Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 90503 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90503 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Taking a deep breath, I described the crowded room, my inability to be seen or heard, my nakedness, the snake, the clock, and the locked door. They listened, rapt with attention. “And then I wake up,” I finished, “right as the snake is about to bite me.”
The bartender brought our wine, and I took an eager sip.
“And you can’t fall back asleep afterward?” Stella asked.
I shrugged. “Sometimes, not always. Not last night.” From the corner of my eye, I glanced at Emme. “Last night I got out of bed and googled the dream.”
Emme beamed and puffed out her chest. “And?”
“Let me guess.” Stella held out a hand. “The Internet thinks the snake is a penis.”
I pointed at her. “Exactly.”
Stella rolled her eyes. “Good old Freud.”
“Is there a penis in your life we don’t know about?” Emme gave me a pointed look over the rim of her narrow glass.
I shook my head. “Nope. Not one that isn’t battery-operated, anyway.”
She snorted. “Maybe you need a real one.”
“Maybe.” I swallowed some more wine. “But I don’t really think the dream is about sex.”
“Let’s think about one of the other things from your dream,” Stella suggested. “Like the clock.”
“Maybe it’s a biological clock,” Emme said. “Maybe you’re subconsciously thinking about getting married and having kids, and worried about waiting too long.”
“But I’m not even thirty,” I protested. “I don’t feel any pressure whatsoever to get married. And I could always adopt if I wanted kids.”
“How about the door?” persisted Stella. “What do you think that means?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “The Internet thought maybe I was feeling confined by something. But I can’t think what.”
“The door was closed, so maybe you need closure on something.” Emme sipped her Prosecco. “Or someone.”
“That’s a good point,” said Stella. “Can you think of anything in the past you might have unresolved feelings about? Your ballet career maybe?”
I shook my head. “It’s not that.”
“Mom and Dad’s divorce?” Emme suggested.
“No, that never bothered me either. They were obviously unhappy together.”
“A relationship?” asked Stella.
Something twisted in my gut.
“No,” I lied.
I couldn’t go there. I never went there.
Emme went there. “What about Dallas Shepherd?”
My stomach hollowed.
Dallas Shepherd.
My first crush, my first kiss, my first everything.
He’d had the body of an athlete, the hands of an artist, the face of a god, the charm of a fairy tale prince, and the sense of a cinder block.
Not that he wasn’t smart—he was. He used to amaze me with all the things he could memorize. Random things I said offhand he could repeat back to me almost verbatim. And he was so damn talented—he could draw anything. I never understood why his grades were so terrible, or why he made such bad decisions. He was always getting in trouble at school. Fights. Pranks. Smoking in the bathroom. He didn’t even like cigarettes! It drove me crazy, all the dumb stuff he used to do—but he couldn’t stay out of trouble, and I couldn’t stay away from him. It was like trying to fight gravity.
“Come on, that was twelve years ago,” I said, attempting to laugh. I’d been seventeen the last time I saw him, not that I had known it was going to be the last time. He’d made sure of that. “I think I’m over him by now.”
“I don’t know about that,” Emme said. “You haven’t really dated anyone seriously since then, and you were pretty wrecked after he left.”
I shifted in my chair. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were. Stella, remember that pillowcase she had with his face on it?”
Stella laughed while I huddled in humiliation, remembering all the tears I’d cried on that pillowcase. “I never saw it, but you told me about it.”
Emme was delighted. “She would put it on every night and take it off every morning to hide it. I only know because I caught her doing it once. She made me swear not to tell Mom.”
“Okay, enough,” I snapped.
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed about your feelings, Maren.” Emme patted my shoulder.
“I don’t have feelings about Dallas anymore,” I insisted.
“You never think about him?” Stella pressed.
I shrugged and took a few swallows of wine. “Not really.” Another lie.
I thought about him every time a man disappointed me in bed and left me wondering if I’d ever feel that thing I’d had with him again—that insatiable desire between us. I can’t get enough, he used to tell me, his ravenous mouth seeking every inch of my skin.
I thought about him every time I drove past the house on the lake where he used to live, or the high school we’d both attended, or the dark church parking lot he’d driven to that final night, where he’d gone down on me in the backseat of his Jeep before pulling me onto his lap and whispering that he loved me, that he wanted me, that he needed me, as he slid inside me, slow and deep. He’d been uncharacteristically broody and intense that night, and I’d been so lost in my own feelings I hadn’t thought to ask him why.