Page 7 of You Again

Instead of saying hello, I stand and turn my back on him. Smooth, Rose.

My body wants to panic—I can feel it. It’s begging to lose it, here and now. What was that thing Robert always said? ‘There’s always a bright side. And a way out.’

Robert.

I wish he were here. I wish he still thought of me the way I think of him. He’d calm the panic trying to rage inside me. My nerves are like Mrs. Bennet on steroids.

My throat clenches and aches with a dryness I can’t seem to shake.

What else can I occupy my mind with?

My eyes dart to the patio door. No free tables yet. I’d sit at a dirty one at this point. I fumble with the hardback book in my hand, opening to the middle pages. I read one line and know exactly where I am in the story.

“Rosalie?” A breathy, feminine voice sounds from behind me, from the entrance of the café.

I turn on instinct to see a woman with long blonde hair holding an infant and staring at me. Her eyes are bright and glassy with tears. She knows me.

She knows who I am, but I’ve never seen her face before.

I can feel the life drain out of me. I’m guessing there’s not an ounce of color left in my cheeks. “Sorry,” I whisper, charging into the middle of the restaurant, away from the woman, and toward the single stall restroom. It’s one of the things I love about this place—their scones, their herbal lemon tea, and the one-person, private bathroom I can lock myself in in case of a panic attack.

By some miracle, it’s open. I shut the door behind me and turn over the lock. My chest patters and my head aches. My breaths come fast and I can’t seem to slow them. I grip either side of the white ceramic sink and stare down into the basin, trying to focus. But my dread won’t calm. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

Turning on the cold water, I splash a little over the back of my neck. I repeat the mantra Dr. Case gave me: “I’m safe. This will pass. I’m safe.”

But I don’t feel all that safe. I feel lost and alone.

I peer up into the mirror, into my own eyes. They’re mine. And they’re not. They aren’t twenty-year-old Rosalie’s eyes. But an older version of myself.

The sight is strange and off-putting. And throws me every single time.

They called it retrograde amnesia.

But to me, it’s simply the thing that stole my memories and turned my life upside down. In many ways, it feels as if retrograde amnesia has taken my past, my present, and my future.

The woman with the baby. She knew me. Sometime in the last six years, I met this woman. She looked at me with dejected eyes that tell me she also knows what’s happened to me.

But I don’t know her. I don’t know her name, her face, or how we met.

The panic rises once more, and I’m afraid I might vomit. “I’m safe. This will pass.”

The whole reason I moved to Tesoro and quit the job I never remembered obtaining with a degree I don’t remember earning was to avoid all the things and people and places that know me. Those I don’t know.

But they’ve found me.

Here, in a place I only remember visiting as a child.

It’s been a while—at least twenty minutes. Surely the woman is gone by now. And surely there is a spot opened on the patio. I glance at my Return to Saigon book for Partida that sits on the tank of the toilet.

Ew.

Yes—time to go.

I wash my hands and snatch up my book. Then I hurry back out into the restaurant, keeping my head down, in case the woman with the baby is still out here.

I’m watching my feet when—oof—I slam into something hard and firm and smelling of mint and pine. I tip my head way up because, holy, I ran into a giant with a short red beard, blue eyes, and ginger-blond hair.

It’s him.