I stood there at the club entrance and scanned the sidewalk: a line of people, all of them on their phones, waiting to enter the club; a couple of pedestrians hurrying past, avoiding eye contact; and farther down, a street-involved individual slumped against the side of the building, dozing in and out of consciousness.
But there was no sign of dream guy. OfNicolas.
My eyebrows drew together in confusion. How had he gotten away so quickly? Even if he’d sprinted off at top speed, I still would have seen him.
Frustration rose up within me. And, oddly enough, tears prickled in my eyes too. Seeing his face had stirred something inmy chest I hadn’t even known was there. It had been like coming home, as impossible and ridiculous as that was. Something vise-tight had unclenched in the very core of me, instinctively, even while my brain had been hamster-wheeling wildly, trying to make sense of the fact that he was, impossibly, right there.
Now he was, just as impossibly, gone. Like he’d never been there at all.
Why the hell would he run from me?
Because even apart from the how, the why made no sense either. He had recognized me too. I had seen it on his face.
Which meant… well, what, exactly?
Had he dreamt of me too?
The moment I considered the possibility, it seemed likely. He had stared at me exactly the way, I imagined, that I had looked at him—like he’d just seen a ghost.
But how could he be real?
Had I imagined him? Had my sleep-deprived brain invented something that wasn’t really there?
Maybe I was cracking up. That was a cheery thought. I had worked multiple back-to-back shifts earlier in the week. Sure, I had gotten some sleep the night before, but it’s actually impossible to pay down a sleep debt in any meaningful way. Maybe my brain was broken now—projecting strangeness onto the world, seeing things that weren’t there.
I shivered in the too-warm air of a summer night in Los Angeles as the last of my adrenaline subsided, leaving me tired and trembling.
But no, I hadn’t imagined him, had I?
He had been there. And now, even though there was nowhere for him to have gone, he somehow had. Like he was some kind of ghost or something. But ghosts didn’t exist. And he did.
And I had left Sam in the club. At least several minutes had passed. She would probably be looking for me by now.
She’d only had seltzer water so far, but she was surrounded on all sides by drunk clubgoers. It was a trigger, for sure. And she was probably already drinking, even if she didn’t want to be. Or she was in there, wondering if I had ditched her. Or possibly both. Probably both. She needed me.
At last, I gave in. I made my way back into the club. And even though it was completely irrational, I couldn’t help feeling a deep, crushing loss. And I had no idea why.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” Sam breathed hours later, when I pulled the covers over her chest.
Her breath smelled strongly of mint. She had gotten sick on the sidewalk outside the club, and then again on the side of the road halfway home, and then—improbably—a third time the moment we got back and she had access to a bathroom. Afterward, she’d rinsed her mouth out with water, then mouthwash, and then brushed her teeth while I watched from the doorway.
“It’s okay,” I muttered, even though it wasn’t. Getting upset with her wouldn’t change anything, would it? And it was just as much my fault as hers. After all, I had left her alone in the club. We’d been separated for at least a half hour before I finally found her sitting at the bar on the far end—farthest from the door. She was on her third shot—at least—of tequila, already bleary-eyed and happy.
It was dark in her room. The door was open, but I had turned off the hallway light so it wouldn’t hurt her eyes. I’d made her drink a glass of water and take some aspirin and a multivitamin before tucking her in—since alcohol consumption leaches essential vitamins and minerals from the body. She’d feel more or less fine in the morning.
“Eli, no. It was your birthday—”
“Sam, it’s fine.”
“It’s not.” Her words came out soupy and slurred, but I could hear the emotion in them too. It wasn’t just guilt, either. There was a note edging dangerously close to panic. “It’s not fucking fine, Eli. It’s not! I wasn’t supposed to—”
She broke off and let out a shuddering breath. And then another. I listened, frozen in place. I tried to ignore the almost-physical sensation, like she had just punched me square in the chest.
“Just for this one night, I told myself I wasn’t going to do this,” she said at last.
I didn’t know what to say. If I could have found the right words, I would have said them. Instead, I just sat there with her, in the dark, and the silence stretched between us, a chasm I had no idea how to cross. She needed me, but I still couldn’t think of anything to say.
