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With shaky hands I open his wallet, noting all of the credit cards. I had access to most of these still, and a few of them even had numbers that matched the ones in mine. I spot his license, a bit of cash, but other than that nothing out of the ordinary. I knew he used to keep an emergency credit card behind the rest, so I check to make sure it’s still there when I feel something else resting against it. Before I even pull it out, I know what it is, and my heart sinks feeling the familiar object against my fingertips. I pull it out slowly and stare at the black wrapper with the gold writing.
“I don’t know the Bennett that keeps condoms in his wallet,” I whisper. I mean, I suppose at one point I may have known that man, but I’m fairly certain Bennett and I used condoms only twice before we had the talk and decided that we’d only be sleeping with each other and they weren’t needed.
I can feel his eyes on me and when I look up his green irises are studying me. “It bothers you…”
I clear my throat and shake my head, sliding the condom back into his wallet. “No. I mean, good for you for being…safe,” I respond weakly. “You’re sleeping with someone else, Bennett.” I brush it off, although the words slither up my spine and into my brain.
It bothers you.
He winces and hands me his phone and his fingers skate over mine in the process causing my skin to tingle in the wake of his fingertips. I fight the urge to catch a glimpse at his lock screen, briefly wondering if it’s still the same picture of him and me from years ago. Bennett was a creature of habit, and for the entirety of our relationship, it had been a picture from our first trip together. The picture had made it through two iPhones and a short lived affair with a Samsung before his most recent iPhone.
Most New Yorker’s first trips together as a couple are to the Hampton’s or maybe Canada to Niagara Falls. But Bennett Clarke proved that he only knew how to do things big. Just two months after we’d been dating, Bennett and I hopped a 747 to Fiji and spent six straight days in carnal fucking bliss. The picture in question that had been his lock screen was one of the few brief moments we’d put on clothes. We’d gone to dinner and had someone take our picture right on the beach as the sun set behind us. I was gloriously sun kissed, slightly drunk—both literally and in love with the man next to me. He’d grabbed my ass and whispered I love you in my ear for the first time, just as the picture was taken.
I’d gasped out of surprise and shock and lust all the while he had smiled at the camera like he hadn’t just sealed our fates.
I slide his phone onto the adjacent table so that he can reach it if he wants to take another crack at his code before rummaging through the rest of the bag. “Anything else in there?” He cocks his head to the side and gestures towards the bag.
I shake my head. “Just your clothes and your keys.” I blink my eyes several times as I just now remember he must have been driving. “Shit, where’s your car?” He gives me a look as if to say how the hell should I know? “Right, of course. But we should look into that. I’m kind of sur
prised you were driving.”
“Do I not drive often?”
“You live four blocks from work. Not usually,” I explain, “but maybe you were showing a house outside of the city.”
“It’s infuriating,” he says after a few moments of silence. “Having to be told about my life. Having you tell me about things I can’t remember.” He’s staring straight ahead at the blank wall in his hospital room as he lets his eyes shut. “You want to know what I do remember? I remember you. You in a yellow dress. It hugged your curves like it was made just for your body. God, you always looked great in yellow. It made you fucking glow. It cinched at the waist and went out slightly and you had on black heels that tied around your ankles. You’d worn your hair up because it was hot as fuck out and just before you left the house, I’d laughed and told you that you looked like a bumblebee. You flipped me off and smiled before kissing me as if you’d never see me again. That’s how we always kissed, like it was somehow a promise of what was to come and also as if it was our last.”
His eyes open and dart to mine, and I know I’m probably a mess, what with not breathing the entire time he spoke and now suddenly letting out the breath that I desperately needed in my lungs.
“I…I remember that.”
“That’s the last thing I remember.” He gives me a sad smile before reaching up behind him to shut off the light, leaving only the emergency lights on and giving the room an ashy glow. “I guess it was our last for me.”
A hand stroking my shoulder gently pulls me out of sleep and the first thing I feel is a searing pain in my neck. My hand immediately goes to the space and I wince at the stiffness.
“Why are you sleeping here in the first place?” I hear whispered in a high-pitched judgmental tone I’d know anywhere.
I blink to see my best friend, Alyssa Hamilton, standing in front of me in pale blue scrubs under a tan Burberry peacoat. Her jet black hair is pulled into a bun at the top of her head, and her pale skin is free of makeup minus a few coats of mascara. She cocks an eyebrow at me and my eyes float to Bennett behind her who is still sleeping soundly.
“I asked a question. Why are you here?” I briefly wonder what time it is, so I reach for my phone that’s still plugged in and note that it’s just after 4 AM. I stand, stretching my exhausted, aching body and usher her out of the room so that we don’t wake Bennett. Although, being in the room with him was probably the only thing keeping her from yelling at me for staying all night.
“Lys…” I trail off, wondering what she could be scolding me about. “Wait a minute, I called you almost five hours ago, and you’re just showing up? And you call yourself my best friend,” I remind her as I cross my hands over my chest.
“I was in back to back surgeries, and it’s not like he died.” She scoffs. “It couldn’t be that easy.” Her brown eyes narrow and she gives me a pointed glare.
“Lys!”
“Relax, I’m kidding. Besides Wren gave me the rundown.” Despite the start of Wren and Alyssa’s relationship which consisted of late night screwing in the on-call rooms of this very hospital, Alyssa worked at a different one across town to keep the temptation at bay. “Amnesia is common.”
“He thinks we’re together, Liv.”
“So I heard. Is that why you’re here, sitting at his bedside like a good little wife? Where’s the wicked witch of the Upper East Side?” Her hands find her hips as her eyes dart down the hallway, waiting for Caroline to manifest.
“She left.” I ignore her comment about why I’m here.
“Shocker.” She snorts. “That doesn’t exactly answer my question about you, though. Why are you here?”
“Who else would be here? His father’s dead, he’s an only child, and his family is pretty small. His mother called his uncle and aunt in Brooklyn, but to your point, he’s fine, so I guess they didn’t feel the need to come. I didn’t want to leave him alone. He’s freaked out.”
