“Hello from the other siiiiiiiiiiiide!” Mel belted out, punctuating her questionable vocal runs with hearty slaps on the steering wheel. She sang along with Adele because she loved it, because it was deeply cathartic, and because it made Ike smile. And let’s face it. Mel would do just about anything to make Ike smile. “I must have called a thousand tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimes!”

“Good lord, Mom!” Ike yelled over the din, plugging his ears. But he couldn’t stifle the grin that spread over his face. He was barreling through the desert with the windows down, a cold Coke, and his bare feet up on the dashboard. What could be better than that? Plus, his mom was happy. Really happy, not just pretend-for-the-kid happy. And there was nothing better than when Mom was happy.

They’d made it through some hard times together. Lean times. He was beginning to be old enough to realize that though he’d never gone without, his mom probably had just so he wouldn’t have to.  They were a small family. Just the two of them. His grandparents had died when he was a baby and he didn’t have any aunts or uncles. His mom occasionally mentioned some distant cousins who lived out in Maine or Massachusetts or Minnesota or Michigan or someplace.

He didn’t have a dad. Which didn’t really bother him so much. It seemed like it bothered other kids though, who always seemed to feel like a kid was automatically supposed to have two parents, or be sad if he didn’t. But Ike didn’t feel sad about having just a mom. His mom. She was a really good mom.

He’d asked a few things about his dad before. And she’d been honest with him. Just like she always was.

“He’s someone I knew just long enough for him to give me you,” she’d said. Now, Ike wasn’t completely sure what that meant, but he knew that he could ask his mom for clarification if he ever really wanted to. And that was enough for now.

Ike dropped his head in his hand in mock disgust as Mel finished strong, right alongside Adele, hitting every note, if not in tune, then in timing.

“Bet you never knew your mom was so talented, now didja?” Mel asked Ike as the song wound down.

Ike leaned over and twisted the volume knob all the way down. “Playing it fast and loose with the word ‘talented’, aren’t you, Mom?”

Mel hooted. “Oh, look who’s all high and mighty. I heard you trying to sing that one Maroon 5 song in the shower the other day.”

Ike pulled his ball cap down over his eyes in a masculine move that Mel couldn’t begin to guess where he’d learned. “A shower is a man’s private time, Mom.”

Mel’s eyebrows shot upwards as she bit her lip to keep from smiling. At age 11, pushing 12, she figured he would start needing a lot more privacy. She just loved that he was still enough of a kid to need that private time in order to practice singing pop songs.

“Whatever you say, hotshot.”

Ike smiled at his nickname and took another swig of his Coke, watching the desert race past them. He stuck one hand out the window and let it catch patches of wind, riding up and down like a sparrow in the breeze.

Mel stuck a hand out her own window, imitating him. In that moment, everything was right with the world. She and her son were headed to vacation. A modest one, sure, but one that she could afford. And he was still young enough to want to be there with her. Their car worked, rent was paid, good tunes on the radio. What more could she ask for?

A face flashed across Mel’s mind and almost as instantly, guilt flashed along with it. The man that she’d been dreaming about. Blonde, messy, sexy as sin. She had no reason to be dreaming about him. Mel had absolutely everything she could ever want, and if she was occasionally lonely, painfully lonely, she figured it came with the territory of being a single mom. Besides, fixing that loneliness would mean adding another person to the Mel + Ike equation. Something she would rather have a root canal than do.

It bothered her that she kept dreaming about this guy. Who was he? She must have seen him somewhere before. From the look of his face, it was probably an underwear ad or something. The guy was seriously beautiful. Perfect. In that surfer, laid-back, just relax, man type of way.

Anyways, he wasn’t even her usual type so she had no idea why she kept dreaming about him. Mel lifted her hair off the back of her neck and passed a slowpoke station wagon. Her type was generally dark and mysterious. Her eyes slid to her son.

Just like Ike. His curly, dark hair slid out from under his baseball cap, his almost-black eyes hidden behind his bright green sunglasses that she’d bought him for his birthday. She had to admit that he looked like his father. Not that he had any right to be called that. It took more than sperm to become a kid’s father.

Her eye firmly back on the road, Mel cranked up the music again. Perfect, Ike loved Drake. This time it was he who was belting out the words out of tune. Mel grinned at the open road in front of them. This was the life.

“Shit!” Mel screamed and whipped the wheel of the car to one side and then the other to avoid hitting the car in front of her. It was fishtailing from one side to the other, one of its back tires completely blown out. She watched the car in her rearview mirror gain control and pull off to the side of the two-lane highway, a small tornado of dust kicking up behind it.

“Holy crap!” Ike yelled, turning around in his seat to watch the car behind them. “That was like an action movie!”

Mel slowed and pulled off to the side of the road. “I’m gonna go make sure they’re okay. Make sure they have a cell phone and everything.”

She unclicked her seat belt but froze when she heard Ike do the same. “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you just stay in the car. I’ll be right back.”

“Mom,” Ike said and leveled her with a direct stare that she recognized as one of her own. He must have been paying attention. “I’m not letting you approach a strange car on a near-deserted highway all by yourself. If you don’t think it’s safe enough for me, then it’s not safe enough for you and we should drive away.”

Mel opened her mouth to argue back, couldn’t think of anything to say, and ended up grinning at her kid. “You’re too smart for your own good.”

They both jumped out of the car and started for the stalled car behind them, about 500 feet back. One lone car raced by going in the other direction, but for the most part the highway was pretty empty. As usual. That was why she’d taken this route to Santa Barbara, open road, no traffic.

“If you smell anything fishy, give my hand a squeeze,” she told her son. He had a good nose for people. Always had. Just like his mom. Both of them could sniff out a suspicious character from a mile away.

Ike nodded and pulled his baseball cap down just a little bit more. His shoulder bumped her elbow and she felt a burst of pride and surprise when she realized how tall he was getting. He was going to pass her any year now. As they approached the little red Hyundai, she realized he was trying to nudge slightly in front of her, but she didn’t let that stand for a second. Sure, he was getting older. And sure, someday he probably would be the one protecting her. But not today. Today, she was still big mama.                            

Clamping a hand gently over her son’s shoulder, she set him a little bit behind her and stopped about 25 feet away from the stalled car.

The driver, for some unknown reason, had the hood of his car popped and was leaning in, scratching his head and looking for all the world like he had no earthly clue what to do next.

“Excuse me!” Melanie called. “Do you need a hand? There somebody I could call for you?”

The man straightened up and turned to face her. For a second the sun seemed almost to flash right off of his eyes, like he was wearing sunglasses. But he wasn’t.

Mel blinked the unexpected flash of light out of her vision and when she opened her eyes, her stomach nearly dropped right out of her body. Even from 25 feet away in the meltingly hot heat and blinding Nevada sun, she recognized him.

It was him.

Blonde, surfer, smiling, sexy, dream man.

She completely froze in her tracks. Willing herself to snap back into reality and see what was really there. But he kept just being there. All improbable and unexpected.

“Oh,” he called, and even from a distance she could see the little grin she recognized so well flash over his face. He brushed a hand distractedly over his hair and sat back on the hood of his car. He was watching her like he was watching a really good episode of a soap opera. Like he couldn’t wait to see what happened next. “It’s you.”

Ike stiffened beside her. What did that guy mean by ‘it’s you’? Did he know her? He knew pretty much everybody his mom knew and she sure as hell didn’t know some surfer guy.

Mel automatically smoothed a hand over her son’s shoulders, soothing him. But she was anything but relaxed. She wasn’t freaking out exactly. But she was just a few steps from it. She said nothing. Just waited for the ‘stranger’ to say more.

She felt Ike take a deep breath under her hand. “How do you know my mom?” he asked.

“I don’t, really,” surfer dude said, leaning even further back onto his car and cocking his head to one side. “I’ve never met her in real life.”

“You mean you met over the internet?” Ike asked, glancing up at his mom like he couldn’t believe she even knew how to use the internet, much less use it to meet a guy.

The man let out a laugh. A deep, delighted sound that Mel hated to admit got her blood pumping. And it relaxed her. She wasn’t sure why she wasn’t freaking the fuck out right now, but for some reason, she just wasn’t.

“No, I don’t mean over the internet,” the man said, scratching his head casually. He recrossed his ankles as he leaned back, one over the other. “I mean we’ve only ever met in dreams.”

Mel felt her mouth drop open as the world seemed to tilt underneath her. She could have sworn she could say the exact angle of the earth’s axis.

“What’s he talking about, Mom?” Ike’s voice was quiet but insistent. He was just as confused as she was.

“We see each other in our dreams, is what I mean,” the man called out, studying his fingernails for a second. “She has dreams about me.” He weighed one hand in the air. “I have dreams about her.” He weighed the other hand. “It’s cool to see you in real life, though. You’re a little shorter than I thought you’d be.”

Mel found herself drawing up her height along with a very deep breath. She found herself walking carefully forward until the distance between them was reduced to ten or so feet. A million questions raced through her brain, but she asked the only one that she could seem to get out of her mouth.

“Why aren’t you freaking out about this?” she asked. A dusty breeze came up and whipped her hair around her neck in a cloud and the man’s eyes tracked after the ends of her hair.

He shrugged. “I’m an oracle, so shit like this happens to me all the time.” He shrugged again, this time almost apologetically. “Well, not exactly like this, cuz I’ve never met anybody like you before. But I see stuff in my dreams. Kind of part and parcel with the gig.”

There was a long beat of silence. Mel couldn’t have said how long it was. Could have been ten seconds or three full minutes. She’d never know. All she knew was the sweat of her son’s hand in hers. The lazy intensity of the stranger’s eyes as he looked her dead in the face. Willing her to believe the simple truth of his words.

Then, finally, they broke the silence.

“Holy shit,” Mel and her son said at the same time.

Ike looked up at her and tugged her hand. “I kinda think he’s telling the truth,” he whispered to her.

Weirdly, so frickin’ weirdly, Mel sort of agreed with her son. None of her usual bullshit meter spidey senses were going off.

Mel looked back at the man as the sun beat down on his tan skin, making his light green eyes look almost translucent. He looked familiar from her dreams, but he also looked familiar in a different way. She felt like his face was known to her somehow. Like she’d known him in another life. Maybe even loved him. A wave of affection for the man rolled up out of her. Unbidden, unaccounted for. She had no reason to feel this way, but she did. His face was handsome in an obvious way. But it was also unspeakably… dear to her. Precious. Important.

“An oracle?” she asked. A healthy skepticism grounded in the rules of the known world was her last defense against the overwhelming wave of brand new emotions flooding her.

“Prove it,” Mel and the Oracle said at the exact same moment. He grinned at her as she sent an annoyed frown his way.

“I didn’t even have to use my powers for that one,” the Oracle said. “It’s the first thing everybody says after I tell them who I am.”

“Sorry to be so predictable,” Mel said, not sounding sorry at all.

“So, are you going to prove it or not?” Ike asked. Mel would never know how much her son looked exactly like her in that moment, crossing his arms and furrowing his brow. They both had their ‘tough guy’ looks on. But they could also feel one another’s curiosity. They both kind of wanted to see the Oracle prove it.

“How about we get out of the sun and go get something cold to drink? And I’ll prove it then.”

The man stood up off the hood of his car and Mel was already flinging Ike behind her, stepping between them and puffing up her chest. “You can’t honestly be assuming we’re about to let you get in our car with us right now.”

“Well, something’s wrong with mine,” he pointed behind him. “Or else I’d offer to drive.”

“You’ve got a flat tire,” Ike spoke up behind Mel. “We saw it blow out.”

The man circled his car, saw the offending tire and cocked his head thoughtfully. “Huh. So that’s what the noise was. How do I fix it?”

Mel felt her eyes goggle in her head. “You don’t know how to fix a flat tire?”

The Oracle shrugged. “I’ve never driven a car before so I don’t know very much about them.”

“You’ve never driven a car before?” Ike asked, his complete shock obvious in his voice.

The Oracle shrugged. “I’m not from around here. We don’t really use cars where I’m from.”

Mel had heard enough. “Look, I’m not letting you get in a car with me and my kid. But I’ll show you how to change a tire. And then you can go your way and we’ll go ours.”

Something flashed across the Oracle’s eyes but his posture remained easy and relaxed. “Fair enough.”

Luckily, his car had a spare tire sound enough to at least get him to the next auto shop. And he had the tools she needed to replace it. So with Ike tucked under the shade of a thorny little desert bush with her phone to mess around with, Mel found herself teaching a man who claimed to be an oracle how to use a jack.

“Kind of a pain in the ass, huh?” she admitted as the man strained and grunted. She tried not to watch the play of his muscles under his T-shirt. His body was long and lithe, each muscle bunching gracefully into the next. He gave the impression of a lion resting under the shade of a baobab tree. Deeply relaxed but ready to spring into deadly action at the slightest provocation.

He gave a friendly grunt but pain winced across his face.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said in a voice a bit more gravelly than she’d heard from him yet. “Just an old injury on my side flaring up a little.”

“Oh, jeez,” Mel said and scooted in next to him. “Let me help, then.”

Without thinking twice, Mel laid her hands over the wrench and her fingers pressed firmly over his for just a second. Just the breath of a moment.

The earth must not have paused. The earth didn’t pause for a moment between two people. But Mel could have sworn she felt her universe stand stock still. Or maybe it exploded into motion, so speedy she couldn’t even track it anymore. She felt the inertia of the blood in her veins, the heat of the sun, racing through space and atmosphere just to reach them, cover them, blanket them.

She felt the spark of his hand under hers and she felt her reality get sucked into that very point. Her whole life was pulled through the one-inch space of where they touched. And they were no longer crouching next to one another on the side of an empty highway. They were cliffside, snow crunching under their feet, kissing like their lives depended on it. And then she felt the smooth skin of his back under her hands as they treaded water in the ocean, his mouth on her throat as the inky water reflected the moon. And then they rolled in a bed, the air hot, the sheets scratchy, but their skin was slick, slipping past each other as they gripped and moaned. And then he was brushing her hair back as they stood in a field, a light breeze feathering over both of them. His lips were soft, warm, caring. And she closed her eyes and the kiss became a hundred other kisses, a thousand other kisses, some passionate, some tender, some laced with so much heat she felt like she’d combust.

Mel gasped and shook her head clear of the dream, the vision, the whatever it was. She was back on the side of the road in Nevada. She could hear the blinky beeps of whatever game Ike was playing behind her. Birds circled the white hot sun above them.

And she was clutching this man’s hand like he was the last thing holding her onto this earth. Like she’d fly away from everything she’d ever known without him. His eyes were only an inch or two away from hers. Light green but so deceptively deep. Like they had no bottom nor end. Like he was just an endless pool of green on the inside.

“Holy fucking shit,” she whispered and watched as a smile bloomed over his face.

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes roaming over her face in a gentle pattern. “Whoa.”

Mel gently tugged her hand away from his and ran it over her hair, lifted the ponytail off the back of her neck. “Y-you felt that? Saw that? Experienced it or whatever?”

The Oracle balanced on the balls of his feet and gave the wrench a healthy tug. He was almost done getting the flat tire off. “You mean the world-spinning, hot as hell, entire romance in about two seconds thing that just happened?” He turned and looked her dead in the eye, a small smile playing over his face. “Yeah. I felt that.”

Mel glanced behind her to make sure that Ike was alright, playing and occupied. She turned back only to see the Oracle’s eyes trailing a bead of sweat that raced down her chest and between her breasts.

“What was that? What just happened to us?” she asked, ignoring his lecherous stare. A thought struck her like a tub of ice water over her head. Her insides went liquid with both fear and desire. When she spoke it was an ashen whisper. “Was that- was that our future?”