"Ground Control to Major Tom"

“Yo! Earth to Tom?!” Greg whispered.

Thomas jerked awake and looked up over the partition between him and his buddy, Greg. He then looked around and saw the familiar faces of some of his co-workers walking around and going through their day, various phones ringing, conversations buzzing in the background, and as far as he could tell it was business as usual.

“I’m at the office.” Thomas said, not fully convinced of the words as they left his mouth.

“Did you think you were at Hooters?” Greg teased. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone come into work, login, and then doze off like that. That beach life must be some hard livin’.”

Thomas shook his head. “Sorry, I haven’t been sleeping well, but I want to say I slept… great last night?”

“So you did drive in yesterday?”

“What?”

“Your texts. Yesterday you said you were planning on driving in, checking on the house, and then coming in today. Easier drive and all.”

“Right. Um, yeah…” Thomas tried to remember the day before, but nothing was coming to mind. “Much shorter trip.”

After getting up to get his bearings and grab a coffee, Thomas met Greg and his team and dove into their project, but the feeling of something missing continued to rattle around his head the whole day. Thankfully, he had Greg’s antics and their project to keep him busy, but later in the afternoon things slowed down and he was lost in thought again.

“Ugh, are you kidding me?” Greg scoffed.

“What’s up?” Thomas asked.

“You remember my crazy ex? The hot one with the tits?”

Thomas looked around. “Greg, seriously? We’re in the office.”

Greg then turned his head and looked around as well. “Sorry. Anyway, she’s found me online and is messaging me, wanting to get back together.”

“Just block her.”

“Should I?”

“You used to go on and on about how she made your life a living hell.”

“Yeah, but damn could she…” Greg paused after Thomas gave him a look. Greg leaned over and whispered. “Her bed game was five-star… and her non-bed game was the same.”

Thomas wanted to ask what ‘non-bed game’ meant, but he decided against it. “But remember, you always complained about how she always spent your money, she kept you out late partying, and later tried to get you to do **** and shit?”

“She was a total succubus.” Greg said, shaking his head.

“A what?” Thomas asked.

“A crazy demon bitch that could get me to do almost anything, but still the seh… bed stuff. Man.”

“It’s not worth it.”

“Maybe I can meet her at a hotel or something and we can just have a quick hook-up. Nothing serious. Just for old times’ sake. What do you think?”

“Buddy, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but remember, you almost got fired the last time you were with her. She was taking you down a dark path and if I hadn’t vouched for you…” Thomas stopped, remembering those meetings with their boss, trying to save Greg from himself. “Fun for a while, I’m sure, but if you hadn’t ended it, things would not have ended well for you here.”

“I’m sure you’re right. I gotta take the experience and move on. But she did up my sex game, though.”

Thomas gave him a look as one of their female co-workers walked by and Greg tried to mouth a ‘sorry’ to her.

After wrapping up for the day Thomas said his goodbyes to Greg and a few others from his team having not seen them for most of the summer, outside of their video conferences. It had been good catching up and seeing people in person, but the loss of a day was still gnawing at him. He had argued with Rachel, had taken a walk on the beach, came home, slept on the couch in his office and then… then he was at work?

Why couldn’t he remember the previous day? Driving into Boston from the beach house, sleeping in his bed, driving to work, and then…?

As he rode the elevator down to the parking garage he tried to replay the last two days again to see if something would click. There was some history of Alzheimer's and dementia in his family, but both his parents seemed fine and he was much too young to be missing bits of his memory. Plus, he was able to remember so much at work as if he had only been there the week before.

When the elevator dinged and opened, the missing memories flooded back like a crashing wave as he looked out into the dimly lit concrete dungeon of the parking garage and saw Aubrey.

She was like a beautiful ghost or a siren having emerged from the dark gray sea, standing there in front of him in a mint colored patterned sundress with those big blue eyes peering into his soul.