Page 127 of Only in Your Dreams

Ifind Zac down by the water at the foot of his property, showered and dressed the way he is every morning before I’m awake. It’s his attempt to keep resisting me, and the man has nerves of steel because I can barely glance at him anymore without having a visceral need to feel him everywhere.

He’s sitting on the grass at the edge of the patch of daisies with a bunch of freshly clipped flowers at his side, probably destined for the vase he let me put in his kitchen after our shopping trip, what feels like years ago. He’s taken it upon himself to put in a fresh bunch since.

I can barely believe we’ve only known each other again for a couple of months. It feels like I’ve fallen asleep with him for an eternity. Getting back the fluttery feelings I’d felt for him as a kid only amplified.

I was right to have called it puppy love the night I first showed up here. It feels so different this time around.

Zac’s voice carries over the lawn as I make my way over. He spots me when I’m a few feet away, and gestures at his phone with the hand not holding it.

The bruises along the side of his face have darkened overnight and sheer rage bubbles inside me again. The thought of someone putting their hands on him—hurting him—makes me want to draw blood. Fret over him. Kiss him until the bruises disappear.

“Mom, I better go get breakfast started,” he says, looking into his phone. I realize he’s on a video call.

“And by that you mean,Mom, I need you to stop talking my ear off,” a voice answers with a laugh. “Unless you’ve really started cooking breakfast for Noah, which would be very sweet indeed.”

I’ve never met Zac’s mom. Growing up, his parents had always been somewhere on the other side of the world, wherever his dad was stationed. Whenever Zac saw them, he’d be flying out to meet them.

I smooth my hair, flushing at the delighted way Zac’s brows inch up his forehead when I sit beside him in the grass, and lean into the frame of his phone.

I’ve seen photos of her over the years, scattered around Grams’s old house. At first glance, the woman on the screen doesn’t look much like Zac. She’s got deep red hair and gorgeous freckles dotting her face. But even through the phone, her brown eyes are as striking as Zac’s. They crinkle the same way his do when he smiles.

“I can vouch for the breakfast alibi,” I tell his mom with a small wave. “I’m a very needy house guest. My name is—”

“Melody,” she finishes for me. Through the phone, it’s hard to tell which one of us she’s looking at given how close together Zac and I are sitting. But she appraised us with obvious interest. “I’d know you anywhere.”

In the tiny square in the corner of the screen where we’re reflected, I can see Zac is wincing.

I suppress a laugh. “You know, I’ve long suspected you kept photos of me plastered to the walls of your teenaged bedroom, somewhere between the Nirvana and Power Rangers posters. This settles it.”

Zac bumps me with his shoulder. “You saw my teenaged bedroom, you brat.”

“What I saw were suspiciously empty walls. Who knows what you did away with before I came over,” I say with a shrug. I turn back to his mom. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Porter. I heard so much about you growing up.”

“Call me Andrea, please,” she tells me. “Between the things I’d hear from my mother and Zachary, it feels like we met ages ago. It was always Melody and Parker this, Melody and Parker that. Sprinkle in some extra Melody all over the place.”

Oh, this is so fun.

Zac’s head falls forward in such defeat, I can’t help but laugh.

“I’m gonna go ahead and take this from you,” I tell him, prying the phone from his hand before he does anything rash, like hang up on his mom to save himself further humiliation. “I’ve only been awake five minutes, and this is already the best day of my life.”

“You know, you’re exactly how I pictured you,” Andrea tells me.

Zac lets out a mournful groan. “Here we go.”

I nudge him quiet. “Really? How did he describe me?”

“‘She looks like the sun, Mom,’” Andrea says, voice dropping in apparent imitation. Zac stiffens at my side. “‘Mixed with a little bit of rain.’ I’ll never forget it. The sweetest words coming from a fourteen-year-old boy.”

Here’s something I never expected: meeting Zac’s mom and having her steal my breath away within the first minute and a half. My body—every organ contained within it—goes still.

She’s that first ray of sunlight after a bad storm. Peeking through the clouds.

They’re the words Zac used to describe the girl he’d once loved. The one he screwed up with.

“I can see what he means now,” Andrea says, clearly oblivious to the thick silence on the other end of the line. “The blonde hair, beautiful face. But your eyes are all trouble, aren’t they? I’ve seen you two together all of two minutes, but it all makes perfect sense now.”

Zac looks off to the side, staring at the tree-lined edge of the property.

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