it should have come back by now. That’s the part that bothers me the most. That my memory is still gone.
“You’re quiet today, Peyton,” Tommy observes.
“Do you think, that if a person doesn’t remember where they came from, they’re still bound by the decisions that they made before?” Tommy throws me a startled look and I wave a hand dismissively. “Never mind.”
“Is that what’s wrong? That you can’t remember?”
We’ve talked, briefly and vaguely, about my accident. He knows something is wrong, and sometimes, when he’s talking about a movie he’s watched recently, I stare at him with a blankness that is frightening.
I stare at the city we’re driving through. I feel a strange longing for it, even as I find it too big and too foreign. It’s not Nashville. Not Sweet Water. I miss my quiet, backwater little town in the middle of nowhere Tennessee.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Peyton, no one gets to decide who you are but you. Even if you had your memories.”
I think of Rike, and how easy it is to be with him. How present he is, even when we were both lost in our own worlds.
How fucking happy I was.
I’m so tired of thinking about him, of being pulled into feelings I don’t know what to do with, and that stupid fucking feeling of loss.
I can’t mourn losing someone I never had. And maybe, before was different. But Rike was never mine. Not the me I am today.
I let the thought roll around my head as Tommy pulls into the visitor bay at St. David’s. There’s a line of cars waiting and I sit quietly, waiting as he inches forward until he finally puts the truck in park and hops out, tugging my wheelchair down before he helps me out and helps me into it, stepping back and letting me situate myself. When I nod at him, he grabs my black purse—a new purse, one he brought to me on the third morning at the hotel—and wheels me to the sidewalk. “I’m going to park, and I’ll take you in,” he says.
“Tommy, you don’t have to do that,” I say, but he’s already jogged away, sliding into the truck and pulling away to park. He’s going to be in trouble if he stays with me. They’ll miss him at the hotel.
“Peyton.”
I jerk and look around. The voice is vaguely familiar, and it clicks suddenly when I see Scott. He’s walking toward me, smoking.
He looks like shit, exhaustion clear on his face even under the oversized sunglasses and ball cap. He’s hunched forward, almost hiding. “God, where the fuck have you been?” he breathes, leaning down and hugging me.
I’m stiff in his arms, and he seems to realize it, because he pulls back and stares at me.
“Holy fuck. You don’t know, do you? You still don’t know who we are.”
“Feel free to clue me in,” I snap.
He takes off his ball cap and ruffles his hair, a scowl lining his forehead. “I’m going to fucking kick his ass.” Scott crouches. “This wasn’t the deal. We wouldn’t have agreed if we knew it was going to take this long for him to come clean about shit. I’ll talk to him.”
“Don’t,” I say, and his face goes pale. “I don’t know who or what I was to you or Lindsay. I don’t know what Rike is playing at. And I don’t fucking care.”
“Peyton, you don’t mean that,” he protests.
“I do. I’m not that girl. I don’t even fucking remember that girl. So if he wants to play god with someone’s life and memories, he’ll have to find someone else because I’m done.”
“What are you going to do?”
It’s a good question. I refuse to go to my parents. That bridge isn’t quite burned, but I’d set fire to it before I crossed it.
“It’s not your concern,” I say.
“You’re my girlfriend’s best friend, and you’re Rike’s—” He stops, and I lean forward.
“I’m what? What the hell am I to him?”
He shrugs. “You’re his. You think you can walk away, and he might even let you, for a time. Because he’s a dumbass. But it won’t stick, Peyton. Rike doesn’t know how to be without you.”
I smile, so cold it hurts even me. “He’ll have to fucking figure it out.”
“Peyton?”
Scott tenses, and his gaze darts to Tommy. Back to me, questioning.
“Pey, is he bothering you?” Tommy asks. He sounds cold. Threatening, for the first time since I’ve met him, and Scott straightens slowly.
“Dude, she’s practically family,” he says. As if it were true,