CHAPTER Thirteen
Erin
He always manages to sneak into my mind, a slippery, but sexy Russian-American man with an accent unlike anything I’ve ever heard before.
When I think of Alek, I feel him all over and inside my body: through my nipples, my thighs, between my legs. I’m on fire, and there’s no hydrant around for me to grab so I can put it out.
I’m in a constant state of rotating between feeling excited and being scared as hell. Flipping through the movie channels doesn’t help one bit, either. Every single station has something romantic smacking me in the face, reminding me that I’ve more than likely thrown every bit of advice Righteous has given me right out the window.
I give up on the boob tube and drift off to sleep. And in your dreams, sometimes the darkest memories manage to find a way to come at you.
Jada and I are nine and ten-year-old girls running through a field. We’re holding hands and laughing. The corn stalks reach way up high over our heads. We know we shouldn’t have gotten so far away from the house, and now we’re lost. Things aren't so funny anymore. Leaving the cornfield, we enter the woods surrounding it, hoping to find the way home. Instead, we find a little cottage. It’s old, but not empty. A scream trills through the air. Cold chills rush over me. At once, my sister’s hand leaves mine. I stand alone in the creepy forest, and I’m so scared I can barely breathe.
“Jada!” I call out again and again, my voice cracking. I start to walk away from the cottage. The bushes shuffle, and I hunch my shoulders as I wait to be killed by whatever steps out of them. Instead, a boy emerges from the brush. Dark hair flops over his brown-blue eyes and he’s smiling at me. I get pissed off. “Where’s my sister?” I scream at him.
He steals a quick glance toward the cottage, and so do I. A light pops up in the window. The boy races forward, grabs my hand, and leads me back into the forest. We run until we’re no longer children. We turn into adults standing inside a field of peonies and poppies, a carpet of color surrounding us. The boy becomes Alek. He’s mouthing some words to me that I can’t understand.
“Where’s Jada?” I ask him, even though I know he can’t help me find her. She’s gone. Forever. The tears come at once. Alek leans over to kiss me.
I wake up, alone in my bed. My pillow is drenched in sweat. And the guilt still punches me in the chest each time I think of the reason my sister was in the car with my dad instead of me.
Sitting up, I step out of bed and head over to my dresser. In the top drawer sits a card. I pull it out and read the name and phone number.
The time for the quarterly visit to see my mom has almost arrived. The date falls right around the time when Alek’s show is set to begin. I place the card back in the drawer, swipe at my eyes, and briefly flirt with the idea of calling Alek. I decide against it before Righteous has the chance to open her mouth up and tell me how desperate I’ll sound if I do that. I crawl back into bed and eventually drift off to sleep.
* * *
I don’t skip my Saturday session this time. With Alek’s pre-show coming up next week and the production right on the heels of that one, I’m pretty sure I’ll be too busy to remember yoga class in the upcoming weeks.
Petre only scolds me for a short moment. He understands me. I feel super crappy for skipping out on his class, and he knows it. All five of the students in my group have all suffered through some type of traumatic incident. We rely on the positive reports from one another to sustain the mood. When one of us skips a meeting, well, it kinda throws the whole group off balance.
After the yoga session ends, we all sit in a circle on the floor in the meditation room. Since I haven’t been here for the past couple of classes, I’m the one who has to share a moment of positivity that has taken place in my life since we last met.
I’m not ready. I can’t very well explain to them how experiencing my first real orgasm in years has been the highlight of my past week. So I go with the dream I had about my sister, making sure I change Alek’s name to someone a little less famous.
So, no, it wasn’t all that great of a dream at first, but in the end, it turned into something I felt was kind of a sign. I fill my classmates in on the details. Everyone in the room agrees with my theory, including Petre.
“What do you think the dream was trying to tell you, Erin?” Petre asks.
I consider his question carefully. “I believe my sister was trying to tell me I’m on the right track.”
“Would you care to highlight for us?” Petre asks.
My, my aren’t we nosey today, doctor? “I think she wants me to know that the person I met is good for me,” I say, shrugging.
“And what does Erin believe?” He asks yet another question.
“I’m not sure yet.”