Page 89 of Hilarina and the Ogre

“You could fall off the bed. Or get a fever.”

“Falling off the bed wouldn’t kill me. And I don’t have a fever. Even if I developed one, I doubt it could progress much in twelve hours. Hilary, you can stay if you want, but I promise I’ll be fine. I have my phone, remember? I can call you or the police or even the pizza guy if I really needed to.”

But Hilary still pushed the scissors into his hand. “If you need it.”

He didn’t see what the point of remaining taped was if Hilary was just going to hand him the scissors anyway, but he wouldn’t argue that either. He kissed Hilary goodbye. “This isn’t like the other times. You know that.”

Hilary did seem to know it, but it wasn’t like he could just reason away the anxiety. “If you forget, we can make you remember again, right? It would only be temporary anyway. Like before.”

Trenton wouldn’t call fifteen years temporary, but he supposed it was short compared to forever. “I’ll remember.”

There were two other false starts. During the first, Hilary made it outside before he had to return to check he hadn’t left the stove on (And Trenton knew he really shouldn’t have put the burning the house down idea into his head). And with the second, Hilary made it out of the bedroom before he had to come back and kiss him again. But the third time he really did leave, and that was problematic, because Trenton had been so worried about Hilary, he’d forgotten what a coward he was himself. It didn’t help that he kept having thoughts like, What if his relief at my remembering isn’t as good as he thought it would be? There were so many obstacles in their path. More than there had been while the amnesia remained. He didn’t think there was much they couldn’t overcome, but it could be sticky for a while, and he really did suffer a lot of damage when Hilary cried, even if he did love him for it. Those spikes of sadness were even more difficult to bear now that he knew he was the cause of them. But there were things to look forward to also, weren’t there? He was sure there were, even if it was difficult to focus on them while the frightening things remained. Distraction was pretty much the plan for the day—a difficult thing to do when covered in half a roll of extra-strength duct tape—but Hilary hadn’t left him with nothing. There was hardly an inch of free space left on the bed with all the books, electronics, food and mountain of nostalgic things they’d shared in the past together. It was those that held most of Trenton’s attention. Just reading over his past journals would take more than a day, though he found he had to take breaks from reading every couple of pages because the weight of his memories and all his regrets would come crashing down on him with every sentence. It wasn’t all misery. He smiled often as he read about his past selves falling in love with Hilary. There were all the usual reasons, of course, but sometimes the things his past selves got caught on surprised him. He hadn’t realized just how much he noticed the little freckle on the back of Hilary’s knee until he read about it in three separate journals. But some of the things were straight out of left field.

One of his selves was obsessed, truly, with the little hairband Hilary wore when he was washing his face. And another couldn’t stand the way Hilary’s heels would drum against the sofa sometimes and would have to grab hold of them to keep in his lap or be forced to leave the room. But more often the things he read left him deeply frustrated. Even the good things. Because he knew that the Hilary he’d experienced them with had been longing for the original Trenton who knew him and all they’d been through together. It wasn’t like Hilary had always been miserable, but the amnesia cast a pall over everything. The thought of what might have been was hard not to get bogged down in. And some of the time Hilary truly had been suffering, and his past selves had been completely useless, baffled by Hilary’s fits of fury or his helpless crying, often making things worse with bumbling insensitivity. And it didn’t matter that Hilary didn’t hold those times against him. Trenton held them against himself. There was no forgiving certain things, even when he knew it would be better between them if he did.

More than anything, he wanted to sleep. The thoughts were torturous, and he so wanted to just pass out to make the time pass quicker. He knew there were things he needed to figure out if he wanted to become a better partner, but there were so many hours left, and his mouth tasted like ash, and he kind of had to take a shit and it was just too much. But then the door opened, and he looked up, and it was Hilary, a little out of breath, but inescapably there.

“Hilary.”

“One second.” The man was eating into him with his eyes, still gasping a little with rushing. “I just need to—he dropped me at the wrong place.”

“Who?”

But Hilary had already disappeared into the bathroom, tossing down his scrub top as he went. He wasn’t gone long. Something like thirteen seconds later, Hilary was back, dripping from his face and hands, water still running into his eyes, but too much in a hurry to spare an extra second to wipe it free. He shook his pants loose, kicking them off as he climbed onto the bed, and then it was his smell, those arms, and the mouth that would give him anything in the world if only he was greedy enough to ask.

“Hilary. Hil.” Trenton had promised himself not to cry. It was finally his chance to prove he could still be a protector, but his vision was already blurring.

Hilary was pretty blubbery as well. “Get this off,” he said of the tape, slapping at it when three seconds with the scissors didn’t yield the results he wanted. “Just get it off, Trent.”

“You could have told me you were coming home for lunch.” With only one hand, Trenton couldn’t work the scissors no matter how much Hilary pushed him. “You’ll have to leave in five minutes.”

“Forty,” Hilary corrected, trying to kiss him and further complicating the scissor work. “If I Uber there and back. Trent, you’re not drinking enough. Look at your veins.”

Trenton didn’t feel dehydrated, though it was true he hadn’t been drinking much. Hilary had kept the tape off his general crotch area to make access easy, but he still hadn’t been enthusiastic about the idea of pissing into a bucket. There were very real concerns about spilling, and he hadn’t wanted to spend the day in a puddle of piss. It was, as Hilary had said, too nice a mattress.

“Maybe I wanted you to play nurse to me again.”

Hilary’s laugh was a hiccup halfway to a sob. “That’s so dumb. You’re so dumb.”

“Still love me?”

“Would I be this crazy if I didn’t? You look like a fucking space mummy.”

“So you say now, but by tomorrow I’ll have become a beautiful butterfly.”

He was hoping for a laugh. What he got instead was a smack to the chest and, “Can’t you cut any faster?”

There was no time to eat anything but sandwiches again, and those even more half-assed than the last ones. Hilary didn’t even spread the peanut butter. He just shellacked some onto a slice of bread to be rolled up like a burrito and shoved down his throat with minimal chewing.

“Slow down,” Trenton warned. “I only know the Heimlich in theory.”

But Hilary didn’t care enough about eating to make a better attempt. He was already trying to climb him like a tree. “Hold me.”

It was impossible to make up for fifteen years in a day, but his partner was endeavoring to try, pressing as much of himself flat to Trenton as he could, as if the increased surface area would improve the flow of feelings. “If you loved me, you’d hold me tighter.”

“Any tighter and your spleen’s going to pop.”

“You don’t need a spleen to live.”