What Remains (17 page)

In desperation
,
he swung his legs out of bed and yanked open the top drawer of the bedside table. He had no clear memories of living in the flat before the accident, only vague, blurred scenes that didn’t make much sense, but he did remember where he’d kept his porn stash during his uni years—a pile of tatty magazines, loaded with images of long-legged women with brassy hair and huge knockers.

The drawer revealed no wrist manuals, just a box of condoms, a laptop, and . . . Jodi reached for the bottle of what looked like lube, then jumped back as it tipped over, revealing the shiny, bare-chested man on the label and the swirly sub line printed under the brand name.
Less sting for his ring.

What the fuck?

Jodi kicked the drawer shut like it had burned him, his heart beating so loudly his ears throbbed. What on earth did he have anal lube for? As far as he remembered, he and Sophie hadn’t explored
that
kind of sex in years, not since the first haze of initial attraction had faded and they’d discovered it wasn’t something Sophie particularly enjoyed. Besides, this lube was brand-new, and clearly for men, so what the hell was it doing in Jodi’s drawers?

The grinding in his brain returned full force. He clutched his temples and tried to get a grip on it before it spread through every nerve in his body.
“Don’t fight it. Act on it.”
The voice of his occupational therapist filtered through the pain. He straightened his posture and reached for the codeine and bottle of water Sophie and Rupert insisted he keep close by. His prescribed dose was three pills, but that often sent him to sleep, and for once, he didn’t want that. Didn’t want his dreams to be filled with greasy lube and shirtless men.

He took two and drained the bottle of water. His gaze fell on the ominous drawer again. The lube bottle seemed to call his name, and the momentary diversion of dealing with another fucking headache had done little to pacify his dick. He needed a distraction.

With his eyes averted, he opened the drawer and grabbed the laptop, slamming the drawer shut before the creepy bottle jumped out at him. He crawled under the covers and booted up the MacBook. A box asking for a password flashed up. He searched his brain but inevitably found nothing. Instinct told him the password would have something to do with Sophie, but that logic had proved deeply flawed of late. He tapped the keyboard as his mind jumped from one notion to another too fast for him to keep up. What if it wasn’t even his computer? He was missing five years, after all, and he knew the shiny iMac in the room Sophie and Rupert called the office was his. Why would he need two computers?

No sensible answers came to him, then he remembered the business card pinned to the fridge. Fire Kat Design. Something clicked. He closed his eyes and tried to chase it down, but it evaporated as quickly as it had come.

Fuck it.

He opened his eyes and typed in
Fire Kat Design
with his birth year tacked on the end. The laptop flashed to life. Jodi blinked, but his surprise was fast tempered by the image that greeted him on the screen: a photograph of Rupert in even less clothes than Jodi had seen him in that morning.

So much for the distraction.

Heat flooded Jodi’s veins, burning him from the inside out.
What the actual fuck?
Was this Rupert’s laptop? It had to be, right? Clearly, his flatmate was some kind of narcissist. There was no other reason his admittedly sketchy logic could find for Rupert’s half-naked form filling the screen.

So shut the damn laptop and put it back.
But Jodi did neither. He growled in frustration, but couldn’t find the will to break his stare. He leaned forward and studied the image, comparing it with the virtual stranger he shared a home with. They didn’t look like the same man. Putting aside the vast swathes of flawless skin that continued to send Jodi into a tailspin, he’d never seen Rupert smile like that. Jesus, he rarely saw Rupert smile at all.

That skin, though. Jodi took a deep, shuddering breath. It was perfect: pale and smooth, and wrapped around a body that put the dude on the lube bottle to shame. And Rupert’s eyes . . . fuck, his eyes. Jodi was lost in them and didn’t notice his hand slip under the duvet until his fingers brushed his cock.

He froze, but it was momentary because the stolen, bewildering pleasure of the featherlight touch on his dick was too intense to ignore. He wrapped his fingers around his cock. The relief was instant but fleeting, as a desperate need for more took hold. He moved his hand up and down, squeezing and pulling. Twisting. His eyelids drooped, but he fought them, unwilling to break the thrall that Rupert’s warm gaze had cast on him.
This is wrong.
But it didn’t feel wrong. It felt right, like it was the only thing that had made sense in as long as he could remember, and fuck, it was good—better than good. It was fucking amazing.

Jodi pushed the laptop back, cradling it between his thighs, and shoved the duvet away. The cool air on his dick made him shiver, but the heady heat in his veins remained, boiling over until an animalistic groan escaped him, echoing around the room, bouncing off the walls and reverberating through his bones. He jammed his fist in his mouth, biting down on his knuckles. Jesus Christ, this was insane—perhaps
he
was insane—but he couldn’t recall wanking ever feeling like this, arresting, enthralling, and so utterly consuming that he couldn’t see how it would ever end.

But it did end. He came with a rush and a strangled yelp, shooting all over his T-shirt with more jizz than he’d ever seen.

For a long moment, he didn’t dare move, but as his gasping breaths returned to normal and his sweat cooled, reality and perspective hit him like a train. Disgust crept over him, and left him empty, like his back had no bones and his stomach had sunk through the mattress. Nausea roared, an urge that, this time, he couldn’t ignore. He dove for the bin as fast as his limited body would allow, and heaved his guts up until there was nothing left but bile and shame.
Great.
Like it wasn’t enough that he had the brain function of an eight-year-old. Now it appeared the accident had short-circuited his sexuality too. Was that even possible? To go into a coma with a—albeit, as it turned out, imaginary—girlfriend, and come out wanting to touch your flatmate’s dick?

Jodi shuddered, and his stomach heaved again, but nothing came up. Panting, he pulled his sticky T-shirt off and wiped his mouth, then stashed it under the bed to retrieve and dump when no one was looking—not that he expected that to happen anytime soon.

On cue, the bedroom door opened. Jodi lunged for the laptop, slamming it shut, and hurling it clumsily into the drawer.

Sophie frowned. “What are you doing? Are you all right?”

“Um . . . I threw up?”

“Shit.” Sophie bustled in, swiping the bin before Jodi could protest. “Do you have a headache?”

“No more than usual. I took some codeine. It came straight back up, though.”

“Ah, bet you didn’t eat breakfast either? Do you never learn?”

Apparently not. Illicit wanking aside, even Jodi could remember the countless times the cacophony of pills he needed to take had pickled his empty stomach.

Sophie disappeared, presumably to the bathroom, leaving Jodi to cast a furtive glance around, checking there were no stray signs of his masturbatory meltdown.

“Now what are you doing?”

Jodi glanced up from peering under the bed. “Nothing.”

“Are you looking for something?”

“Um . . .” Jodi’s brain malfunctioned, and he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “My laptop.”

Dickhead.

Sophie came round the bed and peered into the evil drawer, not seeming to notice the condoms and lube that were all Jodi could see. “Here it is. What do you need it for?”

“I don’t know.”

It was an honest answer. Jodi took the computer from Sophie and crawled back under the covers, leaving room for her to slide in beside him with little conscious thought.

She slipped under the covers. “We do still do this, in case you’re wondering.”

“Hmm?”

“Lazing around in bed together, eating shit, and gossiping like a pair of old women. It’s usually my bed, though. Plays havoc with my sex life.”

Jodi processed the sudden influx of new information, absorbed it, and found it fit. Being in bed with Sophie felt normal, though five years ago it
had
been normal. “Why does it fuck with your sex life?”

“Would you want your, uh, partner, spending the day in bed with their ex?”

Jodi couldn’t think of an answer. Sophie drummed her nails on the laptop. “Are you going to boot this thing up, or what?”

Jodi opened the laptop and tapped in the password, ignoring Sophie’s curious stare. Rupert’s shirtless torso filled the screen once more. Jodi looked away under the pretence of scratching his neck, but his eyes betrayed him, drinking in Rupert’s skin just a split second later. “Is this Rupert’s laptop too?”

“No. I don’t think Rupert knows how to turn one on.”

Jodi had some sympathy for him there. “So it’s just mine? No one else uses it?”

“Unless you count me pinching it to shop on ASOS, no. Why, honey? What’s up?”

Jodi turned the screen to face Sophie, giving her the full Rupert experience. “That’s what’s up. Why the hell do I have this shit as my wallpaper?”

Sophie bit her lip, a sure sign that she was nervous, an emotion that bewildered Jodi’s already fragmented mind. “You live with Rupert. Why wouldn’t you have his picture on your computer? This is from when you took Indie to Cornwall last summer.”

Last summer meant nothing to Jodi. Why would it? And Sophie’s answer made no more sense than the open lube bottle in his bedside drawer. “But—”

“Anyway,” Sophie cut in. “What did you want to do on here? Check your emails or something?”

“My emails?”

“Yeah. I called the clients in your account book when you had your accident, but I might have missed some. Let’s see.” Sophie peered at the screen and drew her finger over the mouse pad. “The mail app isn’t on here. Maybe you have it on the iMac? Or your browser? Can you remember? What’s your email password?”

The barrage of questions made Jodi’s head spin. He tried to catch them all as they jumbled in his brain, but it was no good. His cognition short-circuited and the axe of blackness fell. “Sorry, what?”

Sophie moved the mouse over an icon that was vaguely familiar. “Maybe it’s this . . . Oh, no, this isn’t it.”

“What is it, then?”

“Haven’t a clue, so it’s probably some fancy program you use for work. Click on it and see.”

Jodi tapped the mouse pad. Nothing happened.

“You have to press a bit harder, hon.”

Jodi pressed down and the icon sprang to life, eclipsing Rupert’s face and chest with a bigger logo that eventually merged into a convoluted interface. Jodi leaned closer and studied the tool bar. His fingers itched, and his previously heavy eyes suddenly felt jammed open. He found the file list and clicked on the first one he saw. A monochrome website template opened, modified for what appeared to be a hipster cafe that served a gazillion types of herbal tea. The site was crisp and clean . . . almost. The sidebar header was positioned too far left and the font on the interactive buttons didn’t match up.

He made the adjustments, working on instinct. It took him a while to notice Sophie had gone quiet—scarily quiet—and was watching his every move, tracking each click and drag. “What?”

“This software is new, Jodi. You only got it a month before the accident, and you said it was completely different to the program you were using before, that you had to teach yourself how to build sites all over again.”

Jodi frowned. “Thought you said you didn’t have a clue what it was?”

“I wanted to see if you did. That’s why I didn’t tell you that you don’t have the internet connected on this computer to stop you pissing around when you’re doing your layouts.”

“You wanted to see— What the fuck? Why would you do that? I’m not a bloody lab rat, Soph. What else are you testing me on?”

“I’m not testing you on anything.” Sophie shrank back from Jodi’s anger. “The doctors told us not to plant memories in your head. They said no one interprets the past in the same way, and we had to let you remember things on your own.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know. Just things. Don’t shout at me, Jodi. I’m doing my best.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“
Nothing
.”

Jodi stared her down. He barely knew which way was up anymore, and the distinct sensation Sophie was keeping shit from him wouldn’t quit. Did she know about the lube in the drawer? Or why his laptop was plastered with photos of Rupert half-naked? Or was it something else? Something bigger and even more fucked up? Jodi’s anger faded, and in its place came fear. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to remember. He—

“
Jodi
.” Sophie took his hands and squeezed them hard until he met her gaze. “Don’t be angry, please. I want to give you all the answers, but I’m so scared I’ll get it wrong and hurt you. That we’ll lose you all over again. I can’t do it. You have to remember. Please. You have to remember.”

“Remember what?”

“Who you are, Jodi. You have to remember who you are.”