still had red-and-white danger tape cordoning it off. The doors were open, the shaft was empty and a huge orange cone told people not to go anywhere near it.
“This is it!” I said.
“Yes.” Noah came up behind me, speaking to me over my shoulder. He was close. If I took a step back, I would be able to touch his chest.
“Is anything coming to you?”
I shivered and clutched my arms to my body as a cold sensation clawed its way over my skin and made the hairs on my arms stand up. “No. Just a feeling.” I clutched myself tighter and the feeling intensified. “I . . . I don’t like it,” I whispered. “It frightens me.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Firm. Big. Reassuring. I didn’t realize until that moment how much I’d missed the feel of his hand. It had been a day since I’d felt it.
“Let’s go. It’s not worth it.” He turned my body away from the elevator and then looped his arm through mine and walked us out of the building together. People looking at us might think we were great friends. Or even husband and wife. That’s how comfortable I felt with Noah. How comfortable his arm felt looped through mine like that.
When we got home, I changed into one of the bikinis that Sindi had given me. She’d bought some for a swimwear shoot, and they’d never been used, so I was going to use them as underwear. I was feeling so much better in my new clothes, and certainly with my new undies. We’d fallen into another Game of Thrones marathon and, this time, we talked the entire way through. We kept having to pause the TV to finish what we were saying to each other. But when I started feeling a pain in my abdomen, went to the bathroom and came back out, I was unable to sit down again. Something Noah seemed to notice straight away.
“What?” He looked up at me.
“Um . . .” I started, and then stopped. This was not an easy conversation to have.
“Soooo,” I stretched the word out, buying myself time to think.
“Yeeees.” He imitated me with an amused smile, as if I was starting some sort of game.
“The thing is . . .” I hesitated.
“Yessss.” He stretched out the “s” sound like a snake might do.
“I need tampons!” I blurted out.
Noah’s eyes widened. “Oh. OH! Aaaahhh!”
“Overshare. I know. Awkward. But I need them,” I gushed.
“Of course.” Noah stood up.
“Or pads. Or tampons, or pads, or those little cups, or . . .” I scanned my mind again, looking into the nothingness once more. “I don’t know, actually. I don’t know what I use.” I shrugged.
Weird thought, that. You lose your memory and can’t remember what kind of sanitary wear you use. I bet no one had ever thought of that. Those tiny things that go with losing your memory. I wondered what other small things I might encounter along the way like this.
CHAPTER 27
I stood in the sanitary-wear aisle at the pharmacy. Noah was hanging back. I didn’t blame him. I scanned the row. So, so many different things to choose from. I walked the aisle once, looking carefully at everything as I went, hoping that something would look familiar, but it didn’t.
“I’m Andi. Can I help you?” a young-looking girl with bleached hair and a nose stud asked.
“I like that.” I pointed to my own nose. She seemed confused for a moment and then smiled.
“Thanks.”
“Did it hurt?” I carried on looking at the pink stone glinting from the side of her nose.
Andi shook her head. “Not really. Maybe like a bee sting.” And then she gestured to the products behind me. “Anything specific you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know,” I said, wondering what I would look like with a nose ring.
“Are you looking for sanitary wear?”
“I am.”
“Well, which brand do you use? If we don’t have it, I can go and check in the back. Some of the stock hasn’t been unpacked yet.”
“I actually don’t know,” I confessed. This seemed to elicit a really strange look from her. She dragged her eyes over me, up and down, and then up and down again.
“How? I mean . . . sorry, I don’t mean to offend you or anything, but you seem to be in your mid-twenties so . . . how do you not know what brand you use?”