“Understandable.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know.” Cass shifted in his seat. “I’ve thought about you a lot since I found out about your accident. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through to get to a point where you’ve come looking for me. I thought you didn’t remember us.”
“I don’t. But…”
“But what?” Cass’s tone was gentle, but even Jodi couldn’t miss the burning curiosity in his gaze.
“It’s not a memory,” Jodi said slowly. Stopped again. Searched for the words for how seeing Cass,beingwith him, made him feel. “It’s a feeling, I guess. Like my body knows something I don’t…something I can’t remember. Rupert thinks I must remember fucking you, even if I don’t know what that means.”
“Is that a good thing, or does it freak you out?”
“Both. I don’t mind remembering that you’re hot, because it’s true, but I don’t like that I’m thinking that way about someone that isn’t Rupert. I love him.”
“You always did.”
“How do you know that?”
Cass sat back in his seat and rubbed his face. His hair was soft and dark, his eyes bewitching, but the smudges beneath them gave him away as a man who didn’t get enough sleep. Or maybe that his dreams didn’t give him a break from the world.
Rupert was like that.
Cass nudged him.
The light touch made Jodi jump. “What?”
Cass smirked, then seemed to catch himself. “I was going to say it looked like you’d dropped off the edge of the world, but I’m guessing that shit ain’t funny.”
Jodi snorted. “Define funny. And you’re not entirely wrong. It’s not enough that I can’t remember my adult life, sometimes I forget I even exist. I asked you something…what was it?”
“You wanted to know how I was so sure that you’ve always loved Rupert.”
“What’s the answer?”
“You changed after you met him. I mean, we weren’t fucking around anymore anyway, so we didn’t see much of you, but it was like—I don’t know—that this fire in you to consume as much queer as you could was finally satisfied.”
“Consume queer? What does that even mean?”
Cass laughed. “Okay, maybe it’s not the best way of explaining it, but from what I remember, you felt bad that you’d hurt your girlfriend, so it was almost as though you had to do as much gay stuff as possible to justify what you’d put her through.”
“I’m not even gay, though. I’m bi.”
“I know. I’m just saying how it seemed from our end.”
“Our end? Did Tom think that too?”
“A bit, but I think he was more convinced that you wanted more from us—fromme—than I had to give back then.”
“Back then? What’s different now?”
“We met Jake.”
Jodi gathered the vomit of information and tried to draw it all together. Combined with what he’d already known, Cass’s theory made sense. After all, he didn’t remember hurting Sophie, but fuck, somehow, he remembered the guilt. “Did we have a lot of sex?”
“Yes.”
“I like that you can answer that without flinching.”
