Page 5 of Forget Me Not
“Haven’t seen your byline in a while,” he says, reedy lips twisting into a smirk as I feel his broad arms brush up against mine. He’s standing too close, a habit he’s had since the moment I met him, and I fan out my elbows in an attempt to take up more space.
“Doesn’t mean I’m not working on anything.”
I watch his smile stretch before he plucks a straw from the caddyand bends it in half, using the sharp edge to pick at his teeth. His skin is a caramelized brown, his hair slightly shorter than it was a few months ago. The thin gray strands buzzed so close I can see the spherical shape of his skull.
“You know, you can always come back,” he says next, his voice dipped low like he’s doing me a favor. The leathery scent of cigar stuck to his tongue. “Your desk is still there, all sad and empty.”
“That won’t be necessary, but thanks for the offer.”
He stares at me for a second before shaking his head, a disillusioned little bob like he can’t understand. Then he turns toward Ryan before slapping his hand against the base of his neck, the intensity of the blow jolting Ryan’s whole body forward.
“This guy,” he says, shaking his shoulder with too much force. I glance to the side, noticing a flush creeping into Ryan’s cheeks that he tries to mask by taking a swig of his beer. “Gave him a promotion and you’d think someone died with the way he’s been moping around.”
I force a small smile, my attention lingering on the slope of his jaw as he swallows; the familiarity of it, the reliable shape. He has his usual five-o’clock shadow, although I know he shaved this morning. He shaves every morning. Back at the office, I always made fun of the way he looked so different in the evenings, thick black stubble shading the skin of his cheeks, the stretch of his neck. His face a sundial showing the passage of time, physical proof we were working too late.
“You been following this thing?”
My gaze drifts over to Mike again, then back to the TVs, talking heads now condemning a dead girl for dating a guy who wasn’t her age. For sending him selfies, for low-cut tops.
“Here and there,” I say, attempting to downplay the fact that not only have I been following it, but that I’ve been watching it unfold with a sad obsession: the clothes, the car. The attractiveyoung girl and the older man who killed her for reasons nobody could begin to explain.
“Sick shit,” Mike continues, although he almost sounds pleased. “Anyway, think it over. Pride won’t get you a paycheck, you know.”
He ruffles my hair and I watch in silence as he walks away, a quiet anger simmering beneath my skin.
“Are you all right?” Ryan asks after Mike is gone, his voice soft like he’s embarrassed for us both.
“Yeah, screw him,” I say, bringing my beer back to my lips. “There’s no way I’m crawling back now.”
“I don’t mean that,” he says, before gesturing down to my phone on the bar. “I meanthat.”
“Oh,” I say, remembering that conversation with my dad now, the cold dread starting to sink back in. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
“What was that about? Sounded serious.”
“It’s my mom,” I respond. “She’s okay, but my dad’s trying to get me to go home for a while.”
Ryan nods, both of us eyeing all the bottles lined up against the wall as he lifts the beer in his hand, gesturing to the bartender to deliver two more.
“I get the feeling you don’t want to go.”
I exhale, trying to work out how to explain as I think about the moment Ryan and I met, both of us settling into adjacent desks atThe Journalduring our shared first day on the job.The way he had asked about my past, my family, and me blurting out my little white lie.
I have a sister,I had said, Natalie’s porcelain face, so still and white, blazing through my mind like a forensic flash.But we haven’t spoken in years.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, keeping her from him. At least, in the beginning it wasn’t. I just wanted to be normal. I wanted to answer his routine questions with nice, polite answers—but thenwe got close, closer than I had ever expected, and it started to feel like the time had passed. He had accepted my vague explanation, did the nice thing and decided not to pry. I could tell he wanted to, though, and sometimes I could sense him tiptoeing toward it, slowly starting to work up the nerve, but I never let him get close enough.
I always deflected, changed the subject. Pushed my sister back into the box in the recesses of my mind, the place she’s lived for the last twenty-two years until night falls and she comes crawling back out.
“No,” I say at last, fingernails picking at the glass lip. “I don’t want to go.”
“Why not?” he asks, and I down my beer in one long gulp, the answer too knotty to fully untangle. Too complex to form into words.
“It’s been a while. I’m just having a hard time processing it all.”
“How long?” he asks, softer now as he senses we’re working toward something big, something serious. Something we should have discussed a long time ago.
“Since I graduated high school,” I admit, nodding at the bartender as she delivers our drinks. “Fifteen years.”
