Guarded Dreams

by L. J. Evans

  Ava smiled weakly, her brain probably going to all the places that mine had. “No, I don’t think living with you and Truck is the answer.”

  I couldn’t really argue it. “Is it the thought of Truck and me, or just moving in with me in general?”

  Her eyes searched mine, but we were interrupted with the waiter coming back again. He asked about dessert, and we both declined. I paid the bill, slipping my hand into hers as we left the restaurant so that I could pull her down the path to the pier. At the end, we stopped, watching the sky turn to black as the stars came out above us. She shivered, and I wrapped my arms around her.

  “It isn’t the thought of moving in with you,” she finally answered me.

  “Then what?”

  “Remember when you asked me to stay…”

  She was talking about our time in Rockport, when I’d stopped her car and asked her to stay. I nodded, burying my face in her neck both to keep her warm and to remind her of us. Of what our bodies knew.

  “It wouldn’t have worked, right?” she said breathlessly. “I mean, I’d have hated being in Galveston. I’d have been worried that I’d see my dad around every corner. I may not have applied again to Juilliard...”

  I knew what she was getting at. I’d known the same thing that day in Rockport. It would have been impossible for her to stay, just as it would have been impossible for me to follow. If we had, it would have been filled with regrets.

  “It’s different now,” I told her. We’d found each other again. I saw her as part of the future I was making. There wasn’t going to be regret in that.

  “It is different, and yet it’s not, right? I mean, we still are two people trying to figure out our place in this world.”

  She was right. For all I knew, I’d be jobless and homeless in a few weeks. I might be coming home to live in New London with Mom and Leena in the Victorian they were going to restore.

  “Rick Springfield said, ‘If the timing's right and the gods are with you, something special happens.’ We still haven’t figured out our timing yet,” she said.

  “Timing or not, what we have is already special,” I told her, because I believed it to be true, and I hoped that she did too.

  She turned to face me, lacing her arms behind my neck. “You’re right. We are.”

  “You figure out what you’re doing, I’ll figure out what I’m doing, and then we can figure out how to do that together.” I kissed her, and she returned the kiss with what felt like longing and hope rolled into one.

  She pulled her lips away and breathed out. “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, we’ll wait to figure it out.”

  That was going to have to be good enough for the moment. It was going to have to satisfy us both until we had answers to questions that weren’t completely in our control. Neither of us was good at that—not having control, not having a plan.

  But her words prodded at the possibilities that had been rolling around in my head. It made me think that, if I was willing to change, reimagine myself into something different, it just might bring our lives a little closer. That the doors that I felt closing on me might really lead to better doors ahead.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Ava

  THIS KISS

  “It's the way you love me

  It's a feeling like this

  It's centrifugal motion

  It's perpetual bliss”

  —Performed by Faith Hill

  —Written by Lerner / Roboff / Nielsen-Chapman

  Leaving Eli at the train station and boarding the train back to New York was like being slapped with reality after you’d been in a dream. For a while, it had just been Eli and me and his family. And now, I was having to go back to the reality of my world that existed before Eli.

  Eli and I had so many unknowns ahead of us. We both had huge chapters ending with blank slates on the next page. We’d said we weren’t giving up on us, but it also seemed fragile, like the big decisions waiting could still pull us apart.

  Leena and Mandy had hugged me goodbye at the bookstore, teary-eyed and emotional, as if they’d known me my whole life. It felt like family should. The hugs and the tears. Family should be sad that you were leaving, even if they were happy you were going off to chase the things that were important to you.

  It made me miss my mom. A mom. Having a mom. Having a childhood filled with hugs.

  When I got back to the city, Brady was already there. We spent a few hours sharing stories of our breaks. He’d spent the week in his hometown with ladies and music as the focus. I’d had Eli and his family as the focus.

  “It looks good on you,” Brady said, shoving my foot with his on the coffee table.

  “What?”

  “Love.”

  I flushed.

  “Don’t deny it,” he teased.

  “I can’t,” I told him, feeling strangely guilty that Eli and I still hadn’t said the words to each other, and yet, I felt comfortable sharing them with others—his mom, Brady.

  Maybe Eli and I just didn’t need to say it. Maybe we just knew. Just like our bodies knew something more than our brains about how our worlds were tied together. Maybe we needed to trust the world to figure out the timing for us.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  The weeks of April slowly bled away. Eli and I talked to each other at least twice a day: first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Plus, we usually had a few conversations by text. On the rare occasion, I’d get to hear his voice in the middle of the day, but not often. We were both busy.

  He was helping his mom get her stuff settled into Leena’s house, and they were hiring contractors to do some remodels on it. He was helping at the bookstore and taking his mom to her doctor’s appointments as the last phases of her treatment started to wind up. Cancer in remission. Another battle they’d fought and won together.

  Family.

  The word haunted me a lot these days. It found its way into my songs and my heart, like my subconscious was trying to noodle something out that my brain hadn’t caught up to yet.

  Jenna and I had a whole conversation about it.

  “The last song you sent me made me sad,” Jenna said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I realized that you don’t think of my family as yours.”

  “I love your family.” I told her the truth, because I did.

  “They’re your family, too,” she said forcefully. “My parents would have taken you in if they’d been able to find a way to prove Ethan was abusive.”

  “He never abused me.”

  “Yes, he did,” Jenna said fiercely. “Emotional abuse is still abuse, Chick-a-dee.”

  My mind kind of reeled at her words—the fact that she considered my father abusive. I’d known he was controlling and that he made me feel like I was nothing and would always be nothing, but I’d never really put a tag on it. I’d always considered him an asshole, for sure, but not abusive.

  The fact that Jenna’s family had seen it and wanted to take me in astonished me. I’d rarely talked with them about the things Dad did. Maybe Jenna had. Regardless, I’d never really thought of them as more than my best friend’s parents—people I liked and who were nice to me. But I’d never considered them mine, a support network that was waiting for me.

  It made me wonder if, like I’d told Eli’s mom, I was truly broken when it came to love and relationships. I wondered if my breaks would just continue to crack, and if they would shatter the fragile thing that Eli and I had built.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  On May first, Eli called, waking me from sleep before the sun hadn’t even started to lighten the sky. I panicked. “Eli?”

  “Hey.” His voice was gruff, tired. “I’m sorry to call so early. I’m on my way to the city.”

  My heart leaped. I was going to get to see him. Yet, he didn’t sound so excited about coming back. He sounded…terrified.

  �
��The review board?”

  “Yes. It’s at fifteen hundred hours.”

  I did the math in my head.

  “I’ll be in class,” I told him.

  “I know.”

  “Shall I come to your place after?” I asked.

  “I’ll come to you. I don’t know how long it will take.”

  “Okay,” I told him, but I wanted to reassure him. Wanted to tell him it was going to be fine. That they weren’t going to discharge him. It wouldn’t have been the truth, though, and I wouldn’t lie. I was as terrified as he was.

  “’Not everyone gets a true ending,’” I started.

  He chuckled. “Are you giving me another quote?”

  “Shh. Listen. ‘Not everyone gets a true ending. There are two types of endings because most people give up at the part of the story where things are the worst…Only those who persevere can find their true ending.’ You’ve worked really hard for your true ending,” I said.

  “Was that Ghandi?”

  My turn to laugh. “No, Stephanie Garber in a fantasy novel.”

  He was quiet. I could hear his doubts, even though he wasn’t speaking them. They were so often my own. What if my true ending would never come to be no matter how hard I work toward it? Or, in my case, what if I was giving up before I’d reached my true ending? I hated that he was full of those same doubts. Hated that, in a few hours, he might lose everything he’d worked for.

  I just wanted to give him something that he could take with him. Something positive. Something to show the light through the cracks. The brilliance of him.

  “Eli,” I paused.

  “Hmm?”

  “I love you,” I said. I hadn’t told him before. I’d saved it, because I’d wanted to say it for the first time when I was face to face with him. I wanted to say it when I could see his eyes flash and his gorgeous smile. But at that moment, I knew he needed this. He needed love to go into the room with him.

  “You can’t say that to me while I’m driving,” he said, but there was joy in his voice. Happiness filled me, knowing that I’d been able to give him that—joy at a time of fear.

  “Don’t crash; you’d have to start recovery all over again.”

  “Shit, that would really suck.”

  “Are you going to be full of cuss words now that your mom isn’t hanging over your shoulder?”

  “Maybe,” he teased and then was quiet. “Ava.”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you. And…I love you, too. You know that, right?”

  My heart filled so much that I thought it would break apart inside my chest. More cracks that could be shattered. More pieces of us that we were embedding into each other with no hope of getting them back. Still, I was glad. Glad that we loved each other. Glad that we’d said it. I nodded my response but then realized he couldn’t see it.

  “I do,” I finally breathed out.

  Silence again, him driving, my heart still pounding from the huge step we’d taken over a phone call. So not the way it should have been done, and yet perfect for what we’d needed from each other at the moment. For what Eli had needed at the moment.

  “I can’t wait to see you,” I told him.

  “It’s going to be the best thing about this day,” he said.

  “If you get your commission back, that will be the best thing,” I told him honestly.

  “No. You’re wrong. That will be great, exciting, an over-the-top relief. But seeing you… Seeing you after a month of not seeing you… I don’t have enough words for that.”

  Eli’s own brand of beautiful words filled my heart. I’d used many of them in my songs and told him that. He’d laughed at me, but when I said that I was putting his name down as one of the songwriters, he’d growled and said he’d deny it. I was still doing it, anyway. They were his words and my words mixed together. Strong and soft. Happy and sad. Joy and sorrow. Guard and lyricist.

  “Good luck,” I told him.

  “Say it again,” he said.

  “Good luck?”

  He chuckled into the phone, the sound making my toes curl in pleasure. “Not that.”

  I had to think for a nanosecond of time before I realized what he wanted. “I love you.”

  “Again.”

  The command that I couldn’t disobey. “I love you.”

  “One more time,” he asked.

  I laughed. “I love you, oh Captain, my Captain.”

  He groaned. “Really making it hard to drive.”

  “I just obeyed my captain’s command.”

  “Shit.”

  I laughed. “Please don’t crash.”

  “I need to hang up, but I don’t want to.”

  “Go. I’ll see you after.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey, Doodles,” I said, and he snorted at the nickname coming from my lips. “I love you.”

  “Hey, Ava,” he said. “I love you more.”

  Then he was gone.

  They weren’t original words. They weren’t unique. People had said them a gazillion times a day for centuries upon centuries. I love you and I love you more. But they were new to us. They were original to this moment in time, and they could never be said for the first time again. I cherished them. I cherished the memory. It was mine.

  No matter what happened. No matter whether everything worked out in our lives and we spent another seventy years saying them, or our lives drifted apart and we had to wait for another lifetime for us to come together again, the moment and the words were ours.

  I realized something that made my heart patter and skip a beat. Something that sounded like Jenna speaking in my head. I realized that, sometimes, the perfect love story was simply to have loved. To have taken the risk. To have shared that experience with another human being who loved you back. If it broke, if it shattered, if it came apart, it wouldn’t matter. No one could take away a love story that was yours.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  That afternoon, as I left class, Eli texted me that he was on his way. I texted back, asking how it went, but he just said he’d tell me when he saw me. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. It made me want to vomit.

  He was leaving the truck at his apartment and taking a Lyft into the city. I was anxious. I wanted to know what happened. I wanted to see him. I wanted to wrap my arms around him in a hug that I was learning to love, kiss him, and say, “I love you,” to his face for the first time.

  My concentration was so shot that I went to leave the dorm room with two different shoes on before Brady caught it, laughing at me. “I’ve never seen you this nervous. Ever.”

  I gave him a one-fingered wave but changed to a matching pair and then left. I wanted to meet him on the steps. I wanted to see his face and know what had happened.

  The tension grew as I waited.

  Then he was there, striding toward me with hardly a limp and no brace, a bag on his shoulder. He was almost the Eli that I’d known from before the accident. He was still in his uniform, as if he’d been too impatient to change. I realized it was the first time I’d ever seen him in his uniform.

  It was heart-stopping. Stupid. More mundane words for our day, but he was just so “perfectly perfect in every way” that it was hard to come up with not mundane words. He wore the uniform like it was just part of him, part of who he was. And that made my heart ache in a different way, because I hoped they hadn’t taken who he was away from him.

  His face was the normal blank slate as he moved toward me, but as he got closer, I could see emotion swimming in it. Emotions he was trying to contain, and yet I still couldn’t read them because they seemed so mixed.

  “What did they—”

  He cut me off with a kiss, dropping his bag, and wrapping his arms around my body in the dress I’d slipped on. The kiss… Faith Hill’s words surrounded me. This kiss. Bliss. Centrifugal motion. Unstoppable. Fairytales and reality mixed. Filling me as he always filled me with his scent and his l
ife and his Jedi force.

  We stood there on the steps of the school, kissing. Joining. Rejoining. Finding each other again after a month of being apart. I realized what he was trying to tell me with his lips. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what they’d said. This. This was what mattered.

  We heard a whistle and, “Get a room,” that finally drew us apart, my hand to his cheek, his hand to my neck. He was smiling. That goofy smile.

  “Again?” he asked.

  My smile met his. “I love you,” I told him.

  He smiled, groaned, and kissed me again. Slowly. In that way he did that always felt like he was trying to deliver a sermon to my heart of adoration and love. He loved me.

  I pulled away. “My turn,” I told him. He grinned.

  “I love you,” he responded, that deep tone tingling over my skin.

  I reached my lips back to his and kissed him one more time before stepping back. I pushed my fingers into his and pulled him down so that we sat on the steps in the warm May sunshine that had filled the city.

  “Tell me what happened,” I told him.

  He sighed, and I watched his face. He didn’t look devastated, which eased the pain in my heart, but he didn’t look overjoyed either. It was hard to understand.

  “Do you want the good or the bad?”

  “The beginning. To the end.”

  “I’m being discharged.”

  My heart broke for him. I squeezed his hand.

  “Eli—”

  He kept going, ignoring my pain at his pain. “Stan, my commander, was waiting outside the room after. It isn’t the norm for a commander to show up, but he knew my dad, and he’s kind of looked out for me.”

  I listened, watching him as he spoke, trying to place all his emotions so that I would know how to help him.

  “He’d already told me, back in April, that if everything didn’t go as planned, he had some ideas for me. It was his way of forewarning me, I guess. And he came today because I think he knew that I’d need him more today than when I’d first broken my knee.”

  He shrugged and smiled weakly. I reached up and kissed him, my compassion and sorrow bleeding into his, tugging at the loss I knew he felt. It was the first and last time that I’d see him in his uniform, and that twisted my insides to shreds. For him.