Part 11

 “What do you dream about?”

She turns to face me, her face luminescent in the moonlight. Her eyes glitter in the dark, sapphires burning with their own light like each was a world unto itself, the perfect black pupil a tiny earth circled by some unseen moon, absorbing and reflecting its beams into the expanse of pure blue that surrounds it.

“Uh…”

She snuggles closer to me. “Promise I won’t tell a soul,” she says. The hushed, playful tone of her voice somehow conveys a wink without her performing the action. And I would know, since I can’t look away.

“I…” I swallow, force myself to look up at the actual moon in the sky. “I don’t usually have dreams.”

She scoffs lightly. Nudges my shoulder with hers.

“That’s not what I asked.”

I feel her breath on my cheek: gentle, tinged with mint. I run my tongue over my chapped lips.

“Um…I don’t know.” I can feel her start to object so I amend my statement. “Nothing interesting, anyway.”

She sighs, but the conspiratorial grin remains. 

“What kind of dreams do you have?” I blurt before she can question me further.

Now she turns her face to the moon, hums almost inaudibly. A warm, strangely intimate rumble that registers in my chest, rolls like dark honey down my own throat. I shiver.

“The good kind. Mostly. Sometimes you’re there.”

My heart skips a beat. I try desperately to keep my breathing even.

“Am I…um…are the ones that I’m in…good ones? The dreams?”

She chuckles softly. I silently curse myself for being so motherfucking goddamn awkward, until she turns to face me and my mind goes blank. 

“Those are the best ones.”

I have to look at her now, but when I do her face is…oddly sad. She’s smiling but there’s a wistfulness to her expression that banishes the uneasy warmth I’d felt a moment before. My face creases in concern. I have the strongest urge to cup her face in my palm, to stroke her cheek in a soothing manner, tell her that whatever’s bothering her it will all be okay. The way she’s done for me countless times, both seriously and in jest. For all her whimsy and irresponsibility, she’s really quite maternal in that way; always ready to comfort, calm, talk me down. She’s always there.

I start to raise my hand towards her but my arm halts in mid-air, hovering in the little space left between us. I look at her perfect face, her perfect skin, and I can’t bring myself to touch her. My arm falls to my side.

“Um, I-”

“Hey, can I ask you something?” She interrupts, not unkindly.

“Sure,” I reply, grateful that I don’t have to conjure an ending for that sentence.

She glances off into the distance before returning to me with a look I can’t quite decipher.

“Who’s Brianna?”