Demanding Ransom (32 page)

“Thank
you for visiting.” He gives me that tortured smile again. “I don’t often get to
see the girls I meet in the field again after we drop them off.”

 
I squeeze my pinky to his. “I owed you a
thank you.”

“What
for?” His mouth contorts painfully as he shifts his weight under him,
repositioning in the hospital bed.

“For
saving me.”

The
frown on his lips is replaced with another brave attempt at a smile. “I was
just doing my job,” he mumbles humbly.

I stand
to my feet, commanding my shaky legs to obey. “No,” I say. I can’t do this
anymore. I’m not strong enough, as selfish as that sounds. I make my way toward
the door. I’m grateful the doctor said I had to keep it short, because I need a
reason to explain my running. My running away from the only thing that truly
ever mattered in my life. “No, it isn’t just a job for you.” I turn my back to
him completely so he can’t see the streams of tears that soak my face, and I
shove them off and wipe them on the thighs of my jeans. “I’ll never forget
everything you’ve done. Thank you for rescuing me, Ran.”

I slip
through the door and don’t look back.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

Two months later.

“I think you should consider it. Don’t analyze,
just come. I promise it will be fun. I’ll be there, so
obviously.
”

I twirl the rubber tip of my pencil through my
hair and it tangles in a knot. I try to yank it out, but it just pulls the
twisted hair tighter. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I think you should stop thinking and just do
it. I’m coming to pick you up at eight. You better be ready.”

“We’ll see.” I hang up before he has another
opportunity to convince and manipulate me any further. I’m really not
interested in putting up a fight. I don’t have the strength for it.

Cora peers over the top edge of some gossip
magazine. Her pink gum snaps loudly in her mouth and the pages rustle as she
flicks them down to make eye contact with me. “Was that Trav again?”

“Yeah,” I answer, annoyed at both of them right
now. Annoyed at everyone, actually. I’m getting tired of people telling me what
I should do, where I should go, and how I should live my life. I’ve been fine
on my own for the past two months. I really don’t need their unsolicited
guidance.

“You’ve made it clear that you’re going to do
what you want either way, but I really think you should go.” She ducks her head
back behind the magazine and slides further down onto her bed, crossing her
ankles. “It’s time you saw him, Maggie.”

“I don’t want to.” The blank computer screen
glowers at me. “I have to finish this sociology paper by Monday, and so far all
I have to turn in is one blank, eight and a half by eleven sheet of parchment.
Somehow I don’t think that’s going to go over well with Professor Dexton.”

“Screw Dexton.” Cora chucks her magazine at me
and it lands just under my feet. The pages flutter like a fan. “And screw
sociology.” She swings her legs over the edge of the bed. “You need to go
tonight. Who knows, maybe you could turn it into some social experiment and twist
it into a thesis for your paper. You know, like you could wear that perfume you
used to practically bathe in and see if it triggers his memory. I think I
remember hearing somewhere that your nose has something to do with the
hippopotamus or something in your brain.”

“Hippo
campus
,”
I correct, shoving her magazine under my desk with my toe. “And seriously? They
actually let you go to school here?” I wall her off with my shoulder and hunker
down into my desk.

“Whatever.” Cora pulls out her phone and begins
punching across the screen. “Just because you’re suddenly taking all these
biology courses and know all of this useless information doesn’t give you the
right to make fun of me. I’m doing just fine with my Spanish major. Yo soy
muy
bien.”

“I think I would know that it wasn’t
hippopotamus regardless of which classes I’m enrolled in.” I stare at the hazy
screen. Cora’s right. I do have a lot of useless information inhabiting my
brain, serving no real function or purpose. It’s not like the stuff I’ve committed
to memory will aid me at all in my college courses. I need to stop researching
things that I won’t be graded on. And I need to stop obsessing over information
that serves absolutely no purpose in my life anymore. He’s not going to
remember me. No amount of textbook memorization, studies on retrograde amnesia,
or brain anatomy education will change that. It’s unfair to challenge someone
to do something when they don’t have the capacity to actually do it. He said it
himself. Ran doesn’t know we ever existed, and because of that reality, it’s
like we never did. That’s the way it needs to stay.

“What are you doing?” I ask as Cora slides open
my closet door, thumbing through the clothes that hang there.

“I’m picking your outfit for tonight.” She tugs
at a black dress that hugs every curve and holds it up, tucking the hanger
under her chin. “If he doesn’t
remember
you, the least you can do is try to get him to
notice
you.”

“I’m not interested in getting noticed.” The
words burn when I say them, physically causing me pain.

“Bull.” She slides the dress back in and holds
up a scandalously short aqua skirt. “Every girl wants someone like Ran to
notice them. It’s like in our DNA or something. Surely you’ve been learning
about DNA in your recent quest to become a biologist.”

I don’t dignify her statement with a response.

“I don’t understand why you aren’t trying to
get him to fall in love with you again.” Cora drops the skirt down by her side
and cocks her head, giving me a sympathetic look that reads like she truly cares.
And I’m sure she does. Even though she doesn’t mention it, I know she hears me
when it’s three in the morning and I’m muffling my quiet sobs against my
pillow. I know she sees me poring over web articles about amnesia and the
likelihood of lost memories being reclaimed. She sat with me during our recent
movie night and even let me suggest that film where the man suffering from
amnesia suddenly remembers it all and the woman he once shared his life with,
and everything falls back into place. I know Cora knows the shape of my broken
heart, and she’s trying to do everything possible to help me piece it back
together. But that’s an impossible task when someone else holds a huge chunk of
it, and there’s no way to get it back, because they don’t even know they’re its
keeper.

“I don’t want him to fall in love with me
again, Cora.” I drag my hand down my face. I didn’t know a state of exhaustion
could last two whole months. “He fell in love with me once. And it was
perfect.”

“And it can be perfect again.” Her naïve eyes
pull open wide.

“I’d never want to run the risk of it being
anything less.”

Cora’s phone whistles from under the ruffled
mess of her dorm room bedding. She hangs the skirt back up and strides to
retrieve her cell. Only Cora would have a text alert that is a catcall. “Trav
says Ran’s favorite color is blue. The aqua skirt it is.”

“You’re texting Trav? That’s so not cool,
Cora.”

“I’m helping you make the best first impression
possible, though it’s probably more like your fiftieth.” She races across the
small stretch of space to the closet, balls up the miniskirt in her hand, and
chucks it at me. “But seriously, think about it. The last
real
memory he has of you is covered in blood, hanging upside-down
in your car. It’s time to stand out, Maggie. He likes blue. You’ll wear blue.”

“I’m not doing this.” I toss the skirt to the
floor. “I don’t have the capacity to do this.”

“Umm, yes you do,” she challenges. “And just to
be fair, you are the one always saying Ran doesn’t have the capacity to
remember and it’s not fair to force him to try. Don’t you think that’s a little
selfish to act like you’re the one who got the short end of the stick here?
He’s the one missing two months of his life.”

I spin around so fast in my seat I nearly do
two full rotations. “And I haven’t? I haven’t lost the only part of my life
that actually
meant
something?” I
throw my words at her with force, hoping she feels them the way I do, the way
they hurt me to think them.

“You still have your memories, Maggie.”

“But what’s the point when the person you
shared them with doesn’t even know they ever happened? What’s the point in
hanging onto them?” I toss my hands angrily into the air. “It’s easier to
pretend it never existed. That
he
never existed. Going out to celebrate Ran going back to work won’t help me do
that. Seeing him isn’t going to help me do that. Pretending there is no Ran is
my only option, Cora.”

Cora folds her arms across her chest and all
but taps her toe at me like a disapproving mother would. It’s a look I’m very
familiar with. “I never took you for a coward. What, are you afraid that you
can’t get him to love you again?”

“No, I’m afraid that he
will
love me again.”

“I don’t get it.” She continues filtering
through the row of tops in the closet to find the remaining pieces to my
clubbing ensemble. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

“Cora. Don’t you think sometimes things happen
for a reason?”

She rotates her head over her shoulder like an
owl. “Of course I do.”

“I don’t think it was a coincidence that Ran
and I met the way we did. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that things
ended how they did, either.”

“I get that,” she agrees, nodding slowly, her
back to me while she continues scanning the contents of my closet.

“It was an accident that caused us to cross
paths,” I say with shaky breath. “And it was another accident that ended
everything between us.” Slumping down into my seat, I slip all the way until I
feel the ridge of the chair’s back against the base of my scull. “I think that
was our time together, Cora. I think that was all was supposed to get. This
neatly packaged amount of time with Ran in my life.” I close my eyes. “It feels
selfish to want anything more.”

My lids are sealed shut, so the unanticipated
bite from the impact of her palm across my cheek shocks my system and I jolt
upright, my eyes flashing open quickly. “What the hell, Cora?” I cup my hand to
my stinging cheek and narrow my eyes at her.

“Snap out of it, Maggie,” she sneers. “Like
seriously, stop acting like this girl that doesn’t deserve any good in her
life. The martyr act is getting really old.”

“I’m not trying to be a martyr,” I defend
angrily. My skin burns with heat.

“I’m not saying your life is a cakewalk. You
have a bitch for a mother, your brother’s got cancer, and you finally had the
chance to find real love, only to have it taken from you. On many levels, your
life completely sucks.” Cora’s face is inches from mine. I can smell her bubble
gum just under my nose. “But on many more levels, your life could be the envy
of so many people. You know why?” She tilts her head and widens her eyes. After
several seconds, she tosses her head, as if asking for a response.

“No.” I totally thought that was supposed to be
rhetorical.

“Because all of those people are still
alive
.” She snaps an enormous bubble
between her lips. “You still have the gift of time. Some people aren’t that
lucky.”

***

“I changed my mind, we’re not going to the
club,” Trav says as soon as I open the door. He shamelessly scans me head to
toe, his eyes lingering a little too long at my bare upper legs. “Forget Ran,
I’m keeping you to myself tonight.”

“Very funny, Trav,” I say, hiking my purse up
my shoulder. Cora blows me a kiss from her position under her covers. She’s
lucky my blush did a good job making my other cheek equally as red as the one
she’d slapped earlier. “For the record, I still don’t want to do this.”

“I know.” Trav hooks his arm my direction, and
I slide my hand through the triangular space he’s created. “But tonight is a
big night for Ran and it would just seem wrong to celebrate it without you
there, you know?”

I don’t answer and we head toward his truck in
the south parking lot. I have to delicately position myself into his vehicle in
an attempt not to completely flash him, because I could probably be cited for
indecent exposure in this skirt. I don’t even know why I still have it. Brian
bought it for me back when we were dating, and I remember thinking how not me
it was at the time. It’s even more not me now. How did I let Cora talk me into
wearing this?

“We’re meeting at Ran’s house first for
drinks.” Trav engages the key and starts the engine.

My pulse quickens. “I thought he didn’t drink.”
Normally it wouldn’t bother me. Ran’s twenty-two and plenty old enough to drink
if he chooses. But he’d told me he didn’t drink before, and the thought of him
doing it now makes me wonder if he’s lost more than just these two months.
Maybe he’s forgotten more about himself than everyone thinks.

“He doesn’t.” Trav flips the blinker and coasts
onto the freeway. The dark of night coats the road and the headlights reflect
and flicker like stars against the pavement, which is wet from the brief
afternoon shower. “But I do. And believe me, Ran’s coworkers are celebrating
tonight just as much as he is. We’re all thrilled to have our buddy back.”