I grimace at Lizzy’s text from last night. On the one hand, she makes me laugh, but on the other, I don’t know what she’s going to think when I tell her Nate is Mr. Hulk Tattoo.
I’m supposed to spend the day looking at wedding venues with my mom, and all I can think about is whether I cheated on my fiancé. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure I need to know if I’m fucking some rock star behind Max’s back before I can choose the length of my veil.
I’ve been working in the bakery since four thirty this morning, and the clock reads twenty to six when Lizzy comes through the front door, her eyes half closed.
“Why couldn’t your dream career have required me to sleep past ten every day, huh?” She pushes past me and to the coffee. “I swear, if I weren’t an unemployed loser, I’d tell you to find someone else to wake up at the ass crack of dawn.” She pours herself a cup of coffee and then dumps cream in it before taking a long drink. “Fuck me, that’s good.” When she finally opens her eyes and looks at me—really looks at me—she frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“I know who Mr. Hulk Tattoo is,” I whisper.
She straightens. “Really? Did he come back? Did you see him somewhere?”
“He was at Asher’s last night.”
She grins. “Oh, the plot thickens!”
“It’s Nate Crane, Liz.”
“What’s Nate Crane?”
“Nate Crane is the guy who got into my bed like he belonged there. He’s the guy I was cheating on Max with.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and mutters, “God, you’re such a bitch.”
“What?”
“You’re engaged. Sue me for hating you a little. You get the perfect life and the hottie on the side.”
“The hottie on the side might ruin the perfect life!” As much as I want to tell myself that my secret was sa
fe, as much as I want to let go of what might or might not have happened with Nate, I can’t stop obsessing over what I’ve done. What if my memories don’t return? I need answers.
Liz frowns. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. But come on. Who could blame you? Nate. Fucking. Crane. You were fucking Nate Crane.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” I protest.
She cocks her head. “How familiar was he with your body when he was touching you in the dark?”
I wince. “This sucks.”
She shakes her head as if still trying to clear away sleepiness. “Okay, so you saw him at the party and realized he was the guy. Then what? Did he approach you?”
“No. The opposite. He saw me and went in the other direction. But this is my life, you know? My future with this really great guy. And the more time I spend with Max, the more sure I am that he’s the right guy for me, and I don’t want to screw this up, but maybe I already have. So I followed Nate outside and told him I have amnesia and he asked when the engagement happened—before or after the amnesia, as if that made a difference—and I told him before and he was upset all over again and wouldn’t talk to me about it. He walked away without answering any of my questions, but I got a hold of his cell phone and read through some of our texts to each other, and it looks really bad, and now I don’t know who to talk to or where to get answers, but I’m scared I’ll lose Max if I tell him and…” I take a long, gasping breath. “Help.”
“Okay.” She sets her coffee on the counter and comes over to put her hands on my shoulders. “This is going to be all right. We’re going to figure this out. Together. But first you have to breathe.”
“Right.” I draw in another shaky breath. And another. I’m on my third before Lizzy’s nodding and smiling.
“Okay. Now do you think you and Nate were just…”
“Just what?”
“Do you think he just came by for booty calls, or do you think you had a relationship?”
“He said, ‘I’m the idiot who’s in love with you.’ Those were his words, ‘the idiot who’s in love with you.’ And then the text messages…?”
“Dirty?”
I nod. “Really dirty.”