Chapter Twenty-Three
Vera
Apeel of thunder sounds, jolting me awake. I sit up, glancing around stunned. The first thing I see is my laptop, then my desk. I whip my head around, trying to take stock of my situation. Apparently, I’m in my apartment.
I’m not sure why that would surprise me, where else would I be? Neverland?
What has my life become where I am more surprised to find myself at home than in a fictional world?
Snickers lets out a little chirp from where he is lying stretched across my notes on the right side of my desk before stretching out and falling back asleep. I press myhands to my chest, moving them across it and grabbing bunches of my shirt but there’s no wound or blood or any sign of the sword.
I push to my feet so quickly that I almost fall over and rush into my bathroom, turning on the light. I stare at my reflection in the mirror.
Pale skin and a shock of red hair stare back at me. I reach up, rubbing my hand against my cheek but the scar is gone. I lean back out of my bathroom, my eyes on my bare wrist where the bracelet should be. It’s missing, of course it is. Every other sign of what happened to me is gone, erased perfectly as if it had never happened.
I turn my eyes back to my laptop.
“Was it just a dream?” I whisper to myself as I reach up, grabbing a handful of my hair.
I press my shoulder against the doorframe. It would be kind of awkward if it was, because how am I going to explain to James that I’ve fallen in love with him because of a dream?
I groan and slide down the wall as I grab my hair and try to work through what happened. Everything was so realistic. It couldn’t have just been a dream, could it?
I want to call up James, but I don’t have his number. I don’t even know where he lives. How am I supposed toshow up at his doorway soaking wet and tell him I love him in my big romcom moment if I don’t know where he lives?
And even if he doesn’t reciprocate, at least, I can make sure that he is safe.
Maybe my agent Sally knows. I leap to my feet to grab my phone when suddenly my laptop dings, letting me know that I have a new notification.
I run my finger across the pad to wake up my screen. It whirs back to life. I can still see the blinking cursor from my half unfinished email to James and then a small notification at the bottom telling me that I have an unread email in the same chain.
My breath stalls in my throat as I stare at it. I have three emails, sent within seconds of each other.
Are you okay?
Please respond.
You’re changing that ending btw. No more dead characters.
I stare at the email in shock.
Ding!
Please tell me that you’re okay.
My hand flies to my mouth as I let out a little squeal. I rush to the kitchen to grab my purse, but skid to a stop on my socks when I realize that I haven’t responded and I still have no idea where James lives. I race back to my desk andhurriedly type in an address. Then I grab my phone, my coat, and my purse.
It’s still raining out, but the coffee shop is only a couple blocks from my apartment. I throw my hood up and go jogging down the few blocks till I reach it. As I push open the door, the little ding echoing through the near empty shop, I realize I probably should have waited to get a confirmation from James. I pull out my phone, to check to see if I have an email notification, but there’s nothing. Also, not one person messaged me the whole time I was gone which really makes a girl feel special. How long was I even gone? I check my phone again, the date is the same and it looks like as a whole, only twenty minutes passed from when I first started to send that email.
I give my head a shake.
It almost makes it feel like it wasn’t real, like it truly was all a dream. Even now as I stand here it seems to fade from memory. Like it happened to someone else or is a distant memory.
I stare at my phone, blankly, wondering what I’m doing when suddenly I hear the bell ring behind me.
I whirl so quickly that my hood falls off. I feel my eyes widen as I find myself staring into the all-too-familiar blue eyes of James. He looks almost exactly the same, only missing the scar on his eyebrow and in the place of his piratecoat and boots he is wearing a peacoat and loafers. He even has a scarf tucked in the front.
He looks so well dressed and put together and meanwhile I’m here in my sweats, a too large raincoat and looking like a drowned rat from running in the rain.
