I had developed. I was falling in love with him.
TEN
I’m standing with my back to the wall, and he has me trapped. He’s backlit, and all I can see is his silhouette, standing about two feet in front of me. I have no escape. My body shakes with fear. Adrenaline is coursing through my veins. I could try to run, but I know he’d catch me. I see the silhouette’s right shoulder dip and pull back. Then the more frightening thing I’d ever seen: he has made a fist and he’s cocking his arm back for the punch, level with my face.
I awoke from the dream in a cold sweat. I was drenched, and so were the sheets. I was shaking. Scared. My heart was racing. My mouth felt as dry as cotton.
It was the same dream I’d had about Chris many times. It never varied. It was always one-hundred percent factual, almost not like a dream at all, but a memory burned into my subconscious emerging every once in a while to haunt me.
But this time there was a difference. Not in the setting. Not in the lighting. Not in the order of events. This time, the person raising his fist was Max.
What the fuck did that mean?
The clock read 3:38 am. There is no more lonely place than the middle of the night when you’re awake, by yourself and scared, sad or both.
I got out of the bed, ripped the sheets off and tossed them to the floor. At some point I had pushed the comforter away, so it had escaped the sweat. I pulled the t-shirt over my head, slipped out of my panties, tossed them in the hamper and went to the bathroom where I toweled off my damp body. I got back on the bed—on the harshly uncomfortable bare mattress—and covered myself with the comforter as I shivered.
Somehow I managed to fall back asleep after about thirty minutes of being afraid to let myself fall into that dream again.
Why Max? Why had my brain allowed that to happen?
6:45 am, the alarm woke me. Thank God I hadn’t had a continuation of that terrifying dream. It still lingered, though, and I thought about it way too much as I showered and prepared for the day.
By the time I left my room and made my way to the kitchen to get some juice and fruit, Krystal was just coming in the door. She looked awful. Her hair was ragged. Her skin was an ashy pale color. She had bags under her eyes. She looked like she had aged fifteen years.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She yawned and said, “Fine, yeah, why?”
“Just making sure.” I could barely even look at her. Not just because of her appearance but also because her porn video was running on a loop in my mind.
On the way into work, I didn’t play any music. I spent the entire time trying to process why I might have had that awful dream about Max.
He had never done anything to make me feel the least bit threatened.
Physically, anyway….
Maybe the violence in the dream was a manifestation of my being afraid of him hurting me in some other way. The entire time we had been seeing each other, I’d been having those lingering thoughts that I wasn’t cut out to be with someone like Max.
Later, at lunch, we talked on the phone but I didn’t dare tell him about the dream. It would have opened up all kinds of possibilities for conflict, and I didn’t want to do that. After all, I’d pretty much figured out the source of the dream, so why burden him with an issue I needed to get over myself?
Not to mention our conversation was going so well. He told me he had a great time in NYC and I told him it was amazing.
“But,” I said, “maybe this weekend we keep our feet on the ground.”
“Does that rule out me carrying you to my bed?”
“I’d never rule that out. You know that.”
“Okay, so we stay in town. But I want you to myself all weekend. No going out. I’ll cook, we’ll talk, watch movies…” His voice trailed off.
“And?”
“And what?”
“That’s it?” I said playfully, and I knew he could probably hear the smile in my voice.
“Some things go without saying,” he
TEN
I’m standing with my back to the wall, and he has me trapped. He’s backlit, and all I can see is his silhouette, standing about two feet in front of me. I have no escape. My body shakes with fear. Adrenaline is coursing through my veins. I could try to run, but I know he’d catch me. I see the silhouette’s right shoulder dip and pull back. Then the more frightening thing I’d ever seen: he has made a fist and he’s cocking his arm back for the punch, level with my face.
I awoke from the dream in a cold sweat. I was drenched, and so were the sheets. I was shaking. Scared. My heart was racing. My mouth felt as dry as cotton.
It was the same dream I’d had about Chris many times. It never varied. It was always one-hundred percent factual, almost not like a dream at all, but a memory burned into my subconscious emerging every once in a while to haunt me.
But this time there was a difference. Not in the setting. Not in the lighting. Not in the order of events. This time, the person raising his fist was Max.
What the fuck did that mean?
The clock read 3:38 am. There is no more lonely place than the middle of the night when you’re awake, by yourself and scared, sad or both.
I got out of the bed, ripped the sheets off and tossed them to the floor. At some point I had pushed the comforter away, so it had escaped the sweat. I pulled the t-shirt over my head, slipped out of my panties, tossed them in the hamper and went to the bathroom where I toweled off my damp body. I got back on the bed—on the harshly uncomfortable bare mattress—and covered myself with the comforter as I shivered.
Somehow I managed to fall back asleep after about thirty minutes of being afraid to let myself fall into that dream again.
Why Max? Why had my brain allowed that to happen?
6:45 am, the alarm woke me. Thank God I hadn’t had a continuation of that terrifying dream. It still lingered, though, and I thought about it way too much as I showered and prepared for the day.
By the time I left my room and made my way to the kitchen to get some juice and fruit, Krystal was just coming in the door. She looked awful. Her hair was ragged. Her skin was an ashy pale color. She had bags under her eyes. She looked like she had aged fifteen years.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She yawned and said, “Fine, yeah, why?”
“Just making sure.” I could barely even look at her. Not just because of her appearance but also because her porn video was running on a loop in my mind.
On the way into work, I didn’t play any music. I spent the entire time trying to process why I might have had that awful dream about Max.
He had never done anything to make me feel the least bit threatened.
Physically, anyway….
Maybe the violence in the dream was a manifestation of my being afraid of him hurting me in some other way. The entire time we had been seeing each other, I’d been having those lingering thoughts that I wasn’t cut out to be with someone like Max.
Later, at lunch, we talked on the phone but I didn’t dare tell him about the dream. It would have opened up all kinds of possibilities for conflict, and I didn’t want to do that. After all, I’d pretty much figured out the source of the dream, so why burden him with an issue I needed to get over myself?
Not to mention our conversation was going so well. He told me he had a great time in NYC and I told him it was amazing.
“But,” I said, “maybe this weekend we keep our feet on the ground.”
“Does that rule out me carrying you to my bed?”
“I’d never rule that out. You know that.”
“Okay, so we stay in town. But I want you to myself all weekend. No going out. I’ll cook, we’ll talk, watch movies…” His voice trailed off.
“And?”
“And what?”
“That’s it?” I said playfully, and I knew he could probably hear the smile in my voice.
“Some things go without saying,” he
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