Chapter 19 Emery
An hour later, Luca is napping on the couch, Honey is asleep at his feet, and the doorbell rings. Jogging to the door, I throw it open, expecting it to be Annie delivering Luca’s new phone, but it isn’t.
It’s Crash.
“Where’s the invalid?” he asks, moving to come inside.
It’s exactly what he always does—he’s even got his own key—so normally it wouldn’t occur to me to block his entrance, but on instinct, I step to stop him.
Crash looks at me in confusion. “Whoa. Emery, what’s up?”
“He’s…” I flounder, totally unprepared to deal with Luca’s best friend right now. “Still sleeping. He’s really sick, and—”
“I’m in here,” Luca says from behind me, groggily sitting up and waving.
With a you’ve been overruled smirk, Crash moves past me and into the house, his arm held high for their custom high-five back-of-hand fist-bump greeting that they’ve apparently been doing since they were children, and which Resurrected Luca absolutely bombs.
Thankfully, it seems to help Crash realize how “sick” my husband must be. “What’s up, man, feeling like shit?”
Luca nods, his eyes flickering to me then back up to Crash. “Yeah. Hey. Just under the weather.”
“That’s cool. It’s a slow week so your timing is good.” Bending, he scratches Honey behind the ears. “Who’s this?”
“Our new dog, Honey.”
“Finally gave in and got your man a dog, huh?” Crash shoves Luca’s legs aside so he can sit next to him on the couch, and it’s impossible to miss the way Luca spasms in pain.
“Dude—sorry.” Crash jumps up and jerkily moves to the chair while we both watch Luca clutch his thigh and breathe through the discomfort.
Crash looks at me for explanation and once again, I’m flummoxed. “He hurt his leg.”
“You—what?” He leans forward, inspecting, elbows on his knees. “When?”
“Friday night,” Luca says.
“I saw you Friday night,” Crash says. “This happened on your anniversary?”
Luca looks up at me in confusion. “Friday was our anniversary?”
Fuck, I forgot to mention that detail. My stomach sinks, and Luca registers at the same time what he’s just said. Crash huffs out a laugh and looks more closely at my husband. “How sick are you, Luke?”
Luca and I share a look, and I take a deep breath to explain, ready to mention fevers and delirium and confusion, but Annie bursts inside, already speaking: “Behold! I have a new phone, Jesus! Resurrection Man!” She pulls up short when she sees Crash, dropping her arm to her side. “Oh. Crash. Hey.”
I really need to start locking my doors.
“Resurrection Man?” Crash grins over at Luca.
“He had a super high fever,” I say quickly, sounding like a panicked robot. “And was delirious.”
“That’s right,” Annie says, aggressively nodding. “Resurrection in that he recovered so quickly.” Beat. “But, with some memory loss.” Another beat. “He might be out of it for a while. Or not.” Beat as she looks nervously over at me. “We really don’t know.”
If it wasn’t happening to me right now, I would really enjoy this moment.
“Fucking memory loss?” Crash looks justifiably horrified, and I see all of this slipping downhill like a tree caught in a mudslide.
“And hurt his leg, too? How badly?” He walks over to pull back the blanket before Luca can react, and stares down at the pink, healing skin with puckered tissue beneath. “Whoa.”
It looks like a much older injury than it is, and we all watch in silence as Crash works this out. He’s in Luca’s life every single day, and this injury that clearly ruptured down to the muscle is entirely unknown to him. “Did you take him to the hospital?”
Luca meets my eyes. His expression is a sardonic What a good and rational question, Crash.
“We’re both doctors,” Annie says, composed now. “He was in good hands.”
Crash continues to stare down at Luca’s leg, looking deeply skeptical, then over to Annie. “Aren’t you a vet?”
She straightens, offended. “We’re both medically trained. Why don’t I break your face and fix you right up?”
“Wait,” he says, entirely unfazed, “and Em actually took time off work?” Crash looks over at me, frowning. I register that this is the least credible part of the story and scowl at him for being right.
“Of course I did.”
“ ‘Of course’?” he repeats, laughing dryly.
Crash stands to press the back of his hand to Luca’s forehead.
“What, are you dying or something?” He laughs again but it lands with a thud.
You could hear a pin drop. He looks at each of us in turn.
“Okay.” He sits back in the chair. “Why didn’t anyone call me about his leg?
All you said was he was sick.” He returns his focus to Luca.
“Why are you being so quiet? And why is everyone being so weird?”
Annie and I lock eyes, and I feel the decision solidify inside me. I promised to do better and that means no more lies.
Dammit.
“Let’s sit down,” I suggest, and Annie reaches for my arm.
“Are you crazy?” she hisses.
“We have to tell him,” I say. “I have to. Besides, he knows too much already.”
“Or we could kill him,” she counters, and Crash cackles behind us.
“She’s a little scary,” he tells Luca. “It’s sort of hot.”
“I’m going to pretend you’re kidding,” I say to her.
“Try me,” she says, moving to the other chair while I take up the spot beside Luca on the sofa.
“Okay,” I continue, “before I start, you need to swear on your shirtless life that you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”
Crash bends his arm and brings the side of his straightened right hand to his temple. He’s momentarily distracted by the flexing of his own biceps but finally blinks back over to me. “Scout’s honor.”
“That’s a salute, dumbass,” Annie tells him.
“I’m serious. You can’t tell your mom, your fuck buddies, or even your cat,” I say. “Do you understand me?”
Crash’s brows pull low, and he hesitates before nodding. “Sure, yeah, whatever. What the fuck, Em?”
Annie and Luca watch me with keen interest while I take a deep breath and put the story together in my head. “On Friday night, I was late getting home—”
Crash barks out a laugh, saying, “Yeah, no shit,” before turning to Luca, who stares blankly back at him before shrugging. Crash’s concerned attention lingers on him for a beat before he looks back to me. I have to admit, this stings.
But it’s not unfair.
“Right, well, Luca was out for a run, and I was parked, waiting for him. We were going to go the beach. He started to cross the street, and someone hit him.”
“Wait, for real?”
“He was really hurt and was bleeding out.”
“He bled out,” Annie corrects.
Crash stands up. “What?”
I nod. “I know.”
He points to Luca’s leg. “That? No way that’s from Friday.”
“Just listen to me, okay?”
Slowly, he sits back down, sending both hands through his hair. “Jesus.”
I explain to Crash that my job isn’t really what he thinks it is. That I work for a privately funded company as a research scientist.
“So you’re not actually a—what was it? Project manager or, like… laser queen?”
I shake my head. “No. And Annie isn’t at a vet practice anymore. She also works for BioNEX.”
Crash huffs out a laugh. “Got it. Cool.”
I feel the way my head pulls back on my neck. That’s it? He’s not even a little surprised?
He and I have always gotten along, but I have to wonder now whether Crash has been faking a friendship with me for the sake of Luca. None of these revelations—my lateness on Friday, my enormous lie about my job—seem to faze him at all. He must think the absolute worst of me.
I chance a look at Luca, who is quietly taking all of this in. I’ve admitted as much, but I hate that he’s seeing such a shitty side of me before we even get to know each other again. Hell, I hate that I’m seeing such a shitty side of me.
“Luca didn’t have a pulse,” I say. “There’s a very advanced, very secret technology at my work—I’ll skip the specifics—”
“Because I’m just a shirtless dummy,” Crash says.
I quickly shake my head. “Sorry, no, I just—”
“No, no, I’m being serious.” He smiles. “No shade heard. I barely followed conversations about your job when it was supposedly simple. From now on, I’m just going to assume you’re a mad scientist.”
“Fair enough. Well, the machine we’ve developed can diagnose and heal illness and injury. Not all, but many. And it can also… revive.”
“Sweet, like, bring back from the dead?” Crash says laughing, clearly thinking we must be joking.
But none of us are smiling. “Exactly that,” Annie says. “Within a very limited time frame.”
Crash’s smile slowly melts away. “What the fuck?” He looks over at Luca. “So he’s like—a zombie now?”
Luca barks out a laugh at this and then stops. “Wait, am I?”
“No,” I say forcefully.
“What about superpowers?” Crash asks. Luca looks at me with a hopeful expression, and I regretfully shake my head.
“That sucks,” Crash says.
“From what we can tell, he’s basically the same as before. With some minor side effects,” Annie says. “Such as reduced coordination and…” She clears her throat. “Memory loss.”
“Amnesia?” Crash asks. “So—what? He doesn’t remember his name?”
“Or yours,” Luca says, finally joining in. “Or anyone’s. Or anything about my life before three days ago.”
“So, like, if someone owed you five hundred dollars, you wouldn’t remember?”
Luca laughs again, and I see that these two were destined to be best friends.
“What if they made out with your sister in eleventh grade? Would you want to know? Hypothetically, of course.”
“Hypothetically,” Luca tells him, “I’d tell them to keep that secret to themselves.”
“You’re a real one,” Crash says, and then frowns. “Will you forget me as soon as I leave?”
“No,” I tell him, and explain how Luca doesn’t have any issue creating new memories, and that he can remember implicit and certain explicit memories. And that, hopefully, his memory will come back.
“The brain is fucking wild, man.”
“That is the theme of the week,” Luca agrees.
“So why is it such a secret?” Crash asks. “Seems like the world would love to know that zombies are real and still hot.”
“Because I broke… a lot of rules,” I tell him.
“Yeah, they’d only ever done it on dogs and cats before.” I am thrilled to see that Luca actually seems proud to share this.
“No shit.” Crash nods, impressed. “I’m coming to you if Leo ever gets sick. I love that cat, and you never know when having a mad scientist around will come in handy.”
At this, even Annie’s expression softens. Something tells me he just might win her over yet. “Deal,” she says.
“Excellent,” Crash says, but then his expression clears and he looks at Luca.
“Wait. You mean to tell me you don’t remember the Evil Tree?
” Luca shakes his head. “Rotting Hill?” Another head shake.
Crash lowers his voice: “The Magic Twins?” Once more, Luca shakes his head.
“Oh shit,” says Crash quietly, looking down to his lap, and my stomach twists in guilt all over again.
So much shared history—ours, theirs—simply gone. Luca’s relationship with Crash is deep and meaningful to both of them, and I ache not only for what I’ve potentially lost, but for what the two of them have, too. I am desperate to help Luca get his memory back.
But seemingly thrilled by the challenge, Crash turns his face up to us, grinning and rubbing his hands together. “Man, have I got some stories for you.”