The Dream

We were sitting on her “gently used” leather sofa; me on one end, her on the other. Uncomfortable with each other, yet not wanting it to be that way, we tried to lighten the mood with the liquor I’d brought. I swallowed the last shot of tequila, took an enormous amount pleasure in the burn, and then wished like hell I had brought more. Why couldn’t I just say it? Just blurt out that the reason I left was my dad, since he threatened to tell her parents. 

“So…” I was quite the conversationalist early on that night. A series of one-word sentences, grunts, and a few ‘mmmmm’s’ literally rolled off my tongue and plopped onto my lap. 

“It’s been a while,” I said and finally looked at her. Terri hadn’t changed a bit in the few years since we’d last seen each other. Still had the same long blonde hair—

“Four years, three months, two days, and,” consulting her watch, “eight hours, to be exact. But… who’s counting, Gin?” 

—and smart-ass mouth. She used it as a cover so no one knew how much she cared. I, however, knew that she did care. I knew it the day we’d met in eighth grade and the moment she opened her apartment door one fifth ago. First her first expression had been one of surprise and joy. She grabbed me, hugged me tight, and right before we parted, I felt the stiffening of her spine and then she asked me in. 

“You were always the one for details. Remember when—”

“I remember the day after high school graduation and not being able to find my best friend.” 

There it was. “So, this is the part where it gets heavy?” Had it really just been a fifth?

Her eyes widened. Those big, glittering sapphires that had once held the warmth of day and laughter, now chilled me with their ice-cold glare. “Heavy? Gina, we were inseparable the last four years of high school! We were best friends.”

She stood and began pacing in front of me. I couldn’t help but look at her from head to toe. Her face, hands, and round hips and ass. She was absolutely beautiful. “We made plans, Dammit!” she continued her tirade, “College, apartment together, parties, being there for each other. Does any of that sound familiar?” She stopped wearing out the carpet and stood in front of me; her stance demanded an answer.

“Of course it does, Terri. I haven’t forgotten a thing.” I had to quit staring at her. Feelings were beginning to surface that I ‘d tried damn hard to suppress for four years, three months, two days and eight hours. I shouldn’t have come here tonight. I scooted to the edge of the couch and started to rise. Her hands on my shoulders stopped me.

“Then tell me what happened.” She came around the coffee table, pressing her body so close to my face I thought I’d quit breathing. A stirring whiff of her perfume enticed a deep breath from me and set my head to spinning. She sat closer to me than before, turned to face me, her knee pressed into my hip. “Gina, where did you go that morning? Why did you leave? I’ve thought of nothing else since you’ve been gone. I didn’t and still don’t understand what drove you away and why you never contacted me. What did I do?”

I wanted to bolt from the couch and straight out the door, yet I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her, feel her arms wrap around me and hug me tight. I wanted the comfort that only she could give. I wanted to hold her so hard that all the bad things would go away and just be with her for the moment. Even if it was for just a moment, then I could feel her breath and her life, her warmth, her solidity next to me. God I just wanted to feel her. I was terrified to think it much less to admit it. And that’s what I had come to do. I’d come to rid myself of guilt by explaining to her why I had left and to be honest about my feelings. Closure is what I was looking for. I see, however, what has been opened by my coming here.

I almost talked myself into leaving. Nevertheless, I realized she needed and deserved an answer. In her eyes I could see hurt that reached straight down to her heart and made her take tiny little breaths. 

“I came back because—”

“Fuck why you came back! I want to know why you left.”

“Would you quit interrupting me? Damn!” I swallowed hard. “This is hard enough without having to keep starting over.”

She looked unrepentant, but she conceded. “Ok. Sorry.”

I took a deep breath and began. “I’ve been staying with Aunt Jo in South Carolina since the morning I left here. She owns that nursery, you know, and since she never married or had kids, well she was obviously the best choice.” I heard Terri start to speak, so I rushed on. “After all this time, I’ve practically ruined her life and finances. My therapist told me the only way to exercise this demon is to face it.”

“And I’m the demon? Well, thank you Linda Blair.”

Did I want to strangle her or kiss her? Was it just moments ago I wanted to hold her tenderly? Damn my father! Had he not seen us that night, hell if he had only handled what he had seen differently?

“Shut up and listen, ok. I’ve been having problems, you know, with booze and drugs. I’ve been arrested so many times I’ve lost count. I’ve made no less than three trips to rehab before I finally got a shrink that I half ass have faith in. When I’m sober, I have this dream and it shakes me up and sorta brings it all down on top of me again. She says I gotta confront it so it will leave me alone.”

Terri nodded, taking my story in. Like a sponge in deep water, she had absorbed all she was capable of, yet willing to try to hold more. 

“In this dream I’m, ah, that is you and me are, well, we’re on this pier. "

“Like graduation night?” she asked.

I shake my head. “Yeah, like that. At my dad’s.”

“I remember.”

At this instant everything in the room changed. I no longer had charge of the situation. She had taken control. I stammered for more words so she brought her finger up to rest on my lips. 

“The moon was full and we were alone.” She removed her finger and instinctively I licked my lips where she had touched me. 

“Everyone had gone home or into the cabin to bed. We stayed out and swam in the lake until we were winded. We were both smashed, but the cool water sobered us to the point of silence as we lay there side by side on the pier. I remember rising and looking over at you. You were already sitting. You had your knee pulled up and your arm resting there. Your eyes were closed and your face tilted upwards. Your hair was loose and wild and looked silver under the moon glow. Gina, I thought you were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.”

I had stopped breathing the moment she’d started speaking. She remembered! But she couldn’t know that my dad had seen us and had personally condemned my soul to hell. What could he have told the members of the First Baptist Church? That their preacher had raised a lesbian? The joke’s on him. He’s raised a lesbian and an addict. Does Hallmark make a card for that?

She leaned in close to me and picked up a handful of my hair. Slowly, air escaped my lungs as I watched her press her face into a strand. I swallowed hard and watched my hair slide through her lips as if she tasted it. She leveled a gaze at me that heated me from the inside out.

“I couldn’t resist kissing you that night. Do you remember what you said to me after I did?”

I was shaking by this time. Quaking inside with desire for her as I had that night and every night since when I finally answered. “I said, ‘I’ve wanted you so bad from day one that sometimes, when we stay all night together, I pull back the blankets and just sniff you from head to toe.” 

She kissed me again. Slow. Warm. Her lips were like melted butter against mine. She licked my mouth and it reminded me of when her tongue flicked against my hot flesh that night. I remember coming in her mouth after the first few strokes. 

“Now, you tell me about this dream while I relive it. Does this feel good?” 

Her hands were under my shirt and her fingers were squeezing my nipples. How could I think? I closed my eyes and called to mind the last few images of my vision. 

“There was a man in a fishing boat and he was watching us. I couldn’t see him, but I knew that he was getting closer and closer. Finally I felt his hands on my ass as I was kneeling between your thighs and then felt him enter me.”

Her lips had replaced a set of fingers on my breasts. She sucked my nipple until it was hard and stiff and then she began nibbling. I twinned my fingers in her hair and shoved her face down, forcing my nipple into her mouth. I groaned as I stretched my legs down the length of the sofa, making her lay flat on me. Her lips found mine and we kissed each other hard and hungry. Our hands were everywhere, trying to feel every inch of flesh that had been denied us all those years. I turned her back against the couch, unbuttoned her jeans, and slid my hand inside her wet panties. I cupped her and squeezed before parting her lips and plunging a finger inside her. God! She was hot and wet and convulsed rapidly around my finger. She whimpered against my mouth and at the same moment my hand was filled with her sweet juice. 

Hours later, naked and panting on the floor, entwined arms and legs, we lay quietly. I felt at peace yet sad. I was mourning the time together we had lost, and what could never be. I loved her, but I wasn’t sure if there was a future for us. Could I live with her while my father’s hellfire and brimstone licked at my feet? Could I face the rage he exhibited that morning again?

“So who was the man?”

It took a second to realize what she was talking about. “It was Dad.”

“You fucked your dad in your dream?”

“No. He fucked me.”