Between Dreams (4 page)

On Wednesdays, I joined his family for dinner and then we studied together. It was the only time I truly felt as if I was a part of an actual functioning family. They were always so kind and welcoming. I would hang out afterwards and listen to the boys practice their music in the garage.

By that time, Ray was five foot eleven inches tall and 180 pounds of muscle. When he gripped the microphone with both hands, placing his lips inches from the transmitter, he would glance over at me and I would easily feel as if I were the only one in the room. I couldn’t help but notice how sexy he had become. He had grown out his blond hair and left it messy, like a surfer. He had also begun working out, which left a nice definition to his biceps. He was no longer that awkward teenage boy I had met years before. He was stunning.

He had a nose that now fit his matured face and deep, bright blue eyes. They reminded me of stars in the sky. I felt I was lucky to be his close friend. I also felt I was falling in love with him.

As I sat there in Finn’s car, I smiled at the memory of our times together in high school. It was a much simpler kind of life. Ray and Sid, together all the time, laughing, studying, singing…

We knew each other inside and out. Now, I wondered if we knew each other at all.

My mind took me right back into the bedroom at the mansion.

“
Ray pining after me? That’s not the way I remember it.” I crossed my arms and glared out the window, allowing all of the anger to seep back inside me.

Finn let out another boisterous laugh. “That’s because you were up there with Chrissy; also a ten. You think he wanted to take that chance of rejection with you when he knew the odds were stacked against him? It took him two years to finally get up the courage to ask you out, Sidney.”

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. “What does it matter now?” I asked. “If I’m a ten, which I sincerely doubt, then Ray’s back in that house with a twenty right now.”

Finn turned into Los Angeles International Airport and began following the green signs to the passenger drop off area.

“Ray’s not stupid, you know. When he put up that stink about having you move down here with us…He jeopardized our careers over it. He did it to keep you, Sidney. Unlike you women, who have a predisposed genetic DNA to reject every guy that hits on you, we’re the polar opposite. It’s practically impossible for us to say no. Ray knew what was going to happen when we came down here and got into the mainstream media. He’s not a cheater, and if you were here, he’d never be able to hurt you that way.”

I smiled as I sized up Finn in my mind.
A sweet guy, yes; an insightful psychologist—no way.

Finn pulled the Challenger to the side of the curb and placed the transmission in park. He looked over at me with those big brown eyes full of sincerity. “But if you’re not here, it makes the temptation a little easier. You don’t have to worry about coming home and looking into the face of the person you care about the most and lie to them.”

He nervously patted the steering wheel of the car. He was completely out of his element giving me this pep talk. “I don’t know. You get what I’m trying to say, right?”

I grabbed my purse and opened the car door. I turned to Finn. “Yeah, basically it’s my fault Ray’s cheating on me. If I never would have left, he would have remained the faithful loving boyfriend I’ve always known him to be. Whatever.”

I exited the car, joyous that I had escaped Finn’s mental asylum. “Thanks for the ride. I really don’t know what I would’ve done without you,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

Finn smiled and ignored my biting cynicism as he leaned towards the passenger window. “Hey Sidney, how’s Chrissy?”

Unintentionally, I gave Finn that fake look of sympathy which everyone hates to receive. “She’s doing fine. I’ll tell her you said hi.”

He smiled excitedly and threw the car into gear. “Cool!”

I nodded at Finn and watched the Challenger as it exited the airport. Shaking my head, I whispered, “See you around, Freud.”

I reached into my purse and pulled out my wasted ticket and turned towards the door of the Southwest terminal.

God, what a day.

Chapter Four

Cry

I lay awake in my bed staring up at the ceiling in the quiet pink bedroom of the Craftsman house. The windows were thin and I could hear every sound the night brought, which stimulated my mind, offering no peaceful state of sleep. The swift wind had howled throughout the night, sending the old bare branches of the oak tree rasping against the pane. This was the sixth month of me not being able to sleep and its effects were truly starting to wear on me. Ever since I moved into the pink bedroom I suffered the same fate night after night.

Every time I shut my eyes I would go straight back into the dream that had kept my mind alert and spinning.

Like most dreams people experience, it faded quickly upon waking up. As the sun rose in the sky, the memories of our dreams evaporated and in my case, this was a truism. Except I always remembered the emerald green eyes of the man. The image of his eyes reaching deep into my soul had long been burned into my mind. I called them “pendant eyes,” for they were the exact same color as the striking jewelry I had discovered in my mother’s tin box.

I would fall asleep and awaken with the image of those eyes in my mind as those first days turned into weeks and eventually months.

A man with eyes that penetrated my soul.

But he was just a dream. My dream.

It was really no wonder why I had conjured up this man of perfection in my mind. With everything Ray had put me through, I was in desperate need to hold onto the hope there was someone else out there for me. I would not spend the rest of my life chasing after my high school boyfriend trying to get back what we once had. There was no going back. Ray had broken my heart and in doing so, he had broken my trust.

My emotional funk had been complicated by those dreams which had begun around the time I found my mother’s necklace. I wasn’t sure if they had anything to do with my newfound possession or if they were simply the sum of the emotional trauma taking place in my life.

First I’d undergone the painful loss of my granny as I had known her, and now I had lost Ray too. It’s no wonder my mind lacked the warm state of euphoria.

I rolled over on my side and thought of Ray some more. After I had discovered his betrayal and after his hundredth phone call, I finally gave in and spoke with him. It took me a month before I could stomach a conversation with him. My mind always returned to the scene of me running away from the house of horrors—or whores.

He apologized profusely and told me he originally believed that Lilly was what he’d wanted but once he’d seen me and seen how much his actions hurt me, he couldn’t live with himself. He had broken up with the fox and begged me to come back, but as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t do it. All my trust in him had diminished.

We were currently working on our long-distance relationship as much as we could but, as I lay in my bed I couldn’t help but think our efforts were futile and perhaps Ray was right when he had originally suggested we break up.

I replayed our phone conversation from earlier that night for the millionth time. It seemed now that instead of going around in circles with the granny issue, we had begun chasing our tails with the Lilly situation. I couldn’t get past it.

Ray was pragmatic. “Look, Sid, I know that no matter what I say it will never make up for the pain I’ve caused you. It’s just hard sometimes out there, living this other life. Everyone thinks I’m single, and for the most part, I am.”

He was once again blaming
me
for his unfaithfulness. “I just got mixed up in the moment. It’s hard to explain but when I’m down in L.A. it’s almost like I’m living this other life.”

Yet another hapless attempt on Ray’s part to justify his actions.
It was hard for me to hear. I knew what he was trying to say but that didn’t mean that it hurt any less. Basically, when he’s down there living that
other
life it’s as if I never existed. Evidently, I was that forgettable.

“You can only hurt me so much, Ray. You can only make me cry so much…” I was stumbling around in my mind, trying to think of the right words. “…before I have no more tears left to cry.”

As my emotional pain and the recurring lump in my throat returned, I tried to think of anything other than Ray. I focused again on the dream. It always appeared to be the same one. I wasn’t personally involved in it, instead I was a viewer. Standing on the sidelines, I was a witness to a play where the actors played their repetitive roles. No matter how many times I’d witnessed it, I could never change the outcome.

Unfortunately, once I woke up, my diluted and foggy mind would cause me to forget most of the dream. But one image always stuck in my mind.

They were the eyes of the man, deep and green, burning with passion as he desperately tried to stay intensely close to the woman he loved. Thinking of him, I began comparing his love for the woman in my dream to Ray and myself.

In the three years that Ray and I had been together I had never once seen him stare at me the way this man gazed at his love. If only a man of his caliber truly existed.
Having someone love me that fiercely, I would never look back at Ray again,
I thought as my eyes grew heavy and I finally gave in to the inevitable state of sleep.

***

I woke up feeling groggy and tired and cursed inwardly for the long, thoughtless consultation I had in the early morning hours. My mind never seemed rested anymore and I thought maybe it was time to invest in a journal. If I could just find a way to get that haunting dream out of my mind and onto paper, maybe I would ease up a little and sleep sounder.

But when I wasn’t dreaming I would find myself
daydreaming,
thinking about him and those addictive eyes. I would spend the entire day anxious to crawl back into my bed and see him again. Soon I found that I wasn’t even paying attention to the dreams anymore, but obsessing entirely on him.

There was something about Samael; the man in my dreams, that drew me. It unnerved me that I could never remember his face. It was as if I could feel every emotion he was feeling and his essence spoke to me in volumes. The draw I had to him was so strong I didn’t need to see his face to be captivated by him. I started developing this attraction for a virtual man who wasn’t even real. He was just an invisible stranger I created in my mind, so it confused me to answer the question: How was it that I could obsess over him?

I suppose I was just taken in by the idea of
what
he was. He was truly a fantasy that every woman would want; a man with an undying, devoted love for his paramour. He was willing to go to the ends of the earth just to be in her arms again.

In my mind, that was the most romantic thing I had ever imagined in true love. I just wished I could remember what he looked like. The only thing that stood out to me were those alluring and penetrating emerald eyes.

I lazily climbed out of my cozy bed and headed toward the bathroom to shower away all my foolish fantasies. I did not succeed. The hot water pouring all over my body allowed my mind to imagine they were his strong arms embracing me. I wanted to remain under the water in his captivating presence for hours, but the duties of work were calling to me.

After I combed through my wet, unruly hair, I fought with it a bit in an attempt to style it. Finally giving up, I just decided to throw it into a messy bun and put my work clothes on. I looked at the clock resting on the chestnut nightstand next to the bed, the red numbers glowed eleven-thirty.

Safeway was about half a mile away from my house, and since it was such a beautiful day I decided to walk and get as much fresh air as I could before being trapped inside the dimly lit store for the next eight hours.

I quickly rushed into the white room and said good morning to Granny as I kissed her soft forehead. “Oh Granny, if you would just wake up, everything would be so different,” I whispered to her.

I left the bedroom and headed into the kitchen, snatching up a powdered doughnut. I said goodbye to Nouri, grabbed my purse, and locked the front door behind me.

The air was crisp, but not too cold. It actually felt really nice. Spring was arriving and I took notice of the green leaves budding on the sparse tree branches, reminding me that even the things that looked dead received new life as the seasons passed.

I walked by an old man wearing khaki pants pulled up to his stomach and a light blue polo shirt tucked in. He was raking the fallen cherry blossoms into a pile as his wife held open a garbage bag for him. I thought to myself that’s how a couple should be, growing old together and still doing everything as a team. That was devotion.

And that will probably never be Ray and I.

I arrived to work at 11:59, barely making it on time. As soon as I walked through the double sliding doors, I saw Bob, my floor manager.

“Sidney. Register eleven, please,” he commanded.

Bob was a man in his mid-forties with a bald head and a potbelly. He was married and had two small children. His family would come in and visit every now and then. The children were well-mannered and his wife was a tall, thin blonde who was completely out of his league. I often wondered how the two ended up together as they seemed like such opposites, but I just summed it up to his jovial personality. He was a pretty laid-back manager and pleasant to work for but he didn’t handle pressure very well.

“Sidney, chop, chop,” he said with his nasally voice. He was always trying to get everyone to hurry. Maybe out of a personal paranoia to compensate for his inability to lead a fluid operation.

I looked at the registers and noticed the huge line backed up at each one. No wonder he’s barking commands at me.
His ulcer must be acting up again.

I walked over to register eleven and punched my employee number onto the screen as I flipped on my light.

“I can help the next customer on register eleven,” I shouted.

Quickly a line with about eight people developed in front of my register.

Yep, it’s going to be a long day.

The first half of my shift continued on as I busily scanned my customers’ groceries over and over. The line never receded, but eventually by 4:30 p.m. the rush began to die down, and knowing the calm wouldn’t last long, I decided to take my lunch break. I scanned the floor to inform Bob but he was nowhere to be found.

During a lull in the line, I decided to use my down time to browse the tabloids for any gossip about Ray. I grabbed the
Alternative Post
magazine that was displayed with the other tabloids above the candy rack.

As I skimmed through it, I saw a picture of Ray as he performed at The Viper Room in Hollywood. His hands gripped the microphone as he sang with his eyes closed. He looked so cute. I smiled to myself as I felt the butterflies in my stomach go wild at the sight of him.

Below his photo was the caption: “
Hollywood’s newest most eligible bachelor? Ray Ryker, lead vocalist of the band Unspoken Words, who undoubtedly doesn’t know how to wear his heart anywhere other than on his sleeve, has a new single out. Ladies, get ready, because he may be hinting to the world he’s no longer waiting on his very special lady friend.”

I slammed the magazine shut and tossed it to the side of the register. I hated it that Ray wrote all of his songs about us. It was as if our life was under a giant microscope and the world around us was constantly trying to read into Ray’s songs, hoping to find out their true meaning.

This particular article was in reference to the band’s latest single being played on all the airwaves. The focus of the song was Ray asking if the wait was worth it. I suppose he was referring to waiting on me while I’m here caring for my granny.

I scanned the empty store for a second time, still searching for Bob, but couldn’t find him anywhere. He was probably locked away in the back office trying to escape the afternoon rush. I shook my head in frustration as my empty stomach let out a hungry growl.

Then I noticed someone approaching my line.
As I turned to greet the new customer my heart stopped as my eyes drank in the sight of pure perfection.
I couldn’t breathe. The instant attraction I had felt for this stranger was overwhelming.
I just stood there frozen, completely stupefied and unable to move. Our eyes locked on each other as if we were setting up for a fatal duel. We were both frozen in time, waiting on the other to make the first move.

He wasn’t very tall, five feet nine at the most. But his face made up for the height he lacked.

He had a pale, round face that was shaped like a heart with a high forehead and dark eyebrows that cast a shadow over his big green eyes. He had a tiny mouth with perfectly lined white teeth. His hair was straight and jet black. It was messy and slightly long, reaching his neckline, as it defiantly fell in his face. My mind focused on one thing only.

His eyes. They were the same eyes that had been haunting my dreams for the past six months. The pendant eyes.