Page 25 of Sapphire

Hearing Tomas’s kind words breaks me as I dissolve into tears again.

Tomas’s hands fall from my face as he pulls me into his hard chest again and I snuggle against him, enjoying the security his arms are offering me. We stay like that for a while until I’m calm.

I inhale his citrus scent.

The smell feels familiar.

I smell him again.

Flashes of scenes fly through my mind.

I inhale deeply hoping to make the images clearer.

“I’m guessing you like my cologne?” Tomas chuckles.

“Yes, it smells familiar. It … it’s making me remember something.”

Tomas stills.

He doesn’t move a muscle as he lets me smell him. Flashes of a boy kissing a girl rush through my head. The feeling of being sad slides across my skin. Then there is blood and anger. I inhale again, hoping my mind gives me more than this jumbled mess. This time I see a dorm with things scattered around. I see myself on a bed, crying.

Fuck.

I sit up.

“What is it?” Tomas looks at me with concern on his face.

“I remember something.”

His face lights up.

“I’m a student in a dorm. A boy and a girl made me cry. There was blood, and I was angry.”

Tomas’s brows raise.

“There’s a calendar, it’s in Spanish. It says March of this year.”

Then my stomach sinks as the image slowly begins to vanish.

“No, no. I was so close. So fricken close and now it’s gone. Stupid brain. Why the hell don’t you want to fucking work,” I curse, frustrated with the situation.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tomas tries to reassure me.

“Is it though?” I get up off the sofa and answer him angrily. “What happens if it never returns? I can’t stay here forever with you both.” I begin to pace around the room. “What if I have a boyfriend out there waiting for me? Or family? Friends? Kids? People must be looking for me. I can’t be that easily forgotten. I can’t pretend I wasn’t someone before all this,” I say as I angrily swipe at the tears that seem to freely pour from my eyes. I hate crying. Deep down in my soul in some dark recess of my mind, I know that I don’t normally cry, yet here we are, a weeping fucking mess.

“Fuck it. You need a drink,” Tomas says sternly.

Huh? I’m confused by Tomas’s sudden change of personality. He grabs my hand and pulls me into the kitchen.

I follow him, it’s not like I have a choice.

He pulls out a bottle of tequila, grabs two shot glasses, and slides one in front of me. He then grabs the bottle and pours each of us a glass.

“Drink up,” he says, nudging the shot of tequila in my direction.

“Is this a good idea?”

“Probably not, but maybe you need to get out of your head for a while, and I find tequila helps,” Tomas advises with a shrug.

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