But I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember.

“A-a-er–i-n?” she drew my name out slowly as she looked back at me with confusion.

I dropped my hands from her shoulders sagged back against the bench and covered my face.

She sat on the bench next to me and drew me into an embrace as I wept.

I wept for the first time since waking. My frustration at not being able to remember, the deep confusion I was still struggling with about why and how and what had happened, and most of all, the overwhelming sense of loss over something I sensed had been important, something real, even magical, that had created this bottomless void in my mind, in my heart, in my soul once my memories of it vanished – they all came pouring out in the tears I shed. If I could have, I would have shed blood in my tears.

I turned and clung to her like she was a life-raft and I was in the middle of a storm at sea, at risk of drowning. My tears hurt the bruised flesh in the eye that was still partially bandaged, and the cast in my shin made it awkward for us to embrace, but these things didn’t matter.

I’d lost something. We’d lost something. And I was afraid that we’d never find it again. Somebody … help me, please!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

One year later

“So that’s how it ended?” Alyssa asked, her blue eyes trained on mine as she turned towards me, and then rolled on top of me. She gave me a deep, probing kiss, and then drew back and rested an elbow on either side of my head.

I stroked her bare back, fingertips trailing down her spine, the way I knew she liked to be caressed there, as I shook my head.

“No … that’s not how it ended, but that was the beginning of the end, I’m sure,” I answered her, and then raised my head and gave her a quick kiss.

Normally, the gentle caressing of her spine and a kiss would have been enough to get things going. Heaven knows that for the past six months, we’d been going hot and heavy whenever we’d been able to get together. My place, her place, her office, Jules and Diane’s basement in their townhouse, and all manner of hotels from London to Paris to Berlin to New York, of course.