he is memorizing every detail about it.
“You aren’t looking at me like a woman who’s getting engaged to the love of her life.”
He’s not...
I blink, shaking off the instant response, the thoughts in my head that are the old Adeline, not this new version I am determined to be. The responsible version. The grown up Adeline that doesn’t kiss strangers and screw up her life seeking something she’ll never find.
Grant is a good man. Smart. Practical. Well established. He comes from an equally good family. I will be well taken care of, and he anchors me in place, keeps me from making stupid decisions. I love him, I swear, but it feels more like I am trying to convince myself of this rather than believing it.
The man leans forward, and my breath catches, his eyes trapping mine, his expression unreadable.
Voice soft against the crash of rain behind him, he says, “If I were the man you planned to marry and I caught you looking at another man the way you’re looking at me now, I would be upset. I might want to kill him.”
The air rattles out of my lungs. “Looking at you how?”
He leans closer, his breath a wash of heat against my lips. “You tell me.”
A drop of rain drips from the ends of his hair to slide down the line of his neck, my eyes chasing that drop, fascinated with how it rolls over golden skin.
My stare shoots up to see he is watching me intently.
“I - I don’t know-“
He leans in so far I think our mouths will touch, but then he pulls a phone from his pocket, brings it to his ear, rattles off the intersection closest to us, and I realize he is calling a cab.
The rain stops as well, gone as quickly as it started, and he steps away, reaching into his pocket again and pulling out a wad of bills. Peeling a fifty off the top, he hands it to me.
“This should get you home. The cab will be here in a few minutes. And next time you’re stranded in the middle of a city, don’t tell a stranger. You never know how he might take advantage of that information.”
With a bent finger, he taps the bottom of my chin. Then he turns and walks off, the sidewalk glimmering with rain, entirely vacant except for him.
My heart pounds as if trying to break free of my chest to chase after a man who hasn’t given me his name.
Moments later, I see a flash of yellow in my peripheral vision. It takes effort to pull my gaze from him to look at the cab. When I turn back, he is gone.
A hollow feeling takes over, something I haven’t allowed myself to feel in a long time. But it is there, as cold and desolate as ever. Haunting, if there can be a better word for it.
And while I want to stay in that doorway to see if he’ll come back, I know I have places to be.
I force one foot in front of the other toward the cab. My future husband waits for me. It is a night to celebrate my next step into the life I need.
So why do I want to take a step back?
Regardless, I get in the cab and return home. I call Grant from a landline and explain what happened with my car. He tells me he’ll take care of it, that I should only worry about getting ready for tonight.
He is reliable like that. Dependable. Unlike me. But that’s what I thought I needed. I thought he could be everything that was missing in me. That he could force me to grow up and let go of magical thinking.
Reality is so ugly compared to the fantasy we carry in our thoughts. It’s rash and unforgiving, so terribly boring and mundane that it’s painful to exist at times.
At least, to me, it is.
And maybe that’s because I’ve had a taste of conscious dreams. I’ve walked between the curtain of being awake and being asleep, and I’ve learned to love it there. To make peace with it.
Other people consider the experience disturbing when it happens once or twice in their life. But I’ve suffered it for so long that the in-between has become my kingdom, and the person that waits for me there is always large and overbearing. He is dark and disturbing. And he makes my heart beat like it never does when I’m awake.
He terrifies me.
And I