Page 12 of Help Me Remember
“Can we do food and then everything else after?” I asked, not caring if I sounded pathetic.
Eric winked. “It’s a good thing I have some leftovers that’ll only take a few minutes to heat up.”
My stomach grumbled and growled. “I’m pretty sure you could serve me a tire with a bit of ketchup, and I would eat it right now.”
“Considering how long you were asleep, I don’t doubt that,” he said, looking me over one more time before walking out. “Come on out. I’ll get you something to drink while you wait.”
“How long was I asleep?” I asked, following him. I realized the door he’d come from led into the same room I’d spotted from the hallway. It was a mix of a living room and a small dining area, only big enough for two people to sit at the table.
“Hmm, about eighteen hours, I think,” he said as he continued into the narrow kitchen.
“Eighteen?” I asked in disbelief.
“Yes, amazingly, when your body is trying to recover from whatever the hell happened to you, it needs rest.” He opened the fridge. “And fuel.”
“That makes sense,” I said, a little uneasy that I’d slept so long. I couldn’t explain it, but it just felt wrong to have slept so much.
“Here,” he said, holding out a large bottle of water. “Drink this and take a seat. And maybe you could tell me what happened to you.”
“Kinda hard to do that when I don’t know,” I said, opening the water.
“Well, you knew enough to get some help,” Eric said as he pulled things out of the fridge and grabbed a pan from the drawer under the stove.
“I, uh, fell.”
“Yeah, saw that much on the report.”
“And pretty sure someone shot me.”
Eric hesitated, glancing over at me, his unmoving hand resting on the dial for the stove. “Shot you? Where? I didn’t exactly see you with a hole in anything but your head.”
I reached up and gently placed a finger over the spot that still ached on my chest. “Here, but I…I was wearing a vest.”
“A bulletproof vest?”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t a corset.”
Eric rolled his eyes, flipping the stove on with an irritated flick of his wrist. “How do you lose your memory but not that shitty, sarcastic sense of humor?”
I shrugged, looking down at the small table with a frown. “Maybe it’s just built in. A system feature.”
“Or a bug.”
“Sure.”
I honestly couldn’t say why I was deflecting his questions with sarcasm other than the uncomfortable sensation that I’d told him too much already. It wasn’t like I suspected he was part of the trouble I already had, but the desire to avoid telling him much more sat in my gut and warned me off.
Not knowing who I was grew more and more frustrating. While it had been confusing and upsetting when I’d first woken up, I was no longer stumbling around trying to put pieces together and ensure my survival. For the moment, I was safe, meaning I had time to puzzle over who I was and what I had been doing.
What could have led me to that filthy, broken-down building in the first place? If there were any clues to answer that question, they’d be back in the abandoned apartment building. However, the building wasn’t the safest place, and I didn’t want to risk my fragile health by returning before I was ready. I would need to take a few days to get the worst of the aches and pains out and hope I didn’t run into any trouble.
“Hey,” Eric interrupted with a troubled frown. “Look, I’m sorry. You’ve got enough shit going on in that head of yours right now. You don’t need me giving you shit for just being yourself.”
“Is it me?” I asked grumpily, taking another greedy drink of water.
“Being dry, sarcastic, and a pain in the ass? Oh yeah,” he said with a chuckle, throwing butter into the heating pan. “I always thought it was because of how things were at home, but I guess not.”
For a moment, I was confused, and then I was again reminded that I didn’t have the slightest clue about my past, not even a flicker of what my family had been like. “So, my parents are dead?”