Page 26 of I Dream of Danger
No choice.
But this time he’d be back.
* * *
Elle woke up late and woke up…happy. The past couple of years she’d trained herself to wake up slowly, from dream to sleep to wakefulness, step by step, because when she woke up quickly the effect was brutal. Like waking up to a sword at your throat. She’d trained herself to come up from sleep like a deep-sea diver, floating gently up, because if you did it too fast, you got the bends.
Sometimes when she Dreamed—those odd states that were more real than any reality, where she could see things she knew she couldn’t see in real life—she could transit to wakefulness because it was like stepping from one room to the next, not one world to the next.
Her Dreams were not always pleasant, and that made it easier to deal with. No getting the bends from watching Nick have sex with an anonymous woman and then waking up to the reality of her life. What hurt—like walking over glass—was normal dreams of better times and then waking up to the reality of her life.
The reality of her life had been caring for a broken shell of a man and juggling the dwindling money supply.
Her father was no more. She’d buried him yesterday.
But she didn’t mourn him. She couldn’t. No one knew better than her what a hell his life had been. She missed the man he’d been before the empty shell took over.
She’d loved him, cared for him, buried him.
Done her duty and followed the dictates of daughterly love.
Now a new life awaited.
She opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling. Noticed for the first time that the watermark left by a broken pipe looked like a butterfly. A deformed butterfly by Picasso in his Cubist period.
She’d skimped on food and heat to repair those busted pipes and now there was a crazed butterfly on her ceiling.
She smiled.
Still smiling, she closed her eyes so she could concentrate better as she took stock of herself.
Wow. She and Nick had made love until past midnight. She’d gone from zero to hero—from no sex to more sex than any woman could possibly handle.
She stretched and felt aches and pains, particularly between her thighs and the muscles of her core. But elsewhere, too. Her mouth felt slightly swollen from his kisses, her breasts still seemed to feel his mouth. The insides of her thighs were stretched from being held open for so long and slightly abraded from his hairy thighs moving between hers.
She felt imprinted with Nick. She could smell him on her, feel him on her. If her body had been a crime scene, they’d find his DNA all over her. Luckily, her body wasn’t the scene of a crime but of unimaginable pleasure.
Last night had been a sort of reboot. From an existence of gritted teeth and iron duty, she’d shifted over into a life of hedonism, of pure pleasure. Food had tasted wonderful instead of like glue, the wine had been like some libation of the gods instead of something sour and acidy she couldn’t drink.
She’d slept. Really slept. Like normal people did, going deep under then rising refreshed to a normal day.
Oh God. Normal.
Nick had flipped a switch and her life became normal. Not something to be endured, but something to be savored. There were things to look forward to. Breakfast for one. She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t woken up with her stomach in a knot.
Now her stomach was this open and friendly organ, making smiling me too noises. Rolling its eyes toward the kitchen downstairs because, really…she hadn’t eaten since last night and it was time to eat.
She opened her arms and legs like a child making a snow angel. Nick wasn’t there and since she didn’t encounter any warmth, he’d been up for some time. If he was trying to cook breakfast, good luck. She had enough coffee for this morning, a little milk if it hadn’t spoiled, and an apple.
Well, they could go into town and have breakfast at Jenny’s. And she could thank Jenny for last night’s feast. Kill two birds with one stone.
Except for caring for her father, all the old problems remained, the ones that had seemed as insurmountable as the Himalayas. There was a mortgage on the house that would take her twenty years to pay off. Joshua Bent, the owner of Bent Mortuary Services, had told her he’d hold off on sending her the bill for a month, and that he’d give her a ten percent discount and stagger the payments over a year, but with all that, a huge bill was on its way to her.
But Nick was back, and she felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.
She was drowning in debt but…it was only money. She was young and she could work. She had her health, she was smart, and was good with computers. She’d manage.
And Nick was back.
