Pinch Me

Chapter Twenty-Four

When Rob awoke the next morning, Laura had already left for the shop. A note lay on the counter next to a fresh pot of coffee.

Maybe we could have dinner at your place tonight? Bring Doogie by the shop if you need to. - L.

His stomach knotted. It was their house. They owned it together. They’d thought of it as theirs, not his.

They had agreed she would rent out the condo after the wedding and move in with him.

Before.

He slammed his fist against the counter hard enough to rattle the glasses in the drainer. Doogie ran into the kitchen, worried.

“It’s okay, boy.” He spent a moment loving the dog before going to get a shower.

“You’re in awful early, kiddo,” Steve observed.

Laura set her coffee cup on the desk. “I woke up early.” The truth was, she wanted to be out of the house before Rob woke up. She didn’t want to face him, afraid he’d sense the mood she was in.

Despite having his comforting presence next to her in bed, nightmares plagued her. Not just the one about the door and the shadow, which she’d sadly come to expect every night. But dreams about other men, sexy, strange, odd dreams involving bondage and spankings.

And orgasms.

And Rob hadn’t been in them.

She didn’t want to be faced with trying to explain all of that to him when she didn’t even understand it.

Steve puttered around the shop for ten minutes before finally planting himself next to her desk.

“So?”

“So…what?”

“Laura, you never could play that game with me. How did Rob react to the new hairstyle?”

She shrugged. “I think he was a little freaked out.”

Steve waited for her to continue but she didn’t. “And then what happened?”

“Not much. We had dinner, took a walk, went home. That’s about it.”

He shook his head. “For a writer, you aren’t a very good storyteller.”

The fact was she hadn’t done any writing since the attack. She spent several hours going through her past articles and the journals she’d found, but she worried perhaps that part of her was gone forever.

“I’ve just got a lot of stuff to do. That’s all.”

“You were never a good liar, either. Did you have a fight?”

“No, no fight. Really.”

He finally left her alone. She didn’t want to think about it. Yes she did want to “date” Rob. Going “steady.” Sounded pretty sophomoric. Considering she was rebuilding her life from the ground up, maybe it wasn’t a bad idea. She still hadn’t found the missing journals. Rob said he never snooped and never had a need to know where she kept them or what she wrote in them.

So he said.

Not that she had a reason to not trust him, the truth was, she didn’t know if she could or not no matter how much she wanted to. If she could find the journals, the path back to her memories might be shortened considerably. Over the past couple of days, she had noticed little odd snippets suddenly appearing in her memories after reading through the old journals. As if seeing it in black and white made a difference.

What concerned her was she had no idea what kind of person she was in her relationship with Rob other than what people told her. Was she really in love with Rob and had accepted his proposal because she wanted to spend her life with him, or did she accept to remove the loneliness from her life? Was she strong and self-directed, or was she a totally codependent wuss, afraid to stand on her own two feet?

A journal could open a lot of doors for her that secondhand retelling could never unlock.

Later that afternoon, a man walked in and browsed the dive gear.

“Can I help you?”

When he looked at her and smiled, she felt something tighten in her gut.

“Actually, yes,” he said. “I need new gear plus a refresher class. My ex-wife got all my stuff, and it’s been about five years since I last dove. I finally got moved into my new place and I’m ready to start diving again.”

He was maybe in his late thirties. Tall, dark blond hair, almost brown. Looked like he worked in an office but he wasn’t pale. Trim. Piercing green eyes.

Do I know him? “Sure. What’s your price range?” With business to conduct she pushed all emotions out of the way and went to work. It wasn’t until he was out the door with a complete new rig and signed up for a weekend refresher class she realized how odd she felt. A rush she couldn’t explain. It wasn’t that she was attracted to him, although he was a fairly decent-looking guy, but there was something else there she couldn’t name.

Steve came in from the dock and looked over her shoulder at the charge copy of his receipt. “Wow. That guy must be made of money. Did you make sure the credit card wasn’t hot?”

“Yeah. It’s okay.”

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Nothing, I guess. Just a strange feeling.”

Steve looked out the window but the customer had already driven away. “Why? Did you recognize him or something?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t act like he knew me. It was just strange.”

“Don Kern. Don’t know the name.” He grabbed the phone book and thumbed through it. “No listing for him, either.”

“He said he just moved into a new place. Besides, he’ll be here on Saturday morning for his refresher class. You’ll be teaching, so you don’t have to worry about the big, bad wolf.”

“You think I’m going parental on you? Well excuse me, but anyone who expresses an interest in you at this point to me is a prime suspect.”

Carol and Sarah had told Laura that men used to hit on her all the time in the shop. It was an occupational hazard, and both Sarah and Carol said she’d been confidently adept at turning away unwanted advances without causing offense.

Before.

Laura noticed when that happened now she usually blushed and got flustered and tried to pretend it didn’t happen, or she’d sputter that she was engaged.

She wished she had that same self-confidence back now.

The phone rang, giving her an excuse avoid the conversation. Steve stormed into the back room.

It was Rob. “I saw your note this morning.”

“Yeah, um, I thought maybe we could eat at your place tonight. Is that okay?”

“Sure. What do you want?”

“I don’t know. Whatever you think. Surprise me. I was just thinking I ought to spend more time over there, you know? Maybe it will help trigger something.”

Rob paused. “Sure, honey. What time?”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Is seven okay?”

“That’s fine.” She paused. “Would you mind taking Doogie over there with you? Is it okay to have him there?”

Rob gripped his phone tightly, trying to control his voice. “No, of course I don’t mind. You always brought him with you.”

When they hung up, Rob stared at the phone. In fact, he and Doogie were already over at the house. He had a ton of chores to catch up on and wanted the dog’s company.

He went outside and used the weed trimmer for an hour to get rid of some of his pent-up emotions.

She felt she had to ask permission to bring Doogie with her?

She was timid. She was shy. She jumped at noises and wasn’t much of a talker.

The polar opposite of who she was.

Before.

Laura looked at the phone. She did want to spend time at Rob’s. At the same time, essentially, she had never lived by herself, that she could remember.

Maybe I should.

She fingered the solitaire on her right hand. Rob had been very good about not saying anything, even though she noticed him looking at it. It had to be difficult for him.

The day crept by. When she finally called it quits at five she was more than ready to go home. Steve shooed her out the door, offering to lock up.

After two wrong turns she finally found Rob’s driveway.

She didn’t admit to him that she got lost.

The house was filled with a wonderful garlicky aroma and he presented her with fresh shrimp scampi on angel hair pasta, broccoli au gratin, and homemade garlic knots. Everything tasted delicious, and they sat on the couch after dinner to talk.

He played with the label on his bottle of beer. “I want to be honest with you. My life was all planned. Our lives were planned. We were getting married, I was happy, I thought you were happy. Then this all happened. I love you as much now, if not more, than I did before this happened. That hasn’t changed, it won’t change.”

Doogie put his head in her lap and she petted him while carefully choosing her words. “I don’t even know who I am, who I was, what I wanted to be. I have no history other than what people tell me or I see in pictures or what little I read. I have no true idea of the future I’d pictured for myself or us. I don’t know how much I lost or how much I had to gain when I lost it.”

She took a deep breath and forced the words out. “I think maybe I need to live by myself for a little while. Try to figure things out.”

His face shifted into an unreadable mask. “You don’t want to see me anymore?”

“I do want to see you. And that’s not what I meant.” She struggled to force the words out. “I need time to figure out what my next step is.”

“Can’t you trust me when I tell you what we were to each other?”

“That’s not fair.” She stood and walked over to the windows to stare out at the wetlands silhouetted against the setting sun. “I’m not saying I doubt you. It’s just I don’t know to what extent I used to let you influence my decisions. I still have to figure out who I am. Can’t you understand that?”

He pointed to his head. “Up here, yes.” He pointed to his chest. “In here, it feels like someone’s ripped out my guts and stomped them. Every day I see you, I’m afraid to touch you, I’m afraid to say things to you that weeks ago I took for granted. I can still picture the last time we made love like it was yesterday, can still feel your fingers on my back, can still hear the sound of your voice, remember the way your hair smelled. That’s not going away anytime soon. You have a lifetime to remember. If I lose you, I have a lifetime to forget.”

Laura wanted to cry. She was torn between what she wanted to do to make him feel better and what she had to do to continue her life. “I’d better go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She whistled for Doogie and was out the door before Rob could say anything.

He spent the next couple of hours pacing the house, walking back and forth between standing at the wall with their picture on it and working on an email message to her that he’d never send.

Was this truly the end? Should he just try to get on with his life and hope that she caught up with him, or should he keep trying to make something out of nothing and end up hurt anyway a few months or years down the road?

Could he spend the rest of his life in a vanilla relationship?

Then his words to her in the restaurant came back to him. He caressed her image in a photo.

He’d made a promise to her, as her Master, to always protect her, to take care of her.

If this was how she needed him to care for her, he’d do it. He wouldn’t back out on a promise just because she couldn’t remember it.

“No, Laura. I won’t chicken out on you. No matter how long it takes for you to make up your mind, I won’t give up.”