Page 30 of Help Me Remember

My sleep that night was restless, filled with even more flashes of bright colors and disturbing sounds. Everything bled into a swirling mass that was no longer a confusing fog but a relentless kaleidoscope of sensation and memory. There was no sense to be made of it, only a constant feeling of terror as I tried to keep my thoughts straight.

My first act upon waking was to push away the fragments of the chaotic dreams, knowing there was no point in trying to sort through the mess. My first thought was to dully wonder how I’d managed to get any sleep at all. I had finally forced myself to lie down the night before, staring at the bathroom door leading to Eric’s bedroom. I didn’t know how long I’d lain like that, waiting to see if Eric might reappear, though whether it would be to send me away right then or find it in his heart to forgive what I had really been doing, I didn’t know.

Sitting up, I quickly realized I was not alone in the living room. Eric sat at the table against the wall under the windows, gazing at the street below. One hand held a bottle of water that he was sipping slowly while his other hand lay casually on something on the table. Getting myself upright, I slowed when I realized it was a gun.

“Planning on using that?” I asked him softly, staying where I was on the couch.

Eric didn’t look over at me, so apparently, he wasn’t too concerned. “Been having dreams?”

I flinched, more at the distant, almost cold way he spoke rather than at being caught in a secret. “A few.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Not really. I haven’t been able to make sense of them.”

“How long have they been going on?”

“Since the first time I slept here.”

“Didn’t think you should tell me?”

I sighed, shrugging lightly. “None of it made any sense. I can’t make heads or tails of it. What would be the point of bringing it up?”

Eric’s jaw tightened. “You always liked to keep things close to your chest. And you always liked to explain it away as if there was no point in just…telling me.”

“Because there isn’t a point,” I said.

“There is!” he snapped, finally looking at me, his eyes blazing with the same anger I’d seen last night. “The point is trusting me, not treating me like a child who can’t handle whatever is going on in your head. You’re treating me like I don’t know how the world works. Well, it feels like that when you keep shit from me, like I’m too fragile or dense to understand.”

“I don’t think that,” I insisted.

“Really? Because I’m having a hard time believing that.”

I fidgeted uncomfortably. “It’s not that simple.”

“It seems simple. You could just say you don’t think I’m capable or smart,” Eric snapped.

I let out a growl of frustration. “Fine, because you didn’t exactly make a good case for yourself last night, did you?”

“What are—”

“You let that guy in, or what you thought was just that Ryan guy anyway. Did you even bother to check if he was alone? Did you even consider he might be a threat? He got humiliated only a few hours before he showed up here. You didn’t think he could be pissed about that?”

“He’s never—”

“Done something like that before? Has he ever shown up where you live without warning in the middle of the night?”

“Well…no.”

I sighed, rubbing my brow. “Look, I get that you want to see the best in people and believe that people like him are just hurting and need help. But hurt people create other hurt people all the time. Being in pain doesn’t make you a good person.”

Eric’s face fell into a heavy scowl, and he slapped his bottle down with a harsh crackle of plastic. “That wouldn’t have happened in the first place if you hadn’t gone Chuck Norris on him.”

“I was just supposed to let him beat the shit out of Mr. Reyes?”

“That’s not the point,” Eric said, jabbing a finger at me. “And don’t try to make this about whether or not that poor man deserved to get beaten up. I hope you know me well enough by now to know I wouldn’t want an innocent man hurt.”

“Then what is it about?” I asked, torn between exasperation and annoyance at the constant back and forth with no end or real reason in sight.

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