by Alix Nichols
She lets out a long, ragged breath.
Relief?
“So, is it him?” I ask again.
“No,” she says without hesitation. “I’m dating someone else now.”
The second those words are out, her eyes widen in panic, as if she just realized she’s said too much.
I cock my head. “So, you did date him at one point?”
“I…” She shifts in her seat. “Very briefly. We weren’t well suited as lovers.”
“When was it?”
“Um… Let me see…” She rubs her chin, her ear, and her chin again. “Maybe three years ago?”
Why do I have the feeling she’s lying?
Or, if she isn’t, there’s something she isn’t telling me.
I narrow my eyes. “So, you didn’t dump me while I was in a coma to be with him?”
She gives me a wounded-Bambi look. “Of course not!”
“OK,” I say, no longer bothering to smile. “So, you dumped me for another reason. I’m just trying to get my timeline straight.”
She reaches for her glass again, lifts it, and sets it back on the table. “I really have to go now. It was nice catching up, and… seeing how well you’ve recovered.”
I don’t try to stop her.
Even her physical flawlessness now seems cold and off-putting. For the life of me, I don’t understand why I was into this woman.
Isabelle
This afternoon’s practice for the guys consists of conditioning, some shooting drills, and a lot of strategy.
Only four of them will be traveling to Cologne with the national team, but all show up for the season’s last workout together as a club.
From my favorite bench, I watch them finish the final segment, but instead of getting out of the pool, they hang around.
Lucas has been staring at me all day.
It’s not like you think, I tell my racing heart as I do my best to avoid his eyes. It can’t be like that.
Maybe he simply has a burning idea he wants to discuss with me. Hence all the glancing at his watch and staring in my direction. Mystery solved.
Over the last two weeks, Lucas and I excelled at being paragons of non-fraternization. The both of us became shining examples of professional behavior and not mixing business with pleasure. Then, on Sunday, he went street fishing with his dad—something I’d overheard him mention to Eric—and he came back… different.
I can’t explain exactly in what way, but there’s a new quality to him that makes me think of a rubber band stretched and ready to snap.
Oh. My. God.
What if that je ne sais quoi is suppressed anger? Have I overstepped? In my eagerness to land a big sponsor, have I gone too far and done something that rubbed him the wrong way?
I guess I’m about to find out once the workout is over.
There’s noise behind me, and I turn around. Leanne’s girls rush in and jump into the water.
Ah, I see she got her way.
Leanne believes women improve their game when practicing against men. She’s been bugging Lucas for a joint scrimmage session since January.
It makes sense, so he agreed to do it now. For the guys, time has run out. Lucas doesn’t believe they can get in better shape for the quarterfinals, which start in two days. He has driven them hard for months and gotten them where he wants them. No more ten-hour workouts. The purpose of their quick workouts at this stage is just to retain the base.
I check my watch. My official work day is over. I could just up and leave while everyone is around or inside the pool. I should up and leave. Having spent the whole day trying and failing to get a grip, the last thing I need now is a tête-à-tête with Lucas.
I stand and walk toward the exit.
“Isabelle, wait!” Lucas calls out.
I stop.
“Please, can you stay a few minutes longer? I need to talk to you.”
Slowly I turn around and plaster a smile on my face. “Sure.”
He waves me over.
When I get to the edge of the pool where he and Leanne are standing, he whistles a time-out.
“You know how we’re shopping for an official sponsor, right?” he says, addressing everyone.
The players nod.
He points to me. “Isabelle, Leanne, Eric, and I have been discussing possible logo placement, and we wanted to ask you ladies if it’s OK to put it on your suits.”
“No problem,” several of them holler.
“As long as you’re not putting one on each nipple,” Nat says.
A few of the women boo, a couple of men cheer, and the rest laugh.
“One logo, centered, just beneath the collarbone,” I say.
They nod and give me a thumbs-up.
“What about the men?” Jean-Michel asks. “Where will you put ours?”
Everybody stares at me expectantly.
“On the caps,” I say.
More laughing.
“After Martin’s calendar last year,” Zach says, “we were prepared for the worst.”
Denis raises his hand. “I have an idea. Why not use our skin?” He points to the five or six tattoos on his chest and arms. “I could get another one.”
His biggest tattoo is a stylized text that reads, This body is too hot for clothes. Clearly, he doesn’t see getting a logo inked as a big deal.
The idea is completely outrageous, but three or four of the men shrug a why not.
“No way.” Julien, the hole defender, shakes his head, unsmiling. “No tattoos for me.”
“You can have it removed later, if you hate it,” Denis offers.
Julien glares at him. “I know. I’ve had one lasered off my back. It hurt like hell, and it left scars.”
Several women paddle behind him to study his back.
“Looks like it was huge.” Corinne spreads her hands to show the size to the others. “What was it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Julien says drily.
“A girl’s name?” Jean-Michel asks.
Julien says nothing.
“A heart with an arrow through it, and a girl’s name?” Jean-Michel insists. “Who’s the girl? Have we seen her? Are you still in luuurve with her?”
Silence.
“Leave him alone, will you?” Lucas says to Jean-Michel.
If he hadn’t intervened, I would have.
I can’t stand the man, probably as much as he can’t stand Julien. I suspect it’s because Julien was picked for the national team and Jean-Michel wasn’t. Or because Jean-Michel is on the substitute set. Their rivalry may also be caused by something else entirely, but whatever it is, Jean-Michel has envy issues. And Julien is the source of that envy.
“No one is going to ask anyone to get a tattoo,” I say. “There are limits.”
And with that, Lucas sends the players back into the water.
“Was that what you wanted to talk to me about?” I ask Lucas.
He shakes his head. “Can you wait another half hour?”
“Yes,” I mutter and fish out my phone, so I have something to stare at.
“Thank you,” Lucas says softly.
Eric leaves.
The two remaining coaches oversee the scrimmage while I pretend to be engrossed in my newsfeed.
When everyone is gone, I follow Lucas to his office.
“I remembered something from my past,” he says, opening two blonde ales.
My heart racing, I take one from him.
“Let me rephrase that.” He settles his gaze on my lips. “I remembered something from our past.”
Lucas
Drop the bait. Keep calm. Let it sink and do its job.
What I just said to Isabelle wasn’t an outright lie. I do have recurring dreams about making love to her. They may very well be just fantasies, given how much I lust after her. But there’s a chance they may be recollections.
My first memories of life Before Amnesia.
And there’s the vague sense Isabelle is hiding something from me
just like Angie. My gut tells me it’s important. I need to know what it is. And I’m prepared to do what it takes to find out.
Isabelle’s breathing grows shallower by the second. Her cheeks are crimson. As for her big brown eyes, I have no words to describe the turmoil in them.
It worked. My bait worked!
She wouldn’t be reacting like this if what she’d told me was the full story.
“You and I, we were lovers,” I say gently.
Mustn’t scare her away.
She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even nod in response, but her eyes are expressive enough that she doesn’t have to do either.
I feel like singing. I’m a hairbreadth from pulling her to my chest and kissing the hell out of her. But not just yet.
“Talk to me, please,” I say. “I met with Angie last night, asked her lots of questions, but she kept her answers so short they were useless.”
She sets her beer on the table. “I’ll tell you everything, Lucas. Keeping the ending of our friendship from you didn’t sit well with me anyway.”
“Did we have a relationship?”
She shakes her head. “We had a night.”
“Just one night?”
“Yep, just one. Whatever you remembered can only be from that night three months before you were attacked.”
Three months before—
I was dating Angie.
“Go on,” I say, suddenly a lot less elated.
She looks down. “In the morning, you told me you were dating Angie. And you told me you had no intention of dumping her. Quite the contrary, you were planning to propose.”
“Jeez.”
“I was mad at you.”
“You had every reason to be.”
Isabelle nods. “So, I decided to get away.”
“Is that why you quit water polo, too? So we’d never cross paths?”
She smiles faintly and nods once more.
Happy now, Lucas? The bait worked.
Isabelle totally bit it and spilled the beans. Now I know what she’s been hiding from me. I’ve read the missing page of our story.
Hallelujah.
Except I was probably better off living in ignorance. It would have been easier to deny all the other clues I’d gleaned here and there about my less than stellar behavior. It was easier to cast myself as a decent human being.
I drop my head to my chest. “I was a douchebag.”
She sighs.
“I two-timed Angie, and I got you into my bed without telling you I was seeing someone.” I stare into her eyes. “I was a royal douchebag.”
She gives me a feeble smile. “You were young, stupid and self-centered. So yeah, you were a douchebag. But you weren’t hopeless.”
“You’re too kind,” I say with a sneer.
She shakes her head. “No, no, I mean it, Lucas! The night you were attacked, Eric and I saw you at Le Poivre, and you said you were sorry.”
“Did I?”
“Yes!”
“What exactly did I say?”
“We made some small talk, and when Eric went to the restroom, you said you were sorry for how you’d treated me.”
I frown, unsure what to make of it. Now that I’ve established and owned what kind of guy I was, apologizing sounds out of character.
“You did,” Isabelle insists. “You have to believe me!”
“OK,” I say, “I’ll try.”
And then, hardly believing what I’m doing, I pull her to my chest.
She tips her head up, and I nearly drown in her eyes.
“How I wish I’d asked you who you were waiting for!” she says.
I stroke her hair. “Let it go, Izz.”
“If only Eric had seen him when he went back into the bar…”
“He went back in?”
“Yeah.” She tilts her head slightly. “I thought you knew.”
“No.”
“Weird.” She frowns. “We left the bar and got into his car. He was giving me a lift.”
She looks past me, recalling. “He started the car and realized he’d left his phone in the bar, so he rushed back inside, searched everywhere, but the phone was gone.”
“Eric never mentioned that detail,” I say. “Maybe he considered it unimportant… How long was he inside?”
“Five minutes, tops. I’m sure he would’ve told you if he’d seen you there with someone.”
I shut my eyes, willing myself to remember, but as usual, it’s the imagination and not memory that paints a picture of Eric, looking as he does these days, walk into the bar. I have no idea what he wore that day or if he saw me.
I pull my phone out and dial Eric’s number.
He picks up. “So, how did the girls do? Did they manage to score at all?”
“They actually did,” I say. “Once they adjusted their game and worked up the mojo, they netted twice.”
“So Leanne was right.”
“Yep. We’re definitely doing it again.”
“The night I was mugged,” I say not bothering with preambles, “you came back into the bar looking for your phone. Why didn’t you ever mention it?”
There’s a pause and a loud sigh. “Vanity, I guess.”
“Huh?”
“I didn’t act in a very dignified manner when looking for my stupid phone,” he says. “Besides, I didn’t see you. I thought you’d left by then.”
“What were you wearing that night?” I ask.
My doctors keep saying to hunt for sensory details. Colors, smells, sounds—any sensory input might trigger a memory.
“Honestly, I have no idea,” Eric says. “I’m sorry.”
“I know!” Isabelle cries out, bright-eyed. “He had on a sky-blue sweater, a V-neck. I wore a shirt of the same color, and you’d joked Eric and I were color coordinated.”
In a flash, I see Eric in his blue sweater, entering Le Poivre. He goes straight to the bartender and asks if someone found his phone. The bartender spreads his arms. Eric makes the group at his old table stand up, crawls under the table, and all but sniffs the floor. “It was an iPhone,” he whines. “The latest model!”
The image is too vivid, too detailed to be the product of my imagination.
It is a memory. I’ve actively retrieved my first memory!
With my heart pounding, I will my mind to replay the scene again. Eric walks in… Talks to the bartender… Ducks under the table… “What a schmuck,” the guy at my table says through his teeth. I turn to him. “Even you would try to recover your phone. All your info, your pictures…” I pause before adding, “photos of Angie.”
I truly can’t remember what he said in response, and I don’t care. What matters is that now I know the guy I’d been waiting for did show that night. I’m close… So close… It’s—
“Clément,” I say aloud.
The man at my table, the last man to have seen me before the attack was Clément.
He never came forward with that information.
Neither did Angie.
Does she know?
Could Clément—
Isabelle touches my face. “Lucas, are you OK? You’re pale as death. Talk to me!”
“What’s going on?” Eric’s voice sounds from my phone.
“I’ll explain later. Got to go,” I say before hanging up.
Isabelle’s eyes are wide with so many emotions I wouldn’t even know where to begin. “You… you remembered something.”
I nod. “The person I was waiting for was Angie’s bestie, now ex-boyfriend, Clément.”
She gasps.
“The meeting wasn’t a friendly one,” I say. “I remember my anger and… jealousy.”
“Over Angie.”
“Yes.”
“Can you remember the things you said to each other?”
I shut my eyes again, but nothing comes no matter how hard I try. Maybe the bit I’ve just retrieved is all I’m going to get. Or maybe I’m just too tired. Hopefully, more things will come later.
/> “You’ll try again later,” Isabelle says as if reading my mind. “What you’ve remembered is huge. Let your mind process it.”
“You’re right,” I say, and suddenly another chunk comes back.
I’m drunk. Clément—much less so. I ask him if he’s slept with Angie in the past, sleeping with her now or hoping to sleep with her in the future. He sneers and says it’s none of my business. I warn him to stay away from her. He tells me to go to hell.
My fists itch to meet with his smug face.
I suggest we continue our conversation outside. He says sure. We leave money on the table and head out the door. Too many people, too much light.
“Follow me,” I say and stride around the corner and behind the building. From what I can make out in the dark, it’s a courtyard or cul-de-sac.
We face each other, fists clenched.
“You piece of shit,” Clément spits out. “You don’t deserve a woman like Angela.”
I swing and miss. He punches me. I lose my balance and fall.
Skull cracking.
Searing pain.
Darkness.
Isabelle
Lucas opens his eyes and recounts his fight with Clément.
My hands start to shake as I listen to him, so I hide them behind my back.
“Please, Lucas, don’t do anything rash,” I say when he stops talking. “Give it a few days. Call your doctors. They’ll help you deal with all of that.”
He gives me a long stare. “I don’t know if I can. Too much rage.”
Panic descends upon me in an icy shower.
Must stop him.
I must keep him from leaving now, from going after Clément. At any price.
“He didn’t mean to attack you,” I say. “You were the one who started the fight.”
He nods slowly. “I’m not denying that. But he left me there to bleed out like an animal. Five more minutes, and I—” He looks away. “If it hadn’t been for a server who’d popped out for a smoke, I would’ve died.”
I march to the door, turn the key in the lock it, and drop it into my purse.
“You’re not leaving here until I’m one hundred percent sure it’s safe for you,” I say, planting myself in the middle of the room.
