Remember This (3 page)

“What are you going to do, Lucy?” Kara asks putting her arm around my shoulder.

“I am going to do exactly what Karl says. I am going to reenact our previous life. Whatever it takes to get his memory back as fast as possible,” I say trying to think of how much time I will have to take off from work.

“Lucy Harper?” the nurse calls.

“That’s me.”

“Your husband is awake,” she says in an agitated tone. “I don’t know if it is his memory loss or if he is always a pervert but he’s a handful,” she says shaking her head. Kara and I follow her down a very sterile looking hall to Mason’s room. Scott took a cab home since he has to work early in the morning so we are on our own. We have been at the hospital for hours so Kara is okay to drive us home now.

When we walk in his room, he is sitting on the bed staring at the TV, completely dressed. I notice he has a goosegg on his forehead that is turning redder by the minute.

“Your wife is here. You are free to leave whenever,” the nurse says and then darts out of the room. I think I hear her mutter something like “the sooner the better” as she passes me. I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds him repulsive.

Mason does a double take as he looks at me. Fear glints across his eyes for a second and then confusion. Phew! He doesn’t remember that I was his attacker. Kara notices his reaction and tries to hide her smile with her hand.

“Hi, I’m Lucy, your wife,” I say walking towards his bed. “Do you remember me?”

He looks at me for a few seconds and then his face splits into a grin. “No, but I’d like to get to know you. Do you want to go get some drinks?” he says raising his eyebrows at me in a suggestive manner.

“Ok, I can’t handle this,” I say throwing my hands up in the air in defeat. I turn to walk out of the room but Kara grabs my arm.

“Lucy, you don’t have a choice,” she says whirling me around to face his bed. He is still grinning. I take a deep breath and take a couple of slow steps in his direction.

“Listen, Mason,” I say a little on the bitchy side.

“Lucy,” Kara says accusingly.

I adjust my tone. “We should get you home. It’s late.” I decide short sentences are best. They don’t give me enough time to get too worked up.

“Wow, that was easy. I didn’t even have to buy you dinner and you are already inviting me back to your house,” Mason says like he just won the lottery. I close my eyes and grind my teeth trying to keep my temper from flaring.

“Hi, Mason, I’m Kara, Lucy’s friend,” she says stepping around me, cutting off contact between me and Mason. “Let’s get you home.” She grabs his arm and ushers him out of the room. I am too angry to move my feet so I just stand there for a moment.

I catch up to them just in time to hear him say “Wow, I get to take two women home!” This is a nightmare. I am being punished and I’m not even the one who cheated. So not fair.

We get Mason in the car and luckily, he passes out, snoring loudly.

By the time we get home, it is 3 a.m. Kara drops us off so I am now all alone with my over flirtatious husband that I despise. And to top it off, he barely remembers his own name. He actually didn’t remember his name. He kept calling himself Fabio while he was asleep on the drive home.

I watch Kara drive away and visibly shrink. I can’t handle this. I guess I should rephrase that. I don’t
want
to handle this.

I watch Mason adjust to things around the house. Luckily he remembers core functions of what a human does like to open a door you have to have a key and you lift the lid on the toilet so you don’t piss all over the seat. This makes him only slightly easier to take care of than a puppy. However, I would much rather take care of a puppy than deal with this dog.

I set my purse down and take my shoes off leaving Mason to explore the house. I start to clean up the wine that is all over the floor. After every drop is cleaned up, I wash my sticky hands and realize that he has disappeared.

“Mason? Where are you?” I yell through the house. I hear rustling coming from my bedroom. I open the door and I see him striping down to his black boxer briefs and climbing in my bed. “Oooh no you don’t.” He looks at me bewildered. I swallow trying to regain my composure. It has been a long time since I have seen him this naked and he really does look good. “You sleep in the guest bedroom. You haven’t slept in here for months.”

He pauses for a second with one leg suspended above my sheets. “So let me get this straight,” he starts looking baffled. “We are married but we sleep in separate bedrooms?”

“Yes,” I say as if I see nothing wrong with that arrangement.

“So then where do we have sex?” he asks, a big mischievous smile stretching across his face.

“We don’t!” I say a little louder and faster than I expected but I think I get the point across. Plus when we did have sex it was rarely in the bedroom, but he doesn’t need to know that. Confusion crosses Mason’s face but his smile never fades.

“I think I have a lot to learn,” he says climbing off the bed and walking past me, purposefully brushing against my shoulder. I close my eyes to control my hatred towards him, and maybe so I don’t get a close up view of his body. As he passes me, he slaps me on the butt. Before I can get over the shock, he is already in the spare bedroom with the door closed.

“Aaahhh!” I scream through clenched teeth. If I wasn’t so tired I would run right into his room and slap him across the face. Instead, I fight the urge and crawl into bed not even bothering to take my jewelry off. I am out like a light which means I don’t have time to think of the huge problem I have to deal with.

“So, I have been thinking about things, and you don’t have to play nice,” Drey says sipping her iced tea. We decided to have lunch at our favorite place, Marvin’s. They have the best potato soup and Caesar salads.

“What do you mean play nice? This isn’t a game,” I say stirring crackers into my steaming bowl of soup.

“Why can’t it be?”

“Because Mason is a human being and has feelings?” Kara says and I nod in agreement. I like to refer to him as an animal but I guess human works for today.

“You can’t honestly believe that just because he lost his memory that he turned into a good guy,” Drey says shaking her head in disbelief.

“Mason has always been a good guy. He is just a little over the top and maybe just not the right guy for Lucy anymore,” Kara chimes in.

“So what is your plan then?” Drey asks looking at me.

“Well, I’m not exactly sure. Believe me, I want him back to normal as soon as possible so we can start talking divorce again and I can get back to focusing on work.”

“Okay, but if you want my opinion-“

“I don’t but I’m sure you will tell me what you think anyway,” I smirk cutting her off. Kara laughs to herself and Drey rolls her eyes.

“What I was going to say was that I think you should reenact your wedding like Karl said. It should help bring his memory back and I could really use another trip to Mexico. It’s a win-win.”

“I will think about it,” I sigh. “I have to go into work,” I say as I check my phone and realize I have an inbox full of emails. I throw some money down and I hear a ‘plop’ sound. “Oops.” Drey’s brows are furrowed and Kara is laughing. When I flung the cash out of my wallet, a penny flew out of my ten dollar bill and landed right in Drey’s iced tea. “Sorry about that. You might want to get a new drink,” I say as I dash away towards the exit. I hear them mumbling something about how working on a Saturday shouldn’t be allowed but I ignore them. When I look back, Kara is still laughing and Drey is shaking her head. I can’t help but laugh too. I couldn’t do that again if I tried.

I make myself busy at the office and I am glad that no one is there to distract me. I work a lot of Saturdays but usually only for like an hour or so and I can usually do it from home. Today though, I want any excuse I can get to get out of the house and away from Mason.

I can’t help but feel slightly bad for what I did especially since he has a huge bruise on his forehead from where the bottle made contact. The bump is barely visible today though. He also has a scratch above his eye from hitting the seat in the car. Drey insists that he deserves every bit of what he got but it is still hard for me to digest. I can’t be around him. It’s too depressing.

I did everything I could at the office today and only managed to spend three hours there. All my files are organized and color coordinated, I sent out all of the emails I could, and then I cleaned my office. I did have a couple of weird emails from my family and a coworker. They just said things like ‘thanks for the laugh’ and ‘I don’t think this was meant for me’ but I just ignored them because I had no idea what they were talking about.

I couldn’t think of anything else to do at the office which is why I am sitting in my garage with the car off dreading going inside.

Fighting every muscle in my body, I head inside and walk into the living room. Something is different in here but I don’t have time to figure out what it is. I am distracted by Mason sitting at his laptop with the photo printer next to him.

“Hey,” he says looking up as I walk in. I see him look back at the computer smiling.

“What are you doing?” I ask suspiciously. His smile gets bigger and he starts to lose control. I look around the room and notice that there are picture frames set up everywhere. That’s why it looks so different in here. I walk over to the fire place mantel and pick up one of the new frames. As I stare at the picture bordered in black, my insides convulse. I put it face down and move across the mantel looking at the other new pictures. This is my worst nightmare.

“Where did you get these pictures?” I say so menacingly quietly that I’m not even sure he can hear me over his laughing.

“Your mom emailed them to me. She said that they might help me get my memory back.”

I walk around the room grabbing as many picture frames that I can fit in my hands. I am guessing I have about twenty but I haven’t even gotten to half of the room. Where in the world did he get all of these frames? That is the least of my worries. All the frames are full of pictures of me from my childhood. I was an ugly child. I had the worst teeth so of course braces were a necessity and the head gear to go with it. I don’t even think they make kids wear that anymore probably due to the horrible embarrassment it causes.

I also used to be very chunky. I don’t think my mom could have sent him more embarrassing photos. I am going to have to talk to her about all of this. I am so pissed that I forgot Mason was even in the room until he started laughing again.

“This is the best one yet, Lucy,” he says as he smiles a lopsided grin and crosses his eyes, clearly imitating the picture in front of him. He is laughing so hard that I think I see tears rolling down his cheeks. “I know my memories are gone but out of everything, you would think that I would remember that they made vests with teddy bears on them,” he chokes out.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the best part.” I freeze as I grab a picture of me in a floral swimsuit with floaties around my arms. My sister is in the middle of pushing me in the pool in the picture so my face is all bug eyed. What could he possibly say that is worse than this? “When your mom sent me the email, naturally I wanted to print them off as soon as possible so I pushed the send button here on the screen to send them to the printer. I guess I don’t exactly remember how email works because after I pushed that button it asked if I wanted to send to ‘all.’ I thought it meant all of the pictures so I clicked yes.”

“No, no, no.” The words were out of my mouth before he finishes the story. Unfortunately, I know how the story ends and it doesn’t have a happy ending. “You sent all those pictures to all of my contacts didn’t you?” I ask fully aware of what the answer is.

“Yes, but it was an accident. You seem to already have some replies,” he snickers to himself.

“Dammit, Mason. Everyone from work and some of my clients are in my contacts. This is not good.”

“I’m sure it will be fine. In some of these you look kind of cute. I especially like this one,” he says holding up a picture of me just in my underwear from when I was like three. I can see my fat rolls from across the room. I cringe at the thought of my boss opening that attachment.

I storm out of the room, my arms full of frames and I find a black garbage bag. I stuff all the frames I can find around the house in the bag. As I walk past the desk I catch the picture flying off the printer before Mason can get a hold of it. He protests but gives up once he sees how mad I am. I think I found all of the pictures so I shove the garbage bag under my bed.

I hear my phone beep to signify that I have a text. I storm back out into the living room and pick up my purse from where I dropped it on the floor in a panic. The text is from Drey who also must have received the email.

*You still wanna play nice? Cute scrunchie btw!*

My blood is boiling but I insist on channeling my anger to get back at Mason. He may get the sympathy vote from some people but he knows exactly what he is doing. This is typical Mason. Well, new Mason anyways. Not caring about how his actions affect other people. Apparently that is not something that goes away once your memory is erased. I have made up my mind on what I want to do. I text Drey back.

*Game on.*

I hit send and look up at Mason. He is staring at me with suspicious eyes. My face must look mischievous because he almost looks scared. Oh, Mason, you should be. A wedding you say Dr. Carter? Well a wedding we shall have.

“Mason, we’re getting married again,” I say with a menacing smile. He just swallows. This is going to be so much fun.

Why do you look like a crazy ex who has a plan?” Drey asks looking at my smug but thoughtful expression. Her eyes are full of excitement. She wants Mason to be destroyed too. He once told all the guys in a bar we were at that she had herpes. I don’t think she ever got over that.

I decided that I needed to get out of the house so I went to Drey’s. The rest of the day yesterday, I spent brooding in my room and eating Haagen Das. If I was planning my second wedding, I needed to change my diet and get out of the house.