Chapter Twenty-Eight
A Call to Arms
There was no tape that afternoon. Hilary left him there at the door, already a few minutes late, and kissed him while the rideshare threatened to pull away.
To keep the anxiety at bay, they’d decided to stay connected by phone.
They couldn’t talk much while Hilary was working, but it seemed just having him on the other end of his Bluetooth was a comfort to them both.
It was nice just to hear the ambient sounds of Hilary’s workplace—even if those sounds included screaming monitors, disoriented patients, and irritated staff.
The best parts were whenever Hilary was charting.
There would be mostly quiet except for the soft clacking of the keyboard and the occasional, “Trenton?”
There wasn’t anything that couldn’t easily be sacrificed to answer that call. “Yes, darling?”
He could hear the scowl through the phone. “Are you going through a thesaurus or something?”
He could understand why the man thought so. Over the last few hours, he had gone through dearest, sweetheart, honey bun, handsome, pumpkin, and (just for the heck of it) blueberry.
“Let me know when I hit on one you like.”
“You could just use my name, you know, like a normal person.”
“How about baby? That one’s popular.”
He was sure the vague crackling from the other end of the line was the sound of Hilary’s tooth enamel wearing away. “If you don’t mind breathing through a hole in your neck, maybe.”
Trenton found he was smiling and had been for most of the afternoon. “You called my name,” he reminded him. “Did you need something?
“It’s another update I remembered. I can tell you later, but I didn’t want to forget.”
There had been several of those already. Trenton had missed a lot of things. “What is it?”
“It’s about Mrs. Parson.”
And with that, Trenton knew from the tone alone. “Ah.”
“I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t exactly surprising. She hadn’t been young fifteen years back, but it did feel wrong to be told the death of someone who had only just been put back into his mind.
Then again, it was strange that Mrs. Parson had ever been deleted at all.
Most of the time he’d known her had been before Hilary.
Then again, almost everything that Hilary overlapped had been deleted. “When did it happen?”
“Two years ago. Almost three now. Remember when I took that two-week trip?”
He did remember. Hilary had even asked if he’d wanted to come along, but he hadn’t been able to get off work, something Trenton wouldn’t have cared about if he’d had his memories. But of course, he hadn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Hilary said again. “I should have pushed more.”
“No.” Because even if Hilary had managed to convince him, it wouldn’t have meant anything, and likely only confused and hurt Mrs. Parson to have him appearing uncaring. “I’m glad you went. Was she…?”
“It was when she broke her hip. I went to get her settled with the new aid. Unfortunately, she never really recovered, though it went quick at the end, Mom said. I didn’t—I wasn’t there for the funeral.”
And he could guess why. His most recent forgetting—the time before this one.
They’d been together almost three years, and Hilary must have been starting to think they were done with the cycle of forgetting and almost remembering.
It must have hit hard. Very hard. If their positions had been reversed, he’d have been devastated.
How Hilary had managed—had kept getting up after each time…
It was the kind of strength you had to develop when you didn’t think have a choice.
Hilary cleared his throat. “I mention her because she left you everything. The shop. The apartment up top. It’s all yours.”
It wasn’t at all what Trenton had been expecting the man to say, and he had to jerk his thoughts hard to get them moving in the new direction. “What?”
“She knew about what happened. To us, and about your memory. She’d send things for you sometimes. The jams and the tea. Do you remember?”
Of course, Hilary’s Aunt Peggie. Though she wasn’t an aunt at all, but Mrs. Parson, who had been so generous, sending a basket every Christmas, and for their birthdays too.
The pressed flowers in the hall closet had been from her as well, along with the pretty teacups they rarely used because of their small size that sat on the kitchen windowsill, along with the salt shaker shaped like a mushroom.
“Ah,” he said again, his heart squeezing with it. “I hope she didn’t think—”
“She knew how much you cared about her. And she didn’t think the forgetting was permanent. She would tell me that all of you was still inside and that you just needed more time. She was always telling me to give you just a little more time.”
Again, it was that feeling, that yawning depth of a wrong he could never fix.
But Hilary wasn’t saying it to make him feel bad.
It was the opposite, really. Telling him of support that had been there for him.
So many people still thinking of him. “She put her will under my name, but only so I could hold on to it for you, so it would be there when you remembered. It’s all still waiting there.
I’m not sure what state the store is in.
I haven’t been down there except to collect some of your books.
But I’m warning you, Peggie said she’d haunt you for life if you tried to reopen the shop.
She said, and I quote, ‘If you try to rot out there the way I did, I’ll never forgive you. ”
Trenton couldn’t help but be offended, even knowing they were her words.
“She didn’t rot.” But he didn’t disagree with the reasoning behind the sentiment.
He couldn’t go back there. Everything good there, the meeting place that should have been sacred, the setting for a love and friendship that had been allowed to blossom—was poison now. “I’m glad you took the books.”
“Only the ones I’d seen you read. I’m sure there are more. Mom boxed up the nicer-looking ones and any first editions. We can go and get them whenever you’re ready.”
It might be awhile. Even with Hilary at his side, it would be difficult to go.
“We could still open something,” Hilary offered. “A new store built using the proceeds of the old one. Peggie was still talking about it, toward the end. About coming to visit us at the new shop.”
It was a dream from another life. One Trenton could still have if he wanted, and something to think about. “Thank you for telling me.”
Hilary knew enough to let that go. He was sensitive like that, but then another name floated to mind, and one that arrived without any prompting. “Aspen,” Trenton blurted.
Hilary faked a groan, the air between them was growing lighter again. “Still trying to set us up? Just accept that I’m not the lesbian of her dreams and let the hope die.”
Trenton found his mouth turning up in a smile. “Never.”
“She’s married now, you know. With three little brats too, if you can believe it. And yes, they’re all on sports teams.”
That had a vague memory stirring. Had he seen Aspen in the intervening years?
He didn’t think so, and there had been nothing about her in the journals, but something told him she’d been there anyway.
It was what she did, what she had always done for them, appearing somehow whenever they needed her. “Our guardian angel.”
Hilary laughed, clearly pleased. “Maybe you’re the one who ought to have gotten with her.”
But that was impossible, and for the most obvious of reasons. “My heart only beats for Hilarina.”
Trenton was pulling dinner out of the oven when Hilary came through the door like a hurricane, running again, though less breathless than before.
It seemed the cab driver had gotten the correct street this time.
Trenton caught his beloved around the waist and lifted him up onto the counter to have his way with him.
“Seems someone isn’t getting their steps in these days. ”
Hilary kissed him like he was a toilet he was endeavoring fiercely to unclog—a masterpiece of passion. “Tell me about it. I think all these Ubers might cut into your Italian sports cars fund.”
“God, no. Can’t we skip a few meals instead? Not this one, though. Since I already made it.”
Hilary gave him another one of those kisses, uncharacteristically wet and noisy. The man was enjoying himself. But not for long. He shoved suddenly, breaking them apart. “We’re going out.”
“Out?”
“If we stay in, I’m going to fuck you, and you’re definitely not ready for that yet.”
Trenton wasn’t, true, but the way his heart sped up wasn’t fear either. “What about dinner?”
“Can we eat it tomorrow?” The thought seemed to slow Hilary down, and he paused. “Did you work very hard on it?”
The recipe had been finicky, but also a decent alternative to the waiting. “I’ll put it in the fridge.”
They didn’t go far. Not even as distant as the old restaurant. And Trenton realized, with a start, that he and Hilary had been there together dozens of times in the ‘life’ just before this one.
“It’s the first time you’ve stuck so close after a forgetting,” Hilary said, following his gaze. “Usually you make me work for it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to apply for new nursing licenses to follow your ass over state lines.”
It was true. His stupid fight-or-flight brain really had done the ‘fugitive on the run’ motif. They’d been to half a dozen states, and each time Hilary had needed to uproot everything to do it.
“You still bought the house.”
“Yes.”
It would have been the headache of the century—not to mention a huge expense—to sell a house just a few short years after buying it, and that was undeniable proof that Mrs. Parson hadn’t been the only one betting on Trenton remembering.
Though he also knew Hilary would have sold it without a backward glance, following him into the circles of Hell if that’s where he’d chosen to go.
“How could it be you?” It was a question as old as the bond between them. “I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. A boy like you, the man you’ve become, how did I get you? How did I keep you?”
Hilary let the menu drop. He liked to look things over but never bothered choosing anything. He left that task to his loyal dog/friend/soon-to-be spouse. “You know the answer to that.”
And Trenton did, though it never stopped being miraculous. “Because it was me. Because it was you.”
“That’s right.”
He had Hilary’s fingers intertwined with his, unable to imagine having those hands in range and not holding them. It was something that had persisted throughout all the forgetting. He could eat as well with his left as he could with his right now, practically ambidextrous. “Can we call Mom?”
“I don’t know. You prepared for the consequences?”
“You mean about becoming only the second favorite now?”
“Hey, I didn’t say it was that drastic.”
Trenton had to smile, though the anxiety he was feeling was closer to terror than to simple nervousness.
He wasn’t at all ready. Not for the phone call, and not for dozens of other things.
But Hilary was there, already wrist-deep in the breadbasket, both elbows on the table, still in his work scrubs—and more precious than anything he could imagine.
Trenton opened the menu. “Should we have the coq au vin?”
Hilary handed over the butter knife and a bread roll. It wasn’t an offer, but a call to arms. He was always put on bread-buttering duty. “Whatever you say, Trent.”