Page 2 of Precipitous Nightmare's Valentine Dream

As if he had time for Dreams at all.

Chapter 2

Daydreams in the Real World

Luminous Dream

Luminous Dream swallowed down the last of a raspberry-pomegranate smoothie and followed her quarry into the sunny street.

The unsuspecting woman’s name was Melanie Cross, and Luminous had made it her personal mission to turn this specific mortal’s wildest dream into reality.

“All the lonely Starbucks lovers, they are so insane…” As she tailed Melanie through town, Luminous sang her favorite song aloud. She was vaguely aware that she might, in fact, have not gotten the words quite right.

In her wake, passers-by began to hum the same tune as their minds tilted into fantasies of encountering a mystery lover in a coffee shop. A cacophony of honking horns created an ever-present background soundtrack. Luminous ignored them and hurried to catch up.

“Tell me the bookings for this afternoon,” Melanie called out to the receptionist as she entered her brother’s hair salon, the flagship shop to a chain opening throughout the city. The other woman scrambled to find the information, and Melanie set her takeout lunch on the counter with a sigh. The scent of chicken lo mein and crab rangoons wafted across the room as Luminous slipped into the salon behind her, offhandedly weaving a few daydreams into the heads of women under the large drying bonnets along the back wall.

“You should be able to rattle that off without looking,” Melanie told the harried receptionist. “Or at least pull it up at a touch.”

Melanie’s brother had hired her to help organize the business. His own haphazard style of management had left him struggling since his patented curly-hair ombre coloring method had gone viral and he’d opened four new salons within a year. Unfortunately, the entire business was a mess — everything from the booking system to inventory control needed a complete overhaul.

“Here.” The flustered receptionist turned her computer toward Melanie to show her the calendar.

Luminous settled into a potted plant, shrinking herself to the size of a coffee cup and taking on a diaphanous form that seemed like nothing more than a strange shimmer in the corner of one’s eye.

“What’s this?” Melanie pointed to a scribbled note that the entire salon would be closed from 2 to 4 PM. “Why are we closing mid-day? That’s prime booking time. We can’t…”

“The PR guy,” said the receptionist. “You told me to set up a meeting with a PR firm. There’s a guy coming at two.”

Luminous smiled from her perch among the leaves.

This.

This was the reason she was really here.

Gary Donovan. Owner of Lightstar PR, a brilliant corporate name that had, naturally, come to him in a dream. Also known as the boy who got away.

“Crap,” Melanie said, pulling out her phone to move around items on her personal calendar. “Totally forgot about that. OK. I’ll have to reschedule my call with the shampoo distributor to meet with this PR guy.”

Luminous settled in to wait for the meeting she’d already known was on the agenda. For her, this was a moment long coming.

She’d been assigned to Melanie for years, delivering the sweet dreams of childhood, the most heartfelt nighttime yearnings of adolescence, the idle daytime musings of young womanhood. Occasionally, there were nightmares. Luminous didn’t get to see her on those nights. But Melanie’s dreams had mostly been pleasant, and so Luminous considered her a sort of friend.

She’d taken it upon herself to nudge and shift the girl’s thoughts toward certain things, to offer insight and hope when Melanie leaned toward despair. To hold the young woman’s secrets dear. Secrets like the crush she’d had on her best friend in 8th grade. Secrets like the heartbreak when that friend promised to take her to the 8th grade Valentine’s Day dance, then stood her up for the middle school homecoming princess instead.

Melanie’s secret crush crumbled to ruins on that day. But she still spent far too much time wondering if anything could have changed the outcome of that night. And nearly every night of the 14 years since that day, Melanie had dreamed of Gary.

To some, this kind of obsessive remembrance might have been pitiful. A desperate mental roadblock to true happiness. Luminous knew better.

Because Gary had been dreaming of Melanie, too.

The man mentally beat himself up night after night over the idea that he’d thrown away his best friend to pursue the much less worthy homecoming princess. He dreamed of one day seeing Melanie again so he could apologize and rekindle their once-solid friendship.

Luminous couldn’t wait.

“OK,” Melanie announced. “I’ve got everything set up now. Hopefully, this PR guy can take over the ads and social media my brother and his staff have been doing so they can concentrate on the bigger picture. If we lock this down before Valentine’s day, we could do a big push for that as the soft opening of the Westside salon.”

“That’s in two weeks,” the receptionist exclaimed. “We can’t have everything ready that soon.”

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