Dream On (Stories of Serendipity #2)

by Anne Conley

  “A little early for all this madness, isn’t it?” She eyed them, pointedly looking at the shots lined up on the table.

  “Quit your whining. We’ve been waiting for you to get here.” Jessie clinked her glass to Alyssa’s first, then Summer’s, then licked the salt from the rim, drank the shot and stuck the lime in her mouth.

  Summer followed suit, and they both turned to look at Alyssa, who shrugged her shoulders and licked the salt from the rim of the glass, turned up her glass, and savored the burn as she followed its progress down her throat before it exploded into her stomach. She sucked on the lime daintily, trying to look nonchalant.

  The truth was, Alyssa loved tequila. Dressed, naked, whatever. Tequila made her feel like a totally different person, and she loved the feeling of freedom and lack of inhibition that came over her when she drank it. She knew it was wrong on so many levels, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t drink it often, but when she did, look out.

  “So girls, how’s things?” Alyssa asked, relishing the burn in her stomach.

  Jessie grunted, and took a swig of her beer. “I would be a lot better with some great sex, but I think I’m going to have to forgo it tonight. I’ve got three Mama goats who are about to domino, and I need to be at the house when they do. They’re due tonight or tomorrow, and they’re all new mamas, who have no idea what to expect. I’ve got a cot set up in the barn to spend the night with them.”

  “Is that necessary?” Alyssa was curious.

  “Probably not. I’m more anxious about it than they are, most likely. I just want to make sure all the babies make it.” Jessie shrugged, trying to act nonchalant, but Alyssa knew she worried about her goats. She loved each and every one of them. She had named them all, and loved to describe each one’s personality to whoever would sit still long enough to listen.

  She turned to Summer, “How about you? How’s Bo?”

  Summer turned almost giddy. “She’s great! I just came back from a visit with her. I went on an excursion with her to a hotel near there. We had a great time. A lady had committed suicide and another guy had died there. It was such an amazing experience.”

  “I can only imagine the kind of sex that sort of experience would lead to.” Jessie giggled into her palm before motioning to the waitress for another round of drinks.

  “Well, I’m not going to kiss and tell…”

  “Oh, I totally wish you would. I’ve always wondered about lesbian sex.” Alyssa choked on her drink when Jessie said this.

  “I haven’t. Please don’t share that with us, Summer. I love you dearly, but that’s not something I’ve ever been curious about.”

  Summer was laughing openly at the both of them. “Don’t worry, Al. I’m not going to divulge my secrets. I don’t think you could handle it, with your skewed views on sex, and Jessie, I’m not about to give you the satisfaction. You’ll just have to go on wondering.”

  Jessie grabbed the karaoke book and the ladies started daring each other to sing different songs. After the third round of tequila, Alyssa looked at her girlfriends and asked, “Do you guys ever wonder about your dreams?”

  Jessie snorted, “Nope. Mine are too weird to contemplate too much. Driving around town popping purple bubble people requires absolutely no reading into. I have a hostile personality that is repressed. I’m okay with that.” She swigged on a beer.

  “What’s going on ‘Lyssa?” Summer was looking at her, one eye kind of squinted.

  “I’ve been dreaming about this really hot guy. I mean, I guess he’s hot. Every woman he sees wants to have sex with him. And he does have sex with them. Really crazy, wild sex. Can we have one more shot? I wanna sing.”

  Summer signaled the waitress to bring another round, and looked at Alyssa gesturing with her hands for more.

  “The thing is, in the dream, I’m him. Does that make me gay? I can ask you this, right? You’re not offended?”

  “I’m not offended, Lyssa. I think it’s cool. How long have you been dreaming about him?”

  “Almost two weeks. Every night. It’s weird, cuz it’s like I’m living his life, in my dreams. Mazal Tov!” Without licking the salt, she slammed the shot into the back of her throat, and sucked on the lime with gusto, feeling her cheeks flush and her stomach flip as the liquor splashed into it.

  “You’re not gay. You said you thought he was hot, not the girls. What does he do?” Summer couldn’t hold back her curiosity.

  “He’s a bartender. And he goes to this club, a really freaky place, where he picks up women. Then he goes home with them, and performs deliciously unspeakable acts with them. Do you think my subconscious is telling me something?”

  “Um. Yes. You definitely need to get laid. Everybody’s been telling you that. Maybe your subconscious just got tired of hearing everybody else say it and is jumping on the bandwagon.”

  “Okay. Is it my turn to sing?”

  “I believe it is.” Summer laughed and let her stumble by

  Up on the makeshift stage, Alyssa grabbed the microphone and did a test blow into the top of it to make sure everybody could hear her. At the winces from the fifteen or so people still there at ten o’clock on a Wednesday night, she guessed they could hear okay. So she proceeded to introduce her number.

  “This one goes out to my dream guy, wherever you are...”

  The opening piano riff to Bonnie Tyler’s "Total Eclipse of the Heart" began, and Alyssa managed an astonishingly proficient rendition of the song, which ended with cheers and clapping from the meager audience.

  After taking a cab home, she stumbled into her bedroom, and flopped down on the bed.

  When she had tossed and turned for a bit, trying to get the room to settle down, she gave up and pulled the vibrator out of the drawer.

  “Ah...So we meet again.” She stroked the shaft of the device, feeling its bumpy, rubbery texture. “Shall we?” She turned the thing on, and it almost jumped out of her hands. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with you. Well, I know what I’m supposed to do with you, I just don’t know how I’m supposed to relax and let it happen. You’d think all that tequila would have helped, but you are a noisy little booger aren’t you?”

  She turned it off to stop the incessant buzzing. Hardly romantic. “Well, I don’t suppose girls use you when they are in the mood for romance, now do they? They use you when they are horny, which I definitely am, by the way.” She could tell the vibrator was looking at her like it had the other night. “What? Just because I’m horny, doesn’t mean I know what to do about it. And that’s not something you really go around talking to your girlfriends about, now, is it?”

  Alyssa swore the device seemed sympathetic to her plight. “I am positively mortified I will do something completely stupid with you and you’ll get stuck and I’ll have to go to the emergency room. ‘Excuse me, I seem to have a giant, glittery purple horny vibrator sticking out of my va jay jay. Can you possibly help me?’” Alyssa collapsed in a fit of giggles. “Oh well, apparently the tequila thing didn’t work. Maybe another time, my friend.” She put the vibrator back in the bedside drawer, and passed out.

  Chapter 6

  Dalton’s dad had taken a turn for the worse and was back in the hospital. Dalton was making the drive from Dallas to Palestine again, but this time, he was not sure how long he would be staying. The drive was pleasant and traffic was light, so his mind wandered to his new favorite topic: Alyssa.

  Tequila was a surprise. His subconscious must be throwing him a bone because his uptight prude actually liked tequila. He had already decided she had an inner wild child, which she kept carefully hidden, but the dream he’d had last night showed him the tiger escaped its cage occasionally.

  And the song she sang in her karaoke was totally stuck in his head and had been for the last twenty-four hours. Except instead of Bonnie Tyler’s voice singing it, it was Alyssa’s voice: full, throaty, intoxicating.

  He chuckled inwardly, recalling of the conversation she had with her vibra
tor. “I can show you how to use it, Alyssa.” He said to himself. He would like nothing better than to see her come undone. He couldn’t wait for her to actually get up the nerve to use the thing. He would love to dream that. He sent a mental note to his subconscious to let the woman finally be satisfied. All of her pent up frustrations were killing him. He could see she wasn’t the type of woman to just go out and pick somebody up, like he would, but he hated to see her so uptight.

  Dalton slapped his hand on the steering wheel of his Camaro, and shook his head. "Jesus, she’s imaginary. She’s a character in a weird movie my mind has made up. Not real." He thought to himself with annoyance.

  But she truly was a fantasy woman, and he continued to daydream about her the rest of the way to the hospital.

  When he got there, his sister greeted him at the door before he went inside. “He’s not doing well at all, Dalton.”

  “What can I do to help y’all?” Dalton knew his mom and sister had been under a lot of pressure the last few days. He could see it in the lines around her mouth that hadn’t been there last weekend.

  “He’s not conscious most of the time, but when he is lucid, he brings up working the herd. I think that’s weighing on him. It would be nice if you could do that while you’re here. And I need somebody to pick up Kelly from school today.”

  “No problem. What happened to her car?”

  “She failed English, so I took it away for the six weeks.”

  “Harsh.”

  “Yeah, I know. She doesn’t get out of school until 3:15, so you have a few hours. Why don’t you come in and say hi to Dad? He’s not awake, but he might be able to hear you, anyway.”

  “Okay.” Dalton walked into the room, momentarily floored by his father’s appearance. He seemed to have aged twenty years in the few days since he had seen him last. Tufts of gray hair were sticking up from his head, and his face had a pasty gray pallor. His lips were drawn into a grimace, and tubes snaked from his nose, mouth, and arms. A monitor beeped rhythmically, the only sign of life in the room.

  Dalton’s mother was dozing in the chair next to his dad, and he didn’t want to disturb her. He reached over, and clasped Richard’s hand, squeezing it gently. He whispered, “I love you, Dad. I’m here. I’ll start on the cows tomorrow. Don’t worry about them anymore.”

  As quiet as he tried to be, he managed to wake up Mary, who jumped in her chair and looked at Dalton. The look in her eyes turned from joy to pain almost as soon as she saw who was talking.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to wake you.” Dalton said quietly.

  “That’s alright, Dalton. It’s always nice to see you.” She stood and came around the bed to hug him, stiffly.

  “Mom? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Mary looked at him, her mouth turned down at the edges. “Stay. For once Dalton, just stay. Don’t go running off as soon as you get the chance.” Tears formed in her eyes, and she wiped them away before they had a chance to fall, before turning her back on her son and rejoining her husband by his bedside.

  She does blame me… Choking back tears that threatened to overwhelm him, he left the hospital.

  Back at home, he unpacked his things slowly. His parents had always been constant in his life. They were his rock. His mom tended to be judgmental, and his dad liked to lecture him, but they always managed to support his choices.

  His dad had always been a big strong, cowboy. Seeing him reduced to an old sick man in the hospital bed had almost brought Dalton to his knees with grief, and he knew his mother was probably feeling the same way.

  Memories of his Dad took Dalton out to the barn, where the clean smells of hay and manure overpowered his senses. He shuffled around, kicking the straw on the floor, inhaling the unpolluted aromas around him. His gaze fell on the corner of the barn, where a tarp covered a familiar shape. He walked over to it, and yanked off the tarp. He whistled softly.

  The 1969 Triumph Trackmaster he and his dad had restored when he was in high school, was gleaming in the rays of dusty light in the barn. It looked like his Dad had kept it maintained well. Dalton wondered if Richard ever rode the thing. As he looked it over, he determined it was indeed in good working order but just needed gas. Dalton decided after he finished with the herd this weekend, he would make sure she was in good condition and start riding her, if he could.

  Dalton continued his perusal of the barn. There was a table set up that had electric branding irons, injection equipment, castration gear, and the dehorner and searing irons, all laid out in rows, ready for the cattle to come through. He inspected the chute, to make sure it was in good shape. Spotting the bags of cattle cubes by the barn door, Dalton figured his dad had everything ready to get started, and there was nothing he needed to do today. He could get up at the unholy crack of dawn and do this for his dad.

  After picking Kelly up from the high school, she and Dalton called his sister and convinced her to come home and at least pick up something for their mom to eat in the hospital room. After putting together a bag of stuff for her to eat, as well as some things to make her more comfortable in the hospital room, he and Kelly watched a movie before bed.

  “You wanna help me tomorrow? With the herd?”

  “Sure! I’ve never been able to actually help much. I always had to just watch.” Kelly’s eyes lit up at the prospect.

  “Well, I’ve called Buddy, but I think I’m gonna need all the help I can get. He’ll be here at 7:00, and I would like to have all the cows in the corral by then. It would be great if we could be finished in one day.”

  Buddy was a friend of the family who sometimes ran his herd with theirs. He couldn’t read, but had lived the cowboy life, and knew just about everything there was to know about cows. His knowledge was indispensable. Dalton had helped his dad work the herd multiple times growing up, but this was his first solo run. He wasn’t too proud to ask for help from someone more experienced.

  As they were going off to their separate rooms for bed, Renae came in the door. She kissed Kelly goodnight and pulled Dalton into the kitchen.

  Dalton looked at her expectantly. “How’s Dad doing?”

  “The same. It’s not looking good. The doctors are talking about putting him in hospice. Mom’s not taking it well at all.” Renae put her head in her hands.

  “What can I do. Please give me something to do.” Dalton stroked her arm, encouragingly. “I want to help you. You don’t need to be carrying the burden of our parents alone.”

  “If you could take care of Kelly for me, I think I can take care of Mom. She’s spending all of her time with him, and the hospital’s being great about it. They’ve even made up the other bed in the room for her to sleep in. But she doesn’t eat unless she’s reminded. She needs someone to remind her to brush her teeth. She won’t go to the bathroom if nobody’s there to sit with Dad. She wants to be there every time he wakes up, which is not very often.”

  “I can do that. Kelly wants to help me work the herd tomorrow. Just please, tell me anything y’all need, and I will take care of it.”

  “I will. Thanks, Dalton. I know you have a life in Dallas that you’ve left, and I appreciate it.”

  “It’s nothing, Renae. I may have a life in Dallas, but this is my home.” As he said the words, he realized how true they were, but wasn’t particularly in the mood to dwell on it. “You need to get some rest. Those bags under your eyes are awful.”

  “Thanks, butthead.” Her face contradicted her words, as it crumpled and silent tears started streaming down her cheeks. “He’s not gonna be around long, Dalton.”

  He pulled her into his arms for a bone-crushing hug. He kissed the top of her head. “I know.” Dalton wiped the tears from his own eyes before pulling her away from him. “Now, go to bed. You can’t help Mom, if you can’t keep yourself awake.”

  “I’m going to go home and sleep in my own bed tonight. Can you keep Kelly here? She’s in my old room, I’m assuming you’re in your old room. I can’t sleep in
Mom and Dad’s room.”

  “What about the guest room?” Dalton asked her.

  “Mom turned it into a hobby room. The bed’s gone, it’s full of scrapbooking stuff and her sewing junk.”

  “Take my room. I’ll sleep on the couch. It won’t kill me, I’ve done it plenty of times before.”

  “Are you sure? If you’re working tomorrow, you’ll need a good rest.”

  “No big deal. You need the rest more. I can work the cows in my sleep.” He was exaggerating, but he knew his sister needed a bed more than he did.

  The next morning, Dalton got up at 4:30 and fixed eggs and bacon before waking Kelly.

  “Rise and shine, dumpling cakes.”

  “Wha--? It’s too early Uncle Dobby...” She covered her head with the comforter before Dalton yanked it off from the foot of the bed.

  “You promised to help me. Ranchers get up before the chickens. Today we’re ranchers. Get up. Breakfast is ready. I’ll fix you a cup of coffee.”

  “Coffee?” The allure of this forbidden fruit got her in an upright position.

  “A shower will help wake you up. Just don’t take too long.”

  “‘Kay,” she grumbled as she slid her legs out of the bed.

  They ate breakfast in groggy silence, left a plate for Renae, and headed out to the truck. Dalton’s dad had installed an old train bell in the barn for feeding time and had the cows trained Pavlovian style to come running when the bell was sounded. Dalton made Kelly stay in the truck while he pealed the bell a dozen times, then got out of the way.

  A hundred or so head of cattle came meandering from all directions towards the barn. Dalton managed to get them into the sizable corral connected to it, before shutting the gate on them, effectively trapping them inside. The cows munched lazily on the cubes he had poured out for them, and he hopped into the cab of the truck, while Kelly climbed into the bed.