cul-de-sac

by hacf

Summary:

The first thing Shona sees is Charlotte.

Notes:

well. here is some classic temporary amnesia fic :)

The first thing Shona sees is Charlotte, slumped over the bed with her hand resting against Shona’s forearm. She lifts her head up when Shona shifts, her face breaking into something hopeful.

“Hey Sho,” Charlotte murmurs. The quietness is broken by the door swinging open and Aine pushing inside. “Fuck, Shona,” Aine breathes. She bends down to hug her, more careful than she’s ever been before, and Shona sneaks a look at Charlotte. “You aren’t allowed to scare me like that.”

“Can you at least tell me why you’re mad at me before you yell at me?” Shona asks. The words are rough against her throat and she winces. Both Charlotte and Aine are slightly blurry and she squints to get them into focus.

“How are you feeling?” Charlotte deflects. She passes her a glass of water and Shona takes it.

“Bad?” Shona shrugs. There’s a pounding at the base of her skull that uncenters her and her brain feels raw, like she can feel every spot where her brain touches bone. Each movement requires more effort and makes her stomach roll.

“There was a car accident,” Aine says.

Shona frowns and the pull of her muscles makes her head spin. Charlotte squeezes her hand and Shona notices the ring for the first time, cool and suddenly obvious where it rests against Shona’s skin. “You’re married?” She tugs Charlotte’s hand closer to her, the ring is the only piece of jewellery she’s wearing.

“I -” Charlotte pulls her hand back. “You don’t -” She closes her eyes, pushing her hand through her hair. It’s longer than Shona remembers. “I’m going to go find your doctor.” She disappears before Shona can think of anything to say and she turns to Aine, “She’s married?”

“Yes,” Aine nods. “Do you not -” There’s a sharp cut off and Aine twists the ring on her finger, watches Shona’s eyes track towards it, “You’re married?”

“Yes,” Aine confirms. “Shona, I don’t think -”

“You didn’t marry Richard, did you?” Shona frowns. “Because the last thing I remember is you whining about his dick and -”

“Can we please wait for the doctor?” Aine shakes her head. “I don’t know the protocol here.”

“There’s no protocol,” Shona says. “Just tell me the truth.”

Aine shrugs. She sits down on the edge of the bed and doesn’t say anything else. Shona tries to think. She doesn’t remember the specifics of anything. She remembers people: Aine, their parents, Charlotte, Vish, the barista she likes and the one she hates, the cashier at the grocery stores whose line always moves the fastest, fucking Iain from the fifth floor. She can’t pull specific details out of the loop of her life without feeling like her mind goes blank.

Charlotte returns with the doctor behind her. She hovers near the door, twisting the ring around her finger. Shona wants her to come closer but it feels like a weird thing to ask for. The doctor smiles at her, “I’m Dr. Reed, it’s good to see you awake. How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a truck,” Shona mutters

“That isn’t funny,” Aine says.

“Can you tell me your name?” Dr. Reed goes on.

“Shona O’Keefe.” Shona’s positive it’s the right answer but Charlotte flinches and Aine stares at her like she’s torn about moving to support Charlotte instead.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I work in finance,” Shona mutters. “For Capital Asset.”

“Can you tell me who the other people in this room are?”

“Unfortunately,” Shona sighs. Her head hurts and closing her eyes doesn’t help. “My sister and my - friend?” Aine squeezes her hand.

“Can you tell me what year it is?”

Shona can’t immediately place it. She frowns and the doctor tells her to take her time, which annoys her, because she doesn’t want to know how bad of a sign it is that she can’t.

“I think - 2015?”

Dr. Reed nods. She sits on the chair next to her bed, opposite from Aine, and Charlotte doesn’t move from where she’s backed up closer to the door.

“Three days ago, you were in a car accident,” Dr. Reed explains. “Do you have any memory of it?”

Shona shakes her head no but Dr. Reed doesn’t look surprised. She squeezes Aine’s hand and thinks about the ring around her finger and tries to calculate how many years she’d expect it to take for Aine to get married.

“You were put in a medically-induced coma to help you recover from the brain damage the accident caused. There was a lot of pressure and swelling, but it’s a great sign that you’re awake already,” Dr. Reed pauses and looks down at something on her chat. “I’d like to run a few more tests before we talk about the next steps.”

“But what about -” Aine waves her hand vaguely around her face like that means absolutely anything and Shona rolls her eyes.

“Head trauma can cause memory loss,” Dr. Reed says. “And sometimes that can extend further back than we’d expect.”

“What year is it?” Shona asks.

“No,” Dr. Reed says. “It’s April 21st, 2022.”

“Wait, sorry -” Shona frowns. “That’s not - seven years?”

“It’s likely that your memories will come back,” Dr. Reed offers. “At least - some of them and we can’t put a timeline for how long it will take or which ones will come back. But we do find that once you settle back into the swing of your current life, it’ll almost trigger what you remember.”

“Okay,” Shona nods. “That’s - okay.”

“What about -” Aine starts but she stops when she glances back over at Charlotte. Charlotte smiles when she catches Shona staring at her, but it isn’t her real smile, Shona can still remember enough to know that, and she’s gripping onto the door handle too tightly.

The doctor gets up to leave and Charlotte asks something too quiet for Shona to hear. Shona holds on tighter to Aine’s hand when she tries to stand up, “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I have to - talk to the doctor first,” Aine says.

“Why isn’t Vish here?” Shona asks.

“Oh fuck,” Aine groans. “I forgot that 2015 was the Vish year.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Aine says. “Just - rest, okay? I’ll be back, I have to go make sure that Charlotte’s okay, anyway, love you, don’t fucking move from this bed.”

-

Charlotte doesn’t come back into the room until Shona’s back from her CT scan. She hates CT scans more than anything and MRIs aren’t much better. She pokes at the bandage over where they took her blood and tries to remember the names of the tests the nurses said they were doing when she asked so she can Google it later. She met so many different doctors that she barely remembers her answers which feels too fucking ironic. Aine said she had to leave to go check on someone, but remembered at the last minute that Shona doesn’t know who her husband is.

Shona saw Charlotte hover outside her room before she was dragged away for her MRI but she hasn’t talked to her since the first second she woke up and it’s pissing her off. She pushes cold macaroni around her plate and glares when Charlotte walks in.

“Where did you disappear to?” Shona asks.

Charlotte shrugs. She tied her hair off her face and changed clothes. The ring is still on her finger and Shona scowls at it.

“How are you feeling?” Charlotte asks. She sits down in the chair beside the bed and Shona shifts up more.

“Grand,” Shona drawls. “Who did you marry?”

“The doctors think we shouldn’t - shock you, with anything right now,” Charlotte says.

“Did you marry someone famous or what?” Shona asks. She can’t think of anyone Charlotte would’ve married. “Please tell me it’s not Helen.”

“It isn’t.”

“Celeste?” Shona makes a face. She likes Celeste, but the idea of her marrying Charlotte makes something acidic burn through Shona’s bloodstream.

“No,” Charlotte says. “Shona -”

“Fine,” Shona frowns. “Who did Aine marry then?”

“That, you’ll find out soon,” Charlotte promises. “I think - you’re going to stay with them for a bit first, if that’s okay with you.”

“Do I even have a choice?”

“Shona -” Charlotte sighs. “I just - we want you to be okay, and this is a lot, and it’s - better, if you stay with them.”

“Okay,” Shona says. “But you have to promise me that you’ll tell me everything eventually, okay? I can’t - I’m not restarting my life again.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte nods. “I promise.”

-

“What happened with Vish?” Shona asks.

The sun is out and Shona borrowed Charlotte’s sunglasses to walk outside with Aine. She feels better and the doctors are expected to clear her the next day. She keeps trying to replay her life in her mind, but nothing after 2015 has come up. She remembers the first day Vish kissed her but not when they must’ve broken up. The look on Aine’s face when Shona dropped her off at rehab easily comes up but she can’t picture how happy she was when she got married. Everything is blurry and tangled together, she isn’t sure of the sequence of events or how the current version of herself feels about anything.

“You dumped him,” Aine says.

“And that’s it?” Shona presses.

“No,” Aine shrugs. “But I can’t - it was a lot, Sho.”

“Telling me the truth will make this a lot easier,” Shona says. “All I remember is not wanting to marry him and a bunch of sourdough.”

“You never wanted to marry him,” Aine says. “You just - you’ll remember, okay? But the doctors said that we shouldn’t tell you everything and it’s better for you if you remember on your own.”

“Fine,” Shona nods. “How long have you been married?”

“Three years,” Aine says. “After Richard, I didn’t - I didn’t date anyone for a year, like my therapist suggested in the first place. Brad moved out and tried things with Emma, I got a different roommate and started a new business with James, and then - I don’t know. Brad dumped Emma and -”

“Oh my God, you married Brad?” Shona stops walking.

“You like him,” Aine protests. “He’s - he’s really great.”

“I’m sure he is,” Shona says. “You’re happy?”

“Yeah,” Aine grins. “There’s - well, I can’t exactly hide a child, so -”

“You have a kid?” Shona closes her eyes.

“Yeah,” Aine says. “He’s adorable and somehow he thinks you’re the coolest person around, so he’s -”

“How old?” Shona swallows.

“Almost three,” Aine says. “You’ll meet him soon. He’s missed you.”

Shona nods. She gets why they don’t want to tell her everything. If Aine’s life is overwhelming, her own would drown her, and she starts walking again. Aine is married with a kid. Charlotte is married to someone Shona can’t remember. Shona doesn’t want to know how her own life compares, if she’s happy or not. She doesn’t know if anyone would know if she wasn’t.

Aine grabs her hand and stays quiet. She shows her pictures later, when Shona is sitting cross legged on a hospital bed with Aine leaning across her to scroll through her phone. The kid is cute, with a wide smile and Brad’s eyes, and Shona cries when Aine gets to the pictures of Shona holding him when he was a newborn, his entire body swallowed up in blankets. Aine doesn’t even tease her for it and Shona has to ask for his name and feels worse about it, another missing piece that doesn’t feel like it slots back into place when Aine tells her. There’s more recent pictures too, Shona lying on the floor across from him with piles of toys surrounding them, a cropped picture of Shona beside someone, her hand on their thigh with Ben asleep against Shona’s calves.

“Tomorrow,” Aine says. “Charlotte will pick you up and Ben’s got an entire day planned for you.”

“Okay,” Shona nods. Aine hugs her before she leaves and Shona lies on top of the sheets, unable to fall asleep but not able to think either.

-

Charlotte talks with one of the doctors for fifteen minutes before they leave, Shona glaring through the glass panel like an increase of intensity is going to improve her hearing.

“What did the doctor say?” Shona asks.

“There’s a concussion specialist they want you to see,” Charlotte says. Shona isn’t sure if she’s lying. The hallways are mostly deserted. Shona thinks she’d be fine to walk, but she doesn’t want to complain. Charlotte seems the most flustered out of everyone. Shona finds Aine easy to read, she’s still her sister even with a secret husband, but she doesn’t remember the details of her relationship with Charlotte.

“How fun,” Shona mumbles. She doesn’t know how to talk to Charlotte anymore, it’s so easy to say the wrong thing, and Charlotte isn’t great at hiding emotions.

“Are you staying?” Shona asks. She gets out of the chair as soon as Charlotte rolls to a stop. Charlotte’s car isn’t familiar, but it’s as clean as expected. She climbs into the passenger’s seat and digs through the centre console like there somehow might be a clue inside. She finds nothing but loose change, old receipts, and hand sanitizer.

“Staying?” Charlotte repeats.

“Tonight,” Shona says. “Aine said Brad’s making dinner and -”

“I don’t know,” Charlotte says. “Maybe.”

“You could bring your wife,” Shona offers.

Charlotte laughs, “She can’t make it.”

“Right,” Shona says. She doesn’t know what’s funny about it. She doesn’t think wanting to be around Charlotte is new, but there’s an intensity to it that freaks her out. There’s an imbalance to every conversation that’s obvious, Charlotte knows the truth and Shona doesn’t, but she can’t help but feel needy, like Shona expected them to be closer than they are.

The rest of the drive is quiet. Charlotte pulls up to a house that isn’t at all what Shona expected. There’s a basketball hoop off the side of the driveway and a bike helmet tucked under the front bush.

“Ready?” Charlotte asks.

“No,” Shona mumbles. She thinks of Ben’s sweet face and the way she can only remember him in pictures.

“I think he missed you more than anyone,” Charlotte says.

“Not this me,” Shona says.

“You aren’t that different,” Charlotte shrugs. “You’re still -” She stops, knocking her head back against the seatrest. “He still loves you.” She smiles and Shona knows she hasn’t seen a real smile since she woke up. Charlotte undoes her seatbelt. She looks towards the front door and sees it slightly open, Brad’s head appearing and then Ben’s. “He’s coming to get you,” Charlotte says. She loves the kid. She doesn’t know if Aine warned him about Shona, if there’s any way to tell a toddler that Shona doesn’t remember anything. Her being Aunt Charlotte is easily explainable anyway, she’s around enough and Shona accepted them being close better than Charlotte thought she would.

Shona pushes the car door open and Ben sprints towards her. She bends down and Ben grins at her, stumbling into her arms. Shona hugs him and Ben lets her for a few beats before squirming away, grabbing her hand and tugging her inside instead. He’s babbling already and Charlotte knows Shona’s mentally comparing him to Aine and the pieces she remembers of Brad.

“Hey,” Brad says. “How are you doing?”

Charlotte shrugs. She can’t make herself take the ring off and she threaded Shona’s through a long chain around her neck. She isn’t anything. She’s constantly nauseous and she can’t sleep in their bedroom without Shona. The couch isn’t comfortable and she needs to set up the guest room but it feels too much like admitting defeat. “I’ll be fine,” Charlotte says.

“She’ll remember,” Brad says. “She has to.”

-

They don’t give her back her phone.

Aine presents her with a new one, already opened and pre-loaded with Charlotte, Aine, Eileen and Brad’s phone numbers. There’s nothing else on it and Shona doesn’t remember her password. She can’t reset it because she can’t get into her email account without her old phone number and she scowls at Aine.

“Mammy wants to see you,” Aine says. “She’ll probably show up in a week or so, but you should Facetime her later.”

“Maybe,” Shona says. She will because Eileen is more likely to forget that Shona doesn’t remember most of her life.

“I’ll call her with you,” Aine says.

“So you fixed things with her?” Shona asks. Aine’s guest room is freezing. Shona tugs the blankets tighter around her shoulders and swipes open a text thread to Charlotte. Nobody will let her work and Ben goes to preschool three days a week. Aine and Brad alternate staying home with her but Brad is a better liar than Shona expected. They mostly bake and go for walks. She likes him, likes the easy way he grins when he thinks about Aine, the simple way he chirps her about plates and Ben’s outfits, the way Ben slumps across both of them when they watch TV after dinner.

Shona is the outsider, the one who doesn’t quite fit in, even if she knows she loves all of them and they love her. There’s something missing and Shona can’t decide if it’s the lack of memories specifically, or if they’re missing someone.

“Yeah,” Aine shrugs. “It’s better. I’m her favourite one because I came through with a kid first.”

“Fuck off,” Shona mumbles. “You got married first too.”

Aine nods, too quickly, but Shona checks the new message from Charlotte. “Yep,” Aine says. “Definitely got married first.”

“Charlotte thinks I can go back to work soon,” Shona says.

“Charlotte thinks you can start working from her house soon,” Aine corrects. “You’re not going back to the office yet.”

“Close enough,” Shona says. “My brain is going to atrophy from doing nothing.”

“You need rest,” Aine says, in her mum voice that makes Shona feel uncomfortable and calm in equal measures. “You can probably move in with Charlotte soon, if you really wanted to. I know a 6am Ben wakeup call every morning can be a lot.”

“Wouldn’t Charlotte’s wife have an issue with that?” Shona asks.

“I don’t think so,” Aine says.

“So I’m friends with her?”

“Yeah,” Aine shrugs. “I don’t think - her and Charlotte are going through things, right now.”

“Things,” Shona repeats.

“Yep,” Aine says.

“I don’t get any more detail?” Shona asks.

“Nope,” Aine grins.

-

Charlotte still sleeps on the couch. She can’t bring herself to sleep in their bedroom and their guest room has become a dumping ground for all the baby stuff they’ve started to buy. Eventually, the plan is for Shona to move back in, and for Charlotte to stay in the basement. She’s looking forward to it and dreading it in equal measure, Shona back in her house - their house, but not the Shona who’s in love with her.

Charlotte presses her hand against her stomach. She isn’t showing yet. She isn’t close to showing but she has no idea what she’s supposed to do when she is. It took them so long to get pregnant, long enough that she thinks they were close to giving up, and she doesn’t want to think about going through it alone.

Aine is supposed to come over to help her pack up any evidence that will throw Shona off. She remembers Shona seven years ago, in the middle of her relationship with Vish, cranky and annoyed and confused. Somehow still charming, so easy to fall in love with, but certifiably straight.

Aine lets herself in and Charlotte sits up on the couch. She put all the blankets in the washer because she didn’t want to see Aine’s pity again. Charlotte doesn’t ask if anything’s changed, she thinks that if Shona remembered, if she remembered everything, she’d show up at her front door.

“I can just do it,” Aine offers. “I know this - is worse for you.”

Charlotte shrugs. She rolls off the couch. Aine doesn’t know the extent of it. Charlotte is only four weeks pregnant. She has a doctor’s appointment in a week that she’ll go to alone. “I moved some things already.”

“Okay,” Aine says. “Where are you putting it all?”

Charlotte leads her towards their office. She didn’t think it’d work out, but neither of them work from home that often, and Shona likes having a place that’s just for work. Charlotte prefers the kitchen table that looks out at the backyard, but she stores everything in the bookshelf beside Shona’s.

“I’m going to have to move it somewhere else,” Charlotte says. “She’ll probably start working from here before she goes back to the office, right?”

“Yeah,” Aine says. “She’s already talked my ear off about how important it is that people at work don’t know she’s lost her mind.”

“She doesn’t even know where she works,” Charlotte mutters.

“We should probably tell her soon,” Aine says. “It’s not - surprising, right? That you two started a company together? She seems to remember like - economics terms or whatever.”

“We can tell her tomorrow,” Charlotte shrugs. “I told Julie, but she’ll keep it quiet, and we’ll give her one of the new guys who’ll be too scared to question her.”

Aine picks up one of the frames Charlotte put in a box. It’s one of Charlotte's favourite pictures, from when Eileen and Brad’s mum got the idea that they wanted more professional pictures and less ones taken on iPhones. They’d only been married for a year by then, Ben on his way, and it was one of the outtakes, where Piper was the only one smiling for the camera. Aine is scowling at Brad who is grinning back at her. The parents are standing at the back, Piper in front of Brad’s dad, and looking the other way. Eileen and Cecily look like they’re in serious conversation and Poppy is staring back at Brad and Aine, her wife with her arm around Poppy’s shoulders, and is looking at the camera, halfway to a smile. Charlotte and Shona look lost in their own world. Charlotte doesn’t know how else to phrase it - Shona is smirking at her, pleased with herself and Charlotte looks smitten. It’s obvious, even if most of her face is hidden, turned away.

“I swear if we show her this, she’d remember,” Aine mutters.

“Or she’d be so freaked out by it, she wouldn’t believe it was true,” Charlotte says.

“Charlotte -”

“You remember what it was like, don’t you?” Charlotte asks. “She didn’t - it took us years, Aine, and she’s - she thought she was still with Vish.”

“Yeah,” Aine frowns. “I don’t - she hasn’t remembered anything yet.”

“I figured,” Charlotte says.

“She misses you,” Aine says. “She wants to move back in with you.”

“As friends,” Charlotte says.

“You’re still her favourite,” Aine shrugs. “I - uh, kinda told her that you and your wife are having problems?”

“Funny,” Charlotte sighs.

“She’s jealous of your wife,” Aine says. “Even if she doesn’t realize she is and…doesn’t know that she’s jealous of herself.”

“I’m not getting my hopes up,” Charlotte says. “I was thinking she could stay in our actual bedroom and maybe - that’ll trigger memories or something.”

“Sure,” Aine shrugs. She starts heading towards the stairs and Charlotte follows her. She went through the room already, but she figured it’d be less obvious if they replaced the pictures instead of taking them down and leaving the screws up. She found old nature prints in the basement, a waterfall, a giraffe, a meadow of flowers. She hid the book of baby names and Shona’s current knitting project. She switched the bedding and cleared out her side table.

“Charlotte,” Aine says, quieter. “She’s never going to be able to forget you.”

“She already did,” Charlotte says. “It’s - I’ll be fine.” The nausea hits her quickly, this time, and she’s barely into the bathroom before she’s heaving. Aine follows her, hand gentle against her back, and Charlotte sighs, sinking down onto the floor.

“Charlotte,” Aine repeats.

“I can’t talk about it,” Charlotte mumbles. She doesn’t know if Aine thinks it’s a stress reaction to her wife losing her memory or if she’s guessed that she’s pregnant. Either way, Charlotte isn’t going to talk. She’ll go see the doctor on Monday and help Shona move in afterwards and pretend that she can handle the situation.

“Okay,” Aine sighs. “Okay.”

-

“Are you sure your wife is fine with this?” Shona asks.

“Yeah,” Charlotte says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Where is she?” Shona pushes. She walks around the house like she’s an animal that got moved to a new zoo. Charlotte hates every second of it but tries to keep her expression neutral. They argued for weeks about the colour of the living room walls. Shona won but compromised on the wooden dining room table. Charlotte didn’t originally want a TV in their bedroom but now she loves falling asleep half-way through whatever movie Shona picked on a Saturday night.

“Out of town,” Charlotte says.

Shona scowls at her. It’s so familiar, Charlotte’s chest aches, and she smiles. “Do you not have a cat?” Shona asks.

“She’s hiding,” Charlotte shrugs. “Probably in our bed, or - your bed, now.” She heads upstairs and Shona follows her. She frowns, walking into the master bedroom, “You’re letting me sleep here?”

“The guest bed sucks,” Charlotte says.

“Charlotte, I’m fine. I don’t need -”

“Please don’t fight me on this,” Charlotte says. The room isn’t anything special and without the pictures on the wall, it really could be any other room. Charlotte knows Shona would’ve found it weird that Charlotte had pictures of her in her bedroom, even if they were barely suggestive of anything more than friendship. She hopes that the bathroom with the blue tiles in the shower will remind Shona of the weeks they spent doing the renovation themselves. Or that she’ll walk into the closet where Charlotte had to get rid of half of Shona’s clothes so she wasn’t suspicious about why all her things were over and think of how there’s an entire shelf of clothes they share.

“Okay,” Shona says.

The cat sneaks out of the closet and Shona grins, bending down and leaning back against the bed. Butter walks up to her, immediately cuddling up to her legs, and Charlotte swallows. “She’s cute,” Shona hums.

“Yeah,” Charlotte nods. Her throat is caving in on itself and she doesn’t know how to handle Shona in their house when she doesn’t realize it’s theirs.

“Butter, right?” Shona asks. She grins, incredibly proud of herself, and Charlotte nods again. You picked the name, she wants to say but she can’t. She sits down beside her and fights the urge to grab Shona’s hand. Shona was so sure and so excited that Charlotte would get pregnant this time. Charlotte kept teasing her about not having naming rights after naming their cat Butter. The doctor said everything about the pregnancy looked great. She gave her a cheat sheet for foods to avoid and micronutrients to seek out. Charlotte bought supplements at the pharmacy afterwards and drank a smoothie on her way home. The baby is real but Shona’s memories aren’t. Charlotte can’t make the two facts fit and she stands up suddenly, sways a bit from the rush to her head.

“Are you hungry?” Charlotte asks.

Shona stares up at her, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Charlotte nods. “I was thinking we’d just order in tonight.”

“Sounds good,” Shona shrugs.

They eat on the couch. Butter is louder than she should be in the kitchen and Shona seems amused. She flips through channels like she always does, settling on some TV show about a vet in Alaska. They’ve seen the episode before but Shona doesn’t remember it. She laughs at the same spot and makes a nearly identical comment to when an owl lands on a kid’s head. Charlotte wants to run away. It feels like she’s trapped in a time loop, but the ending is never going to make her happy.

Shona cleans up afterwards, seems to remember the layout of the kitchen even if she doesn’t seem aware of it. Charlotte leans back against the sink and watches. “You can start working again soon, if you want.”

“God yes,” Shona says. “Tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” Charlotte says. “We - you don’t work at Capital Asset anymore.” Shona closes the dishwasher with her hip and raises an eyebrow, “Then where?”

“We started our own company,” Charlotte explains. “A while ago. It’s - a different type of wealth management thing. We called it -”

“Trust Together,” Shona fills in. She grins again and Charlotte wants to kiss her. She digs her fingers into the skin of her forearm and nods, “Yeah.”

“You’re making me work from home though, right?” Shona sighs.

“At first,” Charlotte says. “There’s - an office here you can use.” It’s mostly empty now. Shona’s home office was never as neat as it was at work. Charlotte organized everything into different bins and brought them into the basement. She left her laptop but created a new account on it, changed the password on Shona’s actual one in case she remembered. There’s so many things on it that would reveal too much, bookmarks about pregnancy and parenting, a deeply organized group of photo albums, email newsletters from the caterers and florists they used for their wedding, texts to each other, lists of doctors office and IVF treatment centres. It’s too much.

“Okay,” Shona shrugs.

“Julie’s going to stop by, she’s - basically you’re favourite,” Charlotte says. “She knows everything that - you should know, right now.”

“Does she know who your wife is?” Shona asks.

“Why do you care so much about my wife?” Charlotte sighs.

“You’re my best friend,” Shona says. She doesn’t know why the idea of Charlotte being married makes her feel like she’s burning up. The short list of people she thought it was is already completely scratched out. The secretiveness of her makes Shona wary. It has to be someone she hates, but she can’t think of any woman she can’t stand. “I just - I want to know.”

“She won’t be back for a while,” Charlotte says. “She’s -”

“You’re separated,” Shona says.

“Something like that,” Charlotte shrugs.

“I’m sorry,” Shona says.

“It’s fine,” Charlotte bites down on the inside of her cheek. “You should sleep, if you want to start working tomorrow.”

Shona rolls her eyes but she smiles, just a bit, “Sure, boss.”

-

Charlotte doesn’t hover as much as Shona expects her to. She introduces her to Julie and hangs around until Shona asks Julie about Charlotte’s wife and Julie smirks, ignoring the question to ask Shona about something boring.

Brad shows up at lunch, sitting with her in the backyard. It’s unreasonably warm out and Shona tucks her legs under her. Julie had to go back to meet Charlotte at work for some meeting Shona isn’t cleared for yet. Shona thinks Brad is the closest to cracking. Ben seemed to love Charlotte as much as he loves Shona, so Shona will try him next, but she feels weird trying to get information out of a two year old.

“So,” Shona starts. “Tell me about Charlotte’s wife.”

Brad laughs, “Well, she’s really annoying.”

“Yeah?” Shona feels smug about it and then feels guilty. She wants Charlotte to be happy, but the idea of her having a wife makes her irrationally emotional. “Does Aine like her?”

“Yes,” Brad sighs. “Sho, stop thinking about Charlotte’s wife.”

“I don’t get why it’s a fucking national secret,” Shona mutters. “Was I at her wedding?”

“Of course you were,” Brad says. “You were very involved.”

“Was I the maid of honour?” Shona asks. “Or was it fucking Celeste.”

Brad grins and puts the pickle that came with his sandwich on Shona’s plate. She scowls at it, she remembers that both of them like pickles where Aine and Charlotte don’t. “Don’t try to soften me up to avoid the question.” She eats the pickle anyway and Brad laughs, “I think you need to stop thinking about Charlotte’s wedding.”

“It feels important,” Shona mutters. She thought work would get rid of the underlying itch under her skin, how nothing feels horribly wrong, but something is off. She likes Julie and they fell into an easy working rhythm once Shona gave up on questioning her. Charlotte’s house was more instinctual to her than Aine’s was, but she isn’t surprised by it. If she pushes through what she can remember, Charlotte was always important. She can make out the details of her old apartment, the dark green walls of her living room, and how her old cat was named Buffy and hated the kitchen. She remembers Vish disliking Charlotte and the feeling being mutual, but the link between them is blurry.

Shona dreams a lot more now even if more often they’re nightmares. She’ll be walking down an endless all white hallway in a wedding dress and all of a sudden dark brown doors will appear and burst open. She can’t stop walking. There’s faceless people on either side of the aisle. She notices Aine sitting between Eileen and their father, but as soon as she looks at him, he crumbles into nothing and nobody else notices he’s gone. Sometimes, Vish is waiting for her and his smile stretches his face unnaturally. Shona tries to stop her feet from moving but they aren’t under her control. Sometimes, Charlotte is waiting for her but as soon as Shona stands in front of her, her own body fractures, her face disappearing and leaving behind nothing but an empty mask. Charlotte screams and Shona always wakes up right after.

“You’ll remember, Sho,” Brad says, but just like every other time someone’s promised her, it falls flat.

-

“We used to babysit Ben once a month,” Charlotte says. “At least.”

“We as in you and me or you and your wife?” Shona asks.

“My wife,” Charlotte sighs. She tenses, the way she always does when Shona brings up her wife. Shona thinks it’s unfair that she doesn’t even know her name and has to settle for calling her Charlotte’s wife in her head. “You did too, obviously, but - I don’t know, Aine and Brad are big believers in scheduled date nights.”

“And you’re not?” Shona pushes.

Charlotte shrugs, “I don’t have a kid.” Her voice goes funny at the end and Shona twists to look at her. They haven’t let her drive yet and she doesn’t exactly miss it, but something feels off about her sitting in the passenger’s seat with Charlotte.

“But you want one,” Shona says.

“I - yeah,” Charlotte sighs. “I don’t really want to talk about this.”

Shona hears the unspoken with you and slumps back in her seat. She doesn’t know what else to say. Everyone is keeping secrets from her and she can’t exactly blame them, even if she believes that being handed a textbook on the last seven years of her life would be more beneficial than waiting for her brain to reboot.

Ben is sitting on the porch waiting for them when they pull up and he waves, his backpack almost dwarfing him. He rambles as soon as they’re close enough, peppering Charlotte with questions about a new book series he’s reading. Charlotte grins at him and answers and suddenly Shona can remember the two of them in a tiny bed that must belong to Ben, his hair not as long and his features less defined, his eyes slipping shut as Charlotte reads to him. She’s better at the voices than Shona is, better at exaggeration and disbelief, and Shona blinks out of it.

“We’ll pick him up at like eleven tomorrow?” Aine asks.

“Right, yeah,” Shona says. She assumes the lecture she missed was full of things Charlotte already knows. She isn’t as worried about taking care of a kid as she expected to be and she turns to look at the car, surprised to see Ben already buckled in the backseat with Charlotte turned around to talk to him.

“You good?” Aine asks.

“Yeah,” Shona nods. “Have fun.”

-

Ben likes to lie perpendicular across Shona and Charlotte’s legs, with Butter stretched out with him. He keeps his head on Shona’s thighs with his elbow digging into her shins. He’s lucky he’s adorable and Shona can’t believe he’s still awake, mumbling comments about whatever cartoon is still playing. The show isn’t familiar but Ben lying across both of them is.

“We’ve done this before,” Shona says.

“What?” Charlotte blinks.

“This exact situation,” Shona says. “Right?” She shakes her head when Charlotte opens her mouth again. “You have to tell me the truth.”

“I mean, we have,” Charlotte shrugs.

“And your wife doesn’t care?” Shona presses.

“We’re watching Dinosaur Train,” Charlotte says. “Not -” She sighs, “Why are you obsessed with my wife?”

“Does she hate me?” Shona asks. “Is this why all of you refuse to tell me who she is?”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Charlotte says.

“Who?” Ben asks. He sits up again and grins, he acts so much like Aine, it loses something inside of Shona.

“Nobody,” Charlotte says, just as Shona says, “Charlotte’s wife.”

Ben frowns at them, “Hate isn’t a good word.”

“Right, sorry bud,” Shona nods. Ben shrugs and rolls onto his back, crossing his ankles. Butter shifts around him and Shona smiles. “Do you even talk to her?”

“Yes,” Charlotte mutters. “Do you need new hobbies?”

“Have I ever had hobbies?” Shona huffs.

“You knit, now,” Charlotte says.

“No, I definitely don’t,” Shona says. “That’s - my Mam knits.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte nods. “You’re very involved in her knitting club’s group chat. There’s been a lot of scandals recently and they’re all worried about you.”

“You’re saying that a bunch of my friends now are eighty year old women who knit,” Shona says.

“Yes,” Charlotte grins. “Eileen’s been texting me updates, apparently they’re all knitting you a sweater right now.”

“You talk to my Mam?” Shona asks.

“She’s worried about you,” Charlotte says. “She knows you’re staying with me.”

“Right,” Shona nods. “Am I a better knitter than her at least?”

“I am absolutely not the judge of that,” Charlotte says. “But you’re pretty good.”

“I don’t believe you,” Shona scowls. “What have I ever knitted?”

“My hat!” Ben yells. “It’s green.” His voice trails off and Shona is jealous by how quickly he drops into sleep.

“I knitted him a hat?” Shona asks.

“Yeah,” Charlotte says. “Not your best work, but he loves it.” She grabs her phone off her side table and swipes through a bunch of pictures. Her face goes funny and Shona frowns, “Charlotte - I don’t, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Charlotte says. She holds the phone up, “Here’s your hat.”

Ben is pouting in the picture. The hat is slipping and Charlotte’s chin is hooked over his head, the blue pompom facing sideways. Charlotte is also wearing a hat, one that seems to match, but in reverse colours.

“I made you matching ones?” Shona asks. She reaches to swipe through the pictures and Charlotte freezes, half-pulling away before staying still. Shona blinks up at her then stares back down. The next picture is Shona, Aine, and Ben in Charlotte’s kitchen. Ben is standing on the kitchen counter, with Shona’s hand’s supporting him, and Aine laughing beside them. He’s holding a handful of cheese that’s dropping down midpicture, landing in a mess of pizza dough. Shona swipes again and it’s a picture of herself flipping off the camera. Her glasses are crooked across her nose and she’s twisted up on Charlotte’s couch.

“Shona,” Charlotte says, quietly. She clicks her phone off and puts it back beside her.

“You went to Ireland with me,” Shona blurts. “Ben - he was there, and he was a baby and he slept the entire train ride and Eileen thought we should’ve flown instead and we - we saw a humpback whale, right?”

“Yeah, Sho,” Charlotte nods. “Aine nearly fell off the boat.”

“And she kept calling Mammy every twenty minutes because she didn’t trust her with Ben all alone,” Shona grins, she can keep going, and she does, “When we got back, he was asleep with Mammy on the chair and Aine cried and took like fifty pictures of them, and it was her home screen for months.”

Shona sits up and pushes her hand through Ben’s hair. His nose scrunches up and relaxes again, breathing deep and even. “Is he sleeping here?”

“He normally does,” Charlotte shrugs. “I can bring him downstairs if you want.”

“No,” Shona shakes her head. “You can - stay here too, if you want.”

-

Ben sleeps in longer than Shona expects. She wakes up first, Charlotte curled against her with her face pressed against Shona’s chest, her body pointed away so they form a triangle that Ben stretches out in.

Shona dips her head down to stare at her, the angle awkward, but she brushes Charlotte’s hair out of her face, and feels her mouth stretch into a smile. Jealousy hits her before anything else, wondering if Charlotte wakes up with her wife like this when they watch Ben together. She grits her teeth and stays still.

“Good morning,” Charlotte mumbles and Shona stops moving her hand. Charlotte smiles, soft and sweet, and Shona wants to kiss her. She pulls away entirely as soon as the thought clarifies in her head, not looking back at Charlotte or Ben as she stands up and walks towards the dresser.

“Good morning,” She repeats, too late, when Charlotte is lying on her back and staring back at her. She tugs a hoodie on and sighs. Her head is throbbing but it has been on and off since the accident. She doesn’t worry about it as much as she probably should. Everything physical seems like a simple fix, she goes to physical therapy a few times a week but most of her injuries are focused in her upper body, a stiff neck and a shoulder than pinges in some configurations. Mostly, she’s fine. The doctors don’t even seem concerned with the concussion and the memory loss is something they’re either not equipped to deal with or have decided is out of their hands.

Shona is meant to avoid screens but not restrict herself too much activity wise. Outdoor walks are highly recommended, as well as limiting her sugar intake. Shona mostly follows their advice. She doesn’t like tv shows much anyway, not the way Charlotte does. She likes stretching across the couch with her head in Charlotte’s lap, her face tilted towards her stomach to smell her laundry detergent and her eyes closed, the show briefly making itself known but the plot primarily irrelevant.

It doesn’t occur to her that the memory was something new until she’s standing at the stove, zoning out as Ben rotates his three favourite conversation points, waffles, football, and Butter, who hasn’t been seen yet since she ate. The domesticity of it makes her wary. She puts the flipper down and turns to look at Charlotte, who is sitting up at the island with Ben beside her.

“Are you caught up on The Flight Attendant?” Shona asks.

“You remember The Flight Attendant?” Charlotte grins.

“You’re avoiding the question,” Shona mutters.

“I’m not caught up,” Charlotte says. “You hate it anyway, but still get mad at me if I watch without you.”

“I might have issues with it,” Shona allows. She doesn’t actually remember any of the plot. Something about the CIA maybe, definitely a murder. She turns back to the stove. Butter contorts herself through Shona’s legs and then disappears again. Shona feels like she’s lived this exact same day before.

They take Ben to the park afterwards, walking aimlessly down the street on the way back, and Shona grabs Charlotte’s hand before she realizes her arm is moving. Charlotte doesn’t react right away. Ben is a few steps ahead of them and Shona goes red and slides her hand away. “Sorry.”

Charlotte nods. There’s a twisted look on her face but she snaps out of it, “Hey Benny, want ice cream?”

-

Shona wakes up every morning and expects her memories to be back in her brain, like a movie she could rewatch to get herself caught up. The hope has faded but her neurologists seem pleased with her progress, happy that she remembers Aine’s wedding and the day they officially made Trust Together real. Sometimes, she doesn’t even realize that she has a new memory, and it isn’t always obvious, different scenarios mushed between before head trauma and after. She remembers breaking up with Vish on a Thursday morning when Julie’s left her alone for the first time and Charlotte’s running late on her way home.

It doesn’t come back clearly, but in pieces, little arguments that grow into big fights, and it fades to black when Vish in her mind laughs and bites out Charlotte like it should mean something. She can’t always decide if what she remembers is real or if she’s projecting a life she wants. She tries to picture Charlotte’s wife in her head. She doesn’t remember anyone else Charlotte dated other than Helen.

Shona rolls over in bed and sighs. Sleep isn’t hard to come by but she wakes up feeling like she hadn’t slept at all. The bed feels too big and she wonders if she was dating someone, but if they haven’t shown up yet it couldn’t have been serious. Her body locks up too easily now, like she’s constantly tensing for something. She forces herself to relax which is a contradiction in itself, focusing on breathing deeply and letting her joints rest where they want to. She always thinks about Charlotte when she’s trying not to think about anything. She gives up on bringing her mind back to her breathing and ends up thinking about Charlotte kissing her instead.

The office is familiar. So is Charlotte beaming at her and rambling at how good she was. Shona flushes, in her head and in real life, and then Charlotte is stepping forward. Shona is impressed at her dream-self for not dropping the glass of champagne in her hand. The image in her head is too clear, over-saturated and bright. Charlotte doesn’t say anything when she leans back and Shona doesn’t either, but it’s clear that Shona is the one who leans in the second time.

Shona tries to place when it happened. She’s sure it was a memory, the emotions she felt in the moment repeating themselves in real time, and she sits up again. She could go ask Charlotte. She trusts that Charlotte would tell her the truth, but Shona is terrified that Charlotte will tell her that they had an affair and it was a mistake Charlotte’s working through with her wife. She concentrates on her breathing again, in and out, simple and easy, even if it does nothing to loosen how tight Shona feels.

-

“How’s Charlotte?” Aine asks.

Shona is not a fan of nobody trusting her to be alone. Charlotte has some business dinner that’s important enough where they decide Shona is too much of a risk factor without her memories. She got dropped off at Aine’s place and told she’d be picked up again in the morning. Brad was out with Ben so Shona’s stuck with an Aine who looks at her like she can read her mind.

It’s annoying.

“Fine,” Shona shrugs. “You’d know more than I would.”

“Shona -”

“I think it’s ridiculous that you all refuse to tell me anything about my life,” Shona says. “I don’t know where I actually live, I don’t have access to my own fucking email, none of you trust me alone, and I don’t have context for anything.”

“I know,” Aine says. She looks so much older all of a sudden that Shona feels dizzy. She’s still Aine, but she’s self-assured and less prone to panic. Shona feels like the one who is constantly on edge and she hates it. “The doctors said -”

“I don’t care what they think,” Shona sighs. “I just want to remember.”

“You will,” Aine says. “And if you don’t, we’ll figure it out, but it hasn’t been that long yet.”

“It’s been long enough,” Shona says.

“You’re remembering some things,” Aine says and Shona flushes, “Nothing that’s helping.”

Aine grins, “But what did you remember?”

“When we went to Ireland,” Shona shrugs. “With Ben and you freaking out every five minutes.”

“I don’t think you’re remembering correctly,” Aine says.

“I’m positive I did,” Shona says. “Charlotte was there too.”

“She was,” Aine says and waits. She looks so hopeful that Shona can’t stand to disappoint her again. She knows everyone is waiting to get the real her back, someone they don’t have to pick and choose what they can say around. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” Shona admits. “But it’s not - relevant. It’s all a mess and I have no idea how to put things in order, but - everything is so tied to…” Shona closes her eyes. Her pulse is obvious and she hates being aware of how fragile life is. She remembers nothing about the crash. She doesn’t even know where it happened, if she was driving or walking or biking.

“Charlotte?” Aine says.

“No,” Shona mutters. “I’m just - tired.”

-

“I want to see your face,” Shona says. Charlotte whines, an echoing sound pitched high in her throat, but rolls over anyway. Shona pushes her hair out of her face and rests back on her heels. She feels supercharged, unable to sit still but wanting to stretch the moment out, and she stares at Charlotte, the dip and rise of her chest and stomach as she breathes, then lower, where she’s spread open and waiting, so wet Shona can see it against her thighs.

The skin between Charlotte’s breasts always flushes darker than everywhere else and Shona bends down to press her mouth against the inside curve of her chest. Shona isn’t aware of anything that isn’t Charlotte or the repeating throb of her own cunt, but the latter is echoed, pushed back and out of focus. It’s like her point of view is behind herself, where she should have an unencumbered view of Charlotte, there’s fly ways of her own hair in the way, the arch of her shoulder that’s flushed red too. Time slows down and Shona inches up Charlotte’s body, kisses her open and lets herself melt against her. There’s no rush. Shona pulls back and grins, Charlotte laughing up at her, breathless and fond instead of annoyed. Charlotte’s heel taps against Shona’s calf and Shona pushes Charlotte’s legs apart, one hand stretched across her thigh.

“Shona,” Charlotte says. “I thought you wanted to knock me up.”

Shona startles awake in the same bedroom, but she’s alone and achingly wet, her legs squeezing together to try to relieve the ache. It was a dream, but it felt real. She can’t separate the details of it, how it absolutely wasn’t something new, how I thought you wanted to knock me up makes Shona flush all over again, a shiver rolling through her body. The simple way Charlotte listened to her, the warm relaxed press of their bodies, the giddiness that’s still caught in her chest.

Embarrassment hits later, when Shona’s out of the shower and the drying water on her skin makes her shiver. Charlotte is married. Shona can’t remember if they’ve slept together before but she decides the chances are high. She doesn’t like the options she can come up with, that they were together before Charlotte got married or they’ve had an affair. Or maybe they’re in the middle of one and Charlotte showing up at the hospital for Shona was her wife’s last straw.

Shona figures it’ll be easier to find out about Charlotte’s wife than anything else. She refuses to ask Charlotte point blank if they’re having an affair, not when Charlotte can barely look at her without emotion threatening to overwhelm her. Shona will have to move out soon. She doesn’t want to ruin Aine’s family life but Charlotte’s wife is going to come back. Shona can’t imagine her giving up that easily. She tries to act normally, is sweeter with Julie and polite to the intern who still stares at her like Shona is a known serial killer. She gets her work done and doesn’t text Charlotte random updates. She picks up when Aine calls and texts with Eileen, delights at how much her Mam loves emojis and drives her nuts sending unexplainable ones. She cooks dinners without recipes and doesn’t quite remember how she knows what to do. She hangs out with Butter and wonders if it’s too late to take her out on walks. She thinks of Charlotte spread out in the bed Shona sleeps in with her hand sliding down her stomach, teasing. She doesn’t know how to figure out if something is a dream or a memory.

There’s a new normal that Shona gets used to, working from home and letting Butter climb up onto her lap when she’s listening in on meetings. She doesn’t cross over with Charlotte as much as she expected to and she isn’t sure how close she is to her old role. There’s a slow day where she’s bored and Butter is ignoring her and she calls Charlotte twice before reverting to Aine.

“I have a job you know,” Aine says.

“And a break,” Shona says. “Do you know where Charlotte is?”

“She had an appointment,” Aine says, warily.

“Is she okay?” Shona asks. She spins in her chair.

“She’s fine,” Aine says. “Do you want me to come over?”

“I thought you had a job,” Shona teases. “I’m fine, I just -”

“Miss Charlotte,” Aine fills in.

“Yeah,” Shona shrugs. “Do you like her wife?”

“Shona -”

“Do you?” Shona pushes. She doesn’t know if it matters. There’s a gap in her head that’s feeling less and less likely to be filled and it’s easier to focus on Charlotte’s happiness instead of her own. “She was - Charlotte’s happy, right?”

“Shona,” Aine repeats. “Yeah, she’s happy, but she -”

“Misses her wife,” Shona says. “I know.”

“You should talk to her,” Aine says. “She’ll tell you if you want to know.”

“I’ve been trying,” Shona mutters. It’s mostly true. She argues with Charlotte about work and dinner plans. She folds laundry straight out of the dryer and ignores the look Charlotte gives her. She doesn’t ask about Charlotte’s wife. She wakes up earlier on the weekends and drags the stationary bike up to the main floor so she doesn’t wake Charlotte up. She does a deep dive of Charlotte online, but there’s nothing but her description on their company’s website and a barely used Twitter account. She doesn’t ask more questions about Charlotte wanting kids. She sits beside Charlotte on the couch and fights against the urge to fold herself into Charlotte’s body. She remembers more moments, crying at Aine’s wedding, hiring Julie, meeting Charlotte’s old cat. Nothing is groundbreaking and she adjusts to being stuck in limbo.

-

Shona hears Charlotte argue tiredly with someone on the phone and walks downstairs into the kitchen. Charlotte hangs up, drops her phone against the counter top, and tilts back against it.

“Are you okay?” Shona asks.

“Yeah,” Charlotte nods. “I’m fine.”

Shona hesitates. “Can I hug you?” The question sounds embarrassing as soon as it’s out of her mouth and she flushes, shaking her head. “Sorry, that’s -”

“No,” Charlotte swallows. “I mean - yes, just - come here?”

They’re almost the same height, a fact Shona knew but still finds comforting to have confirmed. Charlotte loops her arms around Shona’s neck and Shona fits hers around her waist. Shona waits for something to click but the furthest she gets is how easy it is to let Charlotte hold her. There’s no memory that’s sparked or clue to be had but Shona doesn’t want to move away.

“Shona,” Charlotte murmurs. There’s a new edge to her voice that Shona thinks she should recognize. She pulls back and keeps her fingers linked behind Charlotte’s back. Her brain goes blank again but it isn’t because of a lack of memory. She kisses Charlotte without thinking about it. She slides her hands up Charlotte’s back and slots her mouth open to match Charlotte’s. She isn’t missing anything in the moment but Charlotte goes still in front of her, suspended like the moment wasn’t supposed to end yet, and Shona blinks, “Charlotte.”

Charlotte’s eyebrows dips and she searches Shona like she’s hoping for proof. Shona knows she doesn’t have it and sighs, “Charlotte -”

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte shakes her head. “I can’t - you don’t remember and there’s so much -” She starts crying and Shona steps forward. She tucks herself against her and Charlotte softens into her.

“I know,” Shona murmurs, even though she has no clue.

-

Shona can’t sleep. She rolls over onto Charlotte’s side of the bed, she’s sure of it, and rests her chin on the back of her hand. The angle makes her neck feel taut but she stays put. She closes her eyes and tries not to think of anything specific.

She sees a flat topped mountain and a bunch of brightly coloured hang gliders dropping towards a beach. A baby elephant stumbling after her mother, Charlotte’s hand slotted against hers, a monkey sprinting through camp, Shona getting her foot stuck in the mosquito net, Charlotte rolling her over and then almost falling off the bed.

She hears fireworks muffled by the window they watch them through, the buzz of a night spent in the middle of the wilderness, Charlotte begging her to touch her, Charlotte shrieking as they speed down white water rapids, an elephant complaining.

She feels sweat drip down her shoulder blades and pool against her back, Charlotte’s mouth against her cunt, the grainy texture of sugar as she eats sweet ice on a beach, the pressure of Charlotte’s hand against her hip.

Shona rolls back over but keeps her eyes closed. She can’t remember where they went or when or why. It’s a half-memory but it’s something and Shona focuses back on Charlotte grinning at her on a beach and it’s easy to fall asleep.

-

Charlotte leaves her alone for longer than a couple of hours on a Saturday. She heads out early in the morning and Shona immediately calls Aine.

“Do you know where Charlotte’s wife went?” Shona asks.

“Have you not talked to her yet?” Aine sighs.

“I tried,” Shona says. She doesn’t like this reversal where Shona is the one floundering but there’s a guilt about it that feels aged. She hates Aine knowing more about her life than she does. She can’t tell her that she kissed Charlotte and Charlotte kissed her back before breaking. “She left this morning.”

“She left?” Aine repeats.

“Yeah,” Shona says. “She’s probably going to see her.” She can’t keep the whine out of her voice and Aine laughs, “I can’t believe you lost all of your memories and you have a crush on her.”

“It isn’t a crush,” Shona says. “She’s married.”

“You should push her on that,” Aine says. “It’s not - when’s your next doctor’s appointment?”

“Monday.”

“Ask them,” Aine says. “Charlotte’s taking you right?”

“Yeah,” Shona says. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“It isn’t my - life,” Aine mutters. The words are clunky falling out of her mouth but there’s a crashing sound in the background and Shona swears Aine is grinning. “Sorry, Ben knocked over a bunch of shit, I have to go.”

“Liar,” Shona sighs. “Love you.”

-

Shona hangs up and immediately heads downstairs. She hasn’t gone down often, only to grab the bike, and wake Charlotte up by knocking on her door and complaining that pancakes were getting cold. There isn’t much to it, a tiny space blocked off for a workout room even if Charlotte mostly swims, and there’s a door beside it that Shona assumes leads to a closet.

Shona walks into the bedroom. The bed has a blue comforter and there’s a book caught under the pillow. Shona sits down and tugs it free. She doesn’t recognize the title or the author, The Rib Joint by Julia Koets, but when she flips through it, it’s her writing on the pages. The highlighter colour changes from pink to yellow to green. The pen stays the same, dark green bleeding onto the pages, and Shona stops randomly. The quote is highlighted in yellow with a curved bracket around the entire paragraph,

When I was with Kate, I didn’t think about the future - partially because I couldn’t imagine a future in which the two of us could be together. But also because I was so present that I wasn’t thinking of the future. In the secrecy of her room, the only thing in the small-town darkness was us.

Shona closes the book. She focuses on a hook on the wall across from her, the only obvious blemish against the pale paint. She can’t remember a past with Charlotte that went further than friendship, but it’s easy to imagine a future. It’s impossible to be present in a moment where she barely exists, where everyone she loves is lying to her because they think it’ll protect her. She doesn’t want Charlotte to come back and tell her that she’s getting back together with her wife. She doesn’t want to think about Charlotte’s wife at all. She smoothes out the cover of the book and when she reaches out to put it on the dresser she notices the picture frame.

The frame itself is dark wood and the picture is in black and white. Shona grabs it and immediately feels like crying. She looks happy. She’s locked on Charlotte who is grinning back, Shona’s back against Charlotte’s front but their heads tilted together. The picture cuts off at their waists and Shona’s hand is curled back towards Charlotte’s head. There’s a ring on her finger that matches the one on Charlotte’s.

Shona lies back on the bed and brings the picture with her. It couldn’t have been too long ago, but she doesn’t know how to date them. There’s no obvious differences, Shona is blonder and Charlotte’s hair is shorter, but it could’ve been recently or it could’ve been years. Her brain can’t make sense of being Charlotte’s wife and not being the other woman. She sits up again and puts the picture back.

There has to be more of them in the house. Charlotte loves pictures. Shona knows it’s true, that Charlotte likes proof of moments and going to art stores to get things professionally framed. Shona remembers Charlotte making her adjust a frame on the wall until it was perfect and suddenly finds it funny that Charlotte is the perfectionist about it. She heads towards the extra room and pushes the door open.

The room is lined with shelves stuffed full with random sports objects and old looking boxes. The floor is cold cement and Shona walks around, digging through boxes where she finds pictures of Charlotte as a baby, old trophies Charlotte won as a kid; soccer, ballet, a maths contest, old calculus and finance textbooks, and old schoolwork Shona must’ve completed before she hit double digits. She finds newer boxes further back, bright blue rubber ones where the lids don’t fit properly.

There’s the contents of her office, paperwork and an old laptop box, a few picture frames with photos of her and Charlotte, smiling on a beach, of Aine and Brad holding Ben between them, of Eileen and Shona’s dad when they were young and happy. She pushes it away and refocuses.

Shona finds what she’s looking for, photo albums and pictures and professional framed prints, her and Charlotte featured in all of them. The box is heavier than she expected, but the basement is freezing, so she lugs it upstairs to Charlotte’s room. She ignores the hope bubbling inside of her, even if the pictures must be proof. She doesn’t know where Charlotte went if Shona’s her wife, if Charlotte went to go vent to Aine or Celeste, if they have new friends now that Shona can’t remember. She drops the box onto the carpet and accidentally terrifies Butter, who growls as she crawls out from under the bed.

Shona sits down against it and Butter crawls up to her, nose at her thigh and digging her paws underneath. Shona scratches behind her ears and thinks about when they got the cat. Ben was with them, she’s sure of it, tiny and afraid but Butter was tiny, half of his size, and she remembers Ben reaching out to pet her and bumping her nose instead. There was a delayed reaction of fear that Butter would fight back but Butter had seemed to accept that Ben liked her and stayed cuddled up against Shona’s thigh, her nose pressing against Ben’s hand until she got bored and wandered in circles around Charlotte instead.

Shona tugs more pictures out of the box. The prints match the size of the ones hung up in the bedroom and Shona aches at the idea of Charlotte switching them out. She finds a photo album of their wedding, but the pictures and notes inside make her body feel out of place like she was transposed into a different universe and she doesn’t fit quite right into the new one. She doesn’t remember any of it. The venue is unfamiliar. She squints at a picture of them eating cake and can’t decipher what kind they chose. Her brain feels twitchy, like the neurons are overworking themselves to try to jump to the right conclusions. She puts the book up on the side table and finds another one. She finds pictures of a safari camp with a family of elephants walking in the empty river below and of Charlotte beaming at her sitting in the back of a truck. There’s pictures of a baby Ben swaddled in her arms in a hospital room and pictures of them all together in front of a massive Christmas tree. She sees blurry pictures of whales jumping out of the water, of Eileen’s thumb blocking half of Shona’s face in a picture of her and Charlotte sitting on a couch, Aine on Brad’s back with Ben holding on tightly to Shona beside them. There’s Butter lying next to a sleeping Ben on a living room floor with Charlotte’s thigh bracketing one side of the picture. An entire envelope of duplicate pictures of Charlotte and Shona, together or apart, some of them suggestive, Shona scowling and still in bed, the blankets tugged high up to her chin with only her bare shoulders visible. Charlotte in a kitchen Shona doesn’t recognize, in a giant shirt that falls to her upper thigh, the sleeves rolled up.

Shona is aware that she’s crying even if it doesn’t feel like a reaction to anything. It all makes sense, if she thinks about it, even if she can’t pinpoint the moment anything changed. She reaches back for the wedding album and flips through it slowly. Charlotte finds her when she’s stuck on the picture of them taken from the back of the venue, the two of them the zenith between both sides of the chairs. Even from far away, their happiness feels palpable, something substantial that tucks itself back behind Shona’s ribcage.

“Shona,” Charlotte frowns. Butter sneaks past her to escape and Shona laughs, wet and rumbling.

“We went to South Africa for our honeymoon, right?” Shona asks. “I wanted to go shark diving but the weather was too shitty each day and they hadn’t been seeing a lot of sharks anyway. Something about killer whales?”

“Yes,” Charlotte says, the one syllable somehow broken into pieces. Shona puts everything back into the box. It doesn’t take that long. She pushes it towards the wall with her foot and stands up. Charlotte is slumped against the doorframe and seems weighed down by something. Shona smiles, the fear is splintered by giddiness.

There are billions of neurons and trillions of synapses in a human brain. It’s impossible to understand all of the connections, to figure out the individual reasons why memories are so fragile, why they get twisted up and lost to time. She can’t explain the order her memories are coming back or how to separate dreams or reality. She doesn’t know who proposed or how they got together but she does know that she’s so relieved that she’s Charlotte’s wife that it’s easy to tug Charlotte away from the door and lead her back towards the bed.

“I’m your wife,” Shona says.

Charlotte nods. Each movement feels delayed and Shona gets the sense Charlotte is waiting for something. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It would’ve freaked you out too much,” Charlotte says. “The doctors said not to -”

“I’ve spent the past few weeks hating your hypothetical wife and hoping she never came back,” Shona says, drily. “And you think I would’ve panicked?”

“Yes,” Charlotte snaps. “I remember what happened then, Shona, you couldn’t - it took us forever to get here and you were still so locked in on marrying Vish to prove something and you didn’t care if it -” She stops talking.

“You kissed me first,” Shona points out. She doesn’t know why it’s important. “After the event, right?”

“Yes,” Charlotte sighs. “But Sho -”

“Do you still want to be with me?” Shona asks. Her fingers are freezing and she tucks them under her legs. The wedding album is still open and she catches Charlotte staring at the picture of them dancing.

“Of course I do,” Charlotte breathes. There’s a stiffness to how she’s holding herself, like she can’t quite believe it’s real, and Shona reaches out to grab her wrist. Charlotte sways into her, lets her body drop, her head coming to rest against Shona’s thigh. It’s an anti-climatic moment for what Shona expected, but she stares down at her wife and feels like something settles.

-

Nothing changes as much as Shona wants it to.

Charlotte still looks at her like she’s a mystery she can’t solve and Shona doesn’t know how to prove that she’s sure of them, even without half her memories. She goes grocery shopping with Charlotte and by the time she’s decided to grab her hand, Charlotte is pushing a cart around. Shona thought they’d be basket people but Charlotte tucks reusable bins on the bottom row and Shona finds it charming.

They go out for dinner alone and it feels closer to an awkward first date than an unquantifiable one with her wife. Shona asks about work and it’s a safer topic, Charlotte updating her on the current expansion project and how they’re meant to be reshuffling their C-suite. Shona grabs her hand when they’re walking back and Charlotte smiles at her, pink cheeks and her nose scrunching up like she’s shy, all of a sudden.

Shona tries to find her ring but can’t, checks everywhere in every room she can think of it being before she caves, asking Charlotte when they’re cleaning up the kitchen.

“I have it,” Charlotte says. “You want it back?”

“Yes,” Shona scowls. “Of course I do.” She scrubs harder at a pan. She thinks they need new ones, but she isn’t used to the induction stovetop either, and she’s been reading up on the differences.

Charlotte steps towards her, hip leaning against the countertop. She tugs the chain out from under her shirt and Shona’s entire body goes warm. “You’ve been wearing it?”

“Yes,” Charlotte sighs. “Where else was I supposed to put it?”

“I don’t know,” Shona mumbles.

“Can I?” Charlotte asks.

Shona nods. The moment shouldn’t feel as romantic as it does, Shona’s hands are wet from dish water and Charlotte has to wait as she washes them. The room smells like the orange soap they use and banana bread that Charlotte put into the oven after she noticed all of their bananas were almost brown. Shona shakes the water off her hands and grabs the dish cloth.

“I proposed to you, didn’t I?” Shona asks. It’s clear as day in her head, Charlotte smiling at her in a different kitchen, amused like she should be surprised at the turn of events but wasn’t. “I had an actual plan, at one of the cabins by the lake, and it was supposed to be - but then I got nervous, and I asked you in the kitchen before we left.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte nods. Her lower lip is pulled into her mouth and there’s a brightness to her eyes that Shona thinks is torn between relief and helplessness. “You beat me to it.”

Charlotte grabs Shona’s wrists and steps closer to her, sliding the ring back onto her finger. She pulls back but Shona catches her hand, slots their fingers together, and flips Charlotte’s momentum so she sways back towards her. Shona pauses, the moment stretching and shrinking back in on itself, until Shona works up the nerve to lean in and kiss her.

Charlotte kisses her back and Shona sinks into her, cups her hand around the back of her head, and feels Charlotte relax into her. She steps closer until their bodies are pressed together and Shona shivers, Charlotte’s thumbs swiping against the sensitive parts of her back.

Shona leans away but keeps their foreheads pressed together, grinning. Charlotte seems wary, like she expects Shona to sprint away, so Shona slips her arms around her and links her fingers together behind Charlotte’s back. The ring feels obvious and she traces over it, smiling again.

“They’re nice rings,” Shona mumbles. She hooks her chin over Charlotte’s shoulder, ducking down a bit, and turning to hide her face against Charlotte’s neck.

“They used to be my parents,” Charlotte says.

“I cried when Miri gave us them, right?” Shona asks.

“Surprised you’re admitting to being a crier,” Charlotte says.

“I’ve seen the wedding photos,” Shona says, drily. “I don’t think I have a leg to stand on here.”

Charlotte laughs. She cried too, Shona knows, even if the memory feels like a stretch too far to reach. She leans away and moves her hands down Charlotte’s back to grab her hands. The timer goes on the oven and Shona sighs, tilts towards her. Charlotte smiles at her, tiny and real, reflected back, and kisses her again before pulling back to take the bread out of the oven.

-

Shona kisses Charlotte again at the midpoint of an episode of The Flight Attendant when she’s already lost interest in the plot. Charlotte kisses her back and sinks into the bed, her hand sliding under Shona’s shirt.

“Shona,” Charlotte says. She drops her head back and Shona digs her elbows into the mattress, “Yeah?”

“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you,” Charlotte says. “You don’t -”

“You aren’t,” Shona scowls. She doesn’t roll away and Charlotte’s fingers shift up and down her back. “I want this, I want - I want to stop waiting for everything to come back.”

“You don’t know if this is what you want,” Charlotte tries.

“Do you really think I’m going to get all of my memories back and not choose you?” Shona frowns.

“No,” Charlotte allows. “But there’s a chance you don’t get any of them back and I don’t want you to feel like you have to feel this way.”

“I want you right now,” Shona says. “Fuck, Charlotte, I keep dreaming about knocking you up and I -” Charlotte freezes under her and Shona sits up. “What’s wrong?”

Charlotte pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and shrugs. Her eyes are filling with tears and Shona reaches over her body to grab her hand and Charlotte laughs, “I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

“When you got hit,” Charlotte says, slower. “You were on your way home and we were going to take the test together.”

“Oh,” Shona blinks. “So we’re having a baby?”

“Yes,” Charlotte says. “If you still want to.”

“Yeah, I do,” Shona says. It’s a relief to feel confident in a decision that’s already made, something that they can’t walk backwards.

Charlotte hardly reacts. She stretches one arm over her head, bent at the elbow, her fingers twisting into her hair. Shona shifts so she’s on her side, her stomach against the edge of Charlotte’s. “Can I touch you?” Shona asks.

There’s still a boundary up and Shona’s going to respect it until she’s sure Charlotte’s knocked down her side of it. Charlotte nods and drops her head to look at her. Shona moves gingerly, pushing up Charlotte’s shirt until it rests under her bra. Charlotte is warm and Shona feels her contract then expand under her hand. She isn’t showing yet but Shona curves her hand around her anyway.

“You can trust me, you know,” Shona says. “I’m still your wife.”

“I know you are,” Charlotte bites. “But I can’t - I didn’t know if you’d still give me a chance, if you didn’t remember all of it.”

“I would,” Shona promises. She brushes her thumb along the divot of Charlotte’s hip. There’s a small scar that’s faded pale against her skin. “I’m remembering more things. I know you got this when you tried to climb out of a lake and caught it on the dock. I remember fighting with you for weeks after I broke up with Vish and we were trying to get the company up and I was still terrified of how in love with you I was. I know you - you wanted to name the baby Nolan but then his initials would be N-O-N, which I think is funny and -”

Charlotte pushes up and kisses her. Shona goes down easily and swings her leg over Charlotte’s thighs. She presses their bodies together and groans. There’s a familiarity that’s ingrained, an ease to kissing Charlotte, an intimacy that feels worn through and comfortable.

“Are you sure?” Charlotte asks.

“Yes,” Shona whines. “I want to fuck you.” She dips lower. She’s in a rush but wants to explore, unsure if she’s moving on an instinct honed through years of being together or if it’s excitement pushing her forward. She finds herself not caring either way, thankful for her lack of nerves, and the ease with Charlotte adjusts to her. She gets Charlotte’s shirt pushed over her breasts and scowls when the clasp is at the back.

Charlotte laughs, unbearably fond, her hand cradled at the back of Shona’s head. Shona doesn’t want to move so she nudges the cups up instead, rolling a nipple between her fingers and looking up to watch Charlotte react. Shona feels absolutely sweet on her and shifts back up to kiss her, pinching her fingers when Charlotte opens her mouth. She wanders lower, scratches her fingers down Charlotte’s stomach, thinks I thought you wanted to knock me up, and feels unreasonably smug.

Charlotte pulls back and catches her look, eyebrows lifting. “I fucked a baby into you” Shona says. She draws her fingers across the edge of Charlotte’s sweats, the material easily slipped past, and cups Charlotte over her underwear. She’s wet and Shona smirks again, resting her cheek against Charlotte’s stomach. The rise and fall of each breath is comforting and Shona rubs over her, the fabric clinging to her folds.

“I missed this,” Shona says. “I missed you.”

“Shona,” Charlotte sighs. She attempts to spread her legs further but the pants restrict her. “Stop teasing.”

Shona shuffles lower. She gets out of the way to tug Charlotte’s pants away, fingers hooking onto her underwear too, and settles back between her legs. She leans left and reaches right, pushes her fingers against Charlotte’s hip and follows the path of her sartorius, down and across her thigh to where her slick is smeared. Shona meets her fingers with her mouth and licks upwards, no longer happy to explore and wait. She feels greedy and excited and free. She spreads Charlotte apart and licks her open.

Charlotte gasps above her and the noise is so familiar Shona feels it sneak inside of her and break her apart. She intimately knows what to do, how to read Charlotte’s reactions, how to get her precisely to the edge before pushing her fingers inside of her to feel her clench around her as she comes. Charlotte’s hand is tighter in Shona’s hair and Shona stares up at her as Charlotte continues to tremble.

“I want you to come again,” Shona murmurs. She feels drunk on Charlotte’s pleasure but anchored by the fact that she’s the one who brought her there. She crooks her fingers up and rubs carefully, a slow shallow movement that makes Charlotte keen. She shifts up and presses her free hand against Charlotte’s clit, sliding over her welty until Charlotte comes again. She crawls up as soon as Charlotte goes still around her, something threatening to burst. She kisses her and Charlotte laughs, overwhelmed and threadbare, and Shona drops her weight over her, her legs parted by Charlotte’s thigh.

“What do you want?” Charlotte asks. Her hands are restless against Shona’s body, but nothing is distracting from the pressure of Shona’s cunt, the reaffirming friction that Shona can control.

“Just let me -” Shona trails off. She kisses Charlotte as she grinds against her, suddenly sure they’ve done this before; Shona perched on Charlotte’s thigh with her hand fucking into her as she makes a mess all over Charlotte’s skin. Shona drops her head, her ear against Charlotte’s. The heat of Charlotte’s body seeps into her and Shona whines, her orgasm taking her by surprise.

“How far along are you?” Shona asks. She doesn’t think she could move if she even wanted to. Charlotte laughs and her fingers step up Shona’s spine, “About nine weeks.”

Shona hums. Her satisfaction is split between the languidness of her body post-orgasm and remembering that Charlotte is pregnant. She drops off Charlotte but stays tucked around her. She’s too hot in her clothes but Charlotte is still naked and she presses her palm against her stomach.

“You’re pregnant,” Shona grins.

“Yes,” Charlotte confirms. She’s sleepy but it’s different from the exhaustion of worry that Shona’s read on her since she woke up. Shona slides down her body to press her cheek against Charlotte’s stomach. She circles her fingers across Charlotte’s skin, smaller loops then bigger ones, watching the tiny hairs on her stomach stand up.

“I love you,” Shona says.

“Are you talking to me or the baby?” Charlotte asks.

“Both,” Shona shrugs.
“You’re insane,” Charlotte sighs, affectionate.
“Maybe,” Shona agrees. Her brain is still a scrambled mess of neuronal misfires and crossed signals, but Shona is sure that she loves Charlotte and Charlotte loves her, and she doesn’t feel like worrying about anything else.
-

“Does Aine know?” Shona asks. “About the baby.”

“No,” Charlotte says. “Or maybe.”

“Maybe?” Shona says. She hops up onto the counter just to receive the look Charlotte gives her. Butter scoots past and swats at her feet before losing interest when Charlotte starts getting her food out.

“She saw me throw up once,” Charlotte shrugs. “She might’ve guessed, but we didn’t talk about it.”

“You were throwing up?” Shona frowns.

“It didn’t last long,” Charlotte says. “A week or so. My mum said she wasn’t sick at all when she had me, so it tracks.”

“Does your mum like me?” Shona asks. She can picture a shadow version of Charlotte, a rounder face, lighter eyes, but she isn’t sure if it’s anything close to the real person.

“Yes,” Charlotte sighs. “She likes you too much.” She moves around the kitchen and Shona is content to sit and watch her. “She wanted to come out,” Charlotte adds. She grabs the box from the cupboard that’s loaded with baking ingredients. They’re making zucchini bread. Shona thinks it’s a stretch, when it’s practically chocolate cake with shredded zucchini involved, shredded so thin that she knows it’s impossible to taste. “After the accident,” Charlotte says. “But we didn’t think - it’d be hard to explain why my mum came to see you, if you didn’t know we were married.”

“How far away is she?” Shona asks. “Miri, right?”

“Yeah,” Charlotte smiles. “Not too far. We should - we can tell them soon, that we’re having a baby.”

“We should,” Shona says. She kicks her heels back against the counter and feels ridiculously smug again, the idea of Charlotte pregnant with their baby, the fact that somehow she got her shit together enough to be deserving of this life. “Next weekend?”

“If you want,” Charlotte says. “Are you going to help me at all?”

“I don’t remember how to bake,” Shona says. She leans back with her arms fully extended and Charlotte rolls her eyes, “You never knew how.”

-

Aine opens the door and Shona smiles, rocking back on her heels. “You know,” Shona says, brushing past her. “It would’ve been so much easier if you told me Charlotte is my wife.”

“You would’ve freaked out,” Aine protests. “You - you almost married Vish that year because you were so - in denial. Sorry that I wanted to protect Charlotte too.”

“I’m just saying,” Shona shrugs. “I think me actively hating her wife was a pretty strong clue.”

“You know,” Aine says. “If I knew that losing your memory would make you immediately accept being gay, I would’ve hit you over the head myself when you were about to marry Vish.”

“I married her without bodily harm,” Shona scowls. “I figured it out.”

“Glad it only took you weeks instead of months this time,” Aine hums. Shona follows her into the living room. Aine nudges toys away from the couch with her foot and then sits down, curling into the side. Shona settles into the middle, remembers nights with Vish to her left and then Charlotte, Shona moulded against her with Aine slumping towards them too.

“Charlotte’s pregnant,” Shona blurts.

“Yeah?” Aine grins. “Good work, Sho.”

“Shut up,” Shona says. She’s sure she can’t wipe the smugness off her face, she’s been unbearable since she found out, even if Charlotte’s been her only witness. “You knew already.”

“I wasn’t sure,” Aine shrugs. “She never actually told me.”

“Almost twelve weeks,” Shona says.

“Ben will be happy,” Aine says. “Kid is obsessed with wanting a sibling.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Aine says. “His friend has a baby sister but I’m pretty sure he just wants someone to boss around.”

“Do you want more kids?” Shona asks. She doesn’t know if she’s supposed to know the answer. They seem closer now than Shona remembers. There isn’t an underlying anxiety threaded through every interaction or a buzzing of worry when Shona leaves. Aine seems happy and Shona trusts her more than she used to, even if it feels clunky and rough.

“Maybe,” Aine shrugs. “Not right now.”

Shona hums. The silence is easy in a way she didn’t expect. It lasts for a few minutes before Aine is talking again, fragmented thoughts that Shona manages to follow.

Charlotte arrives with their mums at the same time Ben gets back with Brad, Ben already stealing her attention, and Shona watches them, the scripted way Charlotte helps Ben take his jacket off and then his hat, dotted with water from the spring rain. Charlotte notices Shona staring and smiles, easy as anything.

“Disgusting,” Aine murmurs but she’s standing up so she can loop her arms around Brad’s neck so Shona considers it a moot point. She catches Eileen and Miri smirking at her and instinctively rolls her eyes.

“Do you remember me?” Eileen asks and Shona rolls her eyes again, climbing off the couch to hug her. “Hi,” Shona sighs. A swell of emotion overtakes her but Eileen isn’t pulling away. “Missed you,” Shona mumbles. Eileen laughs, sweet, and leans away, “Of course you did.”

Ben is suddenly near the, beaming up at Eileen and asking if he can show her his lego. Eileen makes a show of being excited and Shona bites down on her lip. She turns back to Charlotte and Miri when they’re gone, nerves hitting her so quickly she feels like swaying.

Miri looks like what she remembered, shorter than Charlotte but still tall, and their smiles are different. Their expressions match anyway and Shona relaxes when Miri laughs and takes pity on her, stepping forward and hugging her. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Shona,” Miri says, and Shona swallows, “Me too.”

-

Shona’s never liked big announcements. She can handle boardrooms and conference presentations, is fine making small talk with men she wants to stab and is sweet enough with the baristas at the office coffee shop that they don’t have her on the shitlist, but announcing personal news makes her feel unbalanced, the immediate attention too much.

It’s easier with Charlotte. Shona’s sleepy and full and pleased. Her breathing sinks up to Ben’s, his face against her stomach and his arm thrown around her as he falls asleep. Charlotte is beside her with Ben’s legs thrown across hers. There’s a football game on tv that only Brad and Miri are invested in and when the extra time ends, Shona nudges Charlotte’s thigh.

Charlotte squints at her until she gets the message, mouth turning up into a smile, and Shona sighs. “You tell them,” Charlotte murmurs.

Eileen hears them, somehow, Shona blames the fact that football is boring, and suddenly everyone is staring at them. Shona tucks Ben’s hair back behind his ear and shrugs, “We’re having a baby?”

“You don’t sound sure about it,” Eileen notes. Her mouth twists the same way Aine does when she thinks she’s being funnier than she is.

“Oh my God,” Shona says. “We - Charlotte’s pregnant.”

“Congratulations,” Miri smiles.

“A baby?” Ben asks. His eyes are huge when he blinks up and Shona grins, “Yeah, bud.”

“Cool,” Ben hums and his eyes slip close again.

“Cool,” Brad repeats. He’s smiling too and the fondness Shona feels for all of them doesn’t feel brand new. She fits herself against Charlotte and smiles, mostly to herself, rests her hand over Charlotte’s stomach right above Ben’s leg.

Shona doesn’t feel like she remembers everything, but she knows she has all the pieces to put her life back together, and she isn’t worried about it at all.

Notes:

thank you for reading!