Page 61 of Rescuing Mary

“Thanks. The double ceremony was the girls’ idea,” Beatle told him.

“When?” Truck asked.

“We’re not sure. They want to wait until Emily has her baby,” Blade said.

“Cool. I’ll have time to get to know them again,” Truck said.

“Yup.”

“So that makes us the only un-engaged ones left, huh?” Truck asked Ghost.

“I guess so,” was Ghost’s response. Truck heard a note of something in his tone, but couldn’t place it.

“We gotta get going,” Coach said, interrupting the moment. “The commander wants to talk to us about something this morning.”

“Should I be there?” Truck asked.

Coach shook his head. “No need. I asked the same thing, and he said it was about the Africa mission, and since you don’t remember it, you’re excused.”

Truck wanted to insist that he be there too, that maybe if he listened to what happened it might jog his memory, but his head was killing him and he needed to lie down for a while. So he let it go. “Okay. I’ll talk to you guys later then?”

“Definitely. Truck?” Fletch asked tentatively.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I might… Shit.”

“What, Fletch?”

“Did Mary tell you about Annie?”

“Yeah. Your daughter.”

“Right. Well…she misses you and has been begging to see you. Do you think we might come over for a while later this afternoon? I’ll keep the visit short so you aren’t overwhelmed.”

“Does she know about me?” Truck asked. “The last thing I want to do is hurt the kid by not recognizing her.”

“She knows,” Fletch told him.

Truck wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but he couldn’t refuse his friend. “Sure.”

The look of relief on Fletch’s face was telling. The man loved his daughter, that much was obvious. Truck hoped the girl wasn’t annoying. He wasn’t so sure about kids, they tended to freak over his scar, or ask irritating questions. But since Fletch said Annie had been begging to see him, he figured she’d probably be okay with the way he looked.

“I need to get to the meeting with the commander. I’ll see you later,” Fletch said as he hurried to his car.

The others all said their goodbyes as well and before he knew it, Truck was headed back to his apartment. What he really wanted to do was see Mary, but he knew he needed to give her some space.

The morning had been good. He’d cleared the air with his teammates and hopefully made his point about them not keeping shit from him anymore, no matter what the doctor said they should do. But he hadn’t remembered anything new, and that frustrated him.

He hoped as time went by he’d slowly start to remember things here and there, but that hadn’t happened yet. The doctor had told him to be patient, that a week wasn’t enough time for his memory to return, but he’d been hopeful the doctor was wrong. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. The last three years were just as blank as they’d been when he’d woken up after hitting his head.

The names of his teammates’ women didn’t jog his memory. They meant nothing to him. Just names of random people. He hated that, as they obviously meant a great deal to his friends. He felt as if he was missing out, and that sucked.

Truck brooded all the way back to his apartment and instead of feeling better when he got inside, seeing his apartment made his head hurt more. He looked around, trying to figure out what was missing. Something was, he was sure of it, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember.

“Fuck,” he swore.

Because his head hurt so badly, he decided he was going to take one of the powerful painkillers the doctor had prescribed. He hadn’t taken many of them because, as he’d told Mary, he really didn’t like taking the hard drugs, but he was almost desperate to escape the pain and nothingness that was in his head at the moment.