Falling In Between

by Devon Ashley

  “That’s not what I meant,” I replied, gently pushing him off so we were facing one another on our sides. I brushed my fingers through his hair. “Where’ve you been?”

  He sighed and rolled onto his back. “Uh…I’ve been watching over my body.”

  I jerked upright, excitement taking over my actions. “You found yourself? Then you believe me?”

  He reached up to caress my cheek and I felt heat rise inside it. I could barely see the colors in his eyes but a tiny glint managed to reflect light from the dimness. “Yeah, I believe you. I didn’t at first. But when I realized I couldn’t get out of this world, I began to wonder why I wasn’t waking up. It didn’t take long to feel this pull that led me back to my body. But I couldn’t jump back in.”

  “Why not? You can still wake up. I went to the hospital every day this week just to see if you’d done it, cause you certainly weren’t here anymore.”

  There was such distance in his eyes. Defeat, maybe. I tried not to succumb to the gentle swirl-like motions his fingertips were drawing on my cheek.

  “Why didn’t you try to jump back in?”

  “I was about to. But then something occurred to me.” He sat up beside me and grasped one side of my face. “What if I actually do wake up, but I don’t remember you?”

  I took his hand into mine and sighed, cause the thought had occurred to me too. “I know. But I still want you to go. This isn’t healthy for either one of us. Eventually, your body’s gonna deteriorate and I’d lose you anyways. This way, at least I’ll know you can go on with a real life.”

  “Will you come see me if I do this?”

  I nodded softly. “I wouldn’t abandon you like that.”

  His eyes softened and his face fell, and I swear the shimmer in his eyes dimmed a little too. I swung my leg over his hips and sat myself snug on his lap. Both my hands grasped his shoulder blades and firmly traced his neckline all the way to his ears, where I caressed his jaw and brought my lips gently against his. His lips embraced mine and his hands reached around my waist and locked onto my back.

  “One more thing,” he said, pulling his lips out of reach, “Another reason why I was gone so long.” He paused, almost hesitant. “Any chance we both died…around the same time?”

  I swallowed hard. I never mentioned that detail once I learned it. I nodded my head, adding, “Within a minute of each other.”

  Surprisingly, he smiled and nodded his head at this.

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Well, I remembered something during our time apart. But you’re going to think I’m crazy when I tell you.”

  I threw him a tantalizing stare. “Seriously? Even crazier than having to tell you that you were a frequent flyer to my head every night?”

  He rocked his head sideways as he debated. “Mine might require an even greater leap of fate.”

  “Alright,” I said, slumping down a bit. “Hit me.”

  “While I was wandering around in the void trying to find myself, I got this vision, maybe a memory, of us meeting before the dreams, but it was only for a moment. There was something…surreal about it. But you were ripped away from me. I guess because you were being brought back to life. I tried to follow you out but we were separated and I got lost. The next thing I knew, I was in the city park the day we met and I felt drawn to you. That same connection, I guess you can call it, that I felt every time you must have entered a dream state.”

  He watched me cautiously. Like he was ready for me to jump out of his lap and dismiss it. Sorta like what he did to me when I had to share my version of a crazy-ass story. I had to admit, it seemed as good as any other reason for why there seemed to be some kind of connection in our heads. Better in fact.

  “I believe you. Mostly because you remembered that without knowing we both died and came back to life at the same time. It would mean our spirits made a connection that day. It’s funny that yours always comes to mine, like something about your state of unconsciousness is what allows your spirit to find mine when I’m asleep.”

  “That’s what makes me think it won’t again if I come out of the coma.”

  I grabbed his chin and looked directly into his sad puppy dog eyes. Firmly, I said, “Don’t even think about it. You’re not gonna live the rest of your life caged within my dreams just cause you’re afraid you won’t remember me. And it’s okay if you don’t. It doesn’t mean I’m just gonna forget about you.”

  “But I might forget about you,” he slowly reiterated.

  “But what if you don’t?” He leaned forward and kissed me eagerly, and his hands slipped behind me and pressed me in closer.

  God, I loved his touch. His warm, smooth lips. The way his tongue lightly licked my skin. It wasn’t easy to pull myself away and shake my head at him – knowing this could be the last time his mouth ever graced my body.

  “Still saying no, huh? This could be our last chance to be together. If I don’t remember you–”

  “Then you won’t remember us ever having sex, let alone tonight,” I interrupted. “Besides, I will remember, and I don’t want our last time together to seem like a last moment of fear or desperation.” I reached up and stroked his face. His face softened where I touched him. “I’d rather remember my time with you just as it was before.”

  Quietly, he asked, “Can I at least stay the night?”

  I smiled and embraced him in a long hug. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Saturday was a normal volunteer day for me but I didn’t rush right over. I lay there in bed for most of the morning, staring up at the whimsical circular brushstrokes on the ceiling. Yeah, it was eating me up on whether or not the Chance in my head was really Evan, and if he would actually slip back into his body and wake up.

  So why hadn’t I gone yet?

  Straight up – fear. If he’s awake…then…

  Ugh! Why did I care so much? It’s just some random guy in my dreams! Sophie was right. I probably just caught a glance of him while slipping in and out of consciousness. Chance wasn’t real. He wasn’t Evan. And Evan wasn’t gonna suddenly be awake when I got there.

  I threw the covers off me, cleaned myself up for the day and grabbed the number seventeen bus that had the hospital on its route.

  As I neared the outside of room thirty-four, I heard a television playing some type of game show. My heart suddenly pumped double-time as I edged my head around the door frame to peek in.

  Oh, come on!

  The curtain was drawn and I was forced to walk the depth of the room to find out if Evan was awake to watch that television. My feet barely progressed, like some invisible assailant was pushing against my body every time I tried to extend my step. My insides were twisting, somersaulting and tingling all at the same time.

  I heard someone clear their throat behind the curtain and every cell in my body froze in fear. Like that a-man-in-a-creepy-white-mask-is-one-second-from-jumping-through-the-curtain-to-kill-me fear.

  No way, I told myself. Just, no freakin’ way. It’s not Evan. It’s a doctor, or a nurse, examining him.

  I inhaled one last breath and my hand trembled as it reached out to tug the curtain sideways. And there he was. The paler, weaker version of the man I saw most nights in my dreams. But the eyes. The gold that speckled the eyes between the mossy green part of the iris and the black pupil, glittered just like they did on the livelier version I was used to. Evan’s bed was reclined at forty-five degrees and he was twiddling the remote in his hand.

  It took both of us a moment to do anything but stare, but our lips slowly managed to curl upwards.

  “Hi,” I said breathlessly.

  “Hi,” he replied softly.

  He just continued laying there and I just continued standing there, gazing at each other like a doe and a buck caught in the headlights. When he didn’t say anything else, my insides began to rip apart. He’s not gonna remember. I braced myself for the unavoidable truth and fearfully asked, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
>
  Curiously, he asked, “Do you work here?”

  My heart took on the weight of lead and my lungs deflated. He didn’t remember me. “No. I’m a volunteer. My name is Jenna.”

  “Do I know you from school?”

  Disappointedly, I replied, “Uh, no. I go to Pennington Academy.” He let out a tiny huff, and despite the shock coursing through my body, it drew a smile cause I knew what he was thinking. “That doesn’t mean I’m automatically worth discounting. We’re not all…”

  “Hoity-toity?” he finished, a weak smile spreading across his face again.

  My eyes rolled slightly and he found it amusing. “Yeah. If it helps, you can pretend I’m a juvie offender or something.”

  “I like you Jenna. Even if you are one of those prep girls.”

  “Well you should like her,” Margaret said, entering the room and nearing Evan’s bed. “She’s been keeping you company this past week. Reading you Lord knows how many sport stories.”

  He looked back towards me with surprise. “Oh yeah? So who’s looking good to win March Madness?”

  I bit down hard on my lip. “Uh… that’s hockey, right?” He chuckled and shook his head no. “Alright, I admit it. I only read from the paper once. The other days I read from a Harlequin romance novel.”

  His jaw fell all the way open. “Oh, God! Was that my punishment for not waking up? Margaret!”

  Laughing, she said, “Look at it this way, Evan. Maybe reading you that book is what got you to come out of the coma.”

  He playfully glared at me. “Yeah, cause I couldn’t take that crap anymore!”

  “Ah, see,” I said, “You’re welcome.”

  His forehead furrowed at me, but I knew that look all too well. Sure enough, I could tell he was suppressing a smile.

  Margaret pulled out a small tin can from her jacket and shook it. “Ah, man! I thought I was getting this thing removed.”

  “Relax, Evan. We’ll get you started on liquid food soon enough.”

  He turned to me and said, “You don’t have to watch this. It’s

  disgusting.”

  “Stop being so dramatic. It’s just a feeding tube,” Margaret replied.

  “It’s alright. I’ve actually seen it done on other patients before.”

  When Margaret was done feeding and flushing the J-tube connected to his lower abdomen, she left us alone again.

  “So where’s your family? Did they stop by?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they did. Been here all morning, in fact. Couldn’t beat ‘em off with a stick even if I had the strength to. Luckily they left for lunch.”

  I just nodded my head. I had been kinda interested in seeing what they looked like.

  “So why did you ask me if I remembered you? Have we met before, cause I’m pretty sure I don’t remember you.”

  Uh, we sorta screwed around in my dreams for five months. A lot. “Oh, I meant my voice. Since I had been reading to you all last week. I was curious to see if you recognized my voice.”

  “No, sorry.”

  “Evan?”

  I spun on my heels when I heard that come from a girl behind me. She was pretty. Really pretty. With long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, icy blue eyes and a toned body even I had to admit was pretty smokin’.

  “Melissa?” he said, trying to glance around me to confirm his suspicion. Melissa hurried through the room and to the other side of his bed. She practically threw herself on top of him and devoured every visible part of his body. I’m surprised he was able to breathe without choking on the massive amount of hair she just flipped over his face.

  “OH-MY-GOD!” she burst, and I could tell the tears were probably saturating his neck. She mouthed a few more things, but with the tears and the frog that suddenly got stuck in her throat, the only part I thought I made out was ‘thought you were dead’.

  I had never even thought for one second that Chance might have a girlfriend in this life. What was I thinking? Of course he would. And I didn’t exactly know what to do about the PDA before me, but thank God my feet did. They quietly stepped back and slipped out of the room as she continued to choke him with her hair.

  Everything part of my body was numb – my head, my heart, even my fingertips. I wandered lifelessly until I found an unoccupied room and closed myself in it. Once my back hit the end wall, I gasped uncontrollably and slid down to the floor as the tears began to rain. I buried my head between my knees and allowed my body to heave up and down.

  God, I think I was okay at first, with him forgetting me. It meant I could move forward without any complications. But the moment I saw that freakin’ fake-baked bottle blonde receive my affection, my body just lost it! I wasn’t sure why, but I seriously wanted to throttle her throat and smash her head into the wall a few of times just to de-beautify her a bit.

  I felt a little better once I screamed a few times into my knee. At least it made me want to snap off Barbie’s head a little less. A clean break was best, right? I mean, he’s out of my head and back in his body. We both knew it was a possibility he’d never remember me. So what if he had a bobble-head Barbie ready and waiting to blow him? I wasn’t really gonna choose him over Robert anyway, right? I kept thinking all along I wanted Robert, even if Chance woke up remembering who I was.

  So why was it really eating me up at this moment? Like I was wrong or something? Like I wanted to go back to Chance and make him remember everything we had so we could have it again?

  My insides wouldn’t stop twisting and a wave of nausea stuck with me. I felt so confused. I never took my dream relationship that seriously before, but now that I knew we could have it here in the real world, a part of me wanted it back.

  But I still wanted Robert, too.

  It wasn’t easy, but after thirty minutes, I had drained my eyes of tears and cleared the mucous from my system. I cleaned myself up and finished my shift. Luckily, Margaret had plenty of things for me to do that kept me behind the counter. But I found myself looking up and down the hall where Chance’s, er-Evan’s, room was. (Oh, who am I kidding? He’d always be Chance to me). I couldn’t see his room but it didn’t keep me from watching the hall, like he’d suddenly walk up it and come to tell me he remembered me. But who was I kidding? Even if he did, he certainly wasn’t gonna be walking anywhere any time soon.

  I suffered through my neverending shift, hoping I didn’t screw up on any of my work, as my attention just wasn’t as sharp as it normally was. I numbly left through the hospital’s main entrance and crossed the valet zone towards the bus stop. The bus I wanted was due any minute now and I didn’t want to miss it and be stuck waiting for the next in the cold. If I cried again, my tears would just freeze to my face.

  I halted my stride when a familiar Infiniti pulled in front of me and blocked my path. My heart jumped as the passenger window rolled down and Robert stared at me from the opposite side. I slowly stepped beside it and leaned my head down.

  “Get in,” he said coldly. When he sensed my hesitation, he irritably added, “Get in the car, Jenna. I didn’t come all the way out here to have you take the bus back.”

  I swallowed hard and fearfully climbed in. I’d go so far as to believe that he knew about my midnight rendezvous, but no way Sophie would ever rat me out like that. Still, I had pretended to be sick and ignored him for a week. And I knew I wasn’t ready for this conversation – the gut-wrenching pain inside me was clear indication of that. And the eyes that bore down on me were hard and entirely ticked off.

  Once he pulled out of the hospital and passed a few traffic lights, I meekly dared to say, “I thought you had a swim meet today.”

  “Yeah, well, I faked an illness. Quite easy to do, but you already know that, don’t you?” My eyes drifted in his direction as he turned his attention back to the road.

  “You know, I saw you twice this week in the hall. I took a long route that made me late for class just so I could check up on you and see how you were doing. Know what I saw? Not a sick person, that
’s for sure. Not to mention, a sick person wouldn’t hop on the bus every day this week to go to the hospital. So I skipped the meet this weekend because it’s the only time my girlfriend wasn’t going to focus on avoiding me.”

  All I could muster up for that was a simple, “Oh.”

  “Just do me a favor and don’t ask me any more questions right now. I want to have this conversation without yelling at you. So just let me focus on the driving.”

  The silence was deafening and the loud thumping in my chest kept my nerves stiff and tingly. It only took a few minutes for him to get to the city park, but the stillness in the air made it seem like ages. Smart – pulling into the lot at the city park – no way I was gonna bolt from his car here. It was mostly abandoned, and though it wasn’t snowing or raining out, a March day like today was still too chilly to stay out in for too long.

  He put the car in park and let out a deep sigh. Hopefully he’d had enough time to calm down. Panic filled his eyes when I released my seat belt but they calmed again when I pulled off my jacket, confirming I had no intention to run away right now. He wasn’t wearing a jacket like me and the heat in the car was set to keep him comfortable, so I was beginning to feel even more suffocated than I already was.

  “Is this because of what happened?”

  God, our almost sex-capade seemed so long ago. “No,” I replied.

  “Because we can take a step backwards if you’re not ready.”

  “It has nothing to do with that.”

  He gave me a hard look and asked with disbelief, “Really, Jenna? Because you immediately avoided me following that moment. That’s one hell of a coincidence if it’s not about the sex.”

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “Look, Robert,” I said soothingly, but then I paused cause I didn’t know what to say. And for reasons I didn’t understand, the next words I released from my mouth were, “I need us to take a break.”

  Every emotion he was feeling just completely fell off his face. He turned forward and gripped the steering wheel tight, roughly twisting his hands back and forth. “You’re breaking us off?”