Page 50 of Help Me Remember

“Okay, so you had a woman,” he said, sounding neutral. “Who you were probably in love with.”

“Eric, I—”

“Dylan. Tell me what else.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Something…happened to her, uh, she’s…I don’t think she’s alive anymore.”

“Do you…know how?”

“No, but that last thing I just remembered it…I don’t think it was an accident or disease. I think she was killed. I don’t know if I did it or if someone forced me.”

“Why would you think you did it?”

“Because,” I said, feeling the uncomfortably familiar shame and guilt twisting in my gut, “there’s so much guilt and…I hated myself. I hated myself more than I can even understand right now. I held her after she died, and all I knew was rage at someone else and myself. Mostly myself.”

Eric grew quiet as I continued driving, occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror to ensure we were still safe. I had yet to spot anyone or anything coming our way, but despite the blocks we had driven, including the unexpected half-circle we’d been forced to take, I wasn’t going to let my guard down yet. I was amazed at how easy it was to start pushing my emotions away and focus on our current problem. Whoever I was before, I wondered if he was ever as good at compartmentalization as I was now.

“I know I keep saying stuff like this, but that doesn’t sound like you at all,” Eric said softly, breaking me out of my focus.

I sighed. “Eric, I know—”

“No!” he snapped. “Maybe you are the person those thuggish assholes think you are. Maybe you did some fucked-up shit, really terrible and illegal things. But dammit, Dylan, you never hurt the people you cared about. You never hurt the ones you loved.”

“People can change.”

“Not that much! Jesus, Dylan, do you have any idea how much it hurt you to have parents who barely paid attention to you? Who were there physically but absent in every way that counted? You always pretended like it didn’t hurt, but then you’d spend time with me, come to my house, and see how my dad and I were, and you’d always act like there wasn’t this…this hurt in your eyes!”

My eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, fingers tightening on the wheel. “Eric.”

“No, you listen to me! You always did what you could to hold on to what little you had. That’s probably why you went so long without dating. You thought you didn’t know how to love someone or treat someone right because your parents never taught you or showed you.”

“Eric.”

“But goddammit, you did, okay? You were fiercely loyal and kind in your own way, even if you were bumbling, awkward, and a little rude about it at times. You let people hurt you before they hurt anyone else. I know because I saw it happen. You did it for me. So don’t you tell me—”

“Eric!”

“What?” he snapped.

“This is very sweet, and we can talk about it soon,” I said, reaching up to adjust the rearview mirror to show the cherry red convertible speeding up behind us. “But we have bigger problems.”

“What?” Eric asked sharply, twisting in his seat to look back. “Oh, goddammit. Aren’t we allowed to have one fucking moment to ourselves?”

I snorted at the return of his foul mouth, speeding the car up. “Take it up with fate, God, or whoever you want to blame for our circumstances.”

“All of the above,” he grumbled, leaning back as I took the next corner sharply. “Any chance you’d be willing to get away from the crowds? We’d be less likely to crash, and there’s less chance of people getting hurt.”

“You tell me where to go, and I’ll go,” I said, seeing the car still following us.

“Straight through here,” he said, pointing ahead with a shaky finger. “There’s a long bit of road that curves around Port Dale. It’s not used a whole lot.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because there’s a lot of turns, and visibility sucks ass. There’s been a lot of accidents that way. So people call it Suicide Stretch.”

“Comforting,” I grumbled, glancing back only to grimace when I saw they were steadily gaining on us. Clearly, whoever was in the driver’s seat was comfortable driving dangerously, and considering I didn’t know just what my driving skills were like, I wasn’t feeling confident about what would happen next. “Let’s hope it’s their suicide instead of ours.”

“Very,” Eric began, then stopped as I swerved around another vehicle, cutting back around it close enough to make them swerve, “inspiring.”

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