He sneered. “Forgot what? That when I lost my memory, you took advantage of the situation and latched onto me? Or that you used my money to support your sickly brother?”
Three years ago, on a stormy night, I found Ryan under a bridge in Queens. He was covered in blood, too weak to even open his eyes, muttering again and again, “Don’t take me to the hospital.”
He’d been shot. I risked my life against mafia pursuit to save him.
I took him back to my cheap apartment in Queens, New York, cleaned his wounds with iodine I bought, cooked instant noodles and always gave him the only egg, spent three months’ worth of wages to buy his medicine and nutrition, even sold the only painting my father had left behind just to keep him alive.
He held my frozen hands and whispered, “Evelyn, when I get better, I’ll make sure you live in a big house.”
It was in that dark apartment that we became lovers. On my birthday, Ryan even twisted a soda can tab into a crooked ring and said, “This is our wedding ring. One day, I’ll replace it with a real one.”