He dragged his thumb over Jacob’s lips.
Jacob shut his eyes, and Rasul almost said screw it, and took him back to the apartment then and there. But then Jacob grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the stairs. “Your ears are red. We need to get inside.”
Sighing, Rasul followed.
But as they neared the bottom, Jacob stopped and said, without turning around, “The first time will be at your apartment. In your bedroom. With the lights.”
If they’d still been at the top of the lighthouse, Rasul would have leapt off the edge and flown, joyfully, into the milky November sun. “That can be arranged.”
TOWARD THE end of November, Jacob started having a recurring dream that he was back in high school.
Sometimes there were mundane bits where he wandered the halls, but he always ended up at a school dance. He’d gone intermittently to dances in real life, mostly hanging out with his friends, all of whom had moved away after college. They were all back now in this dream, plus people who hadn’t lived in Copper Point in high school, like Gus and Jack Wu, and Matt, who had been much younger than him. There were also people who had been years ahead of him, like Simon, Owen, and Jared. They danced together for fast songs, but when a slow dance came on, all the men who were partnered in real life went out together, plus Matt and Gus. That tracked, as they’d dated briefly when they were both in college. The end result was that Jacob was left alone, the wallflower holding a glass of punch and pretending not to care that he was by himself. Sometimes the cats showed up, Mr. Nancy winding around his feet, Susan sitting on the punch table judging everyone, Moriarty tripping people.
Always at some point Air Supply would start to play, specifically “The One That You Love.” Then a very adult, very sexy Rasul would part the crowd and move forward, hand extended to Jacob, asking him to dance.
Usually this was when Jacob woke up, but sometimes he ran out of the gymnasium and into fog that never ended. He didn’t have the dream often, but it was regular enough that when he heard an Air Supply song come over the radio in the grocery store, he twitched. He also started acting awkward around Rasul, which wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t help it.
Jacob knew the dreams were caused by stress, a lot of it brought on because of Clark’s constant digs. They were subtle, but they were a regular drumbeat, and they ate at him. Just as he had with every other candidate for the chamber, Clark ragged on Jacob’s business sense during meetings and to every member, stopping by their businesses to tell them why Jacob was so dangerous. Clark criticized Jacob’s choices, his methodologies, his dangerous ways. The attacks held no water with Jacob’s friends, but the real dangers were the neutral parties like James Petersen, who ran Petersen Home Furnishings. Petersen liked Jacob well enough, but his business was threatened every time another online retailer made it easier to shop elsewhere cheaper. It wasn’t so much that he believed Jacob was a threat as he worried Clark was right, that the only way to be safe was to never change.
Jacob worried he should have had more of a campaign. Well, he knew he should have had one. He kept thinking of what Rasul had said on their first date, about how he should let someone else do it if he didn’t want to. But he’d put his name in now. Wasn’t he letting everyone down if he didn’t commit? Probably.
So he tried counter-messaging, visiting the members too, listening to their concerns. He didn’t promise them he could fix everything, but he did offer some tips when he had them, and he never got upset if they said they weren’t sure those ideas would work. Maybe he wouldn’t work.
“You’re doing better than you think,” Rebecca told him after a hospital board meeting when he mentioned his potential failure as a candidate. “Besides, Julian and I are working behind the scenes.”
That gave Jacob some hope, but he kept having nightmares.
Then, three days before Thanksgiving, he didn’t simply dream that he ran away from Rasul through the fog. He darted out of the gym and into the living room of his parents’ house, arriving in time to see them heading out the door to the garage, waving at him and telling him they were running an errand and would be back soon.
He woke still shouting at them not to go, tears streaming down his face.
As he shook off the tendrils of the nightmare, he took in the details of his room: his bed, the dresser, the three cats sitting in a concerned circle around him. Shaking, he got up to get a glass of water.
He had the glass half full before he dropped it in the sink and collapsed against the counter, sobbing.
In the dream, he’d known they were departing for what would be their last ride. They wore the clothes they’d worn that day, the ones from the pictures of the event they’d been at. The ones that had been incinerated somewhere in one of the hospitals, too torn and bloody to save. He’d had variations of this dream about three years after their death, right before he’d started the bookstore. There was no way he could handle it if that dream came back. He’d rather go to the school dance naked and have Rasul laugh at him as he walked off with a troupe of models.
Rasul.
He had his phone in his hand before he realized it, had started dialing faster than he could check the time. His gaze fell on the clock, though, as Rasul picked up: 2:30 a.m. He winced.
“Hello?” Rasul’s voice was only slightly rough.
“I’m sorry.” Jacob shut his eyes, focused on slow breathing, but his voice was still shaky. “I shouldn’t have called.”
“Jacob?” Rasul became instantly clear and alert. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
He meant to say It’s stupid, but instead he whispered, “Nightmare. Parents.”
“Oh, baby. Hold on. I’ll be right over.”
“No, no.” Jacob collapsed into the sofa and shut his eyes. “I only… needed to hear your voice.”
“Well, you can hear it as much as you want.” There was shuffling in the background, something closing. “I need a break anyway. I think I’m producing swill at this point.”
“You’re still working at this hour?”
“I want to finish. And not only because I want to have a sleepover.” He sighed, and Jacob could imagine him running a hand through his hair. “I went back and added a plot thread. I had a big eureka last night, which is good, but I had to retrofit things. Except I worry I’m breaking it.”
“Surely you should sleep and start fresh.”
“Probably? But I get into these grooves, like a trance, and I know if I stop, I’ll lose it. Except there’s always a point where it tips over and I’m practically writing in a made-up language. Creation rides a fine line.”
“You’re so much happier, though, than when you first came. You almost resented writing, but now you’re doing a lot better, at least it seems like you are.”
“No, you’re right. A lot of it is because I chucked all my expectations out the window. I don’t care what anybody thinks about this, except that I want to love it.” There was a slight pause, and his voice softened. “And I want you to love it. That’s what I’m the most worried about.”
For the first time since he’d woken up, Jacob felt warm. His hand moved to his chest of its own accord. “I’m absolutely sure I will.”