“I’ll leave you,” the receptionist says.
As the heavy door closes, the doctor motions to an overstuffed chair and steeples her fingers as I sit. “Tell me what’s going on, Hanna.”
“You’re Dr. Perkins?”
Her tiny face draws into a tight frown. “Of course I am.”
“And I’m…one of your patients?”
Her frown turns to skepticism.
“I took a fall.” I motion to my face. I explain as briefly as I can about my amnesia, telling her I’m here because of the reminder on my phone.
“Oh, dear. I wish I would have known. I would have come to the hospital and consulted with your doctor.”
I’m glad she didn’t. I don’t think I want my friends and family to know I’ve sought out therapy. “I don’t understand.” I don’t want to offend this woman. She seems very nice. “It shows in my calendar that I’ve been here before, and I found a prescription for antidepressants in my apartment, but…” I’m not sure how to say it.
“Go on,” she prods.
“My life seems perfect. I have my own business that seems to be going great, and I’m engaged to marry an amazing man. I feel okay about my body for the first time in my life. Why would I need to see a psychiatrist? Why would I need antidepressants?” Why would I cheat on my loving fiancé?
She folds her arms and studies me, her face a series of hard and soft lines I can neither read nor recognize. “Do you think only people who have something ‘wrong’ with their lives need to seek help for their mental health?”
“Of course not. I just—” I cut myself off at her raised eyebrows. Apparently she’s a no-nonsense woman. “I wouldn’t put it that way. I thought that if I was seeing you and you’d prescribed antidepressants, there had to be a reason.”
She’s silent for a long moment that catapults me back in time to just after my father’s death. I was a teenager, and Daddy was my world. Back then, I never measured up with Mom. She was always trying to fix me—shrink me, tone me, dress me, make me an acceptable representation of her family. Something she wouldn’t find so shameful. But Daddy was happy to let me be. Then he died, and after the funeral, the school therapist called us down one at a time. “Why do you think you’re here?” he asked me, his voice sounding more bored than empathetic, and he let the silence grow bigger and stranger between us until I answered.
But I’m not that girl anymore. I’m not the fat teenager languishing in her gorgeous sisters’ shadows. I’m not the ignored child striving for perfection in all things to make up for her appearance.
Sure, I’m overweight, but look at my grades!
Sure, I can’t fit into the pants in your average store, but I’m always happy.
Sure, I can’t get a date to save my life, but I’m the best friend a girl could ever have.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
But she isn’t like the school counselor and she doesn’t let the silence go on forever. “You came to me because you were battling depression and an eating disorder.”
I feel myself wilt. I don’t want to hear these things. I don’t want her tainting my perfect world. I shouldn’t have come. I should have ignored the reminder and carried on.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Dr. Perkins says.
I remember Nix’s request for me to see her in her office about diet concerns brought on by my blood work. “An eating disorder? Depression?”
Something flicks across her features. Regret? Sadness? “There’s no shame in getting help. Are you eating? Since your accident?”
I pause and turn back to her. “I am.”
She smiles. “That’s good.”
“I wasn’t before, was I? That’s how I lost all this weight? I was starving myself?” Panic claws at me the moment the words leave my mouth because I know they’re true. “This means I’m going to gain the weight back, doesn’t it?”
“You came to me because you recognized something in your own habits that you knew wasn’t healthy. You recognized there were parts of your life more important than numbers on the scale and you wanted me to help.”
I swallow, but this information is a bitter pill that goes down rough and painfully. “Did I talk to you about…other things?”
“Like what?”
“This is confidential?” I whisper.
“Of course.”
“Was I cheating on my fiancé?” I shake my head. “He’s my fiancé now, but I guess he would have been my boyfriend last time I was here.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You didn’t share that with me if it was true, but you didn’t mention a boyfriend either.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess this was just about the food.”
“Eating disorders are never just about the food, Hanna. They’re about more than your body and about more than losing weight. They’re about control. And you’ve spent the last three months starving yourself so you would feel like you had control over your life again.”
6
WHEN I return from Indianapolis, the bakery is bustling with a crowd picking up lattes for their afternoon pick-me-ups and fresh pastries to go along with them.
Squeezing past the line, I slip behind the counter and tap Lizzy’s shoulder. “I need to talk.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a little busy running your bakery, so—”
I take the cup from her hand and slam it on the counter. “It’s important.”
“PMS much?” the ponytailed pretty girl at the front of the line says.
I narrow my eyes at her before sticking my head back in the kitchen. “Drew? I need you to work the front for a few minutes.”
“That’s a really bad idea,” Lizzy warns.
I ignore her and drag her up to my apartment. It’s tempting to meet her chilliness with my own, but right now I need my sister too much. I slam the door closed behind her.
“Listen.” I wag my finger in her face. I’ve had enough. “I don’t know who pissed in your Wheaties, but right now I need my sister, so whatever is broken between us, can we just put it aside for a while?”
Her eyes go wide. “I… You…” Her shoulders sag and she collapses onto my couch.
“You asked me if I was sure things are good. Well, I’m not sure.” I pace in front of her. “Everything looks so perfect on the surface, but how am I supposed to know how I feel about anything when I don’t remember?”
“I’m such a bitch, Hanna. I’m sorry. Don’t listen to me. I’m jealous. You’re engaged, Maggie’s living with Asher… Any minute now, I’m going to be the last single girl standing. Maybe that’s making me cranky, but it shouldn’t ruin a happy time for you.”
“I think maybe I’m cheating on Max,” I blurt.
“Shit, Han-Han. What happened?”
I sink onto the couch next to her and lean my head on her shoulder. She combs my hair with her fingers, and even though the contact feels awkward and unsure, it relaxes me.
“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs in my ear.
She doesn’t rush me, and I let myself take my time because suddenly it’s all too much—the last few days, the injuries, the amnesia, the engagement, the whole new life. As much as I’d like Max to be able to comfort me, he’s still a stranger to me in a lot of ways. But Lizzy’s part of me. We sit, letting the minutes pass and the silence slowly stitch us back together.
I don’t know how much time has passed when I finally sit up and wipe my eyes.
“Coffee?” she asks.
I nod and follow her to the kitchen, where I sit on a stool as she prepares us a fresh pot. “While Max and I were dating, do you know if I was…seeing anyone else?”
She turns to c**k a brow at me. “Seeing anyone else? Miss Goody Two-Shoes date two guys at once? As if.”
Right. It doesn’t sound like me. But how does that explain what happened last night? Better come out with it, girl. “Max didn’t stay over last night, but I didn’t sleep alone either.”
Her jaw goes slack and those gorgeous baby blues of hers widen. “What? Who? Why? Does Max know?”
“All very good questions.”
She prepares my coffee and hands me my mug. I wrap my hands around it, letting it warm my hands instead of drinking it.
“Are you going to tell me who else you’re sleeping with,” Lizzy huffs, “or are you going to make me guess?”
“Someone slid into my bed last night. I was sleeping and assumed it was Max, but then we started fooling around in the middle of the night, and when he turned on the light, I realized it…wasn’t.”
“Someone slipped into bed with you while you were sleeping, and it wasn’t Max?”
I watch her carefully. “No.”
“Holy shit. Who was it?”
“I have no idea. He was a stranger to me.”
She slams her mug down and coffee sloshes onto the counter. “Why aren’t we calling the cops?”
“Because I don’t think we need to.”
“You’re freaking kidding me, right?”
“I’m fine. Nothing bad happened. Just let me tell it before you freak out, okay?” I wait until the panic clears from her face before I continue. “He was a stranger to me, but I was no stranger to him.”
“I’m not feeling better about this yet.”
“I realized the guy who’d been touching me in…rather intimate ways…wasn’t Max, and of course I panicked.”
“I can imagine. I’m panicking now.”
“I was thinking there was some ra**st in my house, and I kneed him in the balls and got the hell out of the bed, but then my phone was dead and I couldn’t call for help. And he was trying to get me to calm down and all the sudden he just…stopped.” I make myself take a breath. “I wasn’t thinking straight, but I think everything changed when he saw my ring.”
“A ra**st with morals?”
“He was no rapist, Liz. He looked at my hand and then he got dressed—pulled on his shirt and pants. What kind of sex offender strips down to his boxers and climbs into bed to cuddle with his victim half the night?”
“A really screwed-up one?”
“He held me,” I murmur into my coffee, “and woke me up with sweet kisses on my neck. He knew my name, knew how I like to be touched. When he saw my ring, he said, ‘You could have told me.’ Then, before he left, he said he hoped Max and I had a nice life—mentioning Max by name.”
Lizzy whistles long and low. “He knows about Max?”
I nod and add, “But does Max know about him?” I let that sink in for a minute. “Max is the love of my life. Why would I ruin that?
“Was he hot?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, but that’s hardly the point.”
“So who was it? Anyone from town?”
“No one I recognized, but that doesn’t mean anything when I can’t remember the last year.”
“Oh, good point.” She sips her coffee. “What did he look like?”
“Young, probably my age. Dark hair, a little shaggy like Max’s, I guess. He was tall, built.”
“Again, like Max,” Liz says.
“Maybe taller than Max and not quite that muscular, but impressive still.”
“You’re describing half of Max’s workout buddies.”
“Fuck,” I groan. “Please tell me I’m not cheating on him with one of his friends.”
“In what ways didn’t he look like Max?”
“Tattoos!” I hold my hands together. Maybe this will be the piece of information that will help Lizzy identify my visitor. “He had several. Some numbers over his left pec and a Hulk tattoo on his right shoulder.”
Lizzy raises a brow. “As in Hulk Hogan?”
“As in the Incredible Hulk. You won’t like me when I’m angry Hulk.”
“You’re engaged to Max Hallowell and having an affair with a nerd?”
“Maybe?” I lift my palms helplessly. “Do you know who he is? I’m really freaking out here.”
She shakes her head. “Not a clue.”
“Stupid amnesia.”
“No kidding.” She paces. Stops. Paces. Looks out the window, toys with her hair, paces some more. Suddenly, her head pops up, making her curls bounce around her face. “Oh my God. So obvious!”
“What’s obvious?” I’m so worried she’s going to say, “Tell Max everything.” That whole “honesty is the best policy” thing has always worked for me, but…
I’m not sure this is a the-truth-will-set-you-free kind of situation. And…
How can I tell Max the truth when I don’t even know what the truth is?
“This is the twenty-first century, right? If you and some guy had a thing, there would be digital evidence.”
“Digital evidence? You think I’d have let him take pictures? Oh God! Video?”
Lizzy winces. “Let’s hope not, but that’s not what I mean. You know, text messages and stuff.”
I don’t even bother replying because I’m scrambling toward my purse so I can look at my phone.
I scroll through my text messages. A conversation between me and Max, between me and my mom. Maggie, Cally, Lizzy, even Cally’s little sister Drew.
“Any nude pics?” Lizzy asks. “Sexting? Anything?”
As the heavy door closes, the doctor motions to an overstuffed chair and steeples her fingers as I sit. “Tell me what’s going on, Hanna.”
“You’re Dr. Perkins?”
Her tiny face draws into a tight frown. “Of course I am.”
“And I’m…one of your patients?”
Her frown turns to skepticism.
“I took a fall.” I motion to my face. I explain as briefly as I can about my amnesia, telling her I’m here because of the reminder on my phone.
“Oh, dear. I wish I would have known. I would have come to the hospital and consulted with your doctor.”
I’m glad she didn’t. I don’t think I want my friends and family to know I’ve sought out therapy. “I don’t understand.” I don’t want to offend this woman. She seems very nice. “It shows in my calendar that I’ve been here before, and I found a prescription for antidepressants in my apartment, but…” I’m not sure how to say it.
“Go on,” she prods.
“My life seems perfect. I have my own business that seems to be going great, and I’m engaged to marry an amazing man. I feel okay about my body for the first time in my life. Why would I need to see a psychiatrist? Why would I need antidepressants?” Why would I cheat on my loving fiancé?
She folds her arms and studies me, her face a series of hard and soft lines I can neither read nor recognize. “Do you think only people who have something ‘wrong’ with their lives need to seek help for their mental health?”
“Of course not. I just—” I cut myself off at her raised eyebrows. Apparently she’s a no-nonsense woman. “I wouldn’t put it that way. I thought that if I was seeing you and you’d prescribed antidepressants, there had to be a reason.”
She’s silent for a long moment that catapults me back in time to just after my father’s death. I was a teenager, and Daddy was my world. Back then, I never measured up with Mom. She was always trying to fix me—shrink me, tone me, dress me, make me an acceptable representation of her family. Something she wouldn’t find so shameful. But Daddy was happy to let me be. Then he died, and after the funeral, the school therapist called us down one at a time. “Why do you think you’re here?” he asked me, his voice sounding more bored than empathetic, and he let the silence grow bigger and stranger between us until I answered.
But I’m not that girl anymore. I’m not the fat teenager languishing in her gorgeous sisters’ shadows. I’m not the ignored child striving for perfection in all things to make up for her appearance.
Sure, I’m overweight, but look at my grades!
Sure, I can’t fit into the pants in your average store, but I’m always happy.
Sure, I can’t get a date to save my life, but I’m the best friend a girl could ever have.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
But she isn’t like the school counselor and she doesn’t let the silence go on forever. “You came to me because you were battling depression and an eating disorder.”
I feel myself wilt. I don’t want to hear these things. I don’t want her tainting my perfect world. I shouldn’t have come. I should have ignored the reminder and carried on.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Dr. Perkins says.
I remember Nix’s request for me to see her in her office about diet concerns brought on by my blood work. “An eating disorder? Depression?”
Something flicks across her features. Regret? Sadness? “There’s no shame in getting help. Are you eating? Since your accident?”
I pause and turn back to her. “I am.”
She smiles. “That’s good.”
“I wasn’t before, was I? That’s how I lost all this weight? I was starving myself?” Panic claws at me the moment the words leave my mouth because I know they’re true. “This means I’m going to gain the weight back, doesn’t it?”
“You came to me because you recognized something in your own habits that you knew wasn’t healthy. You recognized there were parts of your life more important than numbers on the scale and you wanted me to help.”
I swallow, but this information is a bitter pill that goes down rough and painfully. “Did I talk to you about…other things?”
“Like what?”
“This is confidential?” I whisper.
“Of course.”
“Was I cheating on my fiancé?” I shake my head. “He’s my fiancé now, but I guess he would have been my boyfriend last time I was here.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You didn’t share that with me if it was true, but you didn’t mention a boyfriend either.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess this was just about the food.”
“Eating disorders are never just about the food, Hanna. They’re about more than your body and about more than losing weight. They’re about control. And you’ve spent the last three months starving yourself so you would feel like you had control over your life again.”
6
WHEN I return from Indianapolis, the bakery is bustling with a crowd picking up lattes for their afternoon pick-me-ups and fresh pastries to go along with them.
Squeezing past the line, I slip behind the counter and tap Lizzy’s shoulder. “I need to talk.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a little busy running your bakery, so—”
I take the cup from her hand and slam it on the counter. “It’s important.”
“PMS much?” the ponytailed pretty girl at the front of the line says.
I narrow my eyes at her before sticking my head back in the kitchen. “Drew? I need you to work the front for a few minutes.”
“That’s a really bad idea,” Lizzy warns.
I ignore her and drag her up to my apartment. It’s tempting to meet her chilliness with my own, but right now I need my sister too much. I slam the door closed behind her.
“Listen.” I wag my finger in her face. I’ve had enough. “I don’t know who pissed in your Wheaties, but right now I need my sister, so whatever is broken between us, can we just put it aside for a while?”
Her eyes go wide. “I… You…” Her shoulders sag and she collapses onto my couch.
“You asked me if I was sure things are good. Well, I’m not sure.” I pace in front of her. “Everything looks so perfect on the surface, but how am I supposed to know how I feel about anything when I don’t remember?”
“I’m such a bitch, Hanna. I’m sorry. Don’t listen to me. I’m jealous. You’re engaged, Maggie’s living with Asher… Any minute now, I’m going to be the last single girl standing. Maybe that’s making me cranky, but it shouldn’t ruin a happy time for you.”
“I think maybe I’m cheating on Max,” I blurt.
“Shit, Han-Han. What happened?”
I sink onto the couch next to her and lean my head on her shoulder. She combs my hair with her fingers, and even though the contact feels awkward and unsure, it relaxes me.
“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs in my ear.
She doesn’t rush me, and I let myself take my time because suddenly it’s all too much—the last few days, the injuries, the amnesia, the engagement, the whole new life. As much as I’d like Max to be able to comfort me, he’s still a stranger to me in a lot of ways. But Lizzy’s part of me. We sit, letting the minutes pass and the silence slowly stitch us back together.
I don’t know how much time has passed when I finally sit up and wipe my eyes.
“Coffee?” she asks.
I nod and follow her to the kitchen, where I sit on a stool as she prepares us a fresh pot. “While Max and I were dating, do you know if I was…seeing anyone else?”
She turns to c**k a brow at me. “Seeing anyone else? Miss Goody Two-Shoes date two guys at once? As if.”
Right. It doesn’t sound like me. But how does that explain what happened last night? Better come out with it, girl. “Max didn’t stay over last night, but I didn’t sleep alone either.”
Her jaw goes slack and those gorgeous baby blues of hers widen. “What? Who? Why? Does Max know?”
“All very good questions.”
She prepares my coffee and hands me my mug. I wrap my hands around it, letting it warm my hands instead of drinking it.
“Are you going to tell me who else you’re sleeping with,” Lizzy huffs, “or are you going to make me guess?”
“Someone slid into my bed last night. I was sleeping and assumed it was Max, but then we started fooling around in the middle of the night, and when he turned on the light, I realized it…wasn’t.”
“Someone slipped into bed with you while you were sleeping, and it wasn’t Max?”
I watch her carefully. “No.”
“Holy shit. Who was it?”
“I have no idea. He was a stranger to me.”
She slams her mug down and coffee sloshes onto the counter. “Why aren’t we calling the cops?”
“Because I don’t think we need to.”
“You’re freaking kidding me, right?”
“I’m fine. Nothing bad happened. Just let me tell it before you freak out, okay?” I wait until the panic clears from her face before I continue. “He was a stranger to me, but I was no stranger to him.”
“I’m not feeling better about this yet.”
“I realized the guy who’d been touching me in…rather intimate ways…wasn’t Max, and of course I panicked.”
“I can imagine. I’m panicking now.”
“I was thinking there was some ra**st in my house, and I kneed him in the balls and got the hell out of the bed, but then my phone was dead and I couldn’t call for help. And he was trying to get me to calm down and all the sudden he just…stopped.” I make myself take a breath. “I wasn’t thinking straight, but I think everything changed when he saw my ring.”
“A ra**st with morals?”
“He was no rapist, Liz. He looked at my hand and then he got dressed—pulled on his shirt and pants. What kind of sex offender strips down to his boxers and climbs into bed to cuddle with his victim half the night?”
“A really screwed-up one?”
“He held me,” I murmur into my coffee, “and woke me up with sweet kisses on my neck. He knew my name, knew how I like to be touched. When he saw my ring, he said, ‘You could have told me.’ Then, before he left, he said he hoped Max and I had a nice life—mentioning Max by name.”
Lizzy whistles long and low. “He knows about Max?”
I nod and add, “But does Max know about him?” I let that sink in for a minute. “Max is the love of my life. Why would I ruin that?
“Was he hot?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, but that’s hardly the point.”
“So who was it? Anyone from town?”
“No one I recognized, but that doesn’t mean anything when I can’t remember the last year.”
“Oh, good point.” She sips her coffee. “What did he look like?”
“Young, probably my age. Dark hair, a little shaggy like Max’s, I guess. He was tall, built.”
“Again, like Max,” Liz says.
“Maybe taller than Max and not quite that muscular, but impressive still.”
“You’re describing half of Max’s workout buddies.”
“Fuck,” I groan. “Please tell me I’m not cheating on him with one of his friends.”
“In what ways didn’t he look like Max?”
“Tattoos!” I hold my hands together. Maybe this will be the piece of information that will help Lizzy identify my visitor. “He had several. Some numbers over his left pec and a Hulk tattoo on his right shoulder.”
Lizzy raises a brow. “As in Hulk Hogan?”
“As in the Incredible Hulk. You won’t like me when I’m angry Hulk.”
“You’re engaged to Max Hallowell and having an affair with a nerd?”
“Maybe?” I lift my palms helplessly. “Do you know who he is? I’m really freaking out here.”
She shakes her head. “Not a clue.”
“Stupid amnesia.”
“No kidding.” She paces. Stops. Paces. Looks out the window, toys with her hair, paces some more. Suddenly, her head pops up, making her curls bounce around her face. “Oh my God. So obvious!”
“What’s obvious?” I’m so worried she’s going to say, “Tell Max everything.” That whole “honesty is the best policy” thing has always worked for me, but…
I’m not sure this is a the-truth-will-set-you-free kind of situation. And…
How can I tell Max the truth when I don’t even know what the truth is?
“This is the twenty-first century, right? If you and some guy had a thing, there would be digital evidence.”
“Digital evidence? You think I’d have let him take pictures? Oh God! Video?”
Lizzy winces. “Let’s hope not, but that’s not what I mean. You know, text messages and stuff.”
I don’t even bother replying because I’m scrambling toward my purse so I can look at my phone.
I scroll through my text messages. A conversation between me and Max, between me and my mom. Maggie, Cally, Lizzy, even Cally’s little sister Drew.
“Any nude pics?” Lizzy asks. “Sexting? Anything?”
