by Rosa Sophia
In my subconscious, Wes and I are standing on Juno Pier when a space shuttle lowers onto the sand in the broad light of day, and perplexed looking travelers pour forth from the vehicle’s wide silver doors.
Wes hands me a cup of coffee and I stare into the swirling depths before I look back at him.
“You know this is just a dream, right?” I tell him.
“Is it?” Brown curls slip over his forehead as he tugs off his sunglasses, peering deeply into my eyes. “Are you sure?”
I glance down at the beach, where the new arrivals wander around as if they’ve never seen an ocean before. Then I look back at Wes. “No. I’m not sure.”
“Aren’t you going to drink your coffee?”
I lift my hands, but they’re empty, and I’m saddened when I realize I’ve dropped my coffee cup and it’s laying on the ground at my feet. “I can’t,” I mumble. “It’s broken…broken…”
My eyes flutter open and I’m looking forward, through the windshield and toward a line of dark trees. It’s begun to rain, slow at first.
Thinking of the coffee in my dream, I climb out of my car and buy a cup from the tired-looking cashier who’s falling asleep at her post.
When I climb back into my car, it’s pouring, oceans of rain slamming down against the glass. I turn up the stereo, and drive on.
Chapter 20
When I wake up, it’s almost noon according to the clock by the bedside.
Where am I?
I squint into the sunlight that streams in between lace curtains. A heavy orange cat, some ten pounds overweight, is sitting on the windowsill surveying me with a look of indignation. The cat seems to be wondering what I’m doing here, and so am I.
Until I remember I arrived in the early hours of the morning, and that I’m at Jenny’s apartment in Juno Beach. She met me at the front door and held me close before ushering me into the guestroom—my room—where I promptly fell asleep on the bed still wearing my clothes.
That means it’s Saturday, and I’m supposed to meet Brett in a couple of hours.
I drag my body off the bed, realizing I can feel my heart pounding in my skin and my entire wobbly frame seems ready to keel over. The result of not eating much and chugging too many energy drinks.
I stagger down the hall, drawing closer to the sounds of dishes clunking against each other in the sink. I turn the corner and lean against the doorframe in the kitchen, where Jenny looks up from shoving cutlery into the dishwasher.
“Jeez, girl, look at you. If you were going to ask, I didn’t get the license plate of the truck that ran you over,” Jenny says, raising her eyebrow, the corner of her lips quirking upward.
“Very funny. What have we got to eat around here?”
“Plenty, thank goodness. I went shopping yesterday and bought some extra stuff since I knew you’d be coming. But before you make anything, don’t worry, there’s homemade macaroni and cheese on the stove behind me.”
“You are a kitchen goddess.” I step over and peek into the pot, breathing deep, enjoying the aroma.
“Someone’s got to be one.” She shuts the dishwasher. “As I recall, you know how to boil water.”
I glare at her. “Well, in that case, next time you need any water boiled, don’t come crying to me.” I reach into the cabinet and grab a fresh bowl, dishing out a large portion of creamy noodles.
Jenny giggles, patting me on the back. “It’s so good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back. I think. Then again, I haven’t been back for very long.”
“What are your plans, other than hanging out with Brett today?”
“Oh, not much.” I sit down at the small dining table. “Just get situated. I’ll give Lynn a call at some point this weekend, maybe go to the beach.”
“You should try to fit a shower into your plans.” She wrinkles her nose in mock distaste, and I shake my head.
“You’re on a roll this morning,” I remark.
“Blame the coffee.” She nods toward the machine on the counter. “Help yourself. I’m headed out for a run.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime.” She slips her phone into the band on her forearm, then tucks her house key into the small pocket on her running shorts. “See you later, hon. Extra key is on the table there. Don’t forget it when you leave.”
“Gotcha,” I reply, my mouth too full of my lunch to say much else.
After Jenny leaves, I finish eating, then head back to my room. I grab a towel from the linen closet, collect some fresh clothing from my bag, and head into the bathroom to shower. On the way, I meet the cat from my window, and we bond as I pet him gently on the back.
He seems to approve of my being here, which is certainly a comfort. The last thing I would want to do is annoy Jenny’s other roommate.
***
When I climb out of my car, I see Brett almost immediately. He’s waiting at the spot we agreed to meet, sitting atop one of the picnic tables at Loggerhead Park.
For a moment, I’m that nervous teenager all over again, about to hold Brett’s hand on our first date. I cross the parking lot and step under the pavilion, noticing he looks a bit slimmer than the last time I saw him, and his hair isn’t shaggy like it was in high school. It’s closely cropped, almost buzzed on the sides, and he’s wearing a pair of dark sunglasses.
“Brett. I’m not even sure how I recognized you with those glasses on.”
He climbs off the table, slipping his sunglasses away from his face, revealing those deep, dark eyes I was enamored with when I was seventeen. “Maybe it’s because I’ve had this t-shirt since high school,” he jokes, pulling me in for a hug.
“You smell good, like dryer sheets.” I tug away from him just enough to look up at his face. “I hope you’re not still spraying your clothes with fabric refresher so you can avoid having to do laundry.”
He laughs, and his deep, throaty voice is so familiar to me. “No, but I’m surprised you remember that.”
“Are you kidding? I had nightmares about it.”
He shakes his head, chuckling, and climbs back onto the table, patting the spot beside him. I hop up, smoothing my hands over my jeans and adjusting my tank top. It surprises me that I was able to find a parking spot; although the season is almost at an end, there are still a lot of snowbirds fluttering about.
“So, what’ve you been doing with yourself these days?” he asks.
“Trying to figure out where I belong.”
“When we talked on the phone, you said you were living in South Carolina.”
“North Carolina,” I correct him. “Kill Devil Hills, to be exact.”
“I’ve never been there.”
“It’s a wonderful place, but…”
“But?”
“I don’t know. For reasons I can’t quite figure out, I had to come back. I had to come home, I guess.”
“It’s true what they say, you can always go home.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs as we stare aimlessly toward Juno Dunes.
“Well…” I lean back, feeling the sea breeze caress my face. “I never thought I could go home. Not with Mom the way she is. I didn’t feel like I had a home, just a sinkhole of chaos.”
“I know.” A long silence drags on. “Nina, besides the fact you didn’t have it too easy growing up, it’s like I said in my email…we were just kids. There’s no reason to blame each other for anything. I’m over it, it’s been a long time.” He turns to look at me, no disdain left his gaze—just genuine caring. “We’ll always be friends.”
“Thank you, Brett.”
A sense of weightlessness passes through me, and I’m almost sure I’ll float away on the next gust of wind. But he doesn’t let that happen. He wraps his arms around me, and I lean my head on his shoulder, all that grief welling to the surface. I acknowledge it, letting it go. All I can do is live one day at a time, learning and offering compassion to the little girl within me.
“Enough of this.” Brett lea
ns back, brushing a tear from my cheek. “Let’s get some lunch.”
“That sounds like a good idea.”
“I’ll drive.”
“Oh, good. After all that driving I did last night, I don’t think I can stand the idea of more driving!” I exclaim, laughing.
When we reach his car, he opens the door for me. It’s like we’re on a date, but we’re not; I tell him as much, and we both share a laugh. Things are different between us now. I think we’re closer than we’ve ever been before.
As we drive down the road to a little café, Wes comes to mind, and I wonder what he’s up to. I think of the conversation we had the morning I woke up in the hotel room beside him, a year and a half ago.
Everything seemed so grim. It was me, my insecurities. I think of those words I spoke, words that tear me apart whenever I recall them.
And I wonder if he’s thinking of me.
Chapter 21
Present day
He approaches me slowly, as if unsure I’m real. I could be a dream, and sometimes I think he’s my imagination. Sometimes I think the night we spent together in the hotel room in Jupiter never really happened, that I concocted the scene in my mind. After all, I’m a writer. I can do that, create worlds and destroy them in the short time it takes to sprint past the sea grapes and onto the sand.
But when he puts his arms around me, then moves his hands to my hips, I know without a doubt he’s real because the heat passing through me and the wetness between my legs verify it. No one has ever made me feel like this, as if the slightest touch of his lips against my skin could cause me to lose all sense of being and drift out of my body like a rowboat lost at sea.
“Nina.”
I reach out and run my fingers over his chest, feeling his muscles tense beneath my touch. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and shorts, his feet clad in flip-flops.
It occurs to me that it’s late, so late he shouldn’t be here, so late my mother would lose her mind with worry if she knew I was running at two in the morning. Spots flicker in my vision as the hazard lights on his car throw orange flashes over the foliage around us, and a breeze makes the leaves of the palm trees shudder. “Wes, I…what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“That’s crazy.” A soft titter escapes my lips. “You live in Cocoa Beach, what are you doing looking for me here, two hours away, at this time of night? Or…morning…”
“I’m in town visiting friends. I admit, I was checking up on you, or I never would’ve known you’d moved back. After we ran into each other at the festival last weekend, I went online and found Jenny. I sent her a message asking about you, and she got back to me mid-week and told me you were coming back to Juno.”
“She…she what?”
He smirks almost wickedly. “I asked her not to tell you. She gave me her phone number. I don’t do much sleeping at night, and while we were texting back and forth, she told me you’d gone out for a run and said I might find you here.” He narrows his eyes at me. “What are you doing running in the dark, anyway?”
“You shouldn’t be asking me questions, you’re the one secretly communicating with my best friend, following me around in the dark. Both of you should be ashamed of yourselves,” I add, though I don’t really mean it. “I can’t believe she told you I was out here.”
“I’m glad she did. What if something happened to you?”
“You mean…what if some guy stops his car, approaches me in the dark, puts his arms around me…”
“Yeah. And what if he kisses you?”
“So, what if he does…”
Wes pulls me toward him, his touch gentle as he glides his hands up my back. He leans forward, pressing his lips against mine, and I taste the minty flavor of his breath as he brushes his mouth against my skin.
“What are we doing?” I murmur between kisses.
“What else? What nature intended.”
He presses me against him, nips at my neck. My entire body is on fire. Clad in my skimpy running outfit, I feel almost like I’m naked—and I may as well be. The breeze embraces my exposed skin, touching every part of me that Wes isn’t, while jolts of desire pass through me, making me want him more with every second. He moves his hips forward, I feel his hardness pulsing against me, and I gasp, overcome with sensations I haven’t experienced since our last night together.
“I want you.” His voice, deep and firm, feathers against the nape of my neck.
“Wait.” I step back, placing my hands on his chest, needing some distance between us in order to think clearly.
“What?”
“What about…what we talked about at the book festival? You said I was full of shit, all those things I said at the hotel.”
Even though the light is dim around us, I can tell he’s disappointed by my words. He remembers, just like I do, the way the night crumbled and morning brought the end of something exquisite. “Yeah. You didn’t want to risk it.” He releases me, letting his arms fall to his sides, the words slipping from between his full lips like poison.
“Wes, neither of us wanted to risk it. I’ve been disappointed too many times. And you…you don’t date. Remember? I wasn’t the only one who said things that morning, after we…”
“I remember.”
“You said you don’t believe in dating, you don’t see a point to a commitment like that. And I said I agreed with you because relationships just end in pain. Something like what we have…” I think for a moment, watching the orange light flash off the sidewalk. “What we have is so passionate it might end up becoming destructive.” I take his hand, running my thumb over his palm. “We might…we might hurt each other. I don’t want to hurt you, Wes, and I’m tired of pain. I’ve been disappointed too many times.”
“What makes you think I’ll disappoint you?” He snatches his hand away from me.
“Oh, come on. We both know you don’t want a relationship. Your career is just getting started, your writing is already becoming well-known…and so are you, for that matter. You don’t want me around, you need to stay focused on your work.”
“This is beginning to sound a lot like that conversation we had in the hotel room.”
“And so it is.” I shrug, unable to disagree with him. He’s right.
We’re both quiet for a while, until he interrupts my somber thoughts. “Hang on. Let me park the car. Then, will you spend some time with me on the beach for a bit?”
“Sure.”
Without another word, he turns and walks to his car. I watch as he pulls up the road and does a u-turn, taking one of the parallel parking spots at the edge of the sidewalk. Then he walks back to me, takes my hand, and leads me down onto the sand. He’s got a blanket under his arm. In the middle of the beach, shrouded in darkness, he spreads out the blanket and sits down. I sit beside him.
“It’s nice to see you, Wes.”
“It’s more than nice to see you, Nina.”
“So, what are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure you want to know what I’m thinking.”
“Of course I do.”
He sidles close to me; I can feel his warmth. Goose bumps crawl across my flesh as I lean back, resting on my elbows.
“When I saw you at the book festival, it all came back to me,” he says. “What it was like to touch you, the way you kissed me.” He leans close, nipping at my earlobe. “The way it felt to come inside you.”
My cheeks heat, and I almost scold him, but I cannot deny the fact that his words thrill me. The sexual tension between us is becoming too much for me to handle. “Wes—”
“Listen. I’m only going to say it once more, so pay attention. I want you. Since we were together that night, I think about you all the time. Nina, be with me. Maybe it won’t be perfect, maybe we’ll hurt each other, but that’s the risk you take in life. Don’t let fear stop you.”
The dreams flash back to me, and I recall the one I had where he was driving, speeding down the road, and just before we
crashed he told me, “With impact comes change.”
I didn’t know what it meant, what the universe was trying to tell me, but now I know. Now I know more than ever.
Drawing him near, I kiss him, and he presses me to the ground with his body, heat radiating from him like a firestorm. I pull at his clothing, and he runs his hands beneath my shirt, lifting my bra, caressing my breasts but tugging at my body with increasing urgency.
The ocean laps at the sand as Wes plunges his tongue into my mouth, pulling my shorts down my thighs. We don’t stop, we cannot, wanting nothing more than to be a part of the other.
He thrusts his velvety heat inside me, a moan escapes my lips. And he fucks me right there on the sand, both of us knowing there was no way we could say no. No way we could turn away from the demands of fate.
It was bound to happen—the two of us together—whether it took a year and a half or twenty.
After we make love, he collapses on top of me, his hot breath caressing the curve of my neck.
“With impact comes change,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else.
“What was that?” he murmurs.
“Oh, nothing.” I wrap my arms around him, holding him tight against me. “Nothing at all, Wes.”
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Lori Whitwam for her incredible skill, and to Limitless Publishing for giving me a chance.
Writing When I Dream of You and When I Think of You has been a very healing journey for me. I am especially grateful to my Home Group and my fellow travelers. You know who you are. I wish my readers all the best on their own personal journeys in life. And remember: Easy Does It.
About the Author
Rosa Sophia is a novelist and full-time editorial consultant. With a degree in Automotive Technology, she adores writing and editing as well as fixing cars. Rosa is also a crazy cat lady in training, and currently divides her time between South Florida and Pennsylvania.