by Lexi Ryan
Chapter Fifteen
At first, I’m not sure if what I’m hearing is someone knocking on my door because the booming thunder of the storm masks it. Then it comes again. Boom, boom, boom.
I slide my laptop onto the couch beside me and rush to the door.
“Hanna?” Liz calls.
“What are you doing out in this storm?” I hurry to the door and yank it open.
Liz steps in, soaking wet but grinning. Maggie, Cally, and Nix pile in right behind her. “Impromptu girls’ night!” Liz announces.
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear the knocking over the thunder.”
The girls shed their shoes and jackets by the door, and I grab towels for them.
“It’s a mess out there,” my sister says. She wipes the rain from her face and shakes her curls, not unlike a dog coming in from the rain.
Cally goes into the kitchen and plugs her iPod into the radio, and Maggie hoists a couple of canvas shopping bags on the counter and starts pulling out cream, Godiva liqueur, and vodka—ingredients for chocolate martinis, if I’m not mistaken. Nix removes a box of truffles, cheese, and crackers from another bag.
“You guys,” I say. “I have a wedding dress to fit into in three and a half weeks.”
Liz opens cabinet doors until she finds my martini glasses and sets them on the island. “You’ve never had us over here.”
“We had to remedy that,” Cally says, grinning.
“And Asher and Nate are working like fiends, so I was bored,” Maggie explains.
“Where’s Will?” I ask Cally.
“He’s hanging with Max and Sam at Brady’s.”
I head to the island and pop a truffle in my mouth. “That is amazing!” I close my eyes and chew slowly.
“God, it’s good to see you eat!” Cally says as she chooses a chocolate. “You were losing weight so fast. I was worried about you.”
“She’s doing really well,” Nix says. She winks at me as she grabs a truffle for herself. “Oh, wow!”
“They’re orgasmic, aren’t they?” Maggie says. “Asher got them for me when he was in New York last month. There’s this shop in the city that I swear does voodoo to make their chocolate.”
“Let me try.” Lizzy abandons her half-made chocolate martinis to try the orgasmic treat for herself. “Holy shit! I didn’t know chocolate could be better.”
The speakers click as Cally’s iPod shuffles to a new song, and Nate Crane’s “Lost In Me” begins.
I gasp.
Lizzy reaches over and squeezes my hand, and I close my eyes.
“That’s it.” Maggie slaps her palm on the counter. “What is going on with Nate Crane?”
Lizzy puts on her innocent face. “What do you mean?”
“Something’s up with you two. You get all weird any time I mention Nate, and he gets all weird every time I say anything about my sisters.”
“Weird?” Lizzy says. “We’re just fans. That’s all.”
Maggie raises a disbelieving brow. “You are a shitty liar.”
My twin sighs dramatically. “Fine. You know how I feel about his hotness. You caught me. I’m sleeping with Nate Crane.”
“You wish,” Maggie mutters before she zeroes in on me. “Hanna, spill.”
“She doesn’t—”
I hold up a hand. It was only a matter of time, right? “It’s okay. I made this mess and now I have to live with the consequences. Maggie should know.”
“It started in St. Louis, didn’t it?” She looks heartbroken.
“She doesn’t have her memory, remember?” Lizzy defends.
“I don’t know much. But the night I got home from the hospital, I woke up with Nate in my bed, and he was really angry when he saw my ring.”
“Jesus.” Cally drags her hand over her face.
“You can’t say anything to Will,” I plead with her. “Not until I tell Max the truth.”
“You haven’t told Max?” Nix says.
“Amnesia, remember?” Liz says. “She can’t even remember being with him.”
“But he climbed into your bed,” Maggie points out. “Did you ask him what’s been going on between you?”
“He’s not real keen on talking to her,” Liz says. “You know, given that she chose the other guy.”
“But you know for sure there was something going on between the two of you?” Maggie asks. “You and Nate Crane?”
“You’re one to talk,” Liz retorts. “You’re fucking Asher Logan. Seriously, what’s happened to this town? And when do I get a sultry affair with a sexy rocker?”
Nix shakes her head as if to clear it and grabs the martini shaker from Lizzy’s hand. She pulls off the top and takes a drink straight from the shaker. “No wonder you’re so anxious for those memories to come back,” she mutters. “I’m anxious for you to get those memories back.”
“I know, right?” Liz says. “I want details, and whether she remembers or not, I’m pretty sure I’m never going to get them.”
“What about Max?” Worry is written all over Cally’s face. “You are going to tell him, right?”
“I have to,” I whisper.
“Hanna!” Lizzy says.
“I’ve made up my mind, Liz. I’m giving my brain one more week to share any details it has hidden in there and then I’m telling Max what I know. For better or worse.”
Liz exhales heavily. “You’re stressing me out. Thank God we have chocolate.” She pops another truffle into her mouth and moans again as she chews. “Oh, hell, that’s better than sex.”
“No, it’s not,” Cally and Maggie say in unison. Then they giggle, and Maggie nudges me. “Come on. Don’t make me feel like the dirty ho here. I know you guys agree with me. That chocolate is good, but it’s not better than sex.”
“I wouldn’t remember,” Lizzy says. She takes the martini shaker back from Nix and takes a gulp.
“Sisters in unwanted abstinence,” Nix says.
Lizzy gives her a high five. “An exclusive club that no one wants to join.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter.
The girls stare at me, and Liz bites back a laugh. “Hanna just found out she and Max don’t have sex. She’s not taking it very well.”
Maggie’s eyes go wide. “But you’re, like, twenty-three. And you and Max have been together for months. How does that even happen?”
“She’s saving herself for marriage,” Lizzy says. “Who knew any of the Thompson girls would make it to marriage with her virginity? Mom would be so proud.”
“So you weren’t having sex with Nate Crane?” Cally asks.
“Apparently not,” I say.
“How do you know?” Nix asks quietly.
“I saw him over the weekend and asked. He said we didn’t.” I frown. “You’re my doctor. What do you know about this that I’m not remembering?”
Nix breaks a cracker in half and avoids my eyes. “We can have this conversation in private later.”
“I want to have it now. These ladies already know my worst secret. Tell me what you know.”
She holds up her hands in defense. “Nothing, really. I was not privy to the details of your sex life. And you certainly never told me you were involved with Nate Crane, sexually or otherwise.”
“But…” I prod.
“But you came in at the beginning of August and talked to me about birth-control options. You’d had some problems with headaches when you were on hormonal contraceptives in high school, so you wanted to know about some other options and decided that condoms and a diaphragm was the right combination for you.”
“So I got a diaphragm?”
“We fitted you for one.”
“Did I tell you anything else?”
She breaks another cracker and sweeps a small pile of crumbs in front of her. “You were still a virgin when we talked, according to you. But you didn’t think…”
“You’re killing me with the suspense,” Liz says. “She didn’t think what?”
Ni
x shrugs. “She didn’t think she’d make it more than a couple more weeks.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Cally says. “She could have been planning to sleep with Max.”
Thunder claps, and half a second later, the apartment goes black, blessedly ending the awkward conversation.
“Candles,” I announce. “I’ll find candles. And…matches or something.”
I hear a click, and the next thing I know, a single flame is illuminating my friends’ faces from the lighter in Nix’s hand. “I’ve got us halfway there.”
“You carry a lighter?”
“And a pocketknife,” she says proudly. “I had four Eagle Scouts for big brothers. Always be prepared and all that jazz.”
“Do you need help looking for the candles?” Liz asks.
“No. I know where to look.”
I head toward the bedroom, my mind still churning on the implications of what Nix just told me. If I was getting birth control only a couple of weeks before the accident, that could mean I’d decided to accept Max’s proposal. Or it could mean I’d decided to earn my scarlet letter after all.
“They’re not in the kitchen?” Maggie calls, and I can already hear her opening drawers and rummaging through them.
“Maybe, but I know I store scented candles in my drawers. They work better than sachets for keeping clothes smelling fresh.”
“She’s so girly,” Nix says. “I need you guys to teach me how to be girly. Could you? For my birthday?”
I feel my way to my dresser and pull open the top drawer. Fumbling through piles of cotton and satin and lace, I finally find what I’m looking for. “Found one! It’s a taper candle, so we’ll have to hold it until we can find a candleholder, but this should get us started.”
As I leave the bedroom, lightning flashes and floods the apartment for two beats. Then we’re left in darkness again.
I fumble with the candle as I scoot my way back toward the kitchen. It’s kind of an odd shape. I wonder if it melted in the heat and re-formed or something. I hope no wax melted on my undies. “Nix, can you light your lighter again? I can’t find the wick.”
With a metallic click, the lighter blazes, and I lift the candle. “Do you see the wick anywhere?”
The room fills with Lizzy’s peals of laughter. “What drawer was that in?”
My cheeks heat. “My underwear drawer.”
“Lemme guess. It was tucked under your lingerie, maybe some sexy undies?” Even in the faint flickering of Nix’s lighter, I can see glee written all over Liz’s face.
“Oh. My. God.” As the realization hits me, my hand opens and I release the oh-my-God-that’s-no-candle. It falls to the floor with a thump.
Liz sinks to her haunches and picks it up off the floor with two fingers, the way one might hold a pair of someone else’s dirty underwear.
“It looks like a taper candle in the dark,” I say. “I don’t even know where that came from.”
Maggie snorts. “Amnesia is such a handy excuse now, isn’t it?”
Kill me now.
“Is it…is it what I think it is?” Nix asks.
“I guess that depends what you think it is,” Liz says. Twisting it at its center, she confirms my worst suspicions and sends it into a vibrating tizzy.
I back away. Horrified.
Lizzy giggles harder. “It doesn’t bite.”
“I didn’t even know I had a… Why do I have that?”
My mind wraps around the words from the texts on Nate’s phone. Nate asking if I’d taken my gift home. What had I replied? “It’s a sorry substitute for you”?
Not just a vibrator. Worse. A vibrator that was a gift from Nate.
The girls are all giggling now.
“I know you two are close,” Cally says, “but I absolutely cannot believe you’re touching that.”
“I don’t get it,” Nix says. “She gets buff, sexy-ass Max Hallowell and an affair with the sexy rocker. What’s the need for the vibrating friend, Hanna?”
If the floor wanted to open up and swallow me right now, I’d be okay with that.
Another flash lights the room. I must look as horrified as I feel, because Lizzy’s giggles go quiet. “Hanna, we’re just giving you a hard time. Are you okay?”
“I’ll go find your candles,” Maggie says, taking the lighter from Nix.
I watch her silhouette move through the darkness and into my bedroom. I shouldn’t let her rifle through my clothes—God knows what else she might find that I don’t know about—but another flash of lightning fills the space and a memory comes with it. Not the memory of sending those texts to Nate. A different memory. Clear and vivid and visceral.
Maggie is carrying a lit candle in each hand when she returns.
“We’ll stop teasing you about the vibrator,” Nix promises me. “We all have one.”
“Those bitches probably don’t,” Liz says, pointing to Cally and Maggie. She tosses the vibrator onto the island. Right there between the truffles and cheese. “They have men to do that work for them.”
Maggie snorts. “Where have you been, Liz? Men and vibrators go very well together.”
“She’s not lying,” Cally says.
“I hate you all,” Liz growls.
“Can we change the subject?” The question comes out of me with an awkward squeak.
“Sure,” Nix says. “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do for Cally’s bachelorette party.”
The girls start chattering about their plans and ideas, but I can’t seem to focus on the conversation. My mind is playing and replaying the memory of Nate Crane’s wicked eyes watching me as he rubs the vibrator over my inner thighs.
“What do you think, Hanna?” Lizzy asks.
“Um, what?” Stop thinking about the vibrator. Stop thinking about Nate holding the vibrator.
Maggie laughs. “We’re trying to decide whether or not we should crash Will’s bachelor party. He’s not going to be able to talk Sam out of the strip club, so we’re thinking we should show up.”
“Oh, that could be fun.” Stop thinking about Nate Crane.
But it’s useless. I finally have a memory of Nate Crane, and instead of helping me let him go, I’m so wrapped up in it I feel lost and confused all over again.
