Free Love in Bloom by Karen Rose Smith

something you loved because of it, did you?"
    Paige noticed quite a few onlookers were watching with interest.  She clasped Ben's shoulder.  "Let's go to the blanket and talk."
    Ben's face flushed beet-red.  "See?  You don't like to be stared at anymore than I do.  See what it's like?"
    He limped toward the blanket.  When Paige glanced at Clay, he looked grim.  He looked as if he was in pain.  Did his shoulder bother him that much?  Had this whole idea been a monumental mistake?
    Unsettled, she followed Ben and sat down on the blanket beside him.  "This is the first time you've been swimming other than therapy, Ben," she said gently.  "You overdid it a little, that's all."
    "I used to be able to swim forty laps easy."
    Clay folded himself down on the other side of Ben.  "That's the first thing you have to change, Ben.  Thinking about used-to-be's won't get you anywhere."  His voice sounded strained, but Paige didn't think Ben noticed.
    "What did you used to do?  How's your life different?"
    "I don't go rock climbing.  I've changed my whole life around because of the accident.  Things that used to be important before aren't now."
    "It's not the same thing.  I don't want to change anything.  I want to be able to walk over to those girls and ask one out and have her say yes."
    "How do you know she won't?"
    "Not after that little performance.  Jeez, they could all see I couldn't even stand on my own two feet!  I used to be able to date anyone I wanted--"
    "Grow up, Ben."
    Paige's instinct to defend made her interrupt.  "Clay--"
    "He needs to hear this, Paige."
    "What do I need to hear?"
    "You've got your life, Ben.  From what Paige tells me, you've got a family who's willing to do anything for you.  You're intelligent and young and capable and you can be anything you set your mind to be.  Okay, you can't play football.  So pick something else you can be good at and do it instead of whining about what you can't do.  Do you know how many people who are in accidents never walk again, who have serious internal injuries that shorten their lives, who have to relearn--"  Clay stopped.  "Think about it, Ben.  Think about how lucky you are.  Think about what you can still do, rather than what you can't do."
    Clay stood, slipped on his moccasins, and grabbed his clothes.  "I'll go get the cooler so we can eat."
    He dumped his clothes on the bench and headed for the SUV.  And he'd thought he could keep this afternoon uncomplicated.  Instead it was like paddling a canoe, all right.  In a hurricane.  What the hell made him think he could pull this off?  He wasn't in the habit of deluding himself.  He prided himself on facing life straight on.  Well, his initial reaction to having anything to do with Ben had been correct.   Clay pulled the cooler from the backseat of the vehicle and slammed the door with more vigor than necessary.  The last seven years, his life had been peaceful and ordinary.  Then one compassionate, pretty doctor sashays into town and...Damn!
    Maybe he shouldn't have been so hard on Ben.  But Clay had the feeling that everyone up to now had treated the teenager with kid gloves.  Clay's family and doctors had treated him that way, too, for a while.  Until they realized he'd never get his memory back.  Then he became an oddity, a stranger, and they didn't know how to treat him.  Today with Ben on the beach, the stares from everyone around them....
    Clay remembered standing on his parents' front porch with the woman he'd supposedly loved before the accident.  She'd looked at him so strangely when he'd told her he might never remember his life before the accident.  She'd shaken her head, told him recuperation was one thing, but never remembering the two of them as a couple was another.  She said he'd changed and now they didn't have anything in common.
    Since Clay couldn't remember loving her, the pain of parting hadn't been intense.  But the pain of rejection had been.  Her