Never Never: Part Three (Never Never #3) (11 page)

“I have no idea how anyone could possibly forget how magnificent this is,” Charlie says, taking the last bite of whatever it was that Ezra cooked for us. Some might call it breakfast, but food like this deserves its own category.

“What is this again?” Charlie asks Ezra.

“Nutella French toast,” she responds.

Charlie writes
Nutella French Toast
down on a piece of paper and scribbles two hearts next to it. Then she adds a follow-up sentence that says,
You hate crawfish, Charlie!!!

Before we leave the kitchen and head back to my room, Charlie walks over to Ezra and gives her a big hug. “Thank you for breakfast, Ezra.”

Ezra pauses a moment before hugging her back. “You’re welcome, Charlize.”

“Will you make that for me next time I’m here for breakfast? No matter if I can’t remember eating it today?”

Ezra shrugs and says, “I guess.”

As we’re walking upstairs, Charlie randomly says, “You know what? I think money is what made us mean.”

“What are you talking about?” We reach my bedroom and I close the door behind us.

“It just seems like maybe we were ungrateful. A little bit spoiled. I’m not sure our parents taught us how to be decent humans. So in a way…I’m grateful this happened to us.”

I sit on the bed and pull her back against my chest. She rests her head on my shoulder and tilts her face up to mine. “I think you were always a little nicer than me. But I don’t think either of us can be proud of who we were.”

I give her a quick peck on the lips and lean my head back against the wall. “I think we were a product of our environment. Inherently, we’re good people. We might lose our memories again, but we’re still the same on the inside. Somewhere deep down, we want to do good.
Be
good. Deep down we love each other. A lot. And whatever this is that’s happening to us, it’s not touching that.”

She slides her fingers through mine and squeezes. We sit in silence for a little while. Every now and then I’ll glance at my phone. We have about ten minutes left until 11:00 a.m., and I don’t think either of us knows how to spend that time. We’ve already written more notes than we’ll be able to comprehend in the next forty-eight hours.

All we can do is wait.

My heart is beating so hard, it’s losing rhythm. My mouth is dry. I grab the bottle of water sitting on Silas’s nightstand and down a big drink. “This is terrifying,” I tell him. “I wish we could speed up the next five minutes and get this over with.”

He sits up straighter on the bed and grabs my hand. “Sit in front of me.”

I sit in front of him. We’re both cross-legged on the bed, in the same position we were in at the hotel room two days ago. Thinking of that morning makes me ill. I don’t want to acknowledge the possibility that in a few minutes, I might not know who he is.

I have to have faith this time. This can’t go on forever.
Can it?

I close my eyes and try to control my breathing. I feel Silas’s hand reach up and brush the hair from my eyes.

“What’s the one thing you’re the most scared of forgetting?” he asks.

I open my eyes. “You.”

He brushes his thumb over my mouth and leans in to kiss me. “Me too. I love you, Charlie.”

And without hesitation I say, “I love you, too, Silas.”

When his lips meet mine, I’m no longer scared. Because I know that whatever happens in the next few seconds…it’ll happen with Silas, and that brings me comfort.

He threads our fingers together and says, “Ten seconds.”

We both inhale deep breaths. I can feel his hands shaking, but they aren’t shaking nearly as badly as mine.

“Five…four…three…two…”

The only sound I hear is the thrashing of my heart. The rest of the world is chillingly silent.

My lips are still resting softly against hers. Our knees are touching, our eyes are closed, our breath is mingling between us as I wait to make my next move. I know for a fact that I didn’t lose my memory this time. That makes twice in a row…but I have no idea about Charlie.

I slowly open my eyes so that I can see what’s in hers. Her eyes remain closed. I watch her for a few seconds, waiting to see what her first reaction will be.

Will she remember me?

Will she have no idea where she is?

She begins to pull back, slowly, and her eyelids flutter open. There’s a mixture of fear and shock in her expression. She pulls back a few more inches, studying my face. She turns her head and looks around the room.

When she glances back at me, my heart plummets down my chest like the drop of an anchor.
She has no idea where she is.

“Charlie?”

Her tear-rimmed eyes swing to mine and she quickly covers her mouth with her hand. I can’t tell if she’s about to scream. I should have put a note on the door like we did last time.

She looks down at the bed and lowers her hand to her chest. “You were wearing black,” she whispers.

Her gaze falls to the pillow next to me. She points at it. “We were right there. You were wearing a black t-shirt, and I was laughing at you because I said it was too tight. I said it made you look like Simon Cowell. You pinned me to the mattress, and then…” Her eyes meet mine. “And then you kissed me.”

I nod, because somehow…I remember every single moment of that. “It was our first kiss. We were fourteen,” I say. “But I had been wanting to kiss you like that since we were twelve.”

She slaps her hand over her mouth again. Sobs begin to rack her entire body. She lunges forward, wrapping her arms around my neck. I pull her down to the bed with me and everything comes rushing back in waves.

“The night you got caught sneaking in?” she says.

“Your mom went after me with a belt. Chased me right out of your bedroom window.”

Charlie starts laughing between her tears. I’m holding her against me, my face pressed against her neck. I close my eyes and sort through all the memories. The good ones. The bad ones. All the nights she cried in my arms over the way things turned out between her mother and father.

“The phone calls,” she says quietly. “Every single night.”

I know exactly what she’s talking about. I would call her every night and we would stay on the phone for an entire hour. When our memories left us, we couldn’t figure out why we had talked for so long every night if our relationship was falling apart.

“Jimmy Fallon,” I tell her. “We both loved Jimmy Fallon. And I would call you every night when his show would come on, and we would watch it together.”

“But we never talked,” she says. “We just watched the show together without speaking and then we’d go straight to sleep.”

“Because I loved hearing you laugh.”

Not only are the memories flooding me right now, but the feelings. All the feelings I’ve ever had for this girl are unfolding, and for a second I’m not sure if I can take it all in.

We hold each other tight as we rake through a lifetime of memories. Several minutes pass as we both laugh at the good memories and then more minutes pass as we succumb to the not so good ones. The hurt our parents’ actions inflicted on us. The hurt we’ve caused each other. The hurt we’ve caused other people. We’re feeling every bit of it, all at once.

Charlie clenches my shirt in her fists and buries her face in my neck. “It hurts, Silas,” she whispers. “I don’t want to be that girl again. How can we make sure we’re not the same people we were before this happened to us?”

I run my hand over the back of her head. “But we
are
those people,” I say to her. “We can’t take back who we’ve been in the past, Charlie. But we can control who we are in the present.”

I lift her head from my shoulder and hold her face in my hands. “Charlie, you have to promise me something.” I wipe her tears away with my thumb. “Promise me you will never fall out of love with me again. Because I don’t want to forget you all over again. I never want to forget a single second with you.”

She shakes her head. “I swear. I’ll never stop loving you, Silas. And I’ll never forget.”

I dip my head until my mouth meets hers. “
Never Never
.”

The End

Silas is bringing dinner home. I wait for him at the kitchen window while I pretend to wash vegetables for a salad. I like to pretend I’m washing things at the sink just so I can see when he pulls into the driveway.

His car pulls in ten minutes later; my fingers are pruned from the water. I grab for a dishtowel, feeling those damn butterflies in my stomach. They never went away. From what I’ve heard, that’s a rare thing after this many years of marriage.

The kids get out of the car first. Jessa, our daughter, and then her boyfriend, Harry. Normally my eyes would go to Silas next, but something makes me linger on Jessa and Harry.

Jessa is just like me: stubborn, mouthy, and aloof. I’d cry, but she mostly makes me laugh with her one-liners. I like Harry; they’ve been together since freshman year and plan on going to the same college when they graduate next year. They’re usually the epitome of teen love, all glassy eyed and touchy like Silas and I used to be.
Still are.
But today, Jessa stands off to the side of the driveway, her arms folded across her chest.

Harry gets out of the car too and goes to stand next to her.
 
They must be fighting
, I think. Jessa sometimes likes to flirt with the neighbor kid, and Harry gets upset.

Silas walks in a minute later. He grabs me from behind, wrapping his arms around me and kissing my neck.

“Hey, Charlie Baby,” he says, breathing me in. I lean into him.

“What’s up with those two?” I ask, still watching them out the window.

“I don’t know. They were really weird on the ride home. Barely spoke.”

“Uh, oh,” I say. “Must be the hot neighbor boy again.”
I hear the front door slam, and I call Jessa into the kitchen.
“Jessa, come here!”

She wanders in, slowly, without Harry in tow.

“What’s up?” I ask her. “You look shell shocked.”

“Do I?” she asks.

I look at Silas and he shrugs.

“Where’s Harry?”

Jessa jabs a thumb over her shoulder. “He’s in there.”

“Okay, well you two get ready for dinner. We’ll eat as soon as the salad is done.”

She nods, and I swear she’s going to start crying.

“Hey, Jessa,” I say as she turns around to leave.

“Yeah?”

“I was thinking we could go to Miami for your birthday next month. Does that sound okay to you?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Cool.”

When she’s gone I turn to Silas, whose eyebrows are drawn together.

“I didn’t know we were going to Miami,” he says. “I can’t get time off for work that quick.”

“Silas,” I say sharply. “Her birthday isn’t for six more months.”

The line between his eyes relaxes and his mouth opens.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. And then realization hits. “Oh.
Oh.”
He brings a hand up to the back of his neck
.
“
Shit
, Charlie. Not again.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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TARRYN AND COLLEEN

COLLEEN HOOVER

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