Strangers: A Novel(45)

“Jo,” I rasp, reluctant to loosen my arms, which are still around her waist.

She shakes her head and exhales heavily.

“That was wonderful. But…”

I don’t finish her sentence this time, but wait until she’s found the words she’s looking for. I’m still so worked up I can’t even guess at what might be going on inside her head.

Maybe the kiss stirred up a memory? Maybe she thinks it was a mistake? I don’t know.

“I’m so confused. And afraid.”

“Of me? Still?”

“No, Erik, not you, I’m afraid of myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

She looks at the floor and briefly touches her temple, the blueish bruise. “I don’t either. I get moments where I’m as much a stranger to myself as you are.”

“Still no memories? Not one?”

She shakes her head. “But now I can imagine having fallen in love with you.”

At least she isn’t rejecting me anymore. Maybe she can feel there’s something connecting us, that … All of a sudden she’s close to me again, and I feel her lips on mine. Not shy and playful this time, but the way we always kissed. Tender and passionate.

She’s smiling when she draws her head back again.

“It was still very nice, though.”

Sometimes, I reflect, you don’t need much at all to turn a feeling of anguish into relief. I don’t feel like I’m free from all my worries, but what I do feel all of a sudden is a sense of optimism. The hope that we’ll get to the bottom of this and that things will take a turn for the better.

“Yes,” I say, returning her smile. “It was wonderful.”

“I want to go outside, get some fresh air. Can we go for a walk?”

An image appears in my mind’s eye. Joanna and I, strolling through the small park all wrapped up in our jackets, in a tight embrace, heads tilted toward each other …

“I’d love to.”

Our walk ends up taking quite a long time. We don’t talk much, nor do we walk in a tight embrace, but our hands keep touching. Again and again they brush against each other, as if by accident, and a gentle shudder goes through my body every time.

Joanna suddenly stops and looks at me when we’ve almost reached the house again. “Would you give me your number?”

I’m confused for a second. “Yes of course, I … I thought you had it but … yes.”

“Not, not until now. But I should have it, right?”

A short while later we’re sitting in the living room, on the couch. The look Joanna is giving me no longer contains the suspicion of the past few days, when it seemed that she was trying to read me, decipher my thoughts.

“Tell me about us again, please?”

“Yes, I’d love to,” I say, and take her hand.

“What would you like to know?”

“Everything,” she answers. “I’d like to know everything.”





21

It’s already dark by the time we finish talking. Only now do I realize that I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast; my stomach is making itself heard, gently but insistently. “How about we cook something together?” I turn to Erik and trace the contours of his face with my finger. Foreign yet at the same time strangely familiar. And gradually becoming more and more so. “You wanted to, remember, yesterday.”

He smiles. “I still want to.”

The way he looks at me when I touch him. There’s so much emotion in it, and it’s increasingly spilling over to me. Is that a good thing? Is it careless?

The fact is, I no longer want to be asking myself these questions. Now that I no longer see Erik as an acute threat. I’ve become aware of how attractive he is, this man who I’m getting to know bit by bit. The man who is there for me night and day. Who hasn’t let my memory loss scare him away.

And who kisses like …

“Why are you laughing?” He takes my face between his hands, carefully, without touching the bruised parts.

“I’m not telling you.”

His mouth on mine again, his tongue, gentle at first, then enticing, then insistent. I playfully bite his lower lip. “I’m hungry.”

“I can see that.” He smiles, takes my hand, and pulls me into the kitchen. “Let’s see. We’d better leave the shrimp, but what would you say to turkey skewers? With that special tomato salad you make? We’ve got everything we need.”

Just the thought of it makes my hunger grow twofold. “Sounds wonderful.”

He takes all the ingredients out of the cupboard. “I’ll do the meat, you do the vegetables. That’s how we usually do it, do you remember?” I can see that he regrets the last three words even as he’s still saying them. I shake my head. “No. Unfortunately not. But that sounds like a good plan.”

His eyes are trained on the worktop; the fridge is still open behind him. “Usually,” he repeats. “Unless it was steak, you’re better at that.”

I can see how desperately he wants to be able to share these memories with me, but as hard as I try, the images just won’t come into my mind.

“Probably because I always made them on the barbecue with my father, since I was a young child,” I say. That memory is there, crystal clear. Daddy and his beloved, gigantic sirloin steaks.