Page 83 of Amnesia

How could I deny her anything? Especially when she had every right to know.

“Please tell me.”

I took a step forward, bringing us that much closer together. Am reached for my hand, and I surrendered it readily. She gave me a light shake, and the vibration traveled up my arm, tingling my heart.

Solemnly, my eyes searched hers. I felt this was a make-or-break moment for us. I wanted her so badly, so very badly.

“I can’t.” My head shook once.

Her fingers slipped away, her body floating backward. The picture in her grasp fell to the floor, crumpled from her grip. “Then I can’t trust you.”

“No, I guess you can’t.” I agreed, feeling as though my heart were literally being ripped from my chest.

“Good-bye, Eddie,” she whispered, turned, and walked out of the house without looking back.

I stood there for long moments, allowing the crushing weight of her rejection to splinter every part of me.

She was long gone. Silence wrapped around me, but I spoke anyway.

“Please, don’t go.”

My life was a beautiful lie. And beneath the beautiful lie lurked an ugly truth. I wanted to ignore it, to start over and let go of whatever brought me here.

People here knew more than they would say. I was in the dark, kept out of my own life.

The look on Eddie's face when I walked away was almost enough to make me stay.

Just like my plea was almost enough to make him talk.

Almost wasn't good enough. Not from him.

I wanted desperately to trust him. But I couldn’t, not when he all but admitted he was lying.

If I was going to use my blank memory as a clean slate to start over, it had to remain clean. Eddie’s lies were dirty.Ifelt dirty now. Dirty and filled with sorrow.

I wondered if the entire town knew what I didn't. Maggie? Dr. Beck? Even Dr. Kline? They all acted as if they were trying to help, but deceiving me wasn’t help.

The entire walk to Maggie’s was a blur, my thoughts too loud for me to really pay attention to anything. Her car wasn’t in the driveway when I walked up. Relief nearly made me sag. I wasn’t up to facing her right now, confronting her about what she might or might not know.

Using the key she gave me, I let myself in. The house was quiet when I walked through the living room. Wherever she was, she must have taken Elmo. In my room, I flopped across the bed belly first. I thought about burying my head in the pillow to cry, but tears didn’t come because I didn’t know what I would be crying about.

I shoved up away from the bed, rubbing my hands over my dry face. I really did feel dirty. My skin felt taut over my muscles, as if the tension in my body were making me tight. After rummaging around in the dresser for some clean clothes, I went across the hall to shower. Maybe the water would help wash away the worst of how I was feeling.

Just the sound of the falling spray soothed some of the tension away, making me eager to step beneath it. Where did I go from here? I wanted to stay in Lake Loch. Even though I didn’t technically have a home here, the place itself still felt like home. Was it because it was all I really knew or something else?

Like Eddie?

I shied away from thoughts of him, turned, and pushed my head beneath the spray. The gentle massage of the jets above made me feel I was melting. Sighing, I propped one hand on the shower wall and let the spray pelt me until my mind began to numb.

I was tired of thinking. Tired of feeling. Tired of being confused.

Not wanting the water to run cold before I washed, I snagged the body wash off the shelf and forced myself to stand up. The glass on the shower door was steamed up, the entire bathroom sort of hazy with humidity. Water dripped off the tip of my nose and clung to my lashes when I gazed down at the plastic bottle gripped in my hand.

Suddenly, it was hard to focus, hard to remember what I was doing. Blinking, I fixated on the body wash again. I was showering… using soap.

I continued to stare down, water rushing across my bare skin, my eyes not really seeing anything. A high-pitched whistling noise filled my ears and everything around me tilted. I grappled for balance, throwing my hand out against the tiles.

Involuntarily, I left the shower, even though my body remained. My brain, my eyes, my ears all abandoned my wet and naked form until it seemed I wasn’t even in my body at all.

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