“You too,” I said. “Have a good night.”
I watched them walk away and Mags passed behind me.
“I hope you’re sleeping with at least one of them,” she said. “Or both.”
I opened my mouth, but she was already down at the other end of the bar.
I looked forward and Josh and Aaron were gone.
I missed Josh. I liked Josh. I more than liked Josh, just like before when I was too young to know what that meant.
My heart was racing.
My heart was ready for whatever was going to happen by getting too close to him.
Chapter 29
A Meeting IV
A LITTLE WHILE AGO
(Josh)
“There’s a different version of the dream,” I said.
“Is there?”
“Yeah,” I said as I ran a hand through my hair.
“Are you still on a plane?”
“Yeah. Except it’s a private plane. Small. Maybe enough room for twelve people. But I’m the only one in the plane.”
“No pilot?”
“No pilot.”
“Yet the plane is flying.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I’m sitting there with this little table in front of me. Looking at pictures. Like actual pictures, right? Photographs. And they’re all of her. Except that she’s older. She’s older as though she never…”
I let the last word hang somewhere between my lips and the air.
“Let me pause you there for a second, Josh. You never complete the sentence. You’ll use the word gone. You’ll say not here. You’ll throw out not around. But you never say the word.”
“What word is that?” I asked.
“You know what word. The final word, Josh. The one that brings it full circle. I think if you at least spoke the word once, it would help bring a small sense of closure. Or at least acceptance of what happened. It doesn’t make it easier, Josh. It’s not going to. I’m not going to lie to you. But by using the word, you begin to face the truth. And when you face the truth, that’s when you can find your sense of healing.”
I knew what was right and wrong. I knew the word. I had spoken it a million times in my head. I whispered it to myself at three in the morning when the world slept and I rolled in my bed of anger.
“Do you want to hear about the fucking dream or not?” I asked.
“Of course I do. Please continue.”
“So, I’m staring at all these pictures of her. I mean it was… she was a teenager in one of them. This beautiful young woman. And then a picture of her at a prom. In this dress with these flowers and her hair done perfectly, looking like a real woman. It was overwhelming to look at. So, I scooped up the pictures and moved them aside. Sometimes in the dreams it feels like there are two versions of me. The version of me who believes it’s real. Then the version of me who knows it’s a dream. And I’m screaming at the other version to keep going. To keep looking at those pictures. But it didn't happen. So I reached for the window. There was this little tan shade that was closed. So I opened it. Don’t worry, the plane was actually in the air. I was actually flying.”
I paused.
I looked around the comfortable office.
It pissed me off that I was actually comfortable. It meant I was coming here too often. I had a spot to sit. A spot to stand. My favorite place to pace. I could navigate the building without worrying what floor or door to look for.
“Josh? Are you okay?”
“She was there,” I said.
“Where?”
“Outside the plane.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was flying. She was the age… you know… and she was flying. Her arms open. A cape on her back. Her hair dancing behind her in the wind. And she smiled at me. The biggest smile I could ever imagine seeing. I opened my mouth to say something and I woke up.”
“What did you feel when you woke up?”
“Anger.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want the dream to end.”
“Let’s pretend the dream didn’t end. What would you have said to her?”
“I have no idea. That’s why I wanted the dream to keep going.”
“Maybe the dream ended because you didn’t know what to say. Maybe that’s her way of suggesting to you to figure out what to say.”
“So you’re suddenly spiritual here? You think someone who is… gone… can appear in a dream like that?”
“I never said that. I’m just keeping our conversation open.”
“Well, you know what? Maybe it’s just a fucking dream. Like the other one. And there’s no way I can ever talk to her. That’s why she was on the outside of the plane. The proof that I’ll never talk to her.”
“So, what do you want to do with that then, Josh? If that’s the truth…”
“It’s your job to tell me what to do,” I said. I stood up. “But you’re going to twist words into questions and demand that I make decisions I don’t want to make.”
“There’s no decision to be made. It’s just us here. Talking.”
“I wanted to tell you about the other dream. So now I’ve got two dreams haunting me. What the fuck is next?”
“That we don’t know, Josh.”
“Great. So this is now a waste of my fucking time.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“Thanks for nothing.”
I left without another word. I was always able to leave like that. It pissed me off because it made me want to go back in there and keep talking.
But there was no more talking.
She was dead.
She died.
She’ll never come back to life again.
But the problem…
She wasn’t the only one I lost at that time.
Chapter 30
Waved Your Hands and it’s Gone
NOW
(Josh)
I put Aaron’s arm around my shoulder and I forced him down to the couch.
He waved his hands in the air and started talking gibberish. That was his cue that he was going to throw up. I’d known him for so damn long I could predict everything he was thinking and what he was going to do next.
The first time we got drunk together was off a bottle of brandy from his father’s liquor cabinet. I had been drunk many times thanks to guys like Murph and the secret life I lived that went beyond my friendship with Aaron. But he got so drunk that he threw up. Which was maybe normal for the first time drinking too much. In my mind, I still saw it.
Him standing in the kitchen. Then out of nowhere he waved his hands and started saying ar-ga-ah-o-er-ah-ga over and over. He ran to the sink and puked. That gibberish stood for he was about to throw up. Even for something like the stomach bug. He confessed to me he was terrified of throwing up for fear of choking on it and dying.
I managed to get a trashcan from the bathroom in the basement just in time for him to roll to his right side and throw up. He growled with an angry voice as everything came back up. Food, drink, and much more.