Page 23 of Forget Me Not

“Chocolate chips?” he asks, already pouring half a bag into the bowl. They’re white chocolate, my favorite.

“You really don’t need to do this, Gun.” I walk up beside him, stopping right before I get in his way.

He ignores me. “Raspberries,” he says to himself, spinning around and moving toward the freezer behind him where he retrieves a frozen bag of the red berries. I didn’t even know I had any. Then he’s in the fridge getting out God knows what. “Here, catch.”

Before I have time to react, an egg comes flying at me. I make a last minute attempt to grab it, hit it too hard and it breaks in my hand, yolk and egg whites running through my fingers down to the floor.

Stunned, I stare at the mess and then at Gun. He’s smiling so hard I’m sure his cheeks must hurt. How he keeps from laughing out loud, I don’t know. “That sucked. Here, try again.” And a second egg is hurled in my direction.

I don’t even have time to shout out, instinct takes over and my palms attempt to cradle the flying yolk bomb once more. Again, I fail. This time I miss and it lands splat at my feet.

“That’s it!” I scream, lunging for the bag of berries just as he moves to throw a third egg at me. I manage to duck before it hits me, at the same time, prying open the plastic bag so I can pelt him with a fist full of frozen raspberries.

“You almost took my eye out with one of those,” he shouts, but he’s laughing far too hard for me to take him seriously. So, the battle continues. Before long, he’s switched from eggs to chocolate chips, both of us racing around the island and taking turns sliding on goopy egg droppings while we continue to make the biggest mess in the history of messes.

I’m laughing so hard I can barely breathe anymore, until my bag of raspberries is empty and I’m out of ammunition. I reach out for the closest thing to me: the flour.

“Wait!” Gun’s deep voice booms through the open kitchen and I freeze, my hand still gripped tightly around the bag. “Up until this very moment, I am still completely committed to cleaning all this shit up. But,” he takes a step in my direction, his finger stretched out and pointing at my flour, “if you pick up that bag and cover this room in thick paste, that’s it. I’m out.” He throws his hands up toward the heavens, indicating the kind of help I’d have to call on. “I mean, that would be it. I’d have to sell the building. You’d have to move.” He shakes his head, slowly smirking again. “There’d simply be no coming back from it.”

Without releasing the flour, I slack my arm and rest against the counter. Who knew a food fight was this exhausting? “Are you calling a truce?” I ask, eyes narrow, voice low and guarded.

He tips his head back, thinking. “Will you accept a truce?”

I twist my mouth back and forth. I’m not sure I will. “I don’t think I like a truce. Nobody wins.”

He comes closer until his fingers press into my hips and he pulls me to him, both of us covered in slime and sweets. “Trust me, we’ll both win,” he growls softly, starting a wave of shivers that starts at my neck and moves all the way down to my toes. I don’t need him to clarify what he means by ‘we’ll both win’. That look in his dark green eyes says it all. He’s about to devour me whole. And I’m going to love every second of it.

Chapter Three

Reed

Jane. I’ve repeated the name to myself at least a hundred times now. It still doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel natural. Cooper. That’s what I called her. I know it. The proof is in the way it rolls off of my tongue as though I’ve whispered it a million times.

There isn’t much else to go on in the accident report, except of course the most important part – there were no fatalities. She lived. Wherever she is now, she survived the accident, and right now, that’s all I need to know to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I reach the bus stop and take the first one that shows up. I don’t care where I’m headed. Maybe because I don’t have a destination in mind yet. I just need time. To sit. To think. To Google.

The address listed on the accident report is out of date. I know because I pass right through there every morning on my commute. Used to be old farm houses, now it’s all commercial construction. As if we really need another gas station and strip mall. Regardless, it’s safe to say, Cooper’s not living anywhere near there.

I could call my parents, ask them. It would be the easy, obvious resource, except their track record for sharing information regarding Cooper isn’t exactly promising. So, I’m on my own.

I don’t know how long I’ve been riding the bus from one end of town to the other when I finally get a hit, on Facebook of all places. She looks different. Her hair is longer and her face narrower, but it’s definitely her. She’s stunning, and even on the small screen of my phone, she takes my breath away.

Outside of a profile picture I can barely keep from staring at, her page is either completely private or hasn’t been used in two years based on the most current visible post. I’m almost ready to call this a bust (not counting the picture of her I already saved) and move on, when I see the link to her work page. Cooper Ceramics.

This page is a lot more forthcoming. Not only are the posts current, but there’s contact info, including a shop address.

I look up, almost startled to find someone sitting beside me after all this time. An older gentleman who appears to be completely preoccupied by a novel with pages so worn he must know each word by heart by now.

“Excuse me,” I interrupt him quietly.

It’s almost as if he’s been waiting for me to say something, his attention is on me so quickly, no indication at all of my having disrupted his thoughts or yanked him from his story.

“Yes?”

“Uh,” I glance back down at the phone in my palm, “I don’t suppose you know where we are right now? I’m afraid I’ve lost track of our stops.”

“I assumed as much.” He nods, chuckling to himself. “You’ve been on nearly as long as I have. And I just ride the bus to read.” He tips his head out toward the window and the world beyond. “Living with my daughter and her three children has proved to be detrimental to my reading time.”

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