I’ve already got a solid grip on the little grape.
It rips from the stem.
And, suddenly, it grows. It becomes the size of my hand, then in a blink, the size of a beach ball. And it’s so incredibly dense and heavy that I can hardly hold it.
Panic surges through me. What the hell have I done? “Ziel!” I cry out in shock as I realize that the surface of the grape isn’t grape-like at all. It’s covered in red dust.
He rushes forward—tonight, he’s a handsome Indian man with a regal nose—but he can’t reach me before the ball that I’m clutching is too heavy.
I drop it, and it immediately sinks beneath the clouds. I stare at the hole it has made in the cloud meadow, a hole that is much deeper and longer than the one I fell through. The clouds swirl around the opening, and the hole becomes filled with shadows as it descends, vaguely reminiscent of a wormhole.
As I glance back up, I realize that the entire front of my body, my hands and shirt, are covered in a light red dust.
I glance at Ziel. “What did I just do?”
He bites his lip. “I think you might have just offed a planet.”
My stomach drops through the same wormhole as the red sphere as my face becomes lava red and panic squeezes my heart. “Shit. Shit! Are you serious?”
Ziel just grabs my hand, ignoring the red dust. “Why don’t we just leave this garden behind? It’s clearly too tempting for you.”
I follow him, but my heart is tripping and face planting on repeat. Did I just kill an entire planet? Really? Truly? Was it inhabited? Oh, Lordy be, it better not have been. Nope. Nope. Cannot handle that.
“Relax. That garden only grows planets incapable of hosting life. It’s an original garden. The one with Earth and the other life-giving planets has a lock on the gate. For good reason.” Ziel adds that last bit under his breath, but I can still hear it.
I want to collapse in relief. I can’t even muster up resentment at his implication that I couldn’t resist the urge to touch things like a child. Or Eve. I’m so damn happy I did not just destroy the universe that my knees tremble. But then…I remember that this is a dream. That planet was just a figment of my imagination. Just like Ziel; he is just a dream.
Tears fill my eyes as I stare up at him. Why do dreams have to be so intense? Why do they have to scare me with the prospect of having the power to destroy the universe and tease me with the thought of a man so perfect that he’s impossible?
Ziel’s broad back and red cape are all I see as we walk back through the rows of tiny, growing planets. He’s still clasping my hand firmly as he opens the gate and leads me out. But he won’t make eye contact with me.
Do recurring dreams pick up where they left off?
Do phantoms of your mind remember their romantic confessions?
I see him glance quickly at me and then swallow hard as he looks back out over the cloudy hills.
I think he might remember.
My chest hums, and my face blooms with unguarded tenderness as I step over to him. His truth deserves a response. Because even if I can only ever love him here in the recesses of my mind, even if he’s only a portion of myself that’s raw and gentle, he’s become so real to me that I can’t help but see him as separate. And deserving. His quiet patience with all of my teenage drama, his sweet understanding as I’ve poured my heart out repeatedly, letting my feelings splash across his chest, as sticky and obnoxious to remove as grape juice stains. Ziel has listened to me rant about my parents and gnaw my nails off about college and the expectations that mount like a life-size Jenga that threatens to topple over on me.
He’s taken care of me. Which is something that no one else, real or imaginary, has ever done. Well, until just now.
“Ziel, I love you.” The words burst from my lips like a crappy magician popping out fake flowers. Immediately, I wish I could take them back and package them like fancy chocolates, say them better, make them sparkle like diamonds or something.
But they just hang in the air between us like fabric flowers that have been stuffed up my sleeve and are slightly damp