Two seconds, three, and then four passed before those arresting eyes met mine.
‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’
I can’t remember which one of us suggested ordering a takeaway, but it seemed dicing with death and missing lunch gives a person an incredible appetite.
‘Does everything that’s happened today make you feel kind of... discombobulated?’ I asked Rhys while we were prising cardboard lids off takeaway containers.
He paused in the task of opening the crispy beef and gave me a smile that had no right to affect my pulse in the way that it did.
‘You might be the first person I’ve ever heard casually drop that word into an actual conversation.’
I gave a slightly embarrassed smile. ‘I was looking for a more appropriate one, but if there’s a better way to describe this feeling, then I must have forgotten it.’
I teetered like a lemming on a cliff edge, wondering what would happen if I proceeded, and then decided to risk it.
‘Actually, that’s not the only thing I seem to have forgotten.’
‘Really? What else can’t you remember?’
I gave him a Homer Simpson-worthy ‘D’oh?’ and we both laughed, not loudly, or even for long, but it was a welcome pressure release from a conversation that had suddenly taken a slightly darker turn.
‘Okay. Let me rephrase that,’ Rhys said, setting aside our takeaway dinner and giving me his full attention. ‘What makes you think the lightning has affected your memory?’
‘Well, aside from the numerous accounts on the internet where people reported their memory was definitely affected after being struck—’
Rhys held up a hand as though he was stopping traffic. ‘Aside from the Google “experts”.’
I bit my lip, fairly sure he’d have scoured the exact same websites I had done while waiting to be discharged from the hospital.
‘Alright. It’s not like I have amnesia, well, not like you see in the movies, where you get a bump on the head and can’t remember who you are. I know my name, I know what I do for a living, and what I ate for breakfast yesterday morning.’
‘So far, so good,’ Rhys said, leaning back against my kitchen worktop and giving me an encouraging nod.
‘It’s more the personal things that are... fuzzy. Like I can’t remember when or how my last serious relationship ended. For a while, I wasn’t even sure if it had.’
Rhys frowned. ‘Should I be worried that some angry ex – who isn’t an ex at all – is about to come barging in here and demand to know why I’m having dinner with his girlfriend?’
I saw what he was trying to do. He was trying to lighten the mood and talk me down from the ledge I’d unknowingly stepped on to. I realised in that moment that Rhys was probably very good in a crisis.
‘It’s more about things I should know – things about people who are important to me – that seem to have evaporated.’ My voice sounded weighty with gloom. ‘Or been electrocuted away. I can’t even remember when I last spoke to any of my friends, or took a holiday, or visited my mum.’
Rhys frowned, which surprisingly did little to diminish how extremely attractive he was looking right now. The gentle concern on his features, if anything, made him even more good-looking.
‘And you told the doctors about this?’
I nodded. ‘As well as I could explain it. But they just said to give it time. Partial memory loss isn’t unusual. Allegedly,’ I added, like a sceptical barrister in a courtroom.
‘It sounds like you’ve been given sensible advice. This is all very recent and raw, for both of us.’ He glanced over at the clock on my kitchen wall. ‘Ten hours ago, none of it had even happened. We weren’t in the park, or caught in the storm, or beneath that tree. I think you’re going to have to listen to the medics on this one and give your body a chance to reset.’
‘But what if it doesn’t, Rhys?’ Damn it, why did his name still sound so right on my tongue, like I was always meant to be saying it? ‘What if it doesn’t go back to normal? What if the lightning has done something permanent to my brain, something really bad?’
I wasn’t expecting his arms to come up and fold me against his chest. He moved so smoothly, so fast, that being pulled into his embrace instantly felt like somewhere I was supposed to be. His body was a rock, and I wanted to cling to it like a human limpet. But as comforting as the hug was, my concerns were real, terrifying, and weren’t going away.
With more reluctance than resolve, I gently eased myself out of his hold before I did anything that would very likely embarrass both of us.
‘It’s just... I don’t understand why I’ve got these gaps in my memory, and you don’t.’
Rhys shrugged. ‘Perhaps for the same reason I now look like a finalist in a tattoo competition and you’re unscathed. It affected us in different ways.’