Remembering Us (7 page)

Adam came home from work and found me sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by albums and t-shirts that all went together. He said nothing as he sat down on the floor and dropped his head against the cushions. We spent three hours listening to music and didn’t say a word.

And yet, he had a hint of a smile. Just a slight tilt to his lips that told me he was happy.

I remembered a picnic lunch I had with Kelsey, Zander, and Adam sitting in the middle of the university grounds the same place where Adam saw me for the first time. We were drinking sparkling grape juice and eating cheese and crackers, toasting to the end of our Spring Midterms.

But it all changed with that stupid dream I had four days ago that I’m still unable to get out of my head. I haven’t said anything to Adam. I don’t ask him. I just pull back. And I know he can tell. I know he notices that every time he sits down on the couch, I move further away. I know he’s pissed, because I can practically hear his teeth grinding from another room. He leaves at night and doesn’t come back for hours.

I don’t know where he goes and I don’t ask. I don’t need to. When he comes home at night, I’m already in bed, but I can hear him fumbling with the key in our lock. I hear him stumble through our kitchen, knocking into the chairs and the walls on the way to the bathroom.

Last night he stopped outside my bedroom. My heart rate picked up and started beating wildly against my chest when I heard a low thump hit my door and saw his shadow from the crack underneath it.

I froze and watched the shadow stay still. Minutes passed and there was no movement from outside, no sound at all. I almost thought he passed out in the hallway, but as I got out of bed to check on him, a louder thumping sound hit the wall and I scurried back into bed like a frightened kitten. He let out a string of curse words before he slammed the door to his room and the apartment went silent.

When I woke up, there was a chunk of drywall missing from the wall and half a dozen dark red dots on the carpet.

It only confirms the suspicion I’ve had in my head all week long, ever since that dream. We were always a disaster waiting to happen. Everything I’ve seen in the dreams, everything I’ve felt always leads back to that conclusion. The fear, the uncertainty, the jealousy – never once have I seen, or felt, any redeeming quality from either of us as I remember how we began. We bring out the worst in each other.

“What do you think?” I spin around in the three-way mirror. Kelsey watches me with a funny expression. “That bad?”

She wrinkles her nose. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in a dress.” I frown in the mirror, watching her regard me like I’ve grown two heads instead of put on a navy and white maxi dress. “It looks strange.”

“I like it,” I say, hands on my hips, convincing myself this should be a part of my new wardrobe. Kelsey looks doubtful. “What’s wrong with a dress?”

“Nothing. It’s just …” she starts, and then sighs, running her hand through her long dark hair. “You just swore you’d never wear a dress again.”

I press my teeth together until my jaw hurts. She’s had this same attitude for the last three hours. She took me to the hospital for my doctor’s appointment, and as soon as my casts were removed, I asked her to bring me shopping. She looks like she’s regretted the choice to come with me ever since I tried on my first dress.

Hell, I’m regretting having her with me.

“Yeah, well, I don’t remember that,” I snap at her, and fling back the curtain in the dressing room.

A minute later, clad only in my bra and underwear, Kelsey walks in with a silent apology written all over her face. I ignore her while I pull on my jeans.

“You can’t keep throwing fits and being pissy with me for crap like this.”

“I know,” she mumbles. “Do you remember when you were fourteen and stopped doing ballet in order to play lacrosse?”

“Yes.”

Lacrosse looked fun and gave me an excuse to get off the ballet stage where I was forced to spend hours practicing even though I never liked dance. My mom refused to speak to me for a month, and when she did, the first words out of her mouth were, “You look like a boy with all that muscle.”

“Well, the dresses thing was something similar. You ditched them over the winter when you and Adam got serious.”

I frown. “I changed who I am for him?” I hate that idea. Did I become
that
girl that is so insecure that she changes everything about herself to become what a guy wants her to be? I can’t see me doing that. But what the hell do I know?

“No,” she says, smiling sadly. I look at her through the mirror, adjusting my shirt. “It’s more like you became who you always wanted to be, and Adam helped you get there. This is like stepping backward in time.”

“So why did I change? And how did I become the girl who only dresses in rock concert t-shirts and denim skirts and jeans?”

She rolls her eyes and I resist the urge to slap her. “It’s not about the clothes, Amy, and you know it. You never liked who your parents tried to make you be. Adam just held your hand while you fought against them and found yourself. That’s all.”

I watch her pale blue eyes soften, willing me to believe her. I can’t. The girl I’ve become with Adam is so far apart from the girl I remember being. And everyone refuses to give me straight answers of how I got from point A to Q.

I pick up the dress, along with the others that I threw in the dressing room but haven’t tried on yet. “I’m getting them.”

I’m in the kitchen making a grilled cheese sandwich when Adam finally crawls out of his room for the day. His unshaven facial hair is longer than I’ve seen it. His dark hair is sticking up in places and matted down in others. His right hand is wrapped in a bandage and there are dots of dried blood on his knuckles seeping through the gauze. His eyes are bloodshot and he doesn’t look at me as he walks to the coffee pot. I feel the tension begin to bubble between us, and instinctively, I straighten my back. I can feel his eyes boring into the back of me as he takes in every inch of my exposed skin.

“Nice dress.” By the tone in his voice, he hates the dress.

I don’t move. I keep my hands on the counter, watching the sandwich cook on the countertop griddle, and press my lips together.

I don’t respond to Adam’s sneer, but I see him sit down at the kitchen table with his head draped in his hands. The steam from his coffee cup floats upward and disappears into his hands.

Finally, he rubs his hands roughly over his face and takes his first sip.

“Just tell me about the fucking dream, Amy. Tell me what sort of asshole you think I am now.” His nose wrinkles, and over the hissing griddle, I hear him grind his teeth together. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at anything. He just stares straight ahead at the television mounted on our far wall with blank, dark eyes.

The smell of burning bread snaps me back to the counter, and I swear, flipping the burnt sandwich into the sink before unplugging the griddle.

How do I tell him how it felt to watch him kiss some girl and then throw my tongue down some asshole’s throat just because I was pissed?

I was jealous.

I was
emotional
.

I don’t remember there ever being a time in my life where my emotions ruled my actions.

It wasn’t what happened in the dream that terrified me. I’ve replayed it in my mind a dozen times and I don’t actually think he wanted to kiss Britnee. It was my own actions that have shaken me.

It was how I felt. Crazed. Like a lunatic in search of a drug to satisfy an itch that burned deep in my bones.

I don’t understand it, and it scares the hell out of me. It wasn’t me. Somehow the girl who moved into this apartment is the complete opposite of the girl I remember being.

She’s the evil twin driven by emotions. I can see it. I can feel it in the darkest places inside me that I’ve somehow changed.

“Just tell me, please.” He turns to me with begging eyes, and I realize I’ve just been staring at him. Or through him, because I haven’t seen anything. His voice is desperate, his eyes pleading.

I can’t resist.

“We were at a formal for your frat. I walked in on Britnee kissing you in the hallway and took off.” I swallow slowly. The scene flashes before my eyes, as I remember the feelings of pain and pride fighting for first place as I ran out of that ballroom.

“And made out with Brendan.” His voice is cold as he finishes my sentence, and there’s a tightness in his jaw. His undamaged hand grips his mug so harshly that his knuckles are white.

“I went home with him and cheated on you,” I clarify. I don’t know how the dream ended exactly, but I can imagine. With the hormones and emotions flooding me that night, I have no doubt I let Brendan take me somewhere and do whatever he wanted to me – just because I was pissed.

Adam scoffs and shakes his head. “You didn’t cheat on me. Although, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did after what you saw with Britnee.”

His eyes drift away from me and out to the window. It’s not the first time I watch a dream I had play out as a memory in his eyes. I watch his breath pick up, the tick in his jaw, the anger, and then the sadness unfold. Every emotion I experienced in my dream plays out in his eyes and in his facial expressions as I silently watch him.

“That’s not the point.” I don’t think whether I had revenge sex with Brendan
is
the point, although the thought alone makes me shudder and gives me a sick feeling in my stomach.

“Then what is it? I didn’t mean to kiss Britnee. She just pulled me to her before I could stop her.”

“And you kissed her back. I saw you.”

“I was twenty-years-old and a walking ball of hormones. I had a hard-on all night long from that fucking dress you were wearing. I was stupid, and it took me a second to register what in the hell was happening. But I didn’t want her. I wanted you.”

He stands up from the table and walks toward me in the kitchen. His nostrils flare and I know what he’s thinking about because I’m thinking the same thing. The way his touch felt like fire through my dress. The way I wanted him. The way I wanted his fingers to dig into my skin and pull me into him. God, I felt it all in my dream and even now standing in front of him, I don’t understand the physical pull he has on me.

Like I’m drawn to him, whether I want to be or not.

“Tell me what else you remembered, Amy. Tell me what happened in the dream before that part.”

My jaw drops and my eyes widen. My pulse begins dancing across my skin as Adam walks up to me. With his hands on both sides of the counter, he’s blocked me into our u-shape kitchen and I can’t escape. I take a step back until my back hits the wall. The zipper of my dress digs into my skin and I move against it, hating the feel.

I shake my head. “It’s too much.”

“Too much what?” His eyes drop to my feet and slowly rake up every inch of me. One side of his lips twists into a sneer when he hits my dress at the knee. He hates it. He hates that I’m not being the me he knows, but rather the one I was before. The two sides of me are confusing. One I don’t know, and one I remember but I’m not sure I like.

Too much of this, I think. Too much heat and fire. It’s explosive and powerful.

It’s scary.

It makes me want to jump off a cliff just so I can drown in cold water.

“I can’t do this.” I hear my own doubt and breathlessness as his eyes pin me against the wall. It doesn’t take anything else besides a look of his narrowed eyes that are clearly warring against something to keep me frozen to the wall.

“Do what, Ames? Let yourself feel again?” He takes a step forward, and then another, until he’s standing inches in front of me, towering over me. “Heaven forbid you remember what it’s like to feel something. That’s what it is, isn’t it? That’s what you’re so afraid of. That’s why you’ve gone back to being the ice princess with this stuck up little dress.”

I shake my head, but inside I’m screaming, “Yes!” at the top of my lungs.

I clear my throat. It’s dry and scratchy and
feels
like I’ve been screaming though I haven’t said a word. “Ice princess?”

He laughs softly, just once, and then a finger comes out and barely brushes my yellow shoulder strap. I shiver, not sure if it’s because his finger burned my skin or scared me.