Before & After Read online

  Her eyes flicker with reserved amusement, and I lean forward, and whisper, “Please. Save me from the sorority.”

  Her lips curve into a slow smile, something mischievous and mysterious in the twist of her lips, and I want to see that smile every day. I want to know why it’s different, and what makes it different from the smile she would give me half asleep and naked in my bed.

  I blink, shake the thought. Focus on now.

  God, she’s fucking with my head, hard.

  “Go find a new toy, Lindsay. This one is mine tonight.”

  That’s what her name was. Lindsay.

  “You’ll like them,” Lindsay says, a smirk in her voice, and Red’s eyes slip past me, settling on the girl and hardening.

  Shit. That’s jealousy, and a part of me wants to fucking crow with victory.

  Instead, I reach out and claim her hand, letting my fingers trace over the curl of her palm, bringing her attention back to me as I absently caress her hand. She watches me curiously for a moment.

  “Friday. Pick me up.” She reclaims her hand and scribbles on a note card, sliding it across to me. Then she grabs her bag, shoving her laptop inside as she slides out of the booth and across the bar. She stops Lindsay, and murmurs something to the blonde girl.

  Curious, assessing eyes flick to me, but Lindsay only nods and turns away from me. Red smiles, and ducks out of the bar.

  I glance down at the note card. Her handwriting is messy and strong.

  And her name is Peyton.

  Chapter 2: After

  Sometimes, the loneliness

  Is a physical blanket,

  A tangible thing that wraps around me,

  Like a suffocating wave that won't recede.

  And then your hand,

  Rescues me.

  (Rike’s poems to Peyton)

  Noise. Quiet, steady, noise. It breaks the stillness, shrill and sharp, then gone and it’s just a waiting silence. My eyes open, slow and painful, and I look at a fuzzing white ceiling, and the bright silver of a pole near my head.

  Why the hell is there a pole near my head?

  I open my lips to talk, to ask, and a body, one I hadn’t noticed before, shifts in the corner.

  Someone—a nurse?—looks at me with brilliant blue eyes, and for a moment, I can’t remember what I was going to ask, because there are only his eyes and the questions there, and a scruffy beard, a sharp, angled face, and long hair that hangs like he’s been pushing his fingers through it.

  “You’re awake,” he says, and I remember that I was asking a question.

  But I can’t remember what it was. I think, struggling to hold onto the elusive question, and my eyes widen, panic slamming into me. Beside me, the shrill and sharp noise of the monitor that woke me screams to life as my heartbeat slams in my chest.

  I can’t remember anything.

  ***

  It takes a sedative to calm me down, and when I wake, it’s slowly, with no idea of where I am. It’s dark, and I remember the light streaming into the room earlier, lighting his bright blue eyes, and the wild panic when I realized everything was a blank slate.

  I feel it again, now, but the panic is tamer, not as sharp and choking. I shift to sit up in the hospital bed, and glance around.

  My gaze lands on the nurse, sleeping in a chair in the corner. His hand is wrapped around a phone, and I wonder, inanely, if he sleeps in all of his patient’s rooms, or if I’m special.

  Tattoos snake under the pushed up cuffs of a long, silver-blue thermal, and I have the absurd desire to push them up and see what designs will be revealed.

  I don’t even like guys with tattoos.

  Why is he here? I clear my throat, and his eyes fly open. For a moment, his eyes are sleepy, soft, so intimate it makes the breath catch in my throat, and I swallow hard. Then he blinks, and the hungry emotions are tucked away, and there is only concern there, calm and professional as he pushes out of the chair and comes to the bed.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks, glancing at the machine briefly. His eyes flick over it, and his lips tighten before he reaches for a button.

  I stop his hand with my own, and see his eyes flare wide before he closes them, and with a deep breath pulls away from me.

  Stung, and strangely embarrassed, I tuck my hand back under my blanket. “Where am I?” I ask my voice shaky with disuse.

  How long have I been here; how long have I been unconscious?

  “St. David’s Medical Center.” He pauses, watching me. It feels like he’s waiting for something, but then he adds, “Austin, sweetheart.”

  Austin. Why the hell am I in Austin?

  “Where would you rather be?” he asks, his voice carefully neutral.

  I blink. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud until he responded, and I feel heat crawling up my neck. His eyes drop to it and heat, and I clear my throat, looking away. Searching for an answer to his question.

  Where would I rather be?

  It’s a blank page, my past empty, stretching behind me. For how long? I bite hard on my lip. “How long have I been here?”

  “I think you should let me call the doctor.”

  “Why can’t I remember anything?” I whisper, and tears sting my eyes. I blink hard and sniffle. He’s staring at me, his face tight and remote, and I want him gone, suddenly. I want just a minute, to break down in private. Away from this stranger with his tattoos and eyes that see too much.

  “Can you call the doctor? And maybe give me a minute?”

  He inhales sharply, and I feel a flare of guilt, inexplicably. Then he nods, and steps away from my bed. “Of course. Give me a few minutes to find him. If you need anything—”

  “I’ll call,” I say, and he nods.

  I don’t know who he is. Why he’s here. Why he looks so strangely hurt by my behavior.

  “Do I know you?” I ask, hesitantly.

  His whole body seems to tense, and I want to reach out and touch him, to soothe the tight lines of his shoulders.

  A tattoo is licking up his neck, a bird in flames, just visible over the collar of his scrubs.

  “I’ll be back with the doctor,” he says hoarsely.

  And then he’s gone, and any answers he might have are gone with him.

  It stings a little. Like I should know him, or why he was here—and I don’t.

  Why the hell am I a hospital in Austin? Why aren’t my parents here?

  Every memory I reach for is blank. A space where something should be. It’s like who I am has vanished. The doctor is a Haitian man with skin the color of midnight and a wide smile. And an accent so thick I almost can’t understand him as he explains.

  The nurse—not Tattooed Blue Eyes—gives me a notebook, and when the doctor leaves again to find my MRI scans, I write what I know.

  I was brought in from a car crash two weeks ago.

  I had traumatic brain injury, causing memory loss.

  Apparently, I was drunk before the accident and that didn’t help my mental functions at all.

  The girl with me is still in critical condition.

  Her license says she is Lindsay Illian and I am Peyton Collins.

  The driver died.

  I live in Austin.

  It’s not nearly enough for me to work with—to build a life on. But it’s all I’ve got, so it’s going to have to do. What bothers me isn’t that I can’t remember. It’s that I’m alone here.

  What the hell kind of life was I living, that I am so fucking alone?

  The door opens, and Tattooed Blue Eyes enters with a paper bag. He eyes me for a minute, and I stare back silently.

  A tiny grin turns his lips, and he comes deeper into the room and sits in a chair near my bed.

  “Knock knock,” he says, and waits, staring at me.

  I frown, “Who’s there?”

  “Hatch.”

  “Hatch who?” I ask, my tone sharp and annoyed.

  The grin blossoms into a full smile, “Cover your mouth when you sneeze!”r />
  I giggle and shake my head. “That’s really bad, Blue Eyes.”

  His grin falters for just a second, and then he shrugs. “But you laughed. Now. Are you hungry?”

  I don’t respond, and he doesn’t seem to care, going to work pulling out a plate of fried rice and chicken with vegetables and spreading it all out on the table. He moves easily, almost ignoring me, but I can feel the tiny glances he darts at me.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, when the plate is in my hands and he’s back in his chair. The sleeves of his thermal have been shoved up, and I see stairs crisscrossing up his arm, and a brightly colored fish on his other, twisting through weeds and flowers.

  “I’m eating dinner with you,” he says. Pauses. “Do you want me to go?”

  That possibility looms in front of me. All night, alone in this room, and nothing. No memories or knowledge to keep me company.

  The thought is terrifying and I shake my head. Because whoever he is, he’s a distraction. Someone to keep my mind off the emptiness.

  “No,” I whisper. “Please stay.”

  Chapter 3: Before

  Scotty is strumming on his guitar, but without any real point or purpose, and it’s grating on my nerves. I scrub a hand over my head, and breathe a curse. He misses a note and I glare across the room at him.

  “Cut that shit out, would you?”

  “Why are you fucking nervous?” he demands. “It’s just a chick. Hit it, and let it go. Get it out of your fucking system.”

  I snort. “Because that’s worked so well for the past few months. Don’t you think if I could forget her, I would have by now?”

  Scott drops the guitar to the futon we picked up from a girl he fucked before she moved to L.A., and stands. “I think you’ve been fixating on her since the first time she walked into Barrie’s. For fuck’s sake, man, you turned down Lindsay.”

  He hadn’t. And Lindsay is a little bit indiscriminate—she was just as happy coming back to the apartment to fuck Scott as she had been when we were both on the table.

  It did make the next morning awkward.

  “Can we keep her out of this?” I demand. Scott’s eyebrows climb, but he doesn’t argue as I reach into the almost empty fridge for a beer. My nerves are dancing.

  “Text her, dude,” Scott says, and his tone is somewhere between amusedly resigned and annoyed. I glance at him, and he extends the phone.

  “She’s outta my league,” I mumble, and take a pull on the beer. It’s shitty, lukewarm Bud Light but it’s what we had the money for this week.

  “Fuck you,” Scotty spits, and stalks from the room. I swallow the beer and follow him. He’s in the back bedroom, the one that’s ostensibly his, but rarely used.

  “You know what I mean,” I grit out.

  “And I’m fucking sick of it. We aren’t that shit anymore, Rike. Get it through your fucking head.”

  “We aren’t country club socialites either,” I snap.

  Scotty gives me a disgusted look. I get it. I’ve known Scott longer than anyone else in my life. With our history, I know exactly what he’s thinking.

  We’ve fought a long time to get away from the past we share. And for the most part, we have. Scott left it behind, threw himself into his work and his music. He’d forget it completely.

  I can’t. I’ve never been able to forget where we came from, or why we can’t ever be more than that shit. It’s why I’ve stayed away from Peyton.

  “You let them win,” Scott says, grabbing a shirt and pulling it over his head. It ruffles his blonde hair, giving him the just-fucked tousle girls can’t keep their hands off. “Every fucking time you say we can’t be more, you let them win. And I’m fucking tired of that. We’re out—no one gets to decide what we are except us. If we want to be damn rock stars, that’s on us. If you want Red, that’s on you. But no one can take that shit from you but you.”

  He stares at me, green eyes brilliant and furious, and I swallow hard. Nod. I dig my phone out and tap out a quick message. A stupid knock-knock joke I heard a few days ago on the morning show.

  Hold it up for Scotty to see. “Happy?”

  He grunts, and pushes past me. “It’s a start.”

  He’s pissy and he’ll sulk for a few days. I expect it. I knew he would when I said it. I’m just stupid enough that I said it anyway.

  The phone vibrates in my hand and Scott twists to give me a knowing stare. “That was quick.”

  “Fuck off,” I mutter, and thumb over to the message.

  P: Took you long enough. Was beginning to think I’d need to find a new bar to keep things from being awkward.

  I grin, and type a quick response.

  R: I’m the one who got shot down the other night. Shit like that will hurt a guy’s ego. Make it up to me.

  P: How?

  I hesitate for a moment, and then.

  R: Dress casual. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.

  P: Slow down, Jokes. Where you think you’re going to pick me up?

  Well, fuck.

  ***

  She agrees to meet me at Barrie’s after her last class the next day, and I sit on the bouncer’s stool—not that we’ve ever actually used the bouncer to turn people away. My leg bobs nervously, and I clench a hand on it to still the nervous energy.

  Why the fuck doe this girl wind me up so much? It’s more than just her beauty—although that helped.

  It’s that she’s the first thing in a long time that I’ve allowed myself to want.

  A car slows, a sleek gray Lexus and I see Lindsay, all straight hair and pursed lips as she watches. Peyton spills out of the car and shifts her bag on her shoulder. “I’ll get a ride home.”

  Lindsay makes a small sniff. “Just call and I’ll swing back by.”

  Peyton makes a face at her friend and steps away from the car, coming to stand in front of me with a small smile. “Hi, Jokes.”

  “Knock knock,” I say.

  A grin lights her face, and she says, “Who’s there?”

  “Lettuce.”

  She rolls her eyes and I nudge her with the toe of my boot. “Lettuce who?”

  “Lettuce in please; it’s cold outside.”

  “That’s horrible,” she says, but there’s a sparkle of laughter in her eyes.

  I push off the stool. She’s wearing heels, but they still put her almost two inches shorter than me, and I’m struck by how tiny she is. With her big blue eyes and wild red hair, in a thin sundress and sandals with some kind of weird wedge that does fucking amazing things to her legs, she looks like a presence much bigger than she truly is. A part of me wants to scoop her up and tuck her somewhere safe, where she won’t get bruised by the world.

  Because I know a fuck ton about the way the world can bruise the innocent.

  “Where you at, Jokes?” she asks, and I blink out of my thoughts to focus on her. She’s watching me with curious, patient eyes.

  No one has ever called me out like that. Pulled me from the dark spiral of my thoughts as easily as she just did—no one but Scotty.

  I think I fall in love right then.

  I shove that stupid thought down, and nod at the POS truck Scotty and I picked up a year or so back. I hold the door open for her, and she doesn’t even seem to care that the truck is a rusted wreck. She just gives me a small, private smile as she slips into the cab. I shut the door behind her and jog around to slide behind the wheel.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “A favorite place of mine,” I say and her eyes brighten with curiosity. But she doesn’t press for more as I put the truck in gear and pull away from the curb.

  Keagan’s is a record store, although lately he’s been taking in boxes of old, used books. Records don’t sell, not the way they used to.

  We push into the store and he lifts his head to peer at me from behind a ragged copy of Playboy. I wave once and steer Peyton toward the back corner. A stack of poetry books sits next to the coffee pot, and I glance at it as I pour her a cup.
/>
  “This looks like tar, Jokes.”

  I nod and dump some shitty powdered cream in it before handing it to her. I make my own cup as I explain, “It’s a rite of passage. Keegan doesn’t really trust you unless you can choke down this shit. And it is shit. But I put up with it so I can come back here.”

  I take her by the hand and she doesn’t protest as I lead her through the rows of crates.

  Keegan doesn’t organize anything. He just puts it out there and lets folks wander through it. “I don’t know how long I’ve spent flipping through records and drinking this nasty coffee. A long damn time.”

  She steps up beside me and touches the glossy cover of a record by Aretha Franklin. “My grandmother loved her. We used to listen to her for hours while Grammy would make cookies and I’d frost them. Every time I hear “A Rose is Still a Rose,” I can taste her cookies again.”

  I swallow hard, shoving down the pang of loneliness that rises at her words. Not her fault, and she can’t possibly know why it stings.

  I grab a crate and nod at the coffee. "Come with me."

  Peyton give me an amused half-smile as she follows me to a small area with ratty couch. It looks vaguely like it was rescued from a dumpster after making a nice home for a rat family.

  Smells that way too. For a heartbeat, as I drop onto the couch with a puff of stale old odor, I think I've fucked up bringing her here. Flawless and classy in her dress, she sinks down next to me, and kicks out of her wedges, curling up with her feet tucked beside her. "What are we looking for?"

  I lick my lips and she follows the motion, and I know women enough to know exactly what that means,. She leans forward, just a little, and I get a peek of the gorgeous cleavage I've been trying to ignore. She smirks and taps the crate. "Focus, Jokes."

  "I'm very focused," I say, my tone hoarse and hungry. Her eyes dart to me, and she hesitates for moment, but I pull back before either of us can act on the hunger that's running too hot between us.

  Maybe I should have taken Lindsay to bed with Scotty. I probably wouldn't be so fucking desperate to get my hands on Peyton if I had.