Dreams were funny things. When I was a kid, I’d loved dreaming. I couldn’t necessarily control the contents of my dreams, but I always liked the episodes that seemed to impart some superhero strengths to me, like when I dreamt of flying or running really fast or doing something heroic. When I was that young, I thought that heroics were some kind of business best left up to people with super powers. I wasn’t yet aware that regular people were capable of heroics or of horrors. My existence was a simple one, boiled down to two sides, a good guy and a bad guy, pure heroes and dastardly evildoers.
Maybe it was naive of me, but when I enlisted, intent on serving in Iraq, I still believed a little bit in that dumbed-down version of the world, that there was only black and white no gray areas for people to get confused and muck about in. I wanted to be on the side of good, wanted to be a hero, wanted to really put it to the bad guys.
Suffice it to say that my dreams weren’t full of heroics anymore. The scenarios that presented themselves to me while I was asleep were myriad, only a handful of them true, but all of them painful. There were so many shades of gray that I waded through those nights, aware that I was reliving or revisiting painful events or shut-off memories, but unable to drag myself up to wakefulness.
It was a simple thing, to will oneself awake during a nightmare, but it was as far away from my own abilities as the super power of becoming invisible.
I once heard that Jack dreamt of things from a past he couldn’t remember, but I’d never asked him about it. Dreams were personal things, and they were a whole different animal for him. I knew that he kept a detailed record of them, treated them like they were archived background information about himself that would help him piece his life back together. It was heartbreaking if you spent too much time thinking about that, the way that had to feel for Jack, but to me, I secretly felt it must not be that bad. I wished I could view my dreams as a movie, or something that had happened to somebody else. And I knew I wasn’t the only one in Horizon MC who wished, at least from time to time, that they could trade places with Jack and be able to forget a few of the worst shit that plagued them.
It was maybe a terrible thing to wish for, but there it was.
Being with Amy had made me wish for that a lot less often. She hadn’t asked me anymore questions about my past since we’d been together, and I was grateful for that. Amy made me feel like my future was more important than my past, and that was something. For the first time in a long time, I was looking forward to the future, especially when I saw Amy in it. We didn’t talk too much about how long she would stay in Rio Seco, because we both knew it was contingent on me.
The funny thing was, though, that she never pressured me. Every time we spent time together, I tended to forget the reason she was in town in the first place. It was so strange. My worries and cares seemed to melt away. It didn’t matter where we were, or what we were doing. I could spend hours just talking to her, at the bar, or at the diner, or just over pizza at my place or the motel. She loved to go riding on the motorcycle, and I loved taking her even more. I liked to elicit little shrieks and squeals from her as we rocketed down the road. I showed her all the beautiful places I knew, and she found them beautiful, too.
God, I found her so beautiful.
The sex was like something from a glorious dream. Each time was better than the last, and bit by bit we learned each other’s bodies like well-worn maps. Kissing her just behind her ear drove her crazy. She loved to do unexpected things in bed, like suddenly tickle me, or kick her leg out and launch us into a new position, or squeeze all her muscles around me so tightly that I couldn’t help but come soon after.
But even better than the sexand I would never admit this to any of the other guys, on pain of lifelong torment and teasing was the cuddling afterward. Being able to hold her, smell the sweat drying on her neck, breath in the scent of her shampoo as her hair fell over my pillows, ease into the way she fit against my body… It brought me more comfort than any orgasm ever could have. I loved just to sleep beside her, to reach out in the middle of the night and find the familiar slope of her hip, her warm breasts as smooth as the sheets beneath us. It made me feel good, and I wished it would be enough to drive away the bad dreams that continued to plague me, but it wasn’t. Those apparently originated in some other part of my brain, the part where love and caring for Amy didn’t bubble up.
The nightmare I was having tonight was nothing new. In it, I stepped in a bit of soft sand in the desert, and it immediately opened up like a quicksand pit, enveloping me before I could even think of stopping my struggling to try and float at its surface. It wasn’t wet, or squelching. It was dry, gritty, and it prickled at my eyes, filled my ears, collected in my nostrils, and finally poured down my throat when I opened my mouth to scream out.
That was my cue to wake up, and I never missed it.
But when I blinked awake, it was the middle of the night, the room dark, and Amy wasn’t beside me. The spot in my bed she’d occupied was still warm, though, so I slid my hand over the sheets, thinking of the way she’d arched beneath me, wondering when she would come back, if we could do it again before morning. But the fabric around my palm soon cooled, and I began to wonder where she was. The light in the bathroom was off, so I doubted she was in there, but her clothes were still pooled on the floor. That had to mean she was still in the house somewhere, didn’t it? Unless she pulled on some of my clothes and left, but that didn’t make a lot of sense.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes, then sat on the side of the bed while I fished around for my boxers. My junk and dignity thus protected, I went roaming. It wasn’t a big house by any means. I just figured if she wasn’t in the bathroom, it meant she was in the kitchen, getting something to eat or drink. Or, if I’d snored or talked or thrashed in my sleep, which I knew from past experience tended to happen, maybe I’d driven her to sleep on the couch in the living room.
But both rooms were empty. Her purse was by the door, where she’d dropped it when she walked in. I started to worry that something had happened to her, but what would’ve happened to her? I would’ve woken up if there had been a break-in and she was lying in bed next to me. I was sure of that.
I paused, adrenaline making my heart hammer in my chest, when I heard low voices, stepping quietly to the back door. I relaxed as soon as I recognized Amy’s voice, but frowned again when I heard a male counterpart. Had one of the guys come over? Why in the world would they, especially at this hour? And what would they have to say to Amy, or her to them?
The sliding glass door was a little bit ajar, and I paused outside of it, concealed by the blinds, trying to judge the situation.
“It’s like I told you,” Amy was saying, and I caught a quick glimpse of her as she paced around on the patio, dressed in just my T-shirt. “These kinds of things take time. You have to be patient.”
“And it’s like I told you,” a man’s voice said, though it was tinny and sounded far away. I realized she was in the middle of a phone call, and the caller was on speakerphone. “These kinds of things have a deadline. Tell me. Have you even started the article?”
“Of course I’ve started the article. I’m not an idiot.”
“You could’ve fooled me. So what has this asshole given up?”
“I meant that I’ve started framing the article. Sliding in research, background, a few of the bigger picture details we talked about.”
“Goddammit, Amy. The reason we talked about that shit was because I didn’t want it in the article. Tell me, for the love of all things holy, that you’ve at least conducted the interview.”
Amy had stopped pacing, and my heart rate had to be around 200 beats per minute trying to understand what was going on.
“I haven’t gotten to that part yet,” she admitted after a silence that stretched on for seconds.
“Please tell me I misheard that.”
“You didn’t. I haven’t done the interview yet. I’m still doing research.”
“What the hell kind of research are you conducting? What is there to research? Sloan Norris is a baby killer. That’s all the research you need.”
An odd sort of roaring was slowly filling up my ears, but I still heard Amy’s next words. I kind of wished I hadn’t.
“I can’t just ask him about that right off,” she said. “The reason you need to be patient is that I’m trying to get him to trust me. You want a good story, don’t you? It’s not going to happen if I just blindside him with this.”
I staggered away from the door, genuinely afraid that I had suffered some kind of mortal wound by hearing all of that. My heart felt like it was in a vise that was squeezing ever tighter. So Amy was simply trying to play me for her story? She’d said she badly wanted to be a writer, but I supposed I’d underestimated what she was willing to do to make it happen.
I had feelings for her. They were complicated fucking feelings, but they were feelings nonetheless. Had those feelings been exploited for the sake of the story I still wasn’t completely committed to giving her? Had she slept with me to get me to try to open up to her? I could appreciate ambition, but that was taking it a little too far.
I plopped down heavily in the armchair, pushing my face into my hands, trying to figure out what was happening, and how I needed to proceed. Amy… It was possible Amy was false. That she was pretending to be something she wasn’t. I’d been fooled, and I was usually pretty difficult to fool. I’d let my heart lead the way on this whole thing, and now the rest of me was paying the price.
Could I carry on and pretend I’d never heard the conversation she was having? That’s what I would’ve done anyway, though unwittingly, if I hadn’t woken up to find Amy missing from the bed. I couldn’t exactly forget what I’d heard, though. Even now the words and all their various implications were bouncing around in my brain.
Whoever she’d been talking to had learned some interesting facts, and Amy had probably known them, too, since the moment she met me. If she really believed I was a “baby killer,” though, why had she been so consistently nice to me? That wasn’t a fact that would ingratiate anyone to anyone else. Was she just tolerating my presence so she could get the story she needed? Should I just go ahead and blab about it, my misgivings be damned, just to get her out of my life?
I hated all the options presented before me, hated most of all the stupid squiggle of hope inside me that wanted me to believe that I’d misunderstood everything I heard, that there was a reasonable explanation that didn’t include Amy being duplicitous or deceitful.
The sliding door opened, paused, and closed again.
“Sloan?” Amy’s bare feet padded across the carpet. “What are you doing up? Hey, are you okay?”
I didn’t raise my face from my hands. “I heard you.”
“What?”
“I heard you talking outside.”
“Your voice is muffled, Sloan. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
Reluctantly, I looked up, and both of us realized at the same time that I’d been weeping.
“I’m saying that I heard you outside,” I said, feeling strangely flat inside for having tears streaking down my cheeks. “I don’t know who you were talking to, but I heard everything you said.”
Even the darkened room I could see her blanch. “You heard that?”
And that gave me no confidence whatsoever. “Yep.”
She was quiet for a long time, just standing there in front of me, probably trying to decide what to say to that. “I’m sorry that you heard that.”
“Not sorry you said it? Not sorry you did the things you did? Not sorry about the things you know about me?”
“Sloan…”
“Get out. Get out of my house.” It was a sudden, knee-jerk reaction to utter betrayal, but it made sense to me, in that moment. It felt right.
“Sloan, I’d like to explain myself.”
“I don’t think you can,” I said. “And if you could, I don’t think I’d want to hear it. Go. Get dressed. Leave.”
She stood there for a little bit longer, either trying to decide whether I was serious or trying to give me a chance to change my mind, before she walked back to the bedroom. It only took her a couple of minutes to change back into her clothing, but when she came back out to the living room for her purse, I didn’t say a word. She didn’t, either. She just let herself out the front door, started her car, and drove off.
I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again, but at this point, I didn’t really care.
When I finally found the strength to stand back up and make my way into the bedroom, no possibility of sleep in my mind, the T-shirt of mine that she’d been wearing was folded neatly and placed on the foot of the bed, like she was trying to do some kind of damage control. She could’ve flung it off onto the floor for all I cared, but she hadn’t. What did that mean, that neat little presentation? Was she just trying to apologize?
That fucking T-shirt haunted me more than anything, and I kicked it off the bed and to the floor, where it belonged, before staring at the ceiling until the sun finally rose.