Chapter 2
Corrine
"I was giving him head in the car, Riley!" My voice carries through the hospital hallway, and I notice the nurse at the desk widening her eyes in surprise. "What if I am responsible for the whole crash and now this memory thing!?" I ask.
"Corrine," my sister starts, "you already explained that you had stopped what you were doing and looked back to see the car approaching you guys from behind. That would have happened regardless of where your mouth was."
"I don't know, maybe he would have seen the car sooner and then could have done something."
"This isn't your fault," Riley says, turning toward Sebastian as he leaves Xavier's hospital room. "How is he?" she asks.
"And who the fuck is Amy?" I ask before Sebastian can respond.
"Xavier is going to be okay. His head's a little fucked up right now, but I don't think it's permanent. I mean, he's always a little fucked up," Sebastian chuckles to himself like this is all a funny joke.
"Why are you laughing right now?" I ask.
"Oh, I had asked if he remembered the Jizz incident and now I can't stop thinking about it."
I roll my eyes. Riley slaps her new husband on the arm. Even though we threw everyone for a loop the night of their wedding, Riley and Sebastian have been steadfast in waiting around the hospital with me in the days since the accident. I had managed to get pulled out of Xavier's crushed car relatively undamaged, but I still remember how fucking scary it was that Xavier wouldn't wake up. By the time we were admitted and I was allowed to hear more about his condition, they'd already determined that he had some swelling in his brain due to the accident and would need to be in a medically induced coma. So I've just been stuck in this limbo, waiting to see what would happen to him.
Waiting around is not something I enjoy doing.
"So, he has amnesia?" I ask Sebastian. “And he is worried about Amy?"
"Amnesia, yes. Amy, yes and no," he starts, then looks around him for a chair. "Sit?" he asks us.
"I'll stand," I say.
He nods. "Amy is a girl from his past. She was a big part of his life before, and after losing her, he chose not to talk or think about her anymore."
"Well, how did he lose her?" I ask, assuming there was a nasty breakup.
"She died."
Riley audibly gasps and stands back up from where she'd sat next to Sebastian. "How?" she asks.
"Car accident," Sebastian says grimly. "Amy was Xavier's fiance..." His voice trails off.
?This is too much. I have too many feelings about all of this. I thought it would be all celebrations when he woke up, that we'd talk about how lucky we were to be alive and try to figure out who the hell would hit and run on us. But instead, I'm trapped in this twilight zone where Sebastian is telling me the man I've been fucking for months now was previously planning to marry another woman. A woman who died.
"I need a fucking drink," I say to no one in particular.
Sebastian nods and looks at Riley. "Little Mouse," he says. “Why don't you take Corrine out for a drink? I'll stay here and wait for Xavier to wake up."
Riley looks at me. "Is that okay?"
I nod. What else am I supposed to do? Xavier wanted nothing to do with me. That was evident. And I just don't understand how this fiance thing never came up. Not that I've been an open book, but we've talked about our views on relationships and commitment in general. I thought we both liked keeping things light and casual.
Truthfully, I also was getting to the point where I wanted to talk with him about possibly changing and being less casual. But now...
I realize I've been staring off into space while Riley waits for my response. I nod, and we walk away from Xavier's room, down the long hallway and out of the hospital. We decide to go to the bar close to our place. Of course, it is no longer our place since Riley moved in officially with Sebastian, but we still refer to it as "ours."
The cab ride is silent while we both process what we just learned. I let Riley pay the driver, and we seek out a table in the back of the bar.
"A gin martini, a shot of whiskey, and an order of fries," I say to the waitress once we are seated in our usual low-top booth.
"Anything else?" she asks.
"Whatever she's having," I say, nodding to Riley. "That was just my order."
"Gin and tonic," Riley says. "Please." She smiles at the waitress politely.
"It wouldn't kill you to be nice to her," Riley half whispers as the girl walks away.
"Please," I say, "I've had two weeks from hell. I deserve to be a bitch."
"You're right," Riley says. "Want to talk about it?"
My sister is so nice. She's always caring, polite, and committed. It's confusing that we're related sometimes. I sigh. "I was just feeling like maybe I wanted something more for us. For me and Xavier, I mean." I look up at her and she gives me sad eyes.
"Go on," she says.
"I’ve liked keeping things loose and free the last few years. I had that couple I was seeing a few months back and I stopped seeing them before your wedding. And I've stopped texting that co-worker Dave for random sex. I even stopped going clubbing unless it was with Xavier."
Riley is just looking at me, nodding her head. It annoys me.
"So I'm pissed. I'm pissed he doesn't remember me, and I'm pissed I care this much about him and how he feels and what happened in his past and that he never told me about it!"
She smiles. "There it is."
"What?" I snap.
"The true problem," she starts, "is that you've fallen in love and you didn't want it to be true. And now you know for sure that it is."
"Don't be gross and cheesy," I say, picking up the shot of whiskey the waitress dropped off. I take it in one gulp and chase it with a sip of my martini. "It's just that Xavier and I are fun. The sex is fun, the conversation is fun, and he's never made me feel like I couldn't keep doing what I had been doing. Which was sleeping with other people as I saw fit. And I never asked him about what he got up to."
"He hasn't been 'up' to anything other than your vag for at least three months," she says, laughing. "He likes you too, Corrine. He may not have all his memories now, but they will return. You heard what the doctor said.”
She picks up her drink. “And when they do, you can return to how things were." She smiles and reaches across the table to touch my hand with her free one. "Or maybe you take a chance, hoping it'll be even better when you're both honest ." She enunciates the word.
"We'll fucking see about that," I say, taking another sip of my martini so I don't start openly crying in the bar. What do I do now? It’s not like I chose to fall for Xavier in the first place. In fact, I tried pretty damn hard not to. When we’d first met at Lock though we were both wearing masks the night of the grand opening, I could instantly see that Xavier was a good-looking, confident guy who took charge. He’d come up to the couch Riley and I had been sitting on, and we were watching an orgy in the middle of the room, making me hot and bothered.
But then, when we ended up alone together as Riley chased after Sebastian a bit later, I found he liked the same things I did.
Sex.
Drinking.
Oh, and sex. Did I say that?
We had wandered Lock and Key together, grabbing drinks at the different bars and watching people grind against each other to fulfill the needs their bodies created as they watched carnal activities taking place around them. I’d admired the girls on the stage in the main room and I caught him staring at me more than once as I appreciated the women as equally as the men.
I surprised him that night. I also excited him. From what I knew about Riley’s law office, Bolt Corporation lawyers thought they were hot shit. He’d probably never been with someone who could easily say no to him.
So that’s exactly what I did. We kept drinking and watching others have sex until I had reached my max. I had texted my then-hookup, or hookups, Jade and Kevin, and they’d picked me up at the club. I still remember the look on Xavier’s face when I said, “This was fun, but I have a date.”
“At 4:00 in the morning?” he had asked me, clearly confused.
“Intimacy happens at all hours,” I’d told him, then walked out of the club with a smile. It was no loss on my part. I had plenty of fun with my playmates at my place after that.
But Xavier hadn’t given up. He had tracked me down only days later when we all started realizing that Riley was not sick at home but being held captive by her fucking psychotic husband, Nate. Xavier had come to my place, where Riley had been staying, to take time away from Nate, and we’d worried and raged together.
I was fucking scared when we realized what had happened. At that time, I didn’t have friends to turn to, nor did I want to tell our parents everything happening. All they knew was that Riley and Nate were having issues, and Riley was staying with me.
So when Sebastian found her and took her back to his place to recover, I learned more about Riley’s new boss and his friends. Though they were complete playboys, they were also savagely devoted and loyal to those they cared about. And I saw that Xavier cared for Riley and, in turn, me too.
She was in and out of consciousness for those early days home, but I stayed close by, filling Sebastian in on her progress. She was too shell-shocked to want to see anyone else, especially a man. But she got better, and I helped her see that what was starting between her and Sebastian was one million times more important than a piece of paper that tied her to crazy Nate Green. She’d felt so much shame and that was something I could never tolerate. There was no reason to feel bad about the desire she had instantly had for Sebastian, nor for the shit she had to go through with Nate. She got handed some crappy shit.
But all that’s over, and now Sebastian and Riley are disgustingly happy, and I just want to go back to my casual lifestyle with Xavier that was starting to become about more than the sex.
But if he doesn’t want me around and doesn’t remember what we were like, I see it as having two options: I wait for him to come around and hope it’ll be the same, or I convince myself I don’t need him anymore.
Neither seems fun.