

  “Crap. I guess you probably don’t even remember him. Nate Crane? You know, sexy rocker?” She frowns. �
�I guess you wouldn’t know. He was kind of an unknown before, but he’s been touring with Asher, and his single is really shooting up the charts.”

  “Cool.” I shift. Partying it up at Asher’s doesn’t appeal to me right now. After my middle-of-the-night visitor, I just want to spend my evening with Max and reassure myself that everything is okay. “I’ll probably take a rain check, though.”

  “Oh.” She sounds disappointed. Really disappointed. Like she was counting on me. “Okay, well, that’s fine.”

  And just like that, the flickering light of our connection is snuffed out again.

  “What happened to us?”

  “What?”

  “You and me. Why are you mad at me?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, Liz. This is us. Something’s not right.”

  Lizzy shifts her gaze away. “Truth be told, you and I haven’t exactly been close lately.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. You started dating Max, and it was okay at first, but then you were running all the time and you were losing weight and—”

  “You stopped being close to me because I lost weight?”

  “Jesus! No. Of course not. You’re the one who pulled away.” She cuts her eyes to the floor and bites her lip. “At least that’s how it felt to me, but I might have been uncomfortable with all the changes you were making. It just didn’t seem healthy, ya know?”

  “Getting healthy didn’t seem healthy?”

  She throws up her hands. “See? You’re so defensive about it! We could never talk, and when we did, all you cared about was Max and running, and I didn’t even recognize you anymore.”

  My eyes fill with tears. “I thought you of all people would be happy for me when I finally got some goodness in my life.”

  “Is it good, Hanna? Are you so sure?” She stares at me for a long time, that little wrinkle appearing between her blond brows.

  The bell over the front door rings, ending our staring contest.

  When we go out front, we find Mom and Granny behind the front counter, preparing themselves cups of coffee, Mom a flurry of anxious gestures in her pink business suit and Granny serene in her wrinkled cotton hippie skirt.

  “Your first day out of the hospital and you’re already back at work,” Mom lectures.

  “I’m fine,” I assure her.

  “You’re not fine. You’ve had a bad fall and you need to recover.”

  “The doctor said I could get back to my normal routine. She said it might even be good for me.”

  Mom grins. “And you know what else will be good for you?”

  “I can guess,” Lizzy grumbles.

  “I have appointments scheduled with three different possible wedding venues,” Mom says. “I thought, what better way to recuperate than to focus on something that makes you happy? Something good.”

  “I don’t know if I can—”

  “I won’t hear any objections. You’re my daughter, and I’m going to make sure you take care of yourself these next few weeks.” She tilts my chin up and moves my face side to side, inspecting my bruises. If she thinks those are bad, she should see what’s going on under my shirt. “I bet you’ll be healed enough for a wedding in as soon as a month.”

  Lizzy chokes on her coffee, and I gape at my mother. “A month?”

  Granny tsks. “Don’t rush the girl, Gretchen.”

  “Why you would drag your feet when a man like Max wants to marry you is beyond me.”

  “I’m not dragging my feet,” I object, but I kind of am. Because don’t I need answers before I can say my vows to Max? Don’t I need my memories?

  “So it’s settled. We’ll spend tomorrow looking at wedding venues.”

  “I can’t just set a date without talking to Max,” I object.

  Mom waves away my concern. “It’s the wedding. All men worry about is the bachelor party and the wedding night. Besides, we need to know what dates the venue you want is available. Then we’ll talk about setting a date.”

  I try to take deep breaths, but I keep thinking about the man in my apartment, about all the things I don’t know about the last year. My headache is back and nausea rolls over me. I brace myself on the counter.

  “See, Gretchen?” Granny scolds. “You’re stressing her out.”

  “I’m okay,” I lie. “I’m just a little overwhelmed. I need Lizzy to bring me up to date on work stuff and I’ll feel better.”

  Mom rolls her eyes then sighs. “Fine. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at noon. Elizabeth, don’t you dare let your sister do any work.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lizzy says, irritation clear in her voice.

  The women take their coffee and push through the door. A hot billow of August air fills the store as the door floats closed.

  “Come on,” Lizzy says. “Let’s get some baking done before you have to spend all your waking hours planning your happily-ever-after.”