Page 83 of Lost Touch
The thought that he might not let me even if I wanted to sent a little frisson down my spine, half anxiety and—half something else that made me clench my abdominal muscles and squirm.
“Fuck,” Drew said suddenly, and pulled his hand away, shoving himself up and bouncing off the bed. “Okay, so a lot more than my tongue’s going in you if you keep looking at me like that. Shower? I’ll suck you off until you scream?”
I nodded, and he swept me up and carried me off, making me laugh and protest before the screaming started. If we had any neighbors in the hotel, I hoped they had earplugs.
But by the time we’d gotten out and I’d toweled off, I’d woken up enough to know this couldn’t last.
We couldn’t lock ourselves away in this hotel room forever, and not only because if we didn’t get clean sheets and towels the room would become a biohazard. My parents were only a hundred miles away. The cops who wanted to arrest me were only a hundred miles away, too. Ditto Clayton, the guy who might or might not have been my boyfriend.
My taste had definitely improved. At least amnesia had one silver lining.
“I guess we’re not going back to bed?” Drew asked, resigned but slightly hopeful all the same. Like if he could convince me, he would.
I shook my head and tossed the damp towel on one of the beds—the linens were a lost cause anyway. Drew’s eyes lit up at my nudity, but I backed away quickly and grabbed a clean pair of boxer briefs out of my bag, and he laughed.
“Worth a try,” he said over his shoulder, and bent down to get his own clothes…okay, no, no, getting dressed.
We finally packed up and made it out the door twenty minutes later, Drew leaving a couple of hundred-dollar bills tucked under the phone on the desk, and we were on the road with coffee another twenty minutes after that.
A few miles out, the road met the coast, and I was practically plastered to the window at my first sight (that I could remember) of the ocean. Sunlight glittered and glanced off of every ripple, islands lay all mysterious in the distance, and birds swooped around.
It was fucking gorgeous, and I rolled my window down and let crisp, salt-laden air whoosh around my face and blow my hair in all directions, laughing over my shoulder at Drew when he asked me teasingly which of us turned into a wolf, again, and did I have my tongue hanging out?
I’d grown up in surroundings like this, apparently. I’d probably seen this stretch of coastline a hundred times.
But today it got to be brand new, filtered through the fresh perspective of Drew’s grin and his hand on my knee while he drove. And that made me smile.
My parents would be brand new to me too.
That thought made me slump back in my seat and try not to throw up the latte I’d been drinking.
“It’ll be all right, babe,” Drew said, and took my hand, wrapping my fingers in his and squeezing.
I didn’t believe him, but I appreciated the effort. And it did help that I wasn’t doing it alone.
***
An hour and a half after leaving the hotel, we pulled up in front of a generic apartment building in the Southern California beach town where I’d gone to college. Aside from a general “this looks like a postcard” kind of familiarity, I didn’t recognize anything. The palm trees and red and purple bougainvillea everywhere and the tile roofs didn’t spark anything in me besides the discomfort of not feeling at home when I knew I ought to.
Drew shut off the engine and turned to me. “You ready, baby?”
I wasn’t, I really, really wasn’t. But it had to be done. And we’d gotten this far. We’d talked it over on the second half of the drive. Seeing my parents first might’ve been the right place to start, but I simply couldn’t face them yet. Besides, they seemed a lot less likely to know what the hell had been going on with me, in general and on the night I disappeared, than someone I’d maybe been dating and had definitely spent time with as a friend.
So we’d opted to go find Clayton first. Since it was Saturday, and still pretty early in the morning, we were hoping to find him at home. A partier like him would surely be hung over at this hour, right?
We’d also talked strategy, and Drew had suggested not mentioning the amnesia at first and letting it play out for a minute before giving anything away.
I took a deep, ragged breath and shot him my best attempt at a smile, though I doubted it’d win any awards. “I won’t get any more ready sitting here.”
“That’s the spirit,” Drew said, and opened his door.
I rolled my eyes and did the same. The building looked like any other that we’d passed on our way from the freeway, albeit a touch run-down: stucco and a few fluffy palm trees, some halfhearted landscaping with stringy purple flowers that somehow managed to look institutional. A woman about Drew’s age jogged by, earbuds in and totally ignoring us.
Otherwise, the place was really quiet, only a few distant voices and a single barking dog.
We headed up an outside staircase to find the apartment number Drew had gotten from his background check on Clayton.
I stood there in front of the door, staring down the tarnished brass number nineteen. The one hung drunkenly askew. It felt like a bad omen.
