“Levi…wake up, baby. I’m home.” Levi opened his eyes. He was still sitting on the couch with the bud of the blunt in the ceramic ashtray in his lap and the whiskey glass in one of his hands. Through bleary eyes he looked up and saw Krissy, smiling down at him. “Somebody party too much last night?”

Levi’s mouth was dry. He tried to work up some saliva and finally, in a dry, raspy voice he said, “No…I was just thinking.”

She sat down next to him, taking the ashtray off his stomach and sitting it on the coffee table. Levi sat the whiskey glass down and she said, “What were you thinking about, baby?”

“You,” he said. He reached out cautiously to touch her face. He knew this had to be a dream…Krissy was dead. He almost gasped when his hand touched her soft skin and his fingers tangled up in her hair. He was dreaming…he knew he was…but God, she felt good. He put his other hand on the other side of her face and tangled that side of her long brown hair in his fingers before leaning down to kiss her, hard, on the mouth. His brain wanted to tell him that if this was a dream, he wouldn’t be able to taste how sweet she was and he wouldn’t be able to feel the hand that she had pressed into his chest. But he knew rationally that wasn’t true. He’d dreamt of her every night since she’d been gone and he felt, tasted, and smelled her every time. It was why he preferred sleep over everything else these days.

Still kissing her sweet lips, he pulled her up into his lap. She was wearing a short skirt and he pushed it out of the way so that her panties pressed down into the hard outline of his cock in his shorts. He let his hands run down over her neck and shoulders, pushing the blouse she was wearing down so that he could feel her skin. Then he ran his palms over and covered her breasts with them. He could feel her hard nipples pressing into his hands. Krissy was the first one to pull out of the kiss and as they both gasped for breath she said, “I’ll have to go away soon, baby.”

“No. Stay with me, Krissy. You promised we’d be together forever.”

“I meant it,” she said. He could feel her hot breath on his lips. If she wasn’t really there, why could he feel her breathe? “My soul is melded with yours, Levi. I’ll always be with you in that place that matters. But we can’t keep doing this. You need to move on.”

“No! I don’t want to move on.”

“I know, baby. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. Let’s enjoy this time while we have it. Make love to me, Levi.”

“Only if you promise me it won’t be the last time.” He was bluffing. His cock was aching for her and he was going to have her no matter what she said.

“Not the last,” she said, “but soon. I need you to prepare yourself for that.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, as he pushed the blouse she was wearing off over her head. He unhooked her bra and buried his face in her breasts, breathing in the way she smelled and reveling in the soft flesh that surrounded him. “Fuck, I love you, Krissy.”

She kissed the top of his head. “I love you too.”

He looked up at her, ready to say something else about her not going away. But he saw the lust in her eyes and decided to let it go…for now. “Take off your skirt and panties.”

She stood up without hesitation and did as he asked. Levi stripped off his shorts and pulled her back down on his lap. He leaned in and sucked one of her big breasts into his mouth while she wiggled around on top of his throbbing cock. She was soaking wet. He could feel her. She was there. He sucked and licked her nipples, biting at them and tasting them, devouring them like a starving man as she held his head to the chest with her back arched and her pussy growing wetter by the second. Levi reached down and found her lips and parted them with his fingers so they were open and his cock was lying in between them. Taking her by the hips he started sliding her back and forth on top of his shaft. He reached up with one hand and pulled her head down and kissed her again. He let his tongue explore every dark, wet crevice, committing anything he might have forgotten to his permanent memory.

When Krissy pulled back that time she said, “Levi…baby…I’m going to come.” He hadn’t even entered her yet. He smiled and said:

“Come for me, gorgeous.” She arched her back even more and bore all her weight down on top of his shaft as she cried out. He felt the rush of her juices and then her body melted and she began to shake. He held her and rocked her back and forth until the quivering stopped and then he said, “Stand up, baby, and lean over the couch.” Levi would have liked to fuck her for hours, but he was already on the verge. He’d missed her so badly. He wanted her so much. She stood up and so did he, and he was treated to the sight of her as she bent over and grabbed the back of the couch. Her round ass was too tempting; he gave it a hard smack and his brain noted the red mark that immediately stained it. Only a real person’s skin would color like that. He smacked her again and one more time before finally taking his cock in his hand and guiding it to her pussy. “Ready, baby?”

“Mm-hmm,” she breathed out. Levi shoved himself up into her, not stopping until she’d taken every inch. They both groaned and when he slowly pulled back, she let out a little gasp. Levi pushed forward again, this time taking her luscious hips in his hands and beginning to thrust in and out. She felt so fucking good. His body was on fire and it was taking all he had to hold back. He slammed into her, slapping flesh on flesh and listening to her passionate cries until he couldn’t stand it any longer. Finally, he let go, flooding her with his own love juice. He took a second to pull himself together and then he opened his eyes and stood up straight to pull her up into him. That was when he realized she wasn’t there.

“Fuck! Krissy!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. Looking around the room, frantically, he saw the ashtray on the coffee table, the whiskey glass on the end table, and his shorts in the floor. There was a wet spot on the couch and when he looked down at his softening cock, he could see the wetness there. Am I fucking losing it? Did I just jerk off in my sleep, imagining my dead girlfriend was there the whole time? Cautiously he reached down and touched his fingers to the juices glistening on his cock. He brought them to his face and up to his nose. He inhaled Krissy’s scent. She’d been there…or he was crazy. He wished he knew which fucking one it was.

* * *

It was Zoe’s first day as a waitress at the Pancake House. She’d woken up at four a.m. to get ready. She had to ride her bike, and she had to make sure she was there by six a.m. She didn’t want to be late on her first day. The past two nights, she hadn’t slept well, so that actually worked in her favor. She’d gone to bed at nine p.m. on Thursday night and thankfully, for the first time since the accident, she didn’t have a dream. At least if she did, this time she didn’t wake up remembering it. As she thought about the dreams on her way in to work, she began to wonder if it was the trauma of watching the girl die that had triggered something in her psyche and made her dreams more vivid than they’d ever been before. Tuesday evening had been the worst. She’d seen that biker on the steps of that old house and she was convinced it was Levi. She knew that was too much of a coincidence but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was him. She’d gone home that day and after helping her nana prune some roses, she’d taken a shower and lain down for a nap before dinner. As soon as she fell asleep, she began to dream. Her dreams were wracked with images of the girl dying on the pavement, the biker standing on the steps and a couple having hot, sweaty sex on a sofa. She’d only seen that from behind, like she was somehow in the little apartment, watching. She knew the man was Levi, even from behind…at least the Levi of her dreams. The woman never turned around, but from the long brown hair Zoe had seen and the way Levi kept telling her that he loved her, she assumed it was the girl from the accident. When she woke up, she was breathless and shamelessly horny. Tuesday night and Wednesday night were more of the same, only at least in those dreams, she was the object of Levi’s affections and she didn’t feel like a creepy voyeur.

She made it to the Pancake House, in the dark, by five-thirty. She parked her bike in the rack out front and locked it up. Then, shaking off the thoughts of her pornographic dreams and taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she went inside. There were three older men sitting at the counter and a young woman and child in the booth by the window. Doris, dressed in her pink cotton top and black pants, was behind the counter. She’d told Zoe when she called her Wednesday morning, to tell her she had the job, that she’d have a uniform for her on Friday. Zoe cringed at what the pale pink color would do to her already pale skin, but she finally had a job, so she wasn’t going to complain.

“Well, good morning,” Doris said, when she saw her. “You’re bright and early.”

Zoe smiled, nervously, as all three men at the counter turned to look at her. “Good morning.” She walked over behind the counter and said, “I didn’t want to be late on my first day.”

“We appreciate promptness around here,” Doris said, “don’t we, boys?”

The man at the end, a balding, paunchy guy with a trucker hat on and grease under the fingernails of the hand that held his coffee cup said, “I don’t know about these guys, but I’d appreciate some more coffee.”

Doris rolled her eyes and turned around and picked up a pot. As she poured she said, “Zoe, this is Larry, Moe, and Curly.” Zoe smiled and said:

“Pleased to meet you.” Doris began laughing and the men rolled their eyes or shook their heads. The one in the middle said:

“She’s too young to even know what you’re talking about. Welcome, darling, I’m Mac.” He held out his hand and Zoe shook it. She felt her face go hot as she wondered what it was she was too young to understand.

“I’m Harold,” the guy with the trucker hat said, “and the quiet one at the end there is Sam. Doris thinks she’s funny, but her jokes are starting to show her age.”

Doris chuckled and said, “Your face is starting to show yours, Harold. Come on, honey, let’s go out back and get your uniform.” Zoe followed Doris through a door to the kitchen, where one young Mexican guy was frying eggs and a young white guy was washing dishes. “This is Zoe, boys. Zoe this is Gilbert,” she pointed at the cook, “And Ryan,” she said of the guy washing dishes. “Zoe’s our new waitress and the granddaughter of a good friend of mine. You boys better be nice to her.”

“We’re always nice,” Gilbert said.

“Hey, Zoe,” was her greeting from Ryan. Doris continued to a small room in the back. The room held a row of lockers, a small bench, and a door marked “Employees Only.” There was a pink blouse, the color of the one Doris was wearing, and a pair of black pants, hanging on the front of one of the lockers.

“I had them send over the smallest they had,” Doris said. “I’m afraid they’ll still be a little big on you.” Zoe felt herself blush again. She had already put on a little weight, thanks to Nana’s cooking, but for the most part, she was still as thin as a rail. Thankfully, her skin was clearing up and her dark brown hair was finally starting to look healthy again too.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” she told Doris.

“Go ahead and change. The bathroom is through that door and you can use this first locker. When you’re ready, come on out and I’ll start showing you where everything is.”

“Okay, thank you, Doris.”

The older woman smiled at her. “Thank you. I haven’t had a day off in over a month since the last girl walked out without warning. We have one waitress on each shift and one backup. The girl that walked out was our backup. We are so happy to have you. In this neighborhood, it’s not easy to get help. When your grandmother told me you were looking, I was ecstatic.”

“How long have you known Nana?” Zoe asked her. She wondered how much Doris knew about her and her past. Doris answered that question by saying:

“I met Ruth when your mama was a little girl. You look a lot like her.”

“Thanks,” Zoe said. It was one thing about her mother that was a compliment. Her mother had been beautiful, at least before the years of putting chemicals in her body ate most of that beauty away. “I don’t know if Nana told you, but I’ve been clean for a while now.” Truthfully, it was only a month, but to most people, that didn’t sound like much. To Zoe, it was huge.

“She told me. I’m not going to judge you, baby. My Ronnie, he’s my youngest, he’s had problems with drugs since he was fifteen years old. He’s sober now and has been for almost a year. But, because of his history, he has a hard time getting a job. I’m hoping if I do a good turn for you, karma will do a good turn for my boy.”

Zoe smiled. “I hope so too,” she said.

“Well, go ahead and get dressed and let’s get this day started.”

Doris left and Zoe took the uniform down and into the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror over the sink and smiled. She had a job. Soon, she’d be earning her own money and maybe she’d even have enough in a few months to get her own place. She was signed up for community college and she’d applied for financial aid. It felt good to be able to look at her reflection and feel something other than disgust for a change. Things were looking up, and even though she was twenty-three years old and getting a later start than most people did, she told herself that it was a start, and that was what really mattered.