***
I dreamed about Nate Crane last night. We were swimming in Asher’s pool and he stripped my swimsuit off my breasts and took my nipples into his mouth. I wrapped my legs around his waist and realized he was nude and his dick was cradled right between my legs.
“We can’t have sex,” I said in the dream. “I’m marrying Max.”
“No you’re not.”
He slid the ring off my finger and threw it into the deep end of the water. Only we weren’t in the pool anymore. We were in the river. The ring glinted against the moonlight before the dark water sucked it under, and I knew I’d never see it again. I just shrugged, and Nate slid his hand between my legs. Then we were in Max’s steam room. I was sitting on the high bench just like I had the night I was there with Max, only it was Nate with me. Nate’s face buried between my legs. Nate’s fingers toying with my nipples.
And when Max walked into the room and called my name through the steam, I laughed. “This is what you wanted,” I said, grabbing a fistful of Nate’s hair and holding him against me. “You wanted me to find someone else, and I did. Now go fuck a blonde.”
I woke up confused, horny, guilty, and depressed. Did it mean something, or is my brain just screwed up from how crazy everything’s been the last few weeks?
I’ve been home from the hospital for two weeks and I feel like I never see Max. He works late almost every night, and when he does come over, he doesn’t stay long. And we’ve never had sex. I know he’s turned on by me—it’s evident—but it’s almost like he’s perfectly satisfied to stop things with a little groping.
In the meantime, wedding planning is going full speed ahead. I ended up having a meeting at the bakery during our caterer appointments last week, so Mom went with Max and they picked a caterer without me. I was relieved not to have to mess with it. Shouldn’t I be more excited about my wedding?
From the edge of Mom’s back deck, I scan the crowd gathered for my engagement party and try to push my anxiety to the side.
In just two weeks, Mom pulled together a party to rival the weddings of most girls in this town. I didn’t give her any input on the event, but then again, she didn’t ask for any. Not too different than my wedding, now that I think of it.
Nix Reid, my doctor and apparently friend, sidles up to me and puts her hand on my arm. “You look stressed. Are you okay?”
I force a smile. “I’m great. Turned out beautifully, didn’t it?”
The evening is warm but not too warm to mingle out on the lawn. Servers circulate with hors d’oeuvres, and Mom hired a bartender to serve drinks from a makeshift bar on the deck.
On the lawn, a small band is playing in front of the temporary floor put down so our guests can dance under the stars. It’s beautiful and perfect and terrifying.
“It’s a lovely party.” She smooths her hair and shifts awkwardly. She doesn’t seem like a woman who’s comfortable in dress clothes. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m doing great, really.” I pause for a breath. “Do you have any guess as to when my other memories might come back?”
Nix looks around. “This is what you want to talk about right now?” She puts her hand on my shoulder and smiles. “Relax. Stressing about your memory isn’t going to help anything.”
“It’s just weird,” I say. “I’m getting these pieces back, but the last few months are still completely missing. Like they never happened.” And the last few months are the memories I want the most.
“Memory recovery isn’t an exact science. It’s different for everyone, but it does usually happen chronologically—not always, but for the most part. Just because you don’t have any memories from the last few months doesn’t mean you won’t.”
“There’s so much I still don’t know. And the day of the accident? The day I fell down the stairs?” The day I put on Max’s ring. “I want that back. I want it all back.”
“Listen,” she says. “The worse the head trauma, the less likely you are to remember the events leading up to it. You need to make peace with the possibility that you might never recover your memories of the accident or the days prior.”
Including the day I chose Max. “This sucks.”
She whispers, “I know, but let it go. For tonight at least, okay? Try to enjoy your party. I’ll see you in my office next week.”
“Where’s the couple of honor?” the bandleader asks in the mic. “Because I understand this is their song.” The guitar player starts into the first notes of Jason Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up.”
Suddenly, Max is next to me, taking my hand and leading me to the dance floor.
“This is our song?” I ask as I slip my arms around his neck.
“I gave you the ring three months ago, remember?”
Something squeezes in my chest as the man sings the line about giving his love the space she needs to navigate. Is that what Max did for me? Gave me the space I needed to figure this out? I want to remember.
“You look drop-dead gorgeous tonight,” he murmurs against my ear.
I’m wearing a red dress, a bold, daring color that draws attention to my legs and my curves. Not just any red dress. It’s Lizzy’s. The one she wore to the winter gallery opening. Now I remember the night I caught Max checking her out and felt twelve kinds of depressed about it…until he kissed me silly.
“You know what I think would be even more gorgeous than you in that dress?”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“You out of that dress. In my bed.”
A delicious chill runs over my skin, but he says stuff like that and then…nothing.
He pulls me even closer and I can feel that hard length of him through his dress pants. “That’s all I’ve been able to think about since I had to leave you last night—undressing you and taking you to my bed, keeping you there all weekend.”
“I think I’d like that.” I’ve not pushed the issue of our lack of intimacy. My head’s too busy spinning with what I have and haven’t done, but I’m ready to put a stop to that hesitancy. I’m marrying this man, and none of my memories of making love to him have returned yet. I want to know what that’s like. I want the reassurance of him making love to me.
He groans. “I’d make damn sure you liked it.”
“Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”
His hands tighten on me, pulling me closer. “Don’t tempt me. We’ve made it this far. We can hold out for a few more weeks, don’t you think?”
I stop moving. Right there in the middle of the dance floor, my shoes might as well be filled with lead. “What?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he says quietly. “I want you. You don’t need to question that. I want you like I’ve never wanted anyone.” He presses his nose to my hair and inhales deeply. “But there’s something kind of special about waiting, about the anticipation of it. And I’m sorry if it’s not politically correct, but I fucking love that I’m going to be your first and only.”
I push back half a step so I can look into his eyes. “Are you saying we’ve never…?”
Confusion flashes in his eyes. Then he drags a hand over his face. “God, it never occurred to me that I needed to tell you, but how would you know if you can’t remember?”
“Know what?” I need to hear him say it.
He smiles, as if he’s about to tell me some delightful surprise. “You’re a virgin,” he whispers. “You wanted to wait for marriage.” He pulls me back against him, and I press my hot cheek against his chest and squeeze my eyes shut.
“You’re a virgin.” But what he means is that I haven’t slept with him. Did I sleep with Nate?
The song ends, and he tips my chin up to look in my eyes. “Are you okay?”
I don’t trust myself to talk, so I nod toward the bar.
We walk hand in hand. Every brush of his thumb skimming over my knuckles digs a guilty dagger into my heart. Every day it becomes clearer to me that I have secrets I have to share with Max before we can ge
t married, but it never occurred to me I might have to tell him I gave my virginity to someone else.
Lizzy’s standing in front of the bar in a long, strapless black dress, tapping her foot to the beat. She takes in our joined hands and grins. “You two look nice out there.”
Max presses a kiss to the back of my hand and winks at me. “This beauty can make anyone look good.”
Lizzy’s jaw goes slack and she flashes me a look as if to say, “How could you doubt a future with this guy?” Or maybe it’s more, “You are such a bitch.” As her twin, I’m excellent at reading her, but those are pretty similar looks.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asks.
Max stuffs a five in the tip jar. “A draft beer for me and a glass of Riesling for my girl.” The bartender hands us our glasses, and Max presses a kiss to my bare shoulder. “I need to talk to William about our plans for his bachelor party. Sam made plans at this strip club in Indy and Will isn’t having it. Apparently, I’m supposed to be the mediator.”
“Mediate away.” I force a smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I love you,” he whispers.
I wait until he’s gone before I turn to Liz and drag her into Mom’s house and all the way upstairs to our old bedroom.
“What’s going on?” she asks as I shut the door.
“Max said I’m a virgin.”
Her eyes go big and her jaw drops.
“He said I wanted to wait until we got married to have sex.”
“Since…when?”
I let out a long breath and study the ceiling. This is all so weird. Some days it doesn’t even feel like I missed a year of my life. It feels like I was dropped into someone else’s.
“I just assumed you two had had sex.”
“That makes two of us.”
“You and Mom have gotten closer lately,” she says. “Maybe she brought you over to the devout side?”
“I’m not buying that.”
“Yeah. Me neither. But hey, at least that means you didn’t have sex with Nate Crane either, right?”
“But what if I did?” I whisper.
“Oh.” She plops down on the bed. “That would be really bad, wouldn’t it? Max thinking you’re a virgin and you actually already gave that up to someone else?”
“I have to tell Max what I know.”
“Why?”
“Lizzy, I’m marrying him.”
“Exactly.”
“I need to be honest. I need him to know what I’ve done.”
“If you had your memories, I might agree, but the truth is, until they come back, you don’t know the whole story. The only thing you’re going to accomplish by telling Max is hurting him.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t tell the man I’m marrying that I was seeing someone else? Possibly sleeping with someone else? I shouldn’t explain to him why I wouldn’t wear his ring all those months?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“My memories are starting to come back.”
“More since last time?”
I nod. “It’s weird, you know. I get these snippets, and a lot of them are insignificant. I remember jogging with Max in the mornings. I remember going into his gym and asking him to train me. I remember the first time he kissed me at the winter gallery opening.”
“Anything about Nate?”
I shake my head. “And nothing to make me think I would have had a reason to cheat on Max.” Except for my profound insecurity.
What if I never got over that feeling that I wasn’t good enough for Max? What if those feelings made me do something really stupid? And what about Valentine’s Day, when he left me alone to take care of Meredith? Is that just the price of dating a good guy? Or was something going on there?
She taps her knee thoughtfully. “None of this makes sense. Cheating? That’s just not in character for you. Maybe you didn’t realize things with Max were going anywhere. Maybe you didn’t think he was serious about you.”
“You forget that he proposed three months ago.”
“Crap. That’s right.”
“Girls!” Mom calls from downstairs. “What are you doing up there? Come down to the party!”
“Coming!” I call back.
Lizzy’s staring at me. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? Not all the memory loss and bad crap, but marrying Max? Is this what you want?”
“Of course.” But in that moment, with everyone waiting downstairs to congratulate me and ask questions about how many babies we plan to have, I’m not sure if this is really what I want or what I should want.