Page 53 of One Night With You

Me:

But you do realize that you’ll be working directly with my mother and that means she is going to be sitting down and wanting to get to know you.

Claire:

I figured. But oh.

Me:

Oh.

Claire:

I’m still in.

Me:

Good. I’ll let her get a hold of you. You doing okay?

Claire:

I am. I have to get back to work. But I’ll talk to you tonight? We still have tofinish that movie.

We were watching a movie over the phone, since both of us were a little busy right now, and it felt weird, and yet not.

Me:

Game on. Talk to you soon.

Claire:

You too.

I put my phone in my pocket, then headed back into the room with my family. Things were a little out of control, overlapping and making me feel as if it was all too much, but as the snow began to fall, just a little bit and it would still be safe to drive, I listened to my family laugh, and clean up. The doctors would call soon, and I would find that path.

And I would end the night on the phone with Claire.

Again.

12

CLAIRE

Iwoke drenched in sweat, odd whispers in my mind as I tried to pull myself into reality and out of my terror dreams once again. I took a deep breath, and then another. I would be fine. I had to be fine.

“It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.”

I continued to repeat that phrase to myself, the blood pounding in my ears finally dissipating so I could hear my alarm going off.

I reached over and pressed a button on my phone to stop it, and then ran my hands over my face again. At least the dream had come right before my alarm, so I wasn’t up at three o’clock in the morning again, screaming.

I didn’t have as many nightmares as I usually had. Ididn’t know if it was because therapy was working, time had moved on, or maybe because I could rely on someone.

Although Kingston wasn’t in bed beside me. He had gone to his family dinner the night before, and we had talked late into the night for hours over the phone, each of us having early morning appointments and meetings. We didn’t spend every hour together, but I did think about him more often than not. Perhaps that should worry me, or perhaps it just meant that this was normal. What did I know? I hadn’t been in a serious relationship in a long time. And even then, this felt different. Probably because we had been friends first, and the trauma that had brought us together still ebbed within my nightmares as was evident this morning.

I had only had that one nightmare with Kingston at my side, and I didn’t know what to make of that. In the few times he had slept over since, I hadn’t had a dream where I’d woken up in a cold sweat and panic. I had dreamt peacefully, and woke up in his arms, naked, and warm.

I was fine without him being here. I didn’t want to have to rely on him being beside me to be okay. And I didn’t want to rely on the idea of a man to protect me, or him in my life forever. It was way too early for that, and although I had had a crush on him for as long as Ihad known him, things were different now. He was different.

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