Dreams - Kate Hawthorne

Chapter 1

“Mom. I need to tell you something.” Jackson lingered in the doorway, waiting for his mom to turn around. She did, after a moment, a cake-battered covered spatula in her hand.

“You’re just in time, baby. I’m making a cake.”

A smile pulled at the corners of Jackson’s mouth and he walked into the large kitchen and took a seat at the dining room table. The chair at the head used to belong to his father, before he had passed away. Exactly three months after his funeral, his mom had told him the chair was his now.

Jackson had refused.

His mom turned back to the mixer and scraped some batter from the edges of the steel mixing bowl. She poured it all into a rectangular cake pan and slid it into the oven, then joined him at the table. There was a smattering of flour across her cheek, and a wispy tendril of her curly brown hair had fallen out of her messy bun and landed over her eye. She huffed a breath out and the hair settled closer to her ear.

“What did you want to talk about, buttercup?” she asked.

The timer on the stove buzzed, and she jumped up from the table with an excitable grin.

“Hold that thought, Jackson. The cake is ready.”

“How is the cake ready?” He looked over his shoulder. His mom bent over the stove and pulled the cake pan out. “You just put it in.”

“Time is nothing, Jackson.”

She came back to the table and sat the cake down in front of him. It was frosted now, a rich and dark chocolate with rainbow sprinkles. It smelled like a dream, and he realized…it was.

“Mom,” he said again.

She handed him a slice of cake and a fork. The loose curl was back over her eye. Jackson cut into the cake with the side of his fork and took a bite. Memories assaulted him rapid fire. Every sense became overwhelmed and he swallowed the mouthful of cake with a sob.

How could a dream feel so real?

His mom reached out and patted his trembling hand, giving him another smile. He could feel her; the warmth of her palm against his skin, and he could smell her, smell this. The scents of sugar and bitter baking chocolate and the subtle rose perfume she always wore.

“Happy birthday, Jackson. Now what did you want to tell me?”

Jackson took another bite of cake and closed his eyes. If he strained his ears, he could hear the sounds of a birthday party in the backyard. It was his birthday party, he guessed. But that was silly. He was about to turn thirty-one, and the sound of skin dragging against plastic as a hired clown molded balloons into animals, the pump-pump-whoosh of water guns and the laughter of his friends, those were all from a time before his father died.

Before…

Jackson opened his eyes and he was in the corner of the kitchen, looking at the table he’d just been sitting at. His mom was there and so was he, but he stared now at a much younger version of himself. It was his thirteenth birthday, and his mom’s hair was still in her face. She eyed the phone on the wall near the refrigerator, but pasted on a smile and patted his hand.

“Did you have something to say, buttercup? Or did you want to go play with your friends while we wait for your dad to get home?”

Jackson looked at the phone, and it rang.

His mom blinked and stood up. She dragged her fingers over the top of his head and headed toward the phone. The sliding door pulled open and Jackson’s best friend Darren ran inside. His clothes were wet, and a party hat hung from the side of his head at a cockeyed angle.

“Come on, my brother and his friends are ganging up on me and I need your help.” Darren grabbed his hand and hauled him up from the table.

“I need to talk to my mom real fast,” Jackson said, skin prickling.

What he didn’t say was, I need to tell her about the way my skin tingles when Darren touches me. I need to make sure it’s okay that I feel this way about him because I don’t think I’m supposed to.

“Can it wait?”

A stream of water fired into the kitchen and painted a wet stripe across Jackson’s blue t-shirt.

“Outside, boys,” his mother chided, her hand on the phone receiver.

Jackson watched the younger version of himself hesitate, then run out the door with Darren. The