by Blythe Stone
I sat on the couch and waited for her to come back from paying the delivery man. Her hands were full so I set the journal down and helped her bring the bags in. She’d ordered enough food to last a week.
“Why did you give me that?” I asked.
I knew she wanted me to read it but I wanted to know why.
“I wrote the dream out,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, sitting back in the couch and picking it up. “I guess I’ll just…”
I opened the cover and found the last page with writing on it. She'd been unloading containers all stoic - but when she saw me she came and took the journal away, flipping it to where the dream must start. It wasn’t a short dream, apparently. After that she handed the journal back.
I felt her carefully sit down away from me and quietly begin to eat. She was nervous, scared for me to read.
She'd taken up a take-out container and tucked her feet under herself on the far side of the couch away from me. Even her eating was sad- her mannerisms were that of a guilty pet.
I started to read, making myself like steel. Locking my feelings about Ben away was difficult. This was not about me.
My chest got tight when he appeared and I sucked in a breath when she stabbed him. I could see it in my head.
Baby…
He called her that in the dream. I wanted to vomit and throw the journal, run down to the jail and kill him for real.
“Oh, Vi… This is terrible. I'm sorry.”
I shoved all the curses, I felt like spewing, away. She needed me to be strong.
I grabbed her hand. “Are you okay? Really…”
“Just keep reading,” she said, shaking her head in discomfort. She knew I wasn't done. She wouldn't even look at me.
I finished it and pushed the journal away from me. There were no words I could think of to say that would be adequate. This was a worst fear. For me to be unable to see her and know our connection. In the dream, she was my patient. She was a stranger to my counterpart in the dream.
She was in trouble and I couldn’t save her. She would go to jail or worse for killing the man that hurt me.
“What scares you most about this dream?”
“That question is too hard, baby,” she said sadly. “Here, eat something. You haven’t eaten all day, please?” She held up her chopsticks with a piece of shrimp inside.
I took the food, even though I hated shrimp. I didn’t care.
“I wish I could erase it. All the things in your brain that make you have dreams like that. I wish they were all gone.”
“The dream felt real,” she said. “It scares me because it felt real.” She opened a new container, sensing my dissatisfaction with the food. “Here,” she said. “How about this?” She pulled a piece of chicken out and held it up, wanting me to eat.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the food and chewing.
It felt real to her. Probably like the dreams I had sometimes. The ones that left me checking every available spot for someone lying in wait.
“I’m so glad it’s not real. You’re not going to wake up in some hospital without me. We’re real.”
I felt sick and slid closer to her, moving quickly.
“Even if I was your therapist I’d have fallen for you,” I ventured.
It wasn’t really related but the thought had occurred to me.
“If you were my therapist who had he touched and why had I killed him?” She asked. “These aren’t the questions. These aren’t the things that make me sad. What makes me sad is the differences, the changes. Or maybe the ways in which things were the same only not. With him… With you... Everything... So subtle. And I know I could kill him. I know I could and how horrible is that? I could, yet I didn’t… And then there’s you and today. I had that dream several hours before you mentioned I should go to therapy. I hate today.”
“Today is stupid. I’ll admit,” I agreed. “Everything about that dream was horrible and I hate that I didn’t take time to read through my letter and correct it. I hate that you’re having dreams that scare you and I hate that you have to see me all crazy and panic-attacky. I wish you didn’t have to worry or think about killing anyone. Now, I just want to hold you.”
I didn’t, except I latched onto her hand, the one without chopsticks in it.
“I wish we were back at lunch,” she said, looking over at me, remorse in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have let you read that.”
“I’m not really scared,” her chin quivered. “I’m human and that’s ugly.”
“You forgot beautiful. Humans are both. We all have the capability to do horrible things and wonderful things, but you choose the best courses you can. We aren’t people that naturally tend toward the ugly. Sometimes things happen and you just get taken there and dreams fade even the ones that seem real…”
I didn’t want to eat anymore. What I really wanted was for both of us to be able to forget that Ben ever existed.
“Just hold on, baby. We have to get through this and we can. You’re so much stronger than you think you are.”
“I just want things to be simple like you said before,” Olivia tried not to cry. “They’re not simple and I want them to be. I can't shake this feeling that we're both gonna break.”
I pulled her to me and put my arms around her. I didn’t care what happened.
“It’s gonna be hard and we might break a little but we can make it. We have to. I won’t let him take our future away.”
“He can’t touch us,” she said, so sure it almost terrified me. “It’s not about that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“All of this is us now. It’s not him. My fear has always been that I’m a monster. None of that has changed. It’s sick… I feel like he’s my brother or something. Like he’s family. I don’t see him as some immortal or some puppet master, not anymore. It’s like he’s in my blood and I can’t bleed him out,” Olivia said. “That connection will always be there. You shouldn’t have to know about that, to see that. That’s what’s gross.”
“I don’t feel that or see that,” I said, trying to comfort her. “I know you do but that’s not who you are to me at all. You’re no monster. I’m sorry. I always feel like I say or think or do the wrong things when you talk about this. I hear you. I do and I see you but what I see is Olivia, the girl who loves me and makes me eat food even when I don’t feel like it. The girl that sends me really cute pictures and texts. The girl that gets really annoyed at me when I make bad jokes at the wrong time. And the girl that likes me to hurt her a little sometimes. None of those things are monstrous. There is a lot more to you than that but it’s just examples.”
“What scares you about that dream?” She asked.
“You being alone in the end. That I wasn’t there for you in the right way.”
I knew she was trying not to cry but I wiped along the outside of her eye at invisible tears. There were physical tears and then there were emotional ones. Sometimes you just can’t cry.
“You’ve always been a gift I couldn’t deserve,” Olivia said. “That you were there at all was a miracle. Just like in life… I mess up all your days. I complicate things. Yet I want you so badly.” She shut her eyes and dropped her head. “I need therapy,” she cried. “You’re right. I need therapy. I’m sick of making your days so much more complicated than they should be. How are we supposed to see him now? And what if nothing comes of it. What if he only gets two years and nothing more?! What if I do kill him? What if he drives me to that? What if I become a monster just because of all this? This is how monsters are made.”
“You deserve me. You don’t mess up all my days. I swear.” I sighed and knew I’d never make those things apparent because I still didn’t feel like I even deserved her. “I hate that you see yourself that way but I know it’s not something that’s easy to just kick. If you think it will help you please see someone. We can even go to the same person and maybe that would help. I know it doesn’t feel like it but you’re who has
kept me afloat. No one else. Because you’re you and I feel incredibly lucky to have you.”
I turned her face to me and kissed her soft and long and then pulled back, looking at her, seeing the fear.
“Everyone needs a little help understanding how things affect them sometimes. That much is very clear to me now.”
She laughed bitterly and fell into me, resting her head on my shoulder and pulling me in for comfort. Ever since I got back she’d been glued to me like fly paper. She needed a hug.
“One day I won’t be confused like this,” she whispered. “One day you’ll have a panic attack and I’ll know how not to freak out or make it worse.”
“And one day I won’t have panic attacks and give you any reason to freak out.” I pulled her onto me, wanting her as close as I could get her. “I’m not blind enough to think that this won’t affect us for the rest of our lives in some ways but I hope that I won’t always feel like this. You’re being hurt by it too on top of the pain you already have from what he did.”
I was so done with this day. In a relationship you didn’t just carry your own pain and confusion, you were also helping them carry theirs as well. We were both so devoted that we might have taken on too much. I didn’t care if the intensity of our relationship might not be best for us at times. I loved her that way and that was all I could do.
“Look,” she swallowed, coming back into now. “The dream was stupid. I just couldn’t take you not knowing what my stupid brain was like… I hate keeping secrets from you. Even stupid dream secrets, they eat me alive,” her voice got quieter. “I’m sorry you had to deal with me today. Sorry I couldn’t fix things this morning and make them easy. It wasn’t a totally shit day. Lunch was nice,” she smiled and scoffed a laugh. “Now… Now can be nice… We should just watch some really stupid TV and try to detox from all this bullshit because that’s all it is. Bullshit. We have the power, right?”
“Yes, we do. I’m glad you let me read the dream. We are here for each other. That’s important.” The end of the couch wasn’t too far away so I backed up to it, pulling her along and into my body.
“We have the power to change the narrative and to make this day end however we want. I’d love to watch stupid TV and think about what your face must have looked like as soon as you got that picture of me and Natalie.” I smiled and kissed the back of her head.
“I still can’t believe you two were hanging out,” Olivia said skeptically. “Are you like friends now? Do you like, text and stuff?” She was teasing. “What else did you compare notes on?”
“I don’t know,” I laughed and blushed a little. “We did exchange phone numbers.” She was teasing me and I couldn’t help but give some back. “We might have talked about your techniques.”
“What techniques?!” Olivia nearly laughed.
“How you please the ladies. You know the E! True Hollywood Story version of what it’s like to be with you.”
I pinched her side a little. Not hard but just enough to make her jump a little.
“Well, I rarely pleased Natalie so I can’t even imagine what you two had to talk about,” Olivia said.
“Mmmm, speaking of pleasing. You killed me at lunch”
“No,” she said. “You killed me at lunch.”
“We killed each other then,” I softened. “You know it popped into my head more than a few times during the day. When I was in class I could barely keep myself from just sexting you.”
I rubbed her side and slipped my hand underneath her shirt to rest just above her belly button.
“Sexts are always invited,” she sighed, pushing her body back into mine and touching her hand to mine beneath her shirt. She pushed the tips of her fingers in between mine and held my hand.
“I didn’t want to get myself too worked up,” I said.
She grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned on the TV, bringing up the menu to look through what was on.
“So, how many times did you do that with Natalie?” I asked.
“What?” She asked, confused. “Do what?”
“Please her,” I said. It was embarrassing to say. “I’m just curious.”
“Uhhh,” she seemed uncomfortable. “Not enough.”
“Ahh,” I said. It was too uncomfortable. I couldn’t ask anymore even though she said as much earlier.
“She let me kiss her a lot,” Olivia said. “But really pleasing was one of those things she did to me but I didn’t do much to her.”
“Gotcha.” There were a lot more questions that I’d brewed up since speaking to Natalie but I felt silly. These weren’t things she probably wanted to tell me. Still, I found myself sort of fascinated.
“We got into patterns,” Olivia said. “At first we tried to be normal but it didn’t work. She always sort of dominated. I didn’t much please her physically. She pleased me and got pleasure from that. I think,” she said… “I don’t really know what all she said to you…”
“Not a lot of specifics,” I told her. “She was more worried about making sure I wasn’t evil.”
“You’re curious,” she said, noting it. “You can ask me things. I’ll answer you.”
“Okay. How long after you met did it take for you to have sex?” I asked, glad she couldn’t see my face right now.
“Um…” She hesitated a moment. “About an hour and a half,” she scoffed embarrassed. “She was sort of hosting this televised academic decathlon and she kept giving me these fuck me eyes while I was trying to concentrate and win. When the thing ended I tried to leave without notice but she pulled me into a closet, locked me in, and kissed the fuck out of me. I was completely gone. She went down on me right there. I came too fast. The rest was sort of history...”
“Wow, that’s kind of intense. Not kind of… That’s like something you see in the movies. So, she went for you. Where did you usually meet after that?”
“Well, yeah. Nat was always a shark. I was just one weak little minnow to her. Or so I thought... And because of that it was always on my terms. Always different places: parks, hotels, dressing rooms, my car. Sometimes we went to her house though, when I was really stressed out and in the mood to get entirely lost… I only brought her home once or twice. It was too weird. I couldn’t handle it. Everything about her was sex. Our world and my separate world just couldn’t coexist. It’s hard to explain.”
“I understand.” I wasn’t just saying it. I felt that about a lot of different things in my life. There were things, people, you didn’t bring into where your internal life was conducted.
“The thing was, with Nat, I felt a little out of control. I liked what she did but it overwhelmed me and I got lost in that, got to a point where I felt it was the only way to erase my mind. Until you… I guess my mind just didn’t have anything else to focus on. Of all the things on this Earth. Nothing else was enough.”
They had a strange and interesting dynamic and I did believe that half of Natalie’s attitude was for show. She liked getting a rise and making Olivia forget would have been a sort of high for her. I was addicted to how I could make her feel and I knew it probably wasn’t that different for Natalie.
“Earlier I told her that sometimes people just fall in love and there’s no explanation for why they do with one person and not another. That there were so many variables and factors that it’s just a perfect storm or an emotional chemical reaction. Sometimes my brain wants to take it apart and try and figure out why me but then I know it’s impossible to answer that fully. Love just is, I suppose.”
“I think you’re right,” Olivia said. “I think a lot of it has to be chemicals… We’re all just animals. It’s embarrassing but true. But then a lot of it is timing too… The way Nat felt about me must’ve been the way I felt about you. Just having you sitting in the passenger seat next to me that very first time made my whole body ache. Your eyes really did arrest me. I felt stolen. It was like you assaulted me only you hadn’t… I was somewhat trapped. And I knew that was a good thing, a t
hing that I wanted. It was confusing but I wouldn’t lie about it or pretend it didn’t happen. People have all these opinions about the phenomenon of love at first sight. I just think love happens in different ways and with you, for me, it was immediate, I knew I was in for a bit of a kidnapping. I made a conscious decision on that very first day to follow my instinct and let myself fall. I instantly saw so much of you that I liked. The decision almost wasn’t even conscious. It was instinct. I think I knew you needed me.”
“Yes, I did and I do,” I responded. “You know I’ve always been slower than you to realize things. It’s frustrating to be honest. Sometimes I feel emotionally dumb but I was confused when we went to dinner that day. I knew I wanted to be close to you but I didn’t know what it meant and I didn’t think about it. If I had I would have probably not let you get as close or under my skin like I did.”