Page 27 of Truth Be Told
Then she began to speak.
Now, she’s touching me.
My body tries to recoil but she takes hold of me again. The shake is more forceful this time. I try to see around me, but there’s nothing but darkness. The only thing I can do is react. I reach out in the dark and my fingers meet flesh.
I want to ask her again what she means by all this. Why she won’t leave me alone, and what she wants out of me. As for what I want? I mostly want to make sure she’s okay.
She screams, and the scream is unlike anything I’ve heard from her before. I pause. Actually, now that I think about it, the tone doesn’t quite match her voice at all.
She’s trembling beneath me when I finally realize what’s happening.
“Stella?”
I push myself off of her and find myself in the corner of the room. I reach down to touch the clothes that I’m wearing. They’re dry. The rest of me is dry. The room is dry, and the window is closed.
I’m awake.
“What are you doing in here? It’s almost pitch black. I had no idea who you were. I could have–”
I stop when I catch the look in her eyes. She’s confused, but concerned. She too reminds me of a deer, but her look is different. It’s the look of an innocent, disoriented fawn. She’s not afraid.
I give up on trying to get any more sleep when the clock reads eight. The second it does, I can’t get the covers off fast enough. On any other night, I’d have gotten up to start my day after an hour or so of trying, having accepted the fact that I’m going to have to get through my day on a night of hardly any sleep. Tonight was different, though. I was so beat from what happened, both with Stella and the nightmare that had been going on prior to her coming into my room, that it didn’t feel right to get out of bed. I’m tough; I can only imagine how much thrashing was going on in here to make me worn out. I guess when you have such fucked up dreams, thrashing comes with the territory. I’m just lucky I didn’t hurt myself. Not to mention Stella.
I shower, then walk to the dresser and wrap my watch around my wrist. My watch is always the first thing I put on, a little life lesson I learned from my father. It’s one of many lessons that he left me with, but this one just so happens to be my favorite. Time is the most important thing in a day, he used to say, and promptness is the foundation of trust when it comes to business relationships. Nobody’s going to take you seriously if you can’t even be counted on to show up on time, so it’s your ass if you don’t make it a priority.
As I tuck the tail of strap away, my eyes lift to the top of the dresser. My black leather wallet sits on top of a silver tray, next to where my watch was resting moments earlier.
I slide it off, then stuff it into my back pocket.
I expect things to be awkward between us, or at least on her part, but it turns out I’m wrong. Stella doesn’t miss a beat, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought I was encountering her on any other normal morning. Not the morning after a complicated, near-sexual encounter. I hear her in the kitchen when I reach the bottom of the stairs, clanking away with pots and pans.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Morning.”
She’s holding a pan above one of the lit burners of the stove, tilting it around to coat the bottom with a layer of melted butter. The smell fills the kitchen.
“You’re up early,” I say, taking a seat.
“I’m a unique study in sleep patterns, Cohen. Not only am I a night owl, like you… I can also be an early bird. When the situation calls for it.” She looks over at me. “And sometimes, like last night, I can be both at the same time.”
I play along. “You’re amazing.”
“Thank you.” She cracks and egg against the counter, sticks her thumbs inside, and pulls the shell apart. The egg falls into the pan.
“So you’re telling me you didn’t get much sleep last night either?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“In that case, at least I’m not alone.”
“Yeah, you look like you didn’t get much sleep,” she confirms.
My fingers naturally gravitate to my jaw, where I feel that I forgot to shave this morning. I can only imagine what my hair looks like. “That wasn’t supposed to be an insult, right?”
She smiles. “Not at all.” She cracks another egg and splits it open into the pan. “Sorry.”
“You really don’t have to do this,” I say, watching her. “Cereal is my morning go-to. And you’re working too hard. Stop.”
