rose garden with a brook of clear water didn’t immediately seem of any importance, her reaction to it demanded she try to remember as much as she could.
She turned to look at her sleeping bedmate. Arnie was out cold on his stomach and sprawled across half the bed.
Crawling out from under the covers, she cautiously slid from the bed without waking him and made a mad dash into the bathroom.
The best way to commit a dream to memory was to use her words, so she repeated the principal elements out loud, over and over, while peeing and rushing through a quick wash-up.
Spying a T-shirt of Arnie’s on the hook next to the bathroom door, she yanked it down and pulled it over her nakedness. Then before the nighttime images self-destructed, she made for the bungalow’s living room and sat at the desk. In the top drawer was a little stack of hotel stationery.
“Yay,” she murmured and grabbed a pen from the drawer too.
Pulling her feet up, Summer sat cross-legged on the upholstered seat and started scribbling. The words came easily, and she knew from experience not to edit or overthink what came. The important thing was to write down as much as she could.
She covered four sheets of paper, front and back, and was working on a fifth when Arnie appeared next to her. He didn’t ask what she was doing, and if she read him right, he understood.
Ignoring him was impossible, so she gave it one last burst of focus, wrote as much as she could, and then threw the pen down. Breathing a sigh of satisfaction for the effort, she looked up at him and smiled.
Their eyes met, and the zing of connection that had been there from their first encounter tickled her senses.
“It’s not possible,” he murmured.
“What isn’t?”
His smile was warm and oh, so very sexy. “That you’re even more beautiful the morning after.”
An unstoppable blush moved from her toes to her forehead. She was so new at this that every compliment rattled her confidence. Letting her inner slut off the leash when they were doing it was one thing, but not cringing from embarrassment and insecurity later was something entirely different.
He nodded at the papers strewn across the desktop. “May I peek?”
Her face went from smile to smirk. “I suppose, but first,” she said with her hand atop the papers, “what do you know about rabbit dream symbology?”
“Say what? Rabbits as in Bugs Bunny?”
Having a serious conversation with him would never come easy.
“No, Arnie. Not Bugs, Peter, Jessica, Harvey, or Roger. I’m talking bunnies and not the one who only has a job at Easter.”
“Gotcha.” He winked and then turned thoughtful. “Well, since you referenced dream symbols, I believe rabbits are a mixed bag. There’s luck of course, hence the abhorrent custom of carrying a rabbit’s foot.” His shudder of revulsion wasn’t done for show. “Rabbits also signify abundance. Oh, and sexual activity.”
She giggled. “That one I know. I believe what you refer to is people fucking like rabbits.”
“Going a step further, sexual activity is in the same category as fertility. The rabbit used to be sacrificed to confirm pregnancy.”
It was Summer’s turn to shudder, and for a brief second, she thought tears were imminent. The thought of killing a bunny to learn such joyful news tore her up inside.
“And lastly,” he continued, “rabbits denote magical power or the presence of.”
“I should probably ask why you have all that information at your fingertips, but since there are a lot of questions we’re not asking, I’ll just leave it for now.”
His goddamn phone had the worst timing ever and chose that moment to go off. His reaction to the ringtone got her full attention. He looked at the coffee table where their phones sat charging, side by side, and immediately stiffened.
“Fuck. I have to take that.”
He didn’t wait for her to react before he grabbed the phone off the table, ripped the charging cord out, held it to his ear, and snarled, “Templeton, here.”
The way he stomped from the room and the gravity in his voice did not cause joy to erupt inside her.
“I need more time,” Arnie demanded brusquely. “Make it happen, Dottie.”
“No can do, Darnell. You heard the man. This matter moved like wildfire through command and made it all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue. We don’t get to call the shots. They want you for a reason, and those reasons are not open to discussion or negotiation.”