I couldn't hold back the tears as I had since my sister had told me about my father's death. They poured down over my cheeks as I buried my face in my hands, and my body heaved with each sob. My father was murdered and I'd forgotten the whole thing!
Jordan sat down beside me and took me in her arms. "Let it out, sweetie. You have to let it out or you'll get like you did then."
Another thing I couldn't remember.
I buried my face in her shoulder and did exactly that. I let all the sadness out until I couldn't cry anymore. Until I felt hollow and empty.
Pulling away from Jordan, I asked, "What do you mean I'll get like I did then? What happened to me then?"
She smoothed the hair from my forehead and wiped her thumb under my eyes. "It was pretty bad. You didn't get out of bed for weeks. Thank God your professors were understanding since it was your senior year because day after day, no matter how I tried, you wouldn't do anything but lay in bed. Sometimes you cried. Other times you just stared up at the ceiling or off in the distance."
"For how long?"
"Honey, it went on for a long time. Even after you came back to life, I was worried you might never be the same old Nina again."
"I wish I knew who that same old Nina was now," I admitted sadly. "I feel like I'm missing so much of me."
"You're still you, Nina. It's all in there. It's just a matter of it coming out."
I sat back against the couch cushions and hung my head. Just thinking about my father's death was exhausting. It was like he'd just died that day and not years before. My heart hurt at Jordan's description of his murder.
Looking up, I asked, "Am I really the same? Of anybody, you'd know. Am I? What was I like when I got into that accident?"
"Blissfully happy. I'd never seen you as happy as when you were with Tristan. I mean, I don't want to say it was perfect. Nothing is. But you were as happy as anyone could want to be."
"Is he as incredible as I think he is?"
"Yeah. He is. When you moved in with him, he paid the rest of your portion of the rent for the year. When that weird guy attacked us on the front steps, he let me stay at his hotel in a gorgeous suite for weeks because you asked him to. You were worried for my safety, and he didn't blink an eye. You wanted something and he made it happen."
"Why don't I remember any of that? Why can't I remember how much in love with him I was? Don't you think I'd remember that? I mean, I can understand not wanting to remember my father's death, but Tristan is wonderful. And the rest of those four years couldn't have been all bad. Were they?"
"No. They weren't all bad. We had some really fun times once you got back to being yourself. Two single girls living in New York. Good times."
Her smile faded as the words trailed off. She was hiding something. It hadn't been all good times.
"What aren't you telling me, Jordan?"
"It's not important. Your life was as good as anyone who's just out of college and trying to make it on their own."
"But?"
"But nothing. You were happy."
Everything in her face said otherwise, though. What had been so bad about my life?
"Tell me, Jordan. I need to know."
She got up from the couch and walked toward the kitchen. "Jordan, tell me!" I called after her.
She stopped dead in the living room doorway and with her back to me asked, "Cal. Do you remember him?"
"Of course. I was crazy about him."
Turning around, she looked at me with pain in her eyes. "Do you remember what happened between the two of you?"
I thought about what I knew about Cal. "We broke it off because he had the chance to study abroad in Spain for a year. He was a junior and it was the chance of a lifetime, so we broke up. But it wasn't anything awful."
"That wasn't the end of it. He came back and you two began seeing each other again, but he wasn't the same guy. Whatever he did in Europe, he came back a real asshole."
"What are you saying?"
She walked away into the kitchen, and I followed her, needing to know what the hell she was talking about. Standing with her back to me, she shook her head. "It was bad, Nina. He was a real shit. You were crazy about him, madly in love, and he..."
She stopped and said nothing for a long time.
"He what?" I finally demanded.
She spun around and I couldn't tell if she was angry or upset. "He fucked you up really bad, Nina. You didn't just break up another time. He broke your heart. You told him you loved him and what did he do? He cheated on you that very fucking night!"
My memory of Cal wasn't of a love meant for the ages, but I had no idea what she was talking about. I'd been disappointed when we broke up so he could go to Spain, but I understood why. The person she was describing wasn't the person I'd cared about, though.
"I can't believe that. Cal and I had been fun together. I never thought it was going to be a forever thing, but we had fun. We cared about each other."
"Well, it wasn't like that when you got back together. He was a real dick. He left you in pieces, Nina. Pieces. It was like it was when your father died all over again. Even worse, if you ask Kim."
"Why? What happened?"
Jordan's body sagged under the weight of what she was saying. "You said some things about wanting to die. I don't think you ever really meant it, but it was a lot to deal with. I was afraid for a long time that you might do something."
"Tell me everything. I need to know."
"Honey, it's in the past, and in my opinion, that bullshit can stay there. Don't do this."
I knew she was trying to protect me, but I needed to fill in the huge blank spots in my memory. I needed to begin to figure out why my mind was keeping me in the dark about so much time.
"Jordan, I need to know what my mind's keeping from me. What happened to make me say I wanted to die?"
"You told him you loved him. For the first time, you actually weren't afraid to take that leap. You remember what you were like when we first started school, right? You were always beautiful and sweet, but you never had the guts to go out on a limb and tell someone you loved them. It was probably because of how you lost your mother. And Cal knew that. He knew how much it meant that you were finally able to open up and say you loved him. And what did he do with that gift? He ripped it to shreds."
I did remember being afraid to tell boyfriends how I felt about them. While every other girl in high school had been dying to tell their boyfriends they loved them, I dreaded it. It terrified me. They might leave and then where would I be? I'd never told Cal I loved him.
At least I didn't remember telling him. Now Jordan was saying that the only time she knew of me saying I love you to anyone other than Tristan had ended in disaster. My stomach felt like it was twisting into knots.
She wrapped her arms around me. "Honey, don't get down about it. Cal was an asshole. He didn't deserve you. He deserved the girl who used him and threw him away three months later."
I pushed her away and shook my head. "I need to know what happened. What did he do?"
"Don't do this. It's not going to make anything better."
"Jordan, this is part of my life I don't remember. I have to know."
Sighing heavily, she nodded. "He'd been cheating on you the whole time. We went out for a drink because you were so happy that you'd finally told him how you felt and we saw him with some cheap blonde. It was terrible. You confronted him all in tears, and she was more than happy to tell you how long they'd been seeing each other. He tried to deny it, but it was no use. The proof was standing there in front of you basically throwing it in your face."
God, had I never had any luck with men? Cal had been the one man I'd remembered in all this as a decent person, and now that was all wrong too.
Jordan smoothed my hair away from my face. Her expression was so sad. "You never meant that you wanted to die, honey. That was just something you said because you were feeling down. I know how it feels. It hurts like hell when you care about someone and they betray you. We've all been through it, and sometimes when we're feeling our worst, we say things we don't mean."
"I don't want to die, Jordan. Even when I've felt like I was totally lost these past few weeks, I never wanted to end it."
"I think Tristan's a big part of that, Nina. He's a good man. And I swear to you on a stack of Bibles that he's crazy about you."
"I know. There's no need to sell him to me. I can see it."
She looked away from me and said quietly, "I'm worried you won't give him a chance now."
"Why?"
Turning to face me, she knitted her brows in concern. "Because of what I told you. I don't want you to think you're just unlucky with men."
It was as if Jordan was reading my mind. The only happy memory I'd had concerning the opposite sex, other than Tristan, was Cal. Now that he had turned out to be just like every other male I'd ever been with that I could remember, all I could think of was that I was jinxed in the realm of love.
"Me unlucky? Look at my life. No worries about luck there," I said with as much bravado I could muster, not even convincing myself. I forced a smile as I looked at my cell phone for the time. "I guess it's time to go."
"Okay, honey. Okay."
I knew Jordan didn't believe me, but like the best friend she was, she didn't say a thing. She knew talking about it wasn't going to help now. "Tristan and I would like you and Justin to join us for New Year's. We'll be at the penthouse and it would mean so much to me if we could all hang out."