Tamara rolls onto her side and gives me a look. As she leans her head on her hand her hair falls like a sheet behind her. “You want me to be honest? I thought they might like one another.”
I’m horror struck by this suggestion, obviously I haven’t talked about Al and his reputation enough. If she had told me what her plan was I immediately would have shot the idea down. How can she be so nuts?
“Alistair isn’t right for your friend, I’ll tell you that much already. He’s a player who doesn’t want to settle down. I know that he pretends he’s just waiting for the right woman but I don’t want Katherine to get caught up in the journey.” Mostly, I don’t want it to get in the way of me and Tamara… if there is still a me and Tamara. “Honestly, it’s for the best that they fell out. If they end up sleeping together it’ll cause issues.”
“Hmm.” Tamara pouts. “I don’t know, I thought it could be kinda perfect. I’m sad it didn’t work out.”
I climb on the bed next to her and circle my arms around her. We’re both too weary to even take off our evening clothes, never mind anything else. But that’s okay, I’m happy to just lie here. Soon, Tamara will drift off to sleep and I’ll get that much needed peace to try and work this out. I need to decide what I’m going to do.
Amnesia… memory loss… might not ever come back…
Terrifying words that I’m not too sure what they mean flood my mind. I need to learn more…
Once I notice Tamara’s breathing has grown heavy and thick I slip my hand out from underneath her and I grab my laptop from the side. If I’m going to help Tamara then I need to learn all that I can. This isn’t something that I’ve ever had any experience with and I don’t want to be utterly clueless.
The first thing I do is look up the definition of the term which is unfortunately very unhelpful. A partial or total loss of memory. That?
??s what I knew already, that doesn’t give me anything. I think I might get more out of it if I learn about what I can do to help. Moving forwards is the best idea for both of us anyway.
“Cognitive behavioral therapy?” I mutter to myself as I read the words. “What’s this? Oh, it involves a therapist. How will that help?” I don’t know why I’m talking to myself aloud but I can’t seem to stop. “By talking about it?” I glance down at Tamara feeling sorry for her as she sleeps. “How can she talk about what she doesn’t remember?” I feel weird about all the times I’ve tried to talk about the coffee incident now and she hasn’t responded. “If she was going to recall, surely she’d do it as soon as I started to talk about it?”
I give up that idea and scan my eyes over the rest of the ideas. There is a lot of medication on offer but it seems to have some terrible side effects which I don’t think is helpful. Especially since it seems to only be a smaller problem really, not something that requires too many harsh chemicals pumped into her body.
Then I come across other ideas, things I can actually do. One of the biggest things seems to be preventing further bumps to the head, so I’ll need to do whatever I can to make sure that doesn’t happen. She won’t go down the stairs alone and I’ll keep all doors open so she can’t clumsily walk into them. Then there are many brain training games to get the brain working harder. That’s supposed to bring things out. Physical exercise too. It doesn’t seem like much and I’m not totally convinced that it’ll work, but I have to do something.
I just want to help, I don’t like this useless feeling. I want to do whatever I can to make it okay again. Including telling her. Once she wakes up in the morning I’ll confess that Katherine told me then maybe we can work through it together. I hope so. I can’t imagine her getting mad, even if she is embarrassed.
“I’ll help you,” I promise Tamara determinedly. “I’m not sure how yet, but I will.”
I lean down and rub her cheek, just wishing that she could know everything about us. I’m scared that she might turn her back on me when she learns the truth. I don’t want to be hated by her.
20
Tamara
“What?” I screech loudly. “She said what to you?” I rake my fingers through my hair. “Are you serious?”
I cannot believe this, it’s ridiculous. I don’t even know what to say about it, it’s too much. I heard the word ‘amnesia’ bandied around when I was in the hospital but I chose to ignore it. It doesn’t apply to me I can remember everything that I need to. I have the horrible recollection of the job interview which is the thing that happened just before, so obviously it isn’t true. My memory has always been a bit patchy anyway, that’s just a part of who I am, so it means nothing. It certainly isn’t something that I wanted Katherine to share with Logan.
“Why would Katherine say that? I don’t understand what that has to do with you anyway, no offence.”
Anger burns through my entire body, it rolls off of me in waves. I’m red hot, it actually hurts like I’ve been sun burned or something. This is not the lovely wake up call that I was waiting for. I thought me and Logan would end up having another lovely, lazy day just basking in one another’s company, but it seems now.
Maybe if I knew that he had a bomb shell to drop on me I would have stayed at home instead.
“Look. I know that this sucks.” Logan tries to take my hands but I snatch them away. I don’t know why but my anger right now is pretty much only directed at him. “But I have told you for a reason, there’s something we need to discuss.” He looks hurt, but I can’t concentrate on that right now. “We actually met before.”
I stare at him blankly. “What do you mean? Before now? What the hell are you on about?”
“No.” He chuckles and shakes his head. Even through his internal pain he can joke about it. Well, good for him. I sure as hell don’t feel the same way. “Not before now, I presume that you remember that?” I glower, refusing to give him anything. “No, I mean before you had your job interview. On the train.”
My heart falls out of my shoes, his words send me topsy turvy. Okay, so I don’t remember everything from that day but I do recall the important stuff. Surely, I would remember meeting Logan? He’s so important to me.
“Familiar, but he was familiar,” I finally hear myself muttering. “I knew him, even then I knew him.”
And that’s true. I can very clearly remember looking at him across the train carriage and remembering him, or at least feeling some sort of pull towards him. There was definitely a magnetic connection… but that doesn’t make this true, does it? I give him a curious look, wondering why on earth he would make this up. There’s no reason, he isn’t going to get anything out of it aside from me being incredibly annoyed.
“Fine.” I fold my arms defiantly across my chest. “If we’ve met before then tell me about it.”