I see shadows and an alligator sticker. It makes me feel… happy. Why is that?”
“We have a pet alligator. His name is Happy. And we met in the shadows, Comet. You made me feel what love was the moment I met you.”
“Why can’t I remember?” I begin to cry.
“You do,” he whispers, knee-walking until he is at the edge of the bed. “Can I touch you? Would that bother you?”
I shake my head and lean to his hand when he lifts in the air to touch my cheek. One touch. Why do I have a feeling all it would take, is one touch?
“Who the fuck are you talking to?” Daddy yells. His drunken steps tumble down the hall to my room.
Glancing at my door, then back to Tongue, I’m surprised to see he isn’t there. But he was. I know it.
Daddy opens the door and fumbles over his own two feet, then hits the side of my dresser. The light from the hallway trickles into my room, and that’s when I see him standing in the far left corner. He’s staring Daddy down, a furious expression on his face. A knife glints in the cheap yellow glow.
And that turns me on.
“You’re lyin’!” he spits, turning up the bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. “I heard you. Walls are paper thin, Daphne. It’s how I caught your whore of a mother cheatin’ on me! Fuckin’ him in my own goddamn house.” He points the liquor bottle at me and chuckles in his dirty tighty-whities. He isn’t wearing a shirt, and his pot belly from drinking so much is pronounced. His boobs are nearly as big as mine, and he has sweat dripping down his chest. There are cigarette burns on his underwear, small black rings in the material from where he fell asleep with one in his hand in his recliner. “Keep it down in here. I won’t say it again,” he warns before storming out of the room the best he can, but not before his shoulder and the edge of the door meet. “Ah! Stupid fuckin’ bitch.” He pushes the door with his hand as if it’s the one in the way. The knob digs into the cheap drywall causing it to crumble.
His ambling footsteps and incoherent mumbling gets further down the hall and Tongue’s boot lifts from the shadow and slowly shuts it. “I can kill him.”
“He’s my dad.” I say it in way that has an ‘explanation to itself’ tone.
“Family doesn’t always mean blood, Comet.”
I twist the yellow blanket between my fingers. It’s something I’ve had since I was a little girl. It used to bring me comfort, but not anymore. Nothing does.
Except Tongue.
My mind might not recall my memories, but my heart remembers how I feel.
“We’re more than friends, aren’t we?”
He walks so quietly for a man that’s as big as he is. He stops at the foot of my bed, and I’m drawn to the tattoos on his arms. “You’re my best friend and the love of my life, Comet.”
“Why can’t I remember you, then?” I sob. “Why am I here?”
“You do remember.” He makes his way to my side of the mattress, sits down beside me, and takes my hand. I inhale as his fingers brush over mine. Sparks—no, something more than sparks—dance over the nerve-endings on my skin. It’s so much more.
It’s fire and ice, a million needles dancing and whirling in a tango over my skin.
I imagine this is what the heat of the sun feels like.
“Yeah, Comet,” his voice deepens. “You remember.” The rough pad of his finger strokes the top of my hand.
I gasp, my eyes fluttering like the butterflies in my stomach as he travels up, caressing my bicep next. My entire body trembles, reacting to the simplest touch, but I have a feeling nothing is simple with this man.
“Every time I touch you feels like the first time. The way you feel right now—” his fingers drag up my shoulder and to my neck, grabbing hold of it like he has done it a hundred times.
My body tells me he has, because I arch my back, tilting my head to give him access to do with me whatever he wants. This is crazy. I’ve never met this man in my life. But then there is that push in the back of my mind, the one that bends reality, and most of the time in my life nothing makes sense.
When I look at Tongue, I know everything is