Where I Stood Waiting

Everett's POV

Celeste Kendrick had taken her first love, Kieran Vance, to the Faerholme coast to chase the northern lights and to Lake Corvin to watch swans glide along the water. This time, she had chartered an entire yacht for him, with fireworks that lasted through the night, all to celebrate ten years since they first met.

My fingers hovered over the screen. I swallowed the bitterness rising in my chest and reached for the consent form the doctor had been about to put away.

"I'll sign it."

Signing it took nearly everything I had left.

The doctor took the form, glanced at it, then looked back at me with an expression I could not quite read. "You're not going to talk this over with your family first? There's a real chance you'll forget all of them."

I shook my head slowly and tugged my sleeve down to cover the needle marks scattered across the back of my hand. "No. She doesn't need to know."

I went into the operating room, and when I woke up, the first round of treatment was over. My head felt heavy and slow, and the doctor went over his instructions before I left.

"Try to go over your old memories whenever you can, and keep taking your medication. I'm worried that if you don't, you'll end up forgetting who you are."

I nodded, picked up a new prescription for sleeping pills, and went home.

When I got there, my hand rested on the door handle for a long time before I could turn it. The door was unlocked. Light seeped out through the gap.

Celeste was home.

I was surprised. By my count, she had not been back in over a month.

She heard me come in and turned to look, her brows furrowing as she took me in. "It's been a few days and you already look like death. Are you doing this on purpose to make me feel bad?"

My hands stilled in mid-air. Something sharp twisted behind my ribs.

I set the pill bottle on the table and noticed the cake sitting on the dining table. It looked familiar, but I could not remember ordering one.

When I said nothing, Celeste stood up from the couch. "Don't think doing all of this is going to make me forgive you."

Everything she said had a bite to it, but today, none of it was making sense.

"What do you mean?"

She did not answer. She just stared at me. "The receptionist told me you called today. What did you need? I was busy."

The fog in my head cleared in an instant. I thought of the photos she had been posting, and something about the whole situation suddenly struck me as pathetic.

"Busy doing what? Taking trips with Kieran? Watching fireworks with him? Or were you too busy sleeping with him?"

Celeste's face went white, the kind of fury that came from being caught. "What the hell is that supposed to mean, Everett Hartley?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could get a word out, a sharp pain tore through my shoulder. Kieran had walked in behind me and slammed into me hard enough to knock me sideways.

He draped an arm over Celeste's shoulder. The marks on her neck had not faded yet. The sight of them burned.

"I told you there was no point coming back just for him. He calls you multiple times a month anyway. It's just for attention, yet you actually fell for it. You came all the way back here for nothing."

Kieran's voice was light, almost bored. Yet Celeste believed every word he said. She always did.

The room went still.

She let out a cold laugh, and before I could react, she grabbed the cake off the table and shoved it into my face. Frosting smeared across my skin and dropped to the floor in clumps.

I stood there, frozen. The ache in my chest spread outward through my limbs, and the ringing in my ears grew louder. Celeste was still shouting, but her voice had blurred into something I could barely make out.

"You've always loved playing the victim, Everett, but now, you're playing mind games too? When did you learn to be such a liar? Oh, wait. You've always been one. You lied to me five years ago."

Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her chest was heaving. Then, her gaze dropped to my wrists, and her eyes widened.

She grabbed my wrist and yanked the sleeve up. When she saw the dense scatter of needle marks across my skin, she froze for just a second before letting out a sharp, humorless laugh.

"This again."

Even Kieran sucked in a breath at the sight. He pulled Celeste behind him and murmured something to calm her down.

"Forget it. Don't let him get to you. I'll take you out for your birthday."

He took Celeste's hand and started toward the door. As he passed me, he slowed just enough to lean in, his voice low enough that only I could hear. "Look at yourself, Everett. What do you have left to compete with?"

The door slammed shut behind them, and they were gone.

It was only then, standing alone in the quiet, that I remembered. Today was Celeste's birthday. The cake she had smashed into my face was one I had baked for her myself the night before.

I had just forgotten.

I went to the bathroom and splashed water over my face again and again. When I finally looked up, the man staring back at me from the mirror was hollow-eyed with cheekbones jutting out. I looked like someone already halfway dead.