Page 52 of Penalty Kiss
"Small things, mostly," she says carefully. "Sometimes you repeat yourself. Sometimes you get fuzzy on times or dates."
"And the big things? Us?"
She hesitates, which tells me everything. "Well, you forgot our first kiss in the alley. The night we met."
"But not the second one," I say quickly, needing her to know that not everything slips away. "Not what happened the next morning."
"No." A smile plays at the corner of her mouth. "You seem to remember that just fine."
Relief washes through me, followed by determination. "I want to try something. A memory exercise my neurologist suggested."
"What kind of exercise?"
I push off from the counter and cross to where my duffel sits. Digging through it, I find the small notebook and pen I started carrying after the diagnosis.
"Anchors," I explain, returning to the kitchen. "We associate memories with sensory details, emotions, places. The stronger the anchor, the better the memory sticks."
Understanding dawns in her eyes. "And you want me to help you create anchors."
"Who better than the woman with perfect recall?" I tap the pen against the notebook. "Let’s start easy, tell me something about yourself. Something I should remember."
She bites her lip, thinking. "I hate cilantro. It tastes like soap."
I scribble in the notebook, adding a quick doodle of her karate-chopping a burrito. "Boom. Locked in."
“How about color?”
"My favorite color is the sky before a storm."
"Storm-sky equals Tara eyes. Guess I'll be checking the weather a lot more. " Then I look up. "One more."
She laughs, warm as a blanket. “I never learned to whistle.”
To prove it to me, she tries. “I sound like a dying teakettle.”
"A very sexy dying teakettle," I assure her solemnly. "The sexiest teakettle in all of Colorado."
“You try!” She taunts.
I purse my lips and attempt a whistle as well, producing a pathetic, airy sound that makes us both crack up.
"Perfect, now I'll never forget. Because you matter." I say simply.
She eyes the notebook, amused.
We continue the game, her offering facts, me creating absurd mnemonics and accents to cement them in place. I learn she can recite all fifty states in alphabetical order, that she broke her arm climbing a tree when she was nine, that she sleeps with three pillows arranged in a specific pattern.
Each piece of information is a gift, a breadcrumb leading me deeper into who she is beneath the carefully constructed facade. And with each detail, I feel myself falling harder, faster, for this complicated woman who remembers everything but chooses to forget her own worth.
Eventually, we move to the living room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, notebook open between us. The lightness from earlier has settled into something more vulnerable, more real.
"I'm scared," I admit quietly, eyes on the page. "Not of whoever's coming after you. I'm scared of forgetting this. Of forgetting you."
The words land with more weight than I intended, but I don't take them back. They're true.
In my fog, she's a beacon.
She reaches out, her fingers brushing my hand. "I remember enough for both of us, Cam."
