by Rosa Sophia
When I Dream
of You
By Rosa Sophia
When I Dream of You
Copyright © 2014 by Rosa Sophia. All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: September 2014
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
www.limitlesspublishing.com
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1502392695
ISBN-10: 1502392690
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To Florida, the home of my soul.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
Present day, Jupiter, Florida
My mother was drunk in the next room when it happened twelve years ago.
Now I’m sitting in a hotel that could be anywhere. I can hear the ocean lapping against the shore, and the lights of the city look like stars that hang too close to the horizon.
I know I shouldn’t be here. Sitting on the firm mattress, my legs bent toward me, I lean against the headboard. I take another drink of whiskey, let the burn sink deep. I feel it in my core, tingling. My breath quickens. I want to be here.
He lifts the comforter and draws me down with him, and I feel as if it’s something we’ve already done. Somewhere, sometime before, he held me this way. And I had to let go.
I can hear his heart beating, my cheek pressed to his chest. I wonder how I ended up here, in the arms of a man I dreamt of before we met. His grip tightens, and I feel soft kisses against my bare shoulder, his stubble scratching my skin. The warmth of his breath is welcome, somehow rejuvenating. Our lips meet and each kiss is exploratory, tender, slow—as if to make sure it’s right. I think about the hot tub six floors down. Is the water too searing? Should we get in?
We stop, cuddle, then continue, and I’m too afraid to move. My heart pounds. I start to hear things in my head, familiar voices. Each taunting, jeering. You stupid slut, what makes you think you’re good enough for him?
I shove them away. He kisses me again, and I invite it. Deep, passionate, frenzied—I’ve never felt anything like this before. Because I make a point to avoid it.
His hands roam my body, and I respond, wanting more.
Please go away, no, stay!
He presses against me, and I want to welcome him, thrust my hips up to meet his. But suddenly I feel trapped, unable to resist. And his tongue is probing my mouth, and I’m hot, wet between my legs—
Panic. Twelve years ago I was lying on a bed with a broken spring, pinned beneath a man who was laughing at me, shoving himself inside me despite my begging him to stop. He thought it was so funny, my resistance, like the way an adult cackles at a crying child after playing a cruel joke.
Why did you let him do that to me, Mama? Why didn’t you stop him?
Stumbling, wasted, she slammed her calloused feet against the faux wood floor and growled, “I trusted you!” Brandishing a gnarled finger, she looked at me in disgust, as if—
It was all my fault.
Panic. I’m back in the hotel, and I’m pressing against his chest, trying to pull away from his kisses. The surf licks the sand, warm and wet, and I can hear the syllables as they jump from the sea.
You are worthless. You deserve this. To be humiliated. Scorned. Treated like dirt.
“Please, please no, this is too much for me.” I manage to speak, and he stops. Am I talking to him, or the voices? I pull away, my chest aching, my heart sinking. I clutch my stomach. “It hurts.”
Something tells me it’s not the whiskey; it’s the pain I bury, the grief roiling inside me.
I tell him about the rape. How my mother was there. She didn’t stop it. Is that love? What is love? I suddenly wish I were six floors down, sinking in the hot tub, nothing but a shell without a soul.
A while later, he asks me if I’m all right, his head on my stomach, his arm around my hip.
I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m all right.
A year ago I had a vision I was in a hotel room with a man, and we made passionate love for hours. Then he went to war and died, shot in the chest, fallen on a dirt road.
I drag myself off the bed, capping the whiskey, listening to the voices taunt me.
Don’t listen. They’re wrong.
“I should go,” I tell him, but I don’t really want to.
He walks me to my car, and I ask him to kiss me again, make it the best I’ve ever had. And he does. Driving down the empty roads, I want to turn around and know I shouldn’t.
In a hotel room, I realized my fears. Now instead of him leaving, it is I who is departing.
A balmy sea breeze tousles the palm trees.
And I drive on, gaze piercing the darkness, thinking of the man I dreamt about before I met him.
Chapter 2
Twelve years ago
The Celtic cross pendant was a gift from my best friend Jenny, and I twirl it between my fingers all day at school.
When I stop by the bathroom in between classes, the tall, willowy Patchett twins are standing in the corner by the paper towel dispenser, giggling with Meghan Chambers. The girls go silent as I step in, and they glare at me as if I don’t belong. A lump rises in my throat, and I cast my gaze to the floor.
Those girls hang around his crowd; they aren’t really friends with him—the monster who raped me last week. I wonder if anyone is really his friend, or if they’re just using him because he’s popular in school and has a lot of connections, or he says he does anyway. I’m not sure what is true and what isn’t. The only thing I know is that I feel dirty, used, and I hate the part of me between my legs, and I hate my mother because she didn’t stop it. But then again, I couldn’t cry out, I couldn’t call for her. I was too humiliated. You deserve it, the voices whisper. I shake my head, cringing, forcing them away. I want to cry. I want to go home, but I don’t know where home is.
When I emerge from the stall and wash my hands, I look to the cross for comfort while the girls behind me whisper something and laugh again.
I check myself quickly to make sure I’m okay—shirt straight, pants zipped, nothing embarrassingly out of place. It doesn’t matter, they will laugh anyway. But for the rest of the day I’ll worry something’s showing, something’s wrong with me that disappoints them. I still can’t figure out why.
Wads of food—soft pretzels, snacks—bounce off my shoulder during lunch. Jenny is out sick, and the only time the kids leave me alone is when she’s there, because no one messes with Mayor Bob Tomlin’s daughter. No one picked on me when the monster wanted my company. No one would dare throw food at him. But now that he’s gotten what he came for, he is gone, and occasionally I see him on the other side of the cafeteria, and I quickly avert my eyes.
I finish my lunch, perched on a seat at the end of an empty table, and watch Adam’s snide expression as he leers at me from ne
arby. A piece of pretzel flies through the air, and lands somewhere in front of my table. Adam saunters over and snatches the pretzel off the ground and says, “I dropped something.”
His friends burst into laughter, clutching their guts as Adam goes back to the table and prepares to fire another round.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now.
I tug my backpack across the table and use it as a pillow, folding my arms under my face and resting my head against the cool fabric. I pretend I’m not there. Once I tried to draw a picture of the dreadful feelings that course through me at a time like this, because it was so hard to explain in words. It begins in the center of my chest, a pulsing heaviness that makes it difficult to breathe. Then it spreads across my body like poison, jabbing into my arms and slicing through my fingers. It is misery, a physical reaction that can last anywhere from a few minutes to an entire day. I shuffle my feet, finally resting one over the other, and take a deep breath.
Tears. Hot and salty. They slip unbidden along my cheeks, but I dare not make a sound. I can’t let them see me like this.
Under my breath, I repeat the only prayer I know by heart, using the words as a mantra to keep my weeping under control.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven...”
I clutch the cross so tightly I think it might cut my skin.
***
I always come home late to avoid Mom. I go to the library after school to study or write stories. It’s quiet there, peaceful, within walking distance of my bus stop, and I often wonder what would happen if I just stayed there, hid from the librarians at closing time, and slept somewhere in a study room, tucked in a dark corner.
Come find me, I dare you...No, please don’t...
I step inside the apartment and carefully shut the door behind me. It is chilly, mid-December, and Mom has the sliding glass doors to the balcony wide open. The breeze reaches across the living room and down the hall, making wind chimes sing in the darkness.
Just because it’s dark doesn’t mean she’s asleep.
Seven-thirty. Mom goes to sleep early most nights, passed out from too many drinks. Most of the time she’s out cold by now, but when I walk past her bedroom, I see a wavering form move in the shadows.
“Nina, is that you?”
“Yes, Mom.” I leave my backpack on the floor by the front door as I go into the kitchen.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?”
“Making something to eat.” I flip on the light switch, and a glaring bright light fills the small space, making me wince.
She joins me a moment later, a thin woman in navy blue pajamas, her short brown hair messy from lying in bed. There are dark circles around her blood-shot eyes, and she leans against the entryway to the kitchen for support, moving back and forth on her gnarled feet as though being pushed to and fro by the breeze.
I don’t speak as I gather items for a sandwich—bread, mayonnaise, cheddar cheese, tomato, lettuce, sliced turkey. I feel her watching me.
“What?” I turn, looking at her.
“You’re eating now?”
“Yeah. I’m hungry. So what?” I feel it coming. My heartbeat quickens. She will go into her usual diatribe, her breath reeking of liquor.
“It’s almost eight o’ clock, and you’re eating? You’ll get fat.”
I am so sick of hearing it, I laugh it off. At a hundred and twenty-eight pounds, I am not fat at all, but I can’t help but shoot back a clever retort, “Mom, I’m already fat, what does it matter?”
Under the unnatural light, her face contorts in disgust, and she looks almost frightening. She sneers at me. “Look at you. What have you done to yourself?” Her gaze travels up and down my body. “You’ve gained weight. Why? Look at you.”
“Are you serious?”
“Nina, I just don’t understand it.” She shakes her head, waving her hand in a gesture of disdain, and turns on her heels, nearly stumbling against the plaster wall behind her as she makes her way back to her bedroom.
I move slowly, putting the sandwich together as though I’m building a work of art. Then I stare at it as it sits there on the yellow-and-white plate, the florescent lights above me buzzing.
My appetite is gone. But I eat it anyway.
Then I go in my room and sit on my bed, touching the mattress, running my hands over the blanket. I hear my mother in the next room talking to herself or to the television, I can’t tell which.
And I think to myself, this is where it happened. This is where he raped me.
Will I ever be able to forget?
Chapter 3
Two weeks ago, Jupiter, Florida
I stand in a sea of people with no room to move. My bare leg brushes against someone’s hand. I slip to the side only to collide with a blonde dressed in bright pink. She flashes white teeth and apologizes, her blue eyes sparkling, as she glances at the headband across my forehead that reads I thought they said RUM.
I love being around all these people, being part of a race. The energy, the positivity, the competitive urge. It makes me want to grow, shoot for the sky, become a better person.
“And they’re off!” The announcer’s voice is amplified over the crowd as we begin to move slowly in one direction. For a brief moment, we shift as one flesh, before gaining independence from one another like atoms splitting in an explosion of sweat and excitement.
As we wind around the curve that will lead us along the ocean, I remember last year when I almost vomited after crossing the finish line. Not today.
My feet pound on the pavement and I clear my mind, slipping into a meditative state as I concentrate on my breathing and the alternating pattern of my feet touching the ground as they carry me along.
Snippets of conversations bounce around me.
“Slow at first, then finish strong...”
“Oh, you did? I ran that one too.”
“This isn’t like the run for the pies, the Thanksgiving run...you know? More intensive...”
I jog past a woman who is running beside a young boy, telling him, “you can do this, don’t give up, I know it’s your first time, but you can do it.” I imagine it’s his coach, and I wonder what it’s like to not be isolated as a child, to grow up with other kids, with other people encouraging you.
Letting go of thoughts, I clear my mind.
Mom said she thought sports were too much for little children, but I knew the real reason she didn’t like them. Evening was her time to drink, and she couldn’t drive me to any practice, any function. So I stayed home.
Back to the present, I clear my mind again. I have to concentrate to keep myself from giving up, collapsing by the side of the street. I always want to give up, and the voices encourage it.
Why are you doing this? Such a waste of your time.
“Fuck you,” I growl under my breath.
A man runs alongside me, glances at me with a peculiar expression, and I hope he didn’t think I was talking to him. My cheeks burn, but I can’t tell if it’s from the heat or my embarrassment.
I jump forward out of my body, my corporeal form tugging me along. A therapist once told me that it was called dissociation, said it was a bad thing. But it focuses me; I feel nothing, and I glide along with perfect ease. I can snap back to reality if I choose, but during these races I tend to remain separate, forcing my body through any pain it might encounter all the way to the finish line.
I run for the love of it. I started a couple of years ago, battling depression and weight gain, and now I am a paltry hundred and fifteen pounds, slim and curvaceous, with shoulder-length auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, perky breasts accentuated by my tank top and sports bra. I’m still not good enough for Mom, who swears I need to lose another couple pounds. Growing up, she’d taught me if your thighs touched when you walked, it meant you were fat.
The voices sound like Mom, and they constantly haunt me. I run from them, keeping a good pac
e, hoping one day I can leave them behind. I love my mother so much it hurts, but she fights against horrors I can’t even begin to imagine. She doesn’t know she’s beautiful, talented. She worked so hard to protect me, to raise me, but she couldn’t stop her demons from escaping their cage.
It was inevitable.
I hear the waves as they break against the sand and look up at the palm trees against a backdrop of light blue sky. Soon I’m on my own, just a crowd of people in front of me and behind me. Until I begin to match my pace with a man around my age, late twenties or early thirties, his brown curls bouncing over the sweat that beads on his forehead.
He’s wearing shorts and sneakers, and his muscled arms and chest are bare. For a brief moment, our eyes meet, and I feel my soul snap back into my body. I skip forward as my breath increases its cadence, and I’m unsure if it’s his influence that caused it, or my quick pace as I beat a rhythm against the sizzling macadam.
Something about him makes me uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me.
I run ahead to try to escape him, but we keep returning to each other, like polarized magnets drawn inexorably back. There’s no defying nature’s laws.
We’re pacing each other, our steps in sync, and there are only so many times we can glance at each other, pretending we aren’t looking, before one of us has to say something.
We swing around the halfway point, passing a group of girls clad in matching shirts. A man walking his dog by the side of the road watches, and the dog barks.
Finally our gazes meet and we acknowledge each other.
“Hey, good luck,” he says. “Think you’ll beat me?”
“No, I think you’ll beat me,” I retort, my breath labored.
There’s magic, synchronicity, and I feel good running beside him, strangers drawn together somehow by our movements. I think about the finish line. The words objects in motion stay in motion flash through my mind. I think about him, but I’m not sure why, and for some reason this feels like the most natural place to be, running with him in the summer heat, the sea breeze caressing our faces.