Forgotten First Kiss

Chapter 4

“You didn’t answer me last night.” Danica’s rosebud of a mouth formed a pout, one that tugged at my heart and made me momentarily regret my choice to watch a recorded football game from over a decade ago with Garrett—night of the infamous blue paint incident and Garrett’s most famous Hail Mary pass into the end zone. “Did I have the wrong phone number?”

I set my Big Gusher cup of Pepsi on the windowsill and reached into the stuffed-full brown paper grocery bag I’d brought with me. “Let’s play a game.”

“Are you going to tell me what happened last night?” She folded her arms over her chest. It had a totally different effect on me than when Aunt June did it. I forced my eyes to stay where they belonged and not on the little crease of flesh that formed above the V-neck of her hospital gown.

“The game is called Do You Still?” First, I pulled out a half-pint clamshell of fresh raspberries. “Here’s how it works. I’ll give you something from this bag, and you’ll guess whether you like or hate them. For starters, do you still blank fresh raspberries?”

“Love!” She leaned forward and reached for them. “Mmm.”

Yep. She still loved them. “That was a gimme. Almost everyone loves fresh raspberries. Let’s move onto the trickier items.” I pulled out milk chocolate and dark chocolate. From what I recalled, she had a strong preference for one over the other. Yes, I’d guessed it wrong in an unfortunate incident deep in our past. “Do you still blank milk chocolate?”

“Love?” She opened the tinfoil and gingerly placed it in her mouth. I stared at her lips as she chewed—probably too intensely. They were sweet and mesmerizing. I was their slave. “Mm,” she said. “Love.”

Wrong. She hated milk chocolate and loved dark chocolate. The higher the cacao percentage, the better. “Good job. Three points.”

“Yay!” She clapped and leaned forward to peer into the sack. “What’s next?”

I handed her another piece of chocolate, very different this time—an eighty-six percenter. Might as well eat cocoa powder straight from the can. “Do you still blank extra-dark chocolate?”

Her nose crinkled. “Hate?” she asked tentatively. “It’s really bitter, right?” She took it and placed it on her tongue, killing me by inches. Slowly, she chewed it, her nose staying bunched up. “It’s definitely bitter. If I liked it before, something was seriously wrong with me. I’m never eating it again. Blech.”

“Three more points!” Okay, so I lied. The stakes were pretty low, though, or so I justified. But these results were exactly the type of feedback I was looking for.

We cycled through the rest of the things I’d brought—including other sensory items. She still loved the Australian boy band. Predictable. She could still finish a couple of sentences in Spanish when I started them for her—she’d be fine in Mexico City if she needed to locate that library. “That’s big,” I said.

“Being able to say me llamo Danica?”

“To find out that some things that you memorized from years ago are still embedded in your subconscious.”

She sighed, running a hand over her head’s bandage. “It’s driving me crazy. Deep-seated stuff is still there, but little else. I feel like a new baby sometimes. Except I can walk and feed myself. And do math.”

I broke into a circus announcer voice. “The amazing Math-Problem-Solving Baby.”

She sang a little fanfare and then looked at me like I was her best friend. “I guess you don’t have to explain where you were last night. Besides, my friend Oliver showed up, and you and I wouldn’t have had time to read Jane Eyre anyway.”

Oliver? Oliver who? My hackles all rose. “Oliver likes to dominate the conversation?”

“Oliver likes to talk about driving his trucks in the sandbox and getting his handstand.”

Oliver. One of her tumblers. My hackles slowly relaxed. “I’m glad you had some company. But you’re right. He probably wouldn’t have loved hearing about Jane’s new job with Mr. Rochester.”

“Mr. Rochester? I thought you gave me the spoiler that Jane likes someone named Sinjin.”

“Come on. You’ve read that book a dozen times. Maybe twenty.”

“And it will feel brand new to me this time, which is all the more exciting.” She aimed a warning finger at me. “No more spoilers.” Her mouth spread into a grin.

I broke open the book—on my app—and read the next chapter to her, glancing up now and then to see her reaction to the events in the story.

“Listening to this story feels like a favorite old blanket thrown over me, even though I can’t seem to recall anything that happens in the plot.”

I set the book down, and looked into her eyes. “You may not remember everything, Danica, but you’re still yourself.”

Without warning, her eyes welled with tears. She blinked, but none fell. With a hitch in her voice she said, “You have no idea how reassuring that is to hear.”

My own breathing caught. I looked down at the book and resumed the read-aloud. We made it through chapters two and three. Danica made comments now and then, insights into the life of Jane. “She’s so self-sacrificing. I really admire that quality.”