Remembering Us (15 page)

“It’s your favorite beer.” Adam nods toward the beer in his hand and then to Zander behind the bar. “When Zander started working here, we came in one night and you made him give you a sample of every beer they have until you could find one you didn’t think tasted like Miller Light Keg Beer.”

I wrinkle my nose. One too many frat parties by the end of my freshman year and I had refused to take another sip of beer. That I remember. This story, I don’t, but I don’t take my eyes off of him as he stares at the bar with a distant look on his face.

I examine the label as if it’s the only lifeline between us right now. “It’s a good beer.”

Adam raises his beer in the air, signaling for another round, and looks everywhere besides at me. The uncomfortableness we had just started breaking down increases to insane levels. I feel like I could just … snap … at any second. Adam looks even closer to the breaking point.

His hands grip the beer so tightly I think it might shatter when he notices me absentmindedly fingering the scar on my hairline.

“I was late that night.” He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head as if clearing away a nightmare.

My hands freeze on the table. I don’t want to move or distract him for a second. Finally, I might get some answers.

“The library was closed and locked by the time I got there. I was so upset. I was mad at you for leaving the library to walk across the campus, mad at Zander for talking me into playing another round of Walking Dead, and mad at myself for not charging my cell phone. When I took off for your apartment, I was just pissed. At everyone. And scared. It was so dark and campus was so empty. Nothing felt right that night.”

He shakes his head again and stares at me but without seeing me. Maybe staring through me to the girl who used to love him. I have no idea, but I stay still, listening, not even sure if I’m breathing.

“He was on top of you.” He drains the remainder of his beer in one long gulp.

What? My fingertips press against my scar and Adam flinches when he sees me.

“He hurt you, Amy. Not me. I heard you screaming not far from the tower in the middle of campus. I found you behind the pine trees. Jared was … he was on top of you. Hurting you.”

I swallow slowly, trying to absorb his words, but not understanding. Or not wanting to. Adam … Jared. Jared was my friend. We were both finance majors and had a lot of classes together. He was always so nice to me.

He wouldn’t hurt me.

“He was so nice,” I mutter, and then lurch back when I realize my mistake. Adam’s eyes glow a similarly evil expression. I shake my head quickly and raise a hand. “That’s not what I mean. I’m not saying I don’t believe you, I just … I remember Jared and he was so nice to me.”

“Do you?”

I frown. “Do I what?”

“Do you believe me?”

I blink. Unsure. And then nod.

I can see the pain of what reliving this night has done to him, and the sincerity in Zander’s eyes at the bar.

At the very least, I don’t think Adam hurt me that night.

Relief washes over him and his shoulders sag down. Adam falls back into the booth.

“When did it happen?” I ask, not because it’s important or changes anything, I just need to know.

“Spring semester, near the end of our junior year.”

“What happened to Jared?”

Adam’s nose twitches and then he grins. “He left and never came back. He had a couple fractured cheekbones and his nose was broken, but nothing too permanent. He never said what happened to him, probably knowing what we would say about him.”

“Zander said you might need me.” Kelsey smiles and slides in next to me, throwing an arm around me and pulling me close.

I didn’t even see her coming until her voice broke through the silence at our table.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she says, ignoring the tension between Adam and me.

Zander appears out of nowhere with a round of beers, four shot glasses, and a bottle of tequila. He sits down next to Adam.

Kelsey grins. “A new version of ‘I have never’.”

I roll my eyes. I was never good at ‘I never’ … the drinking game where someone says something they’ve never done. If you’ve done it, you have to take a drink. I always ended the game sober while everyone else involved was trashed.

“I hate that game.”

“Yes, but there’s a twist to tonight’s game,” she says smiling, as if everything is just bright and sunny in her little world. Her happy smile looks almost as strange as Zander’s smile. “We’re going to say something and you have to guess whether or not it’s true. If you’re wrong – you drink.”

“So this game is called ‘make Amy puke her brains out’?”

“Not if you’re a good guesser.” She smirks and nudges me with her shoulder.

Adam smiles and shakes his head, taking a long pull of his beer.

I watch his Adam’s apple dip in his throat, unable to take my eyes off him. How can I go from being so afraid of him to turned on by such a simple movement?

“I’ll go first,” Zander says. He leans forward with his elbows on the table, and I peel my eyes away from Adam’s throat. “You streaked butt naked through our frat house.”

Adam snorts and shakes his head. When he drags his eyes to mine, he smiles.

I didn’t.

There’s no way I did that.

I look to Kelsey to see if she’s giving anything away, but she has one hell of a poker face.

“No way,” I say confidently, but then jump in my seat when Kelsey smacks her hand on the table and shouts, “Yes!”

“You’re lying.”

“No,” she shouts again, laughter bubbling up from her. “You totally did. Like half the guys in the house saw you.”

I look across the table.

Zander looks pleased and pours me a shot. I take it without the help of salt or limes and cringe as it burns my throat.

“I don’t believe you.” I shake my head. There’s absolutely no way I would willingly streak through a frat house.

“Technically,” Adam finally says with a shit-eating grin on his face. He pauses and takes a shot with me. “You walked out of my room to go to the bathroom, but you were so drunk you forgot there was still a party going on.”

I feel the heat rise on my cheeks, embarrassed that not only does Adam mention me being naked in his room at his frat house, which can only mean one thing, but also at the idea of how many people saw me doing a naked, drunk stumbling walk.

“Relax, girl.” Zander smirks. “There was only like six of us at a room at the end of the hall. But it was the best night of our lives.”

“Oh my god.” I drop my head into my hands, elbows propped on the table, and bounce against Kelsey’s shoulder when she shoves me again.

I point my finger at Zander. “You lied. You should take a shot too. That isn’t streaking.”

He shrugs. “Close enough.”

Shit.

The rest of the night continues almost the exact same way.

I learn that I dumped a beer all over Lexi’s little football cheerleader uniform after Adam and I had been dating a year and she tried to kiss him right in front of me. My first rock concert was Radiohead in Colorado Springs – which I guessed right - remembering the way Adam looked the day he told me about them in the car.

I have never skinny dipped, which answered a few lingering questions about what exactly I’ve done in the hot springs.

I not only wore jeans to Thanksgiving dinner at my parent’s house, but that I skipped Christmas last year all together after they learned I was moving out of my apartment and in with Adam. That one made me frown and I took two shots because it was too close to all the unanswered questions I still don’t understand.

But when I open my mouth to ask them, my tongue feels heavy and too big for my mouth.

“Did we go home to your parent’s house then?” I immediately, even in my tequila induced haze, wish I would have kept my mouth shut.

Adam’s eyes go cold like they did the day at the park, and Zander makes a similar expression.

I’m too drunk to think straight.

“Have I ever met them?” I ask again, pushing, because why not? The last two hours have been spent with me learning that I was almost raped by a friend and re-living every embarrassing moment of my life.

Which has been great. I’m happy tonight, if the evidence of my cheek hurting smile is any clue.

I like this Amy.

I like who I am when I’m at this table with my best friend and the guys I don’t remember. Tonight, with liquor warming my veins and my cheeks hurting from laughing so hard, I don’t even care that I don’t remember them.

What does matter is that no matter what I’m forced to remember and think of - Adam never talks about himself.

“No, you haven’t,” he says, and throws back a shot. “What else haven’t you done?”

I don’t let him change the subject even though I can see the anger dancing across his eyes, warning me to drop it. “Why don’t you talk about them?”

“Because his dad’s an asshole.” Zander fills a shot glass and slides it toward Adam. Almost as if he’s helping him ease his pain. I don’t get it, but I want to.

I want to understand everything about him. And not because I’m drunk or because I don’t remember, but because I
want
to.

“Because I don’t.” And then he pushes Zander out of the booth’s bench and stalks off to the bathroom.

Whatever. He’ll have to tell me sometime if he wants me to trust him.

I throw back a shot of Patron and feel the bar tip to the left and right before straightening out. I blink once, then twice, clearing the haze and blurred edges from my eyes.

I may need to stop drinking.

I listen vaguely to Zander and Kelsey talking, but I’m no longer paying attention. I’m trying to focus my eyes on one particular spot so the room stops spinning.

And I wonder – what would it feel like to be touched by Adam again? The caresses from Adam have teased my skin and I’m a lying ball of crap if I say I don’t miss the connection.

I feel my skin heat at the thought of what Adam told me at the hot springs, about how he won’t sink into me again until I’m sure.

I’m sure, tonight. I want him. Or maybe it’s the liquor.

I don’t care.

My body is telling me something completely different from my mind, something I’m learning is a normal occurrence when Adam is so close by.

But maybe it’s always been this way. Maybe he’s always made me lose my mind, and right now is no different.

I look up in the direction of the bar and see Adam. My eyes narrow, drinking in the profile of him; dark washed jeans with bling on the back pockets that hang off his hips and his butt in a sexy, but slightly messy, way. His pale blue t-shirt stretches across his arms and his back.

I watch him raise his arm. And squeeze onto a woman’s bicep.

How did I not notice her before? Now she’s all my slightly blurred vision can see as Adam wraps his hand around her arm and pulls her close, whispering something in her ear and smiling.

He’s smiling. And holding her.

It’s an intimate touch that tells me not only does he know her, but he knows her well. I so rarely see him smile, but he flashes her a large grin and the girl he’s touching throws her head back.

I watch her waist long dirty blonde hair fly out behind her while she laughs. Her eyes practically sparkle as she looks at him and then leans back in.

Kissing him? Telling him something? What in the hell is he doing only fifteen feet away from me in a bar, touching and holding and laughing with someone?

“Who is that?” I snap, and narrow my eyes.

Kelsey and Zander both stop whatever conversation they were having. They turn in the direction of where I’m trying to light Adam on fire with my eyes.

It’s part jealousy and part drunkenness.

Who am I kidding? It’s all jealousy and anger.

Why is it every freaking time I begin to trust him – to begin to want him – he pulls something like this? I flip through my memories in my dreams – Lexi, Tina, Britnee …

Always, there’s another girl in his arms as soon as he walks away from me. Seeing it happen in person is more painful than I could have imagined. More painful than I remember seeing in my dreams.

“I don’t know,” Kelsey whispers quietly, looking nervously at Zander.

He shrugs, unaffected. I want to kick him in the shins.

“Well find out,” I snap, and take another shot, relishing the burn in my throat.

“Calm down, Amy. It’s totally innocent.”

I shoot daggers out of my eyes at my best friend. “Lexi, Tina, Britnee,” I count off, holding up a finger for each girl I
do
remember. “How many other girls were there, that he held and hugged and kissed, when we were dating and so easily brushed it off with a plausible excuse?”

My blood is beginning to boil. Maybe it’s the alcohol making me irrational. I don’t know.

I also don’t care.

I also ignore the fact that no one bothers answering my question.

But then Adam turns and smiles at me. I see his arm let go of the girl next to him as he faces me from across the bar.

I blink.

“Here’s to finals being done. Cheers!” Kelsey lifts her shot glass in the air and I raise mine along with Zander and Adam. It’s freezing cold out tonight, the snowstorm hit Denver just as our Statistic final finished. Kelsey met the three of us at The Library for some end of the semester celebrating, which has quickly dissolved into a game of get Amy as plastered as possible.