Next To You (40 page)

He danced and sang about
pourin’ sugah
on his
baybee
.

For so long she’d been coming out of a long hibernation, stuck in some kind of twilight state between sleepwalking and alertness, between yesterday and today. With a hazy, sleep-crusted sort of vision, she’d made out a few very obvious details, and nothing pointed to anything Will and her uncle said happened. Yet, regardless if she couldn’t find the link to last night, one thing was very weird, very plain, and very exciting. She was awake, she was alive, and Caroline
knew
how she felt. She was no longer daunted by the past or future. She didn’t care. She could start again. She could grab life by the balls and start over.

‘
Hey, hey, hey
!’

Smiling, she looked up into Will’s wide, fair face, at his shining hair, and eyes so like the iolite earrings her father had given her years ago. ‘Thank you. Thank God you live next door. I don’t remember what Alex did after the diner, and I’m mortified that you saw us, but thank God you did.’ She rose, lips pursing. ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

‘Yes, of course,’ Will smiled down at her.

‘Did the chocolate milk he spilled on your shoes ruin them?’

‘My shoes?’ He did a James Brown shuffle.

‘Yes, when Alex got up he knocked over his chocolate milk; it went all over your shoes. Did the milk discolor the leather?’

Dread, ice-cold and heavy, landed in the pit of Will’s stomach. He stopped dancing.

His shoes
. Dear God,
his shoes
. His shoes and the chocolaty mocha Alex had upended at the Wellington Diner.

That was the first time they’d seen each other.

That’s where Caroline was, back in the past, back before they’d known one another, before he’d loved her.

Horrified, desperate, Will did what he’d always done when he looked at something and missed the fine details. He tilted his head to look at her better, so he could help her to see, help her to uncover the things she’d missed, so she would find
him
in the picture. His throat constricted. ‘My shoes,’ he said.

‘Wait. You mean that wasn’t you I saw at the diner?’

‘Yes, that was me, those were my shoes, and they didn’t stain, but do you … do you remember … do you remember that you, that we … that I …’

She touched his lapel. ‘You wear that suit beautifully.’

He stared at her, still hoping to help her see what was missing. ‘That’s what you said when I introduced myself.’

‘Is that what I said?’ She held her palm against his cheek. ‘You have good taste, a quietly elegant style.’

‘Yes,’ he rasped, his world fading, bleaching out to nothing.

‘Oh, dear, dear, dear,’ her uncle said.

Will slid his hand over hers. ‘Do you remember me?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘You were sitting in a booth near the window, and your hair was so shiny.’

‘Oh dear, dear, dear.’

It was too bright and Will couldn’t see. He couldn’t see and she didn’t see. Memory loss, short-term memory loss that wasn’t limited to the absent events of yesterday, or last week, or … Sweet Jesus … He was simply her new neighbor, the nice guy who had lived next door to her uncle, the man who had saved her life, for which she was grateful, and maybe they’d be friends because of that, but what they’d had was missing, was lost. Will was as blank and washed out as his vision.

‘Puddin’, you don’t remember Will?’

‘I saw him at the diner.’ She blew the hair from her face. ‘Does it matter if I remember after that? No,’ she said, shrugging. ‘It doesn’t matter if I don’t remember. I don’t care if I have holes, or black spots, if bad things happened again. I don’t care if I can’t remember. I know how I feel and I’m not confused by that.’

She reached up and snatched at the air. ‘I’m grabbing life by the balls, boys, and starting over. I’m not afraid. I spent time in a psychiatric hospital, you know. I got help. I know I don’t have to fall apart. I can chose to focus on now instead of the past, and that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t need to know what I did, or be embarrassed about how we met, or by what you saw, or by how you found me with Alex. I know how I feel.’

‘Oh, dear, dear, dear.’

Will’s eyes burned, but he took her hand, kissed the center of her palm.

‘Ah, Will,’ Reg said behind him, hand patting his shoulder.

Will let her go. He sank onto the side of the bed and put his head in his hands. Maybe the chest pains he’d had in the store other day had been a heart attack and he was in the hospital on life support, moving toward the blinding, obscuring light …

‘William.’ Caroline laughed. ‘Why are you so upset?’

Will lifted his head. He saw her clearly, in full, agonizingly perfect live color. Somehow, he squashed down the sob in his chest, but there was nothing he could do about the tears stinging his face. ‘Why am I so upset?’

‘Don’t be upset. I’m not. I’ll be fine,’ she said, cocking her head, hair dipping over one eye. Arms crossed, she exhaled, bit her bottom lip for a second, and said, ‘I’ll be just fine. I’m going to start over. So I don’t remember you after that day in the diner, or know what I did, or how I got here. It might help to think of me as a raving madwoman since what I’m about to say next is going to come screaming way out of left field, especially considering I don’t remember anything about you except for your shoes, but—and don’t ask me how I know this, I just do—I know I how I feel. Yes, it’s crazy, and it’s not because I’m grateful you saved my life, which I am, but I know,’ she lay a hand over her heart, ‘in here, that I love you. I don’t care how insane it sounds. I’m grabbing my life by the balls, William, and I don't suppose you'd want to marry me, would you?’

William Murphy never saw it coming.

Thanks for reading
Next to You
. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you’d like to know more about me, my books, or to connect with me online, you can visit my webpage:
sandraantonelli.com
, follow me on twitter
@sandrAntonelli
or like my Facebook page
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www.escapepublishing.com.au

Reviews can help readers find books, and I am grateful for all honest reviews. Thank you for taking the time to let others know what you’ve read, and what you thought.

If you liked this book, here are my other books:
A Basic Renovation
,
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,
Driving in Neutral.

This book was published by Escape Publishing. If you’d like to sample some more great books from my fellow Escape Artists, please turn the page.

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