In Your Dreams

by Ginger Scott

  I suck in my bottom lip, breathing courage in through my nose while I form the right words that will let him down easy—words that will give him the strength to get through this on his own, words that are sensitive and full of sympathy, but that aren’t self sacrificing, because I…I’m not that person to him. There must be someone better. Anyone would be better, wouldn’t they?

  “Casey, I—”

  “Please,” he whispers before I finish. I shift to look at him, but he doesn’t break his concentration on my brother. His eyes are terrified, glassy, and red. He swallows hard to keep the pain at bay just as his eyes close and his breath comes in ragged. This is the man I saw in the parking lot—the one wearing his pain.

  “Yes, Casey,” I say, feeling his eyes move to look at me. I should say no, even with his plea. Going with him to this—it won’t be good for me. It’s only going to make me feel sorry for him, and I can’t do that, because that clouds my judgment. Those lines of trust have already been blurred though. And maybe…maybe they should be. I never really knew him well. Perhaps this is the real Casey Coffield, and the picture I had in my head four years ago was all wrong. Maybe he isn’t as selfish as everybody thinks—as I think. Maybe he just needs someone who’s willing to walk through the fire with him and hold him through the ugly parts.

  Maybe I’m stronger than I think.

  I keep my focus on Lane even though I feel Casey’s eyes on me. I look at my brother because he’s brave, and I’m scared. I’m scared because I like this Casey Coffield. I really like him.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Chapter 8

  Casey

  “You look nice,” Joyce says as I trickle down the last few steps into the Orr’s living room.

  “Thank you. Tell Houston I’ll get this back to him,” I say as she leans in and straightens the collar on the gray suit jacket.

  “Casey, Houston hasn’t worn that thing since high school. I doubt he’ll miss it,” she says, tugging the front lapels one last time to make sure everything’s straight. I smile and she pats my cheek.

  I called my sister Christina after Murphy and Lane left my apartment. She didn’t tear into me as I expected. She cried. I let her.

  She told me that Mom wanted us to dress nice for dinner, like we would for the holidays. I missed the last round of holiday meals at my parents’ house, so I was at a loss for what to wear. I called Houston, of course. We’ve always been the same size. He called his mom, since he wouldn’t be home. I can tell she knows the full story—about my dad—but she hasn’t brought the reason I need a suit up once.

  I didn’t mention to Houston that Murphy was coming with me. Not that it’s a secret, but it’s also not something I want to dissect. Houston wouldn’t necessarily say anything, but he would sigh, and there would be that look. I’d like to get through this dinner first. And then I can move on to looks and questions.

  Murphy’s meeting me at my apartment, and as I glance at my watch, I realize she’s probably going to beat me there. Because I’m always late.

  I kiss Joyce on the cheek and thank her again, then step out through the back door toward my car in the driveway. Joyce calls after me, and when I turn, she has a small bouquet of flowers wrapped in plastic.

  “Here, I almost forgot. Bring these. You don’t have to say they’re from me. Make them from you…for your mom,” she says. I smirk at them, recalling the last time I tried to bring my mom flowers.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking them in my hand and nodding goodbye one last time.

  I get a lucky break on the small distance between Houston’s house and my apartment, and somehow manage not to catch a single light. Murphy’s still waiting for me in her car along the curb, though. I pull up behind her, and neither of us gets out right away. I know the minute I do, she’ll step out of her car and walk toward mine, and then this dinner thing will really happen.

  With a deep breath, my eyes set on the face reflecting in the review mirror in front of me, I kill the engine and open my car. I walk to Murphy’s car and open her door for her, catching her hand in an awkward moment as she slips sideways on one of her heels and falls into me. Selfishly, I love that’s she’s so unsteady. Her hand squeezes mine for balance, and the grip draws my focus. She lets go quickly as she rights herself, but my fingers flex wanting her hand back.

  “Sorry. I’m…I’m not good in shoes like these,” she says, sweeping her uneven skirt to the side and kicking one foot forward to show me her brown shoes that wrap up her leg to her knee. “My friend Sam got them for me a year ago, and I’ve never worn them.”

  My eyes stick to her leg because the shoes make them look unbelievably sexy.

  “Well, if ever you’re going to try out something new, I’d say tonight’s the night to try it,” I say, my mouth falling into a tight smile.

  “Well, that new thing might be walking around barefoot before the night’s over,” she giggles. “These things hurt like hell.”

  I glance from her feet to mine, which are in a pair of black Converse. I don’t really own dress shoes, and Eli and Houston’s feet are nowhere near my size. Murphy notices my feet and kicks her toes forward, catching my attention.

  “I should have done that, too,” she says.

  “Huh?” I shake my head, finally looking up at her, and losing my awareness again the minute I do.

  “Worn shoes like that,” she explains.

  “Oh…yeah,” I smile, moving my gaze toward my apartment, pinching my brow and acting as if I’m thinking about something else rather than the way she looks right now. Her dress is this plaid country-style thing that’s shorter in the front and long in the back, and it fits her like a corset—hugging every curve and ending at her bare arms. She has a small tattoo on her right shoulder that I’ve never noticed, and between flits of my eyes from her bare skin to anything else I can think of to look at, I take in the form to see a small music staff with a few notes. Eventually, I give in and look long and hard, and she twists to the side, her chin tucked in to look at it with me.

  “I brought a sweater. It’s in the car, in case your parents don’t like tattoos…” she begins.

  “Don’t worry about your sweater,” I cut in.

  I tilt my head and do my best to hum the melody in my head.

  “It’s the first few bars of ‘The Scientist.’ You know, by Coldplay?”

  I look again, humming along, and I smirk when the recognition hits.

  “Why that song?” I say, my eyes moving away from the small line of notes to the rest of her, her arm, the faint pink on her fingernails, her neck, her collarbone, the way the thin gold bracelet clings to her forearm…I feel dizzy and have to look away again.

  “Promise you won’t laugh?” she asks.

  I want to, merely at her question. How could I possibly laugh at her?

  I swallow while my head is turned away, then squint as I turn back to look at her, as if this is something I need to think about. I tilt my head to the side and cross my chest with my finger. “Swear,” I say.

  She sucks in her bottom lip briefly, then lets go of it. The entire scene plays out in slow motion—the way it slides loose from her teeth and quivers with a tiny breath. It’s like one of those National Geographic videos I watched when I was a kid—where the flower blooms in an instant with stop-motion photography. Her lips—a flower.

  “It’s my power song.” The words stumble out of her mouth, and her hands fly up to cover the lip I’m staring at. Her cheeks are a shade or two pinker than they were a moment before. I smile, but I don’t laugh. I wouldn’t at what she said, only at how absolutely captivating every single gesture she makes is.

  “Most people go with something like Metallica, or AC/DC or…”

  “Van Halen,” she says, winking and remembering the small little phrase I picked out on the guitar for her the other day.

  “Yeah,” I smile. “Van Halen.”

  She takes in a deep breath, and glances at my car behind me, her mouth poised to sp
eak for a beat before words finally come.

  “I guess I just felt like that’s what love is supposed to feel like, and it seemed…I don’t know…kind of beautiful. Poetic maybe?” Her eyes trail back to mine, and her lips quirk up on one side in an embarrassed smile. “It sounds stupid out loud, but I don’t care. It’s worth waiting for is all.”

  “What is?” I ask, my heart beating a little more than I’m used to. I step to the side so she’ll follow and begin walking toward my car.

  “Anything,” she says, pausing right in front of me and looking up—the gray, honest eyes I’ve become obsessed with catching me in every lie I’ve ever told. “Everything. If it’s worth it, it’s worth waiting for.”

  I suck in my top lip and hold her stare as long as I can.

  “Can’t laugh at that,” I say quietly. Her eyes stay on mine, and my heart squeezes a little. “I like your dress, Murphy. I like it a lot.”

  She blushes. I breathe.

  “Thanks, Casey,” she says, looking down as she takes careful steps up the curb to the passenger door. “That means a lot.”

  Yes, Murphy. I do believe it does.

  * * *

  My parents house isn’t far, but far enough that I’m late—again. My sisters don’t lecture me, but I think that’s only because I walked in with Murphy. She’s changed her hair a little—her purple more of a grayish tone now. It looks like silver in winter. I noticed my youngest sister, Annalissa—still older than me—seemed to be quite taken with it. She was the only one, though. The others gave it the same unprofessional stamp of disapproval.

  My mom barely looked at us when we walked in. Even her hug felt stilted and unsure. I’m beginning to think that despite my sisters begging me to be here, perhaps I should have stuck to the plan of ignoring everyone. I’m the match in the house filled with kerosene.

  “It’s pancreatic cancer,” Christina says to me, pulling me by the arm to a corner in the kitchen so she can whisper/not whisper. My other sisters are helping set the table, dressing it in the full linens and candles while my mom runs manically around the table, setting out pots of beans and potatoes, bowls of salad and a platter with sliced beef.

  “Is he…in his room?” I ask, my eyes darting from every moving person in front of me. The only other person standing still is Murphy, a foot away from me. It’s like that game I played when I was a kid—freeze tag—and Murphy and I have been frozen while mania swishes around us.

  “He is,” Christina says. “He doesn’t look bad, but he’s already losing weight. I can tell.”

  “Are they doing…” I swallow and lean into her so my mom doesn’t hear me speak. “Is he doing chemo or…radiation or something?”

  My sister’s eyes meet mine quickly, and she shakes her head in a small motion before looking to our mom to make sure she’s still in her blissful state of denial.

  “Why?” I mouth.

  “There’s too much,” she whispers. “It’s too far along.”

  I look away from her, back to the quiet chaos and the sounds of cabinets opening and closing.

  “You should go up and see him…before he comes down. Go up alone, and talk with him. It would be…I think it’d be good,” she says. I think about her suggestion. My sister has always pushed for some sort of reconciliation between us. They all have. But none of them were here to hear the words spoken the first time he disowned me. He called me an embarrassment. No. He called me an abnormality.

  He called me a cancer. What irony.

  “Maybe after dinner,” I lie.

  Murphy’s knuckles graze against mine at my side, and I flex my fingers in hope as she cups her hand in mine. The second her palm is flush with mine, I squeeze it—and that same feeling when she stumbled out of the car less than thirty minutes ago fills my chest. It’s like I can breathe.

  I clutch her tightly and pray she doesn’t give me a sign that she wants me to let go as we both walk to the far end of the table. As we sit, her palm remains in mine, and I leave them linked on top of my thigh out of view. I’m sweating—my palm is sweating, and I know she can feel it. I run my thumb over the top of her hand in small circles to clear more nerves. It doesn’t help, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s peaceful, as opposed to the quiet storm brewing above the table.

  She has no idea how grateful I am for her, how much I need her to survive this. I’ve made it this far and it’s only because she’s by my side. I lean on her, my hand clenching more tightly as my heart speeds up. With every squeeze I give, she gives one back—silent courage.

  “How nice,” my father says, stepping through the small hallway into the dining area. He’s dressed as if he’s ready for a day at the office, but I can see the small change my sister warned me about. It’s only been a few weeks, but his shirt collar is loose around his neck, the bones and tendons more pronounced.

  “This was a nice idea, Gina,” he says to my mom.

  She pulls out a chair next to the one she just rose from, and he smiles and slides it out farther, almost as if to prove he can still do it on his own.

  “Casey,” he says, his eyes landing on me for a brief second before he sits. He looks down at the plate in front of him as he slides his chair forward. “I see you brought a friend.”

  “Hi, sir,” Murphy says, standing and circling around the table. I rub my hand on my leg to dry it, then panic that she won’t hold it again when she sits back down.

  I glance around the table to see half of my sisters looking down into their own laps, the other two staring nervously as this stranger I’ve brought home tries to win over the unwinnable.

  “My name’s Murphy. Thank you so much for inviting me for dinner,” she says.

  My father pauses a second, finishing a sip of his water, then finally bothers to reach for her hand, shaking it. He smirks and glances to me then to my mom. “Did we? Invite you, I mean?” he says, that familiar pompous smirk making it’s first appearance of the day.

  I see everything in Murphy freeze up—and sick or not—I want to punch him for treating her like an extension of me.

  “Luke, don’t joke with her,” my mother says through a nervous giggle. Nobody thinks he’s joking. Nobody thinks it, because we all know he’s not. But maybe Murphy doesn’t know, and that’s why my mom says it—to smooth the waters and dial back the storm.

  My father chuckles and his eyes wrinkle with his smile as he looks at me again, his eyes telling me the truth before he glances back to my now-speechless friend. “Right, I’m sorry, Murphy. My humor…it isn’t for everyone,” he says.

  She laughs in response nervously and lightly before letting go and slipping back into her seat. Her hand finds mine quickly, and I stroke her wrist with my thumb this time, hoping I can soothe her.

  My mother glosses over everything and begins passing dishes around. My father asks Christina about some real-estate contract she’s been negotiating for a new high-rise downtown, and then the rest of my sisters and he begin talking about some new chip being manufactured, and how the process has an “anomaly,” but nobody can figure out where there’s a misstep. My eyes glaze over for their fifteen-minute conversation, but as I silently count how many green beans are left on my plate, I’m brought out of my trance when my father says my name.

  “Casey was always good at that, finding the hiccups in projects? Seeing what’s broken in the process,” he says while chewing. He runs a napkin over his mouth and looks at me, and I breathe in slowly through my nose to fill my chest. If I’m going to be held under water, I may as well prepare.

  “Weren’t you, Case,” he says, putting the napkin next to his plate and laying one hand flat on the table next to his setting.

  “I guess,” I say, not quite audible enough for his liking as he tilts his head to the side and cups his ear. My mother stops eating and places her napkin and hands in her lap, looking down.

  “I said, I guess,” I say, now overcompensating as if he’s deaf. I copy his posture and look right at him.

  My father g
runts out a small laugh, his tongue pushed in his cheek.

  My mom and two youngest sisters all stand and begin clearing the table, asking if anyone would like coffee. My father holds up a finger indicating he’d like a cup. We continue to stare at each other.

  “So what do you do, Murphy?” he asks, his eyes still on me. The smirk is there. He’s treating this dinner as a process problem, weeding out the error. I should save him the trouble and just leave.

  “I teach music,” she says.

  “And how does that pay?” There’s almost a low grumble of a laugh in his chest. It’s barely audible, but I hear it. It’s that satisfying checkmate laugh he does so well.

  Murphy stumbles in her answer, not really sure how to reply, so my father saves her. “Not well then, hmmm?”

  “No, but it’s not what I ultimately want to do, so it’s okay,” she says. I squeeze her hand tighter for a second to let her know I’m proud.

  “If that’s not your goal, then why are you wasting time on it?” he asks.

  I open my mouth, ready to end his interrogation, but Murphy straightens up next to me and begins before I have a chance to speak.

  “That’s a really good point, actually,” she says, glancing at me and wiggling our locked hands in reassurance along with her smile. “Your son has kind of helped me with that, you know.”

  “Really?” my father chuckles.

  “Yes,” she says without missing a beat. “I want to make a record, and Casey made my demo for me.”

  I hear the short breaths she’s taking, and I feel badly, because I know my father isn’t going to be impressed. I run my hand over my face and prepare myself for the laughable response that comes the moment my fingers touch my skin.

  “A…demo. That’s…what…like, a recording of your song?” He’s being patronizing.

  Murphy nods and smiles. She’s proud of it, and I love that she is. He’s going to pick it apart now. I wish he’d listen. I could never get him to do that, though.