He frowns thoughtfully but doesn't say anything else as he pushes my wheelchair off the elevator when the doors slide open. I sit quiet while he opens the door to my room and wheels me in, laying my bags across the bed. Without giving me a chance to say anything, he crosses to the desk and scribbles on the pad of paper there. Taps it with his pen while giving me a serious look.

"I'm Tommy. I work here to fill my time—since my wife died, I don’t like being home alone. You need anything at all—food or a ride to the store or help downstairs. You call me. I'm here every day but Sunday." He says sternly. I nod quietly and his gaze, so very fierce, gentles into the concern that looks like what I imagine my father would look like, if he could be bothered to care. "You should not be here, alone. I will help, if you'll let me."

"Thank you," I whisper, and he grins. Bobs his head at me and ducks out the door. I let out a breath and stare around the little room.

A TV. Two beds. Three bags. A view of a city I've never been to, and that I live in.

A cell phone that has been silenced, blinking with unread messages.

It's not much to build a life on. Not nearly enough.

I shove that thought aside and work on getting out of the wheelchair, and on to the bed.

I don't know who I am. Rike holds the keys to everything, but he's not giving them up and I'm not going to wait for him to tell me. So it's time to research.

***

I'm lost in Facebook when I hear a tap on the door. My head jerks up and then, muffled, I hear Tommy calling to me. "Ma'am?"

Relief sags my shoulders. "Hang on," I yell. It takes a few minutes, but I make it to the door and pull it open.

Tommy is standing there with a bag of food and a hopeful look. “You hungry?

I tilt my head. “Tommy you don’t have to take care of me. I’m ok.”

He hesitates, some of the light in his going out. “Sorry. I—you remind me of my wife. She was stubborn and brave. I didn’t mean to be pushy.”

“How long ago did she pass away?” I ask, softly.

Grief flickers in his eyes, “Four years ago. They said it’ll get easier, but it doesn’t. It just gets familiar.”

"Peyton. My name is Peyton," I say. "And I am hungry. I was working." He glances over the bed, at the little notepad that I've scribbled on and ripped apart, the notebook that's spread out with names and lines crisscrossing like a fucked up map.

"Well, eat something. And try to get some sleep tonight," he says.

I nod and take the bag. "Thank you."

"Need me to bring you anything in the morning?"

I shake my head and he wilts but doesn't push. Just gives me a quick smile before he ducks out. "Lock up behind me," he advises and then he's gone.

I do.

It begins a routine that quickly becomes comfortable. He comes by in the morning with breakfast and whatever random thing he thinks I need. And in the evening, when his shift is ending, he comes by again with dinner. Sometimes he stays and we talk about the hotel and what he did during the day. He learns quickly that I don’t like questions and stops asking after a few days. But he’s a constant presence, with stories about his wife, and the forty years they spent together before cancer ripped apart their happy life.

It still bugs me when I call him for the first time.

“Tommy? It’s Peyton, in 337.” I hesitate and he laughs.

“I only know the one Peyton,” he teases. “Now what do you need?”

“Do you think you could help me downstairs? I have appointments at the hospital all day—”

“I’ll be right down. Get your stuff together.”

He hangs up before I get the “thank you” out of my mouth and I let out a little sigh.

When Tommy knocks on the door five minutes later, I’m ready and vaguely nervous. I’ve got more information about the retrograde amnesia, and about myself.

But knowing that I’m the daughter of a politician from Tennessee, that I hate my family and spent a good chunk of my high school years in and out of rehab—none of that tells me why I’m living in Austin or who the hell Rike is to me.

And it should have come back by now. That’s the part that bothers me the most. That my memory is still gone.

“You’re quiet today, Peyton,” Tommy observes.

“Do you think, that if a person doesn’t remember where they came from, they’re still bound by the decisions that they made before?” Tommy throws me a startled look and I wave a hand dismissively. “Never mind.”

“Is that what’s wrong? That you can’t remember?”

We’ve talked, briefly and vaguely, about my accident. He knows something is wrong, and sometimes, when he’s talking about a movie he’s watched recently, I stare at him with a blankness that is frightening.

I stare at the city we’re driving through. I feel a strange longing for it, even as I find it too big and too foreign. It’s not Nashville. Not Sweet Water. I miss my quiet, backwater little town in the middle of nowhere Tennessee.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Peyton, no one gets to decide who you are but you. Even if you had your memories.”

I think of Rike, and how easy it is to be with him. How present he is, even when we were both lost in our own worlds.

How fucking happy I was.

I’m so tired of thinking about him, of being pulled into feelings I don’t know what to do with, and that stupid fucking feeling of loss.

I can’t mourn losing someone I never had. And maybe, before was different. But Rike was never mine. Not the me I am today.

I let the thought roll around my head as Tommy pulls into the visitor bay at St. David’s. There’s a line of cars waiting and I sit quietly, waiting as he inches forward until he finally puts the truck in park and hops out, tugging my wheelchair down before he helps me out and helps me into it, stepping back and letting me situate myself. When I nod at him, he grabs my black purse—a new purse, one he brought to me on the third morning at the hotel—and wheels me to the sidewalk. “I’m going to park, and I’ll take you in,” he says.

“Tommy, you don’t have to do that,” I say, but he’s already jogged away, sliding into the truck and pulling away to park. He’s going to be in trouble if he stays with me. They’ll miss him at the hotel.

“Peyton.”

I jerk and look around. The voice is vaguely familiar, and it clicks suddenly when I see Scott. He’s walking toward me, smoking.

He looks like shit, exhaustion clear on his face even under the oversized sunglasses and ball cap. He’s hunched forward, almost hiding. “God, where the fuck have you been?” he breathes, leaning down and hugging me.

I’m stiff in his arms, and he seems to realize it, because he pulls back and stares at me.

“Holy fuck. You don’t know, do you? You still don’t know who we are.”

“Feel free to clue me in,” I snap.

He takes off his ball cap and ruffles his hair, a scowl lining his forehead. “I’m going to fucking kick his ass.” Scott crouches. “This wasn’t the deal. We wouldn’t have agreed if we knew it was going to take this long for him to come clean about shit. I’ll talk to him.”

“Don’t,” I say, and his face goes pale. “I don’t know who or what I was to you or Lindsay. I don’t know what Rike is playing at. And I don’t fucking care.”

“Peyton, you don’t mean that,” he protests.

“I do. I’m not that girl. I don’t even fucking remember that girl. So if he wants to play god with someone’s life and memories, he’ll have to find someone else because I’m done.”

“What are you going to do?”

It’s a good question. I refuse to go to my parents. That bridge isn’t quite burned, but I’d set fire to it before I crossed it.

“It’s not your concern,” I say.

“You’re my girlfriend’s best friend, and you’re Rike’s—” He stops, and I lean forward.

“I’m what? What the hell am I to him?”