After going to bed with barely a goodnight, I roll over and look at her. She’s in panties and one of my shirts, nothing else, the way she usually sleeps. Her mouth is open, tiny snores floating out, the way I remember from our secret sleepovers as teenagers. Now and then, her brow furrows while she dreams.

I should have been nicer at dinner. A little more open, maybe. She’s just trying to help.

“Hey,” I whisper. She doesn’t stir.

That is, until I slip my hand under the covers and find the warmth between her legs, rubbing her through her panties in a gentle circle.

“Mm,” she mumbles, kicking me in her sleep. I change my tactic and unbutton the shirt halfway, until I can get my mouth on her skin.

This wakes her, but not completely. “Later,” she protests, and rolls away from me in a flailing mess of limbs, dragging half the blanket with her. I grab a fistful of the comforter and yank it back towards me, rolling her onto her back. She sighs and mutters something.

I smirk. She’s got no idea what she’s in for.

In my dream, Blake is stuck on a rock in the middle of a river, rapids churning on every side. I try everything to get to him: hopping rocks, knocking over trees as makeshift bridges, even swinging on vines. It’s not that none of them work, but that he refuses to let them.

He greases the rocks. He kicks the trees into the water. When I sail overhead, the vine feeling so real, rough and green in my hands, he won’t even look up.

“Just take it,” I scream. The rapids are deafening, but I can tell he hears me. Even if he pretends he can’t.

The one thing I know, in that strange intuition of dreams, is that braving the water and swimming out will convince him. He would let me save him, if I dare to put myself in the same place, the same danger—but ironically, it’s also the one plan that wouldn’t work. I’d be swept right over the falls, pulled under.

Suddenly, the dream shifts. Instead of a riverbank, I’m standing in the forest with the river roaring in the distance. Blake kisses me, running his hand between my legs. We’re safe. We’re together.

I undress right there, in the dappled light with flowers and life all around.

The feelings grow stronger and the dream begins to break, fragments floating out of place, like a tape skipping.

When I open my eyes, Blake has his head in my shirt and his hand down my panties, working me into a frenzy. I reach up and scratch his scalp the way he likes.

“I was having a nightmare,” I whisper, swallowing the dryness of sleep from my throat. “You were stuck in the middle of this—this river, and I kept trying to save you, only...you wouldn’t let me.”

“Just a dream, Mellie,” he says, amused, like I’m afraid of the monsters under the bed.

When his fingers slip inside me, I can feel how wet I already am. I wanted him so intensely, even in my sleep.

“Let me feel you come on my hand,” he says. I realize, as my senses awaken, that I smell liquor on his breath. Something oaky and sweet, a hint of apples.

“Are you drunk?”

His back tenses. If I could see his face, I’m sure it would be angry. “So what if I am?”

“I just.... I didn’t see you drinking after the wine.”

His fingers halt inside me, the pleasure flatlining. “I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “I got up, had a few drinks, and now I’m just trying to have some fun and make you feel good. All right?”

Before I can answer, he slips a third finger inside and pumps them against my G-spot wildly, like a machine. I come so hard and so suddenly, I don’t even notice my head hitting the slats of the headboard.

“Maybe when you’re sober. This just...doesn’t seem like it’s getting us anywhere.”

I watch Mel attempt, yet again, to work my erection back up. I won’t admit it, but the brandy’s getting to me.

“You don’t like a challenge?”

“This isn’t a challenge,” she counters. “This is impossible.” She laughs, but my pride won’t let me. I ease out from under her and head for the living room.

“Hey,” she calls, “come back, I’m sorry. I’ll keep trying.” I can tell from her tone she thinks I’m pouting, which I am, and that she doesn’t really want to keep trying. Who can blame her, anyway? She just devoted twenty minutes to the world’s most useless blowjob.

A few minutes later, she appears beside the couch, pulling the comforter with her. “What are you watching?”

“Can you not,” I say, my voice grating even to my own ears, “drag my comforter all over the house like that? It gets filthy and I hate when you do it.”

“Since when? I do it all the time.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“For God’s sake,” she mutters, turning on her heel and putting it back in the bedroom. “There. A place for every damn thing and every damn thing in its place. Happy?”

I don’t respond, instead sipping from the brandy I abandoned when I decided to wake her up. It burns less now, my mouth anesthetized.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” she asks when she comes back. She picks up the bottle from the kitchen island and studies it. “We have work tomorrow, you know.”

“Yeah,” I spit. “Thanks, Mom.”

Mel slams the bottle down hard enough to chip the glass. “Hey,” she snaps, “I know you’re stressed about the baby and all that, but that doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole to me and drink yourself stupid.” She steps closer, in between me and the TV. “I found that vodka bottle under the bed.”

I lean around her until I can see the screen. “So?”

“And the one in your car.” Her voice softens, a shaky kind of whisper, and I already know it could break me if I’m not careful. “What’s going on?”

Only now do I look her in the eye. “Nothing.”

There are tears on her face. How didn’t I notice them? “Nothing,” she repeats, letting her hands fall to her sides. “So, what, now you’re lying to me?”

“Just worry about yourself, Mel, all right?”

“That’s not what a relationship is about. I’m allowed to worry about you. I’m supposed to.”

My heart starts racing, with that familiar, stabbing pain. It gets worse when I drink, but I stifle it with another gulp, just the same.

“Please,” she says, “talk to me. I want to help.”

I shake my head and turn back to the TV, so drunk by now that it’s just a box of flashing colors and noise. This must be what babies see when they watch television, I think, only instead of being funny, it just depresses me more.