Page 19 of Forget About Me

“Are you sure you really grew up with him?”

“Yep. I’m sure I did.”

Her smooth brow crinkles. “No offense, but you seem a lot older than him.”

“He’s three years older than me, Cindy.”

“So, he’s like mid-thirties?”

I stifle a sigh. Cindy’s only eighteen, so everyone is old to her. “Just FYI, Cindy, I’m twenty-five.”

“Not even! I thought you were way older than that.”

My brows go up as I stare her down.

“I mean, like, in a good way. Like you majorly have your shit together.”

“Uh-huh.”

Three bells sound, indicating that an owner is in for a pickup. I’ll take any excuse to escape from the interrogation, so I press the button indicating that I’ll grab the post-surgical cat. “I’m not sure I’ll have time, anyway.”

She follows me. “But you were saying you were trying to save money for that certification course. If he’s a rich model, charge him extra.”

She’s driving me crazy, but she has a point. How much money would it be worth to risk further stirring up the grief I thought I’d buried years ago?

Opening the cage to ease out a still groggy but now stitched-up and gonad-free cat, I whisper, “Hey, buddy, time to go home.”

Cindy, still at my elbow, closes the cage. “When was the last time you saw him anyway? I mean, before now.”

“Seven years ago.” Until last week, the last time I saw him was at my brother’s wake. But she doesn’t need to know that. “Things… ended badly.”

Talk about understatement of the year.

“Seven years! Lucy, jeez. Seven years ago, I was in elementary school! That’s forever ago. Forgive and forget already.” A single bell sounds, letting us know that a new client needs to be moved to an exam room. “Do you still want the cat discharge, or whatever’s behind door number one?”

I hand over the cat. “I’ll take the new patient.” I don’t have any ex-boyfriends left to surprise me, so I walk briskly to the waiting room, eager for a distraction. Whether it’s an engorged tick to be removed or a puppy needing its shots or a busted-up tomcat, taking care of an animal is always preferable to listening to my inner monologue.

Deciding what to do about Ben will have to wait.

Later that afternoon while filling a prescription, I have to blow out a breath and force myself back to the present moment. Memories of Ben will not stop invading my thoughts. Even over the weekend, before Cindy dropped the “Ben wants you to train his dog” bomb, while I was nagging Sal into working on his college application essay instead of making yet another mixtape for his current girlfriend, songs from the many mixtapes I made for Ben played through my head.

Like the obvious mix of sex-themed songs I put in his boombox the day I made it clear that while good girls didn’t, I would. I wanted to lose my virginity. With him. And do a bunch of other naughty things.

When I said:“I just want to know what real sex feels like, how it works. I trust you, Ben.”

He asked: “Don’t you want to be in love?”

Clearly meaning: “I’m not in love with you.”

But did I care? No, I just barreled on. From Tony’s warnings, I knew that once a guy gets going, he can’t stop, so I took off my shirt to show off the lacy bra I’d spent a stupid amount of money on. From that point on, it was pretty clear he was into my body. But the only other thing I remember him saying was,“Tony will kill me.”

Tony was his friend before he was mine. They spent way more time together.

I didn’t listen. I just tried to remember everything I’d read and… brazenly seduced him. I didn’t think about any consequences beyond getting pregnant—which I took care of by going with my friend Marianne to Planned Parenthood—because his touch was a match to my gasoline-soaked body. I couldn’t get enough.

When it was all over, he was obviously distressed. All I could think about was doing it again.

He drops his forehead on a sigh. It rests briefly on my sternum, but then he’s up and pulling on his boxers. He picks up my clothes and hands them to me. “You should probably get dressed too. My dad’ll be home soon.”

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