Forgotten First Kiss

I devoured the rest of the texts, spiraling into them, drinking up the blossoming romance between us as it clearly grew day by day. There were a lot of late-night texting threads. In one, we’d apparently spent half the night texting each other silly ideas for restaurants someone could open in Wilder River during tourist season, including how to staff them. Another night, I’d kept him on his phone into the wee hours discussing art I’d studied in a coffee table book he’d brought me, with Jeremy telling me all about the artists, their history and painting styles.

Exactly who was this guy?

By the time I reached the last few days of our correspondence before my memory came back, I felt like I’d been reading a love story for a slow-burn romance, like the one between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Every time I’d asked for help, Jeremy had been there for me. He’d even taken me fishing—while the sun was setting. I’d texted him a gusher-load of thanks for that the next day, telling him not a few times how much I was longing to see him again soon, and to kiss him again as soon as possible.

I guessed that the texts slowed down based on the fact we were spending a lot more hours in the day together at that point. Texts came before eight in the morning every day, and then they resumed around two the next morning. Wow. We’d been together a lot. And our conversations were increasingly emotionally intimate. I’d shared with him all my fears about regaining—or not regaining—my memories. How that would affect my relationships and my life.

All of Jeremy’s responses had been hopeful, positive, reassuring. Loving.

A strange swelling expanded in my chest, a sensation I’d never felt before. This time, no déjà vu was attached, unfortunately. In fact, my brain and logic railed against it with a big no! Not love for Jeremy Hotston!

But there it was—stark, bold, and undeniable in blue and white text bubbles on my phone screen. Some version of me had fallen hard for the current version of Jeremy.

I swiped at my cheeks, which were wet. I dabbed at them with the sheet.

“Hello?” Jeremy appeared at the door, his arms laden with bags and drink-holders, and came toward me. “Are you all right? Are you in pain? I’ll bring you a painkiller right away.”

This. This was the Jeremy from the texts. Warm, open and solicitous. Mine.

“I’m all right.” What excuse could I give? “I accidentally sprayed that analgesic in my eye. I’m such a clod.” It was true, just not recent or causative.

He gave me a questioning look but seemed to buy my fib. “Would you like to eat now?”

For the next few minutes, Jeremy attended to my immediate needs: painkillers and sustenance.

“This is really good.” I took a second sandwich from the stack. “Getting in bike wrecks makes me ravenous.” Combine it with an emotional roller coaster, and I was likely to eat all seven of the mini-croissants filled with chicken salad or ham and provolone. I looked at Jeremy before I bit into it, though. “Thank you.”

Jeremy handed me a collared cup from the holder. “I hope you still like vanilla shots in your hot cocoa.”

“Is that something you learned about me while I was …”

“We didn’t go to the hot cocoa shop. The weather was too warm.”

“Then how did you know?”

He recounted an incident. It involved hot cocoa with much more vanilla in it than I liked, one that had resulted in my dumping the cocoa on one of my mom’s prize rosebush and killing it.

She hadn’t been happy with Jeremy. Or with me, for that matter. But I was the one who’d dumped it, so I’d told her to quit being mad at Jeremy. She hadn’t.

“I thought you were playing a prank on me.”

“You hate pranks. You always have.”

“Then why play them on me and my family all the time?” And ruin my sister’s wedding, for instance?

Jeremy lowered his chin and gave me a penetrating stare. I’d never endured anything quite so intense. At last, he blinked and looked aside. “I brought you the paperwork.”

“What paperwork?” I let the old subject drop, for now. But he owed me an explanation.

“Mark reviewed the contract with the forged signature—I let him know about that—and he sent a different one that rescinds all previous contracts, making them null and void. You’ll sign it, and then Tennille and her husband will need to.”

“Does it involve their admission of guilt?”

“If you would like me to have him add that, I can, but I wasn’t sure what you’d want.”

I didn’t know that either. Even after getting plenty to eat. “I honestly can’t remember anything from that time, so I don’t know whether to make them take responsibility or not. If I was acting truly crazy, I can kind of see where they were coming from, even though what they did was beyond wrong.”

Obviously mulling it over, Jeremy sipped his cup of cocoa. It was the first time I’d ever seen him drink anything but Pepsi. “You can’t remember anything?”