Chapter 5
Xander
Five Months Earlier
“Come on. We’re taking you out,” Noah insists.
“No offense, but I’m not really in the going-out mood,” I tell him.
It’s been a month since I woke up in the hospital. Part of me wishes I’d have just stayed asleep or died in the accident.
Everything is confusing and frustrating.
Noah, Jamison, Chase...they all tell me I’m not twenty-two.
It’s twelve years later. I’m no longer a paramedic.
I’ve gone through med school and am a surgeon.
According to Noah, I invested in several companies with him and am pretty wealthy.
My apartment is fancier than I ever thought possible.
And I am no longer with the love of my life, Billie.
Except I don’t remember a single thing about the last twelve years, and every day that goes by, I lose more and more hope I’ll ever get my memory back.
“Sorry, but I’m not letting you sit at home all night. Get dressed. You’re coming out with us.” Noah has his, ‘I’m not letting you out of this,’ expression on, so I groan, go into the bathroom, and remove the pajama bottoms I’ve been wearing all day and take a shower.
When I walk out of my bedroom, Noah nods at me. “Good to see you can still clean up well.”
“Funny. Good thing I didn’t lose my good looks and amazing fashion sense in the accident.” I joke about it, but I would have rather lost those things than my memory.
“What would all the ladies do if that had happened?” Noah teases me, but we both know I’ve not had any ass since before the accident.
Any ass I got right before, I don’t remember, so did it even happen?
All I remember is screwing Billie since I was nineteen, in multiple positions and places, but she is nowhere.
To make things worse, a faceless woman haunts me every night, and it’s not Billie, so I live in a constant state of guilt.
I don’t tell anyone about my dreams. I’m sure it’s just my screwed-up mind playing more games on me.
I never even had wet dreams this intense when I was a horny teenager, and the last thing I need to do is tell anyone about it and be deemed crazy.
“Let’s get this over with,” I mumble to Noah and snatch my keys off the table.
Noah’s car and his driver Lou are waiting at the curb.
That’s another thing I can’t seem to get used to.
Noah, Jamison, and Chase have all changed.
Yes, they are still the same guys I’ve always known, but they all have lives.
..stories I don’t know. The last I knew, we were all paramedics.
Now, Noah runs one of the largest merger and acquisition firms in the country and is worth billions.
Jamison and Chase own ambulance companies in several states and are expanding.
And my investment portfolio has more zeros behind it than I could have ever dreamed.
Apparently, the three of us were smart and gave whatever we could to Noah to invest in various companies and are all self-made billionaires.
I mean, seriously, how do four guys who scrambled for scraps become not millionaires but billionaires?
I thought Noah was playing a joke on me when he sat me down and said, “We need to go through your finances so you pay your bills on time and don’t screw up your credit.”
“Am I going to lose everything since I can’t work right now?” I asked him seriously.
Noah laughed but then seemed to realize I was freaking out. “Xander, you’re loaded. You never have to work again if you don’t want to.”
“Funny. Just give it to me straight. How long until I have to beg my parents to move back in with them? I’m sure my salary was nice and all, but with my student loans and no paycheck coming in, I’m sure this apartment will need to go.”
Noah searched my eyes, not saying anything.
“It’s okay. Don’t sugarcoat it. I can handle it. How bad is it?”
“Xander, I’m not joking. We’ve done well. Really well. You invested in some of my first projects with me. You only work because you love being a surgeon. It would take a lot for you to run out of money.”
“Stop being cruel. Just give it to me straight, Noah. How long?”
He gazed at me a minute, went over to my pile of unopened mail, sorted through it, and came back with about ten envelopes from different banks and financial firms. Throwing them on the table, he said, “Open them.”
Slowly, I opened them. One statement after another confirmed he was telling the truth about my financial situation. When I had them all laid out in front of me, I added it up in my head and sat back in shock. “So I’m rich?”
Noah laughed. “Yep. Filthy fucking rich.”
I tried to comprehend it.
I should have felt elated.
I should have been dancing on the table.
I should have been grateful I would not lose my fancy apartment and have to move in with my parents.
I felt nothing but more confusion.
What I last remember is buying ramen noodles and my mom bringing casserole dishes of lasagna to the station so the guys and I could eat something decent between our shifts and school studies.
How did it all happen? I wish I could comprehend it all, but I can’t. I don’t remember any of it.
Even my cell phone is so complicated, I hardly use it. What happened to my flip phone and paramedic beeper?
“Earth to Xander.” Noah waves at me in the car.
“Oh, sorry,” I mumble.
“Xander, you’ve got to snap out of it. You can’t go down this hole,” Noah says.
I glare at him. “Easy for you to say. You remember the last twelve years of your life. Mine, too, apparently.”
“That may be true, but you didn’t let me go down the hole when Nathan died, and I will not let you go down it.”
Nathan. I turn toward the window, blinking back tears. Noah’s brother died, and I can’t remember that, either.
Noah’s voice gets softer. “Xander, your memory will come back. Give it more time.”
I stare out the window. “Will it? I’m beginning to think not.”
“It will. I know it will.”
I say nothing, and we soon pull up to the curb. When we get inside, Chase and Jamison are at the bar.
“Xander,” they both call out.
They sound the same as they always have when they are at the bar and drinking, so I plunge into a false sense of comfort.
Within minutes of our arrival, Chase orders shots, and I pound a few back.
I haven’t drunk alcohol in...well, I don’t remember when.
It doesn’t take long before I feel buzzed and am smiling.
The hostess comes and tells us our table is ready. We grab our beers and sit down at the table. For the first time in a long time, I’m having fun. The guys and I spend dinner laughing.
I keep ordering more shots and am feeling pretty drunk. Noah says, “Think it’s time to cut back on those.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Don’t be a wuss.”
He laughs.
The waitress quickly comes back with the shots.
“No wuss zone. Drink up, Parker,” Jamison says to Noah and then clinks my glass to his.
I throw back the shot. Then I notice the woman with honey-colored hair. She looks like her, and my pulse creeps up.
I stand up quickly, knocking over my chair and take a few steps. I grasp the back of her shoulder. “Billie?”
The woman turns around. She isn’t Billie.
“I’m so sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
She bats her eyes at me and smiles. “That’s okay.”
I sulk back to the table. “Shit. I will never find her.”
“Stop searching for her. You’re not with her. You don’t want her,” Chase says.
I glare at him. “Don’t tell me what I want or don’t want.”
He’s about to say something else when the staff in the restaurant start singing “Happy Birthday,” and a cake with the number thirty-five on it is placed in front of me.
How the hell am I thirty-five?
The candles are flickering, and the guys are singing along with the staff when all the anger, frustration, confusion, and desperation I’ve felt the last month comes to the surface. I pick up my pint of beer and dump it on top of the cake.
The staff stops singing.
“Have you lost your mind, Xander?” Chase stands up quickly as the beer drips off the table and onto his pants.
“Yeah, motherfucker, I have lost my mind, in case you haven’t been paying attention,” I yell at him.
“Get a grip, man,” Chase yells back.
I land a punch right in the middle of his nose. He steps back for a minute then comes back at me, and his fist collides with the side of my chin.
There is a ton of commotion and loud noise as people scream. Noah and Jamison are dragging us away from each other, and Chase and I are yelling.
Within minutes, the cops are in the restaurant, and Chase and I are being pulled out to the back alley. Jamison follows, and Noah is nowhere to be seen.
When we get outside, one cop demands, “What are you two thinking?”
“It’s just a misunderstanding among friends, Simon,” Chase mutters.
“It will kill me to arrest you two. You better hope Noah can clean up your mess,” the other cop says.
They seem like they know us, but I’ve never seen them before. I glance at Jamison for answers.
“Crandle, can I talk to you a minute?”
The cop named Crandle and Jamison step away, leaving Chase, Simon, and myself.
“Xander, you could be in massive trouble with the medical board for this. What are you thinking, throwing punches in a restaurant?” Simon asks.
“I’m sorry, but do I know you?”
Simon peers at me. “Funny.”
“Simon, he doesn’t know who you are,” Chase says with blood all over his face.
Simon looks over at Chase, then me, then back at Chase.
“It’s true. Xander has amnesia from a car accident he was in a month ago.”
Simon’s head jerks to me. “Xander, man, I’m sorry to hear that. You doing okay?”
I stare at him, feeling like a pathetic loser once again. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know you.”
Pity crosses his face. It’s an expression I’ve gotten to see on too many people’s faces the last month. He pats me on the back. If my hands weren’t cuffed behind me, I would punch him in the face.
Jamison and Crandle return just as Noah comes outside with another man I don’t know.
“I won’t press charges,” the man says. “We’ve handled the matter privately. Please have them leave through the alley though. I don’t need my customers thinking people can get away with that kind of behavior.”
“I’m sorry,” I say to him right away, feeling guilty I created a mess in his place of business.
He gives me a sympathetic expression. “You’re forgiven, Xander. I hope your memory comes back quickly, man.”
Once again, another person knows me, and I have no clue who they are.
The cops finally unfasten our handcuffs. Sobered up by now, I turn to Chase. “I’m sorry.”
He nods. “Already forgiven, but next time, can you not hit my face? I think I’m going to need a nose job.”
The four of us laugh, and I’m reminded that, as depressing as it’s been, I still have things in my life to be grateful for, like these guys. Maybe I shouldn’t kill myself after all.