She picks our son up off the bed and shoos him out the door before turning back to me. Slowly, she climbs up on the bed and straddles me. It’s only now that I notice her long hair is no longer black and purple. It’s a dark shade of brown with natural highlights. It’s soft and wavy and frames her face perfectly. She isn’t wearing her usual dark eyeliner and black nail polish. In fact, she’s wearing a long gray cotton skirt and a pink lace top. She’s beautiful.
“We’re taking Axl to the park for a picnic, then we’re going to pick up the crib to start on the nursery, remember?”
“Of course I do. I just forgot for a minute,” I tell her. She leans down and kisses me softly. “But what about band practice?” I ask when she pulls away.
“Band practice?” She seems confused. “I haven’t had band practice in four years, since we got married. Seriously, are you feeling okay?”
My eyes pop open as my heart pounds in my chest. That dream felt so real. I can still feel the happiness that overwhelmed me when I looked at my son who looked so much like her. Suddenly, I realize that the beautiful future I saw wasn’t that beautiful at all. That was Luna giving up her dreams for me. That was me getting everything I wanted while she gave up everything she wanted. Something I can’t ever allow to happen.
Guilt eats me alive as if I had some kind of control over the dream, but truth be told, it’s probably because lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what our lives would look like if she hadn’t gotten signed by that record label. I know things can’t turn out that way, but it’s been fun to dream.
I won’t allow Luna to give up her dream for me. When the time comes—when she needs to move on—I’ll release her and deal with everything else later. This isn’t about me, and I can’t be selfish with her. I have to keep myself in check.
I end up not being able to go back to sleep after having that dream, so I get up, throw on some gym clothes, and take off, needing to work her and that dream out of my mind. I spend a couple hours at the gym—running, lifting, and even stepping into a 6 a.m. class. An hour later, I take off toward the house, needing to shower and get ready for work.
I get to the office and feel a sadness when I walk in and see that Calvin’s door is standing wide open—his empty office there for all to see. It only reminds me that when this thing ends between Luna and me, I’ll only be that much more alone. I sit behind my desk and grab my phone to call Cal.
“Hey, what’s up?” he answers.
“Just feels weird starting my day without you. How are you liking the new place?”
“It’s great. I slept really well since there weren’t any blaring horns or police sirens. In fact, I woke up early and thought about running to get a cup of coffee until I realized nothing was open yet and I had to make it myself.”
I laugh. “So you’re missing the city?”
“Nah, I’m missing parts of the city.”
“When are you going to open up the new office?”
“I just bought the building, so it will be a couple of weeks of renovations before it actually opens.”
“Let me know if you need any help. I’m always down for a trip outside the city.”
“Yeah?”
“Absolutely,” I agree.
“Okay, I might take you up on that. But I’ve gotta run. Mason is about to start screaming and I’m trying to let Piper sleep in. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Sounds good.” I drop the phone onto my desk and start my computer to look over my schedule for the day. My phone chimes and I look down at the screen to see a message from Luna.
Want to have lunch with me at the store today?
I grin when I read her words. Of course I do. Noon?
See ya then!
I finally have something to propel me through the first half of the day. I push all other thoughts away as I grab my first case file, needing to familiarize myself with it before the client comes in for our meeting.
It’s going on noon when I walk into the store and find Luna behind the counter. She already has two bottles of Coke sitting next to a pizza. I head over and lean down to brush my lips against hers. “Lunch smells good,” I say, pulling away and sitting on the stool next to her.
She bats her lashes. “I’m glad you think so. I’ve been slaving over a brick oven all morning,” she jokes.
I laugh. “My kind of woman.”
She opens the top of the box and reveals a large pizza with extra cheese, bacon, and chicken. My favorite.
“And yes, before you ask, it does include parmesan ranch dressing.”
I rub my hands together as excitement fills my stomach.
She picks up a piece and puts it on a napkin before handing it over.
My mouth is already watering. I raise the slice and take a big bite—the cheese stringing from the pizza to my mouth as I pull it away. The heavenly taste is amazing and makes me close my eyes and moan my appreciation.
She giggles but takes a bite of her own. She nods while making an mmm sound, agreeing.
“How’d you sleep last night?” I ask, just to make conversation.
She shrugs. “When I was asleep, I slept great, but I kept having these weird dreams.”
“Me too. I had a dream that we got married. We had our own house, a little boy, and a baby on the way.”
She smiles. “Aww, that’s cute. But at least that makes sense.”
“How does that make sense? We both know how this is going to end, and it’s not going to be anything like that dream.”
She nods but doesn’t seem upset by this conversation. Which is another reason why it’s going to end the way it is. I’m not sure I mean as much to her as she means to me. She’s always calm and collected, whereas I feel like I’m more of a heart on my sleeve kind of guy.
“We’ve never done this, have we?”
“Done what?” I ask, taking another slice of pizza since I inhaled my last piece.
“Had the official what our future could look like talk.”
“I guess not, but that’s probably because we both know where we’re heading.”
“Well, I mean, we know what the next couple of weeks will bring, but we don’t know anything after that,” she points out.
My chewing stops as I glance over at her. “Are you saying there could still be something between us after you leave?”
She shrugs and chews slowly on her pizza. “I’m saying we don’t know exactly how we’ll end up. We know what’s coming, but what if we do end up together? What if in a year or two or 10, we run into each other on the street and hit it off again? We could still end up married and having kids. Me leaving doesn’t mean nothing could ever happen between us again, you know?”
Honestly, to me, that’s exactly what it means. I figured she’d go off and get famous, then when things finally calmed down, she’d end up living in California in some mansion in the hills. I’d assumed we’d never get another shot.
“I guess you’re right. We don’t know what destiny has planned for us.”
“So maybe when I leave, it’s not goodbye. It’ll just be a see ya later.”
We’re so lost in this conversation that we don’t notice someone walking into the store until the bell rings. We both pull our eyes away from each other and look at the door to see Van headed our way.