Love Me Again (Stonewall Investigations Blue Creek 1)

“All right, I’m out!” I slammed the door shut, leaving the gang to discuss whatever Amira was about to say next. Judging by Sam’s howl, it was exactly what I expected.

Our house was located in a tucked-away and hilly neighborhood called Ivy Rose Grove with an eclectic mix of old and new. It was a three-story house that had been flipped about fifteen different times, keeping some of the trends from each flip while molding its own interesting charm. The outside was half clean lines and concrete, and the other half was black wooden slats. I made sure the front yard and gardens were always taken care of. No matter how much of a sieve my brain decided to be on any given day, I always remembered to take care of the plants.

From the front of the house, I could see the mountains framing the distance, making a permanent and picturesque backdrop for our tiny town. Behind our neighborhood was a large lake that was great for those summer days that begged for some beer and sun.

Aside from the beauty, another huge bonus to living in Blue Creek?

The complete and utter lack of traffic.

It took me a total of five minutes to get to the pet store, driving down the tree-lined road that held a few other shops that had been here since I was a kid. I still had all those memories, but if I were asked about anything from age twenty and up, I’d have to shake my head and say, “I don’t know.”

Retrograde amnesia. It fucking sucked.

It happened after a near-death accident two and a half years ago. I was working as a landscaper at the time, and I had the cherry picker out so I could clear up some rogue tree limbs. I couldn’t remember anything from that day (or the 3,650 days before that), but thankfully I was found only minutes after the accident. Doctors said if I hadn’t made it to the hospital when I did, then I would have been a goner.

It still wasn’t an easy road to recovery. I had fallen a massive distance and had broken plenty of bones, along with the crack in my skull that required a medically induced coma to keep under control (after the weeklong coma I had naturally slipped into). Therapy was long and painful and fucking sucked massive, sweaty donkey balls, but I made it through—for the most part.

I could walk, although running for long distances still made me ache like I’d been steamrolled. I still had the ability to form new memories while holding on to the ones I didn’t lose after the accident, so that was a huge plus. There was a ten-year gap in my head, but at least I still remembered things like my thirteenth birthday with my family and friends at the lake and my high school prom where I took Amira as my date and she ended up leaving me for Tina Camero about five minutes in.

I never held it against her since it let me spend prom with Paul, another in-the-closet gay kid, who played footsie with me the entire night.

So yeah, I remembered all that shit, but the seven years before my accident was a completely blank slate.

It frustrated me to no fucking end. I hated it. There were days I’d just stare at old photos for hours and hours, hoping I’d unlock my memories like some climactic movie moment, a door surrounded by clouds slowly unlocking its lock and swinging open.

That never happened, and I ended up with a headache on those days, without fail.

The people who were moving into the vacant office above us were just finished up. I watched a pink-haired kid hop out of the moving truck and carry a cardboard box labeled “office shit” on the side. Apparently it was some kind of progressive detective agency that was moving into the building, which I was all for. Our town had its fair share of open-minded residents, but there was still a handful of people who didn’t understand and didn’t have big enough hearts to even try. Those few people were some of the reasons why I had stayed in the closet for so long.

Too bad I couldn’t remember ever coming out.

I parked my car in the usual spot in the gravelly lot next to the redbrick building. There weren’t many places where you could find a pet store with a liquor license, but Blue Creek was special.

And now that liquor-selling pet store was about to have a detective agency right upstairs.

Inside the bright green and blue store, Shelly Ming, our manager, was already cleaning up a mess made by the cutest Australian shepherd puppy I’d ever seen. The owner was apologizing profusely while Shelly reassured her that it was nothing and asked if she wanted a screwdriver to start her day.