by Dani Atkins
I thought it would take me ages to fall asleep. I thought I would be replaying the day and all its outcomes over and over in my mind on an endless spool. But the combination of the wine we had drunk with dinner and sheer nervous exhaustion must have overtaken me, for I drifted off into oblivion within minutes of my head nestling onto the pillow. And for several hours I slept soundly, deeply and untroubled.
The dream began pleasantly enough. I was lying somewhere warm and relaxing, on a beach, I thought, and although I couldn’t quite make out his words, I could hear my father talking nearby. In my dream I kept meaning to say something, to ask him something, but I was so overcome by a delicious lassitude that to stir, even an inch, from the warm enveloping sand required too much effort.
And then it all abruptly changed, in that bizarre way that dreams do. The beach was gone, and so too was my father. I was back in time, back to the night of the car accident, only this time it wasn’t Matt who had seen the approaching car heading toward us, it was me.
I knew what I had to do, but when I opened my mouth to shout out a warning, no words came out, no sound at all. Frantically I tried to get everyone’s attention, but each one of them was deeply engrossed in conversation with someone else at the table, and despite my hysterical gesticulations, no one but me was aware of the imminent danger. The waiters were laying our plates of food before us, refilling our wineglasses, while death hurtled toward us at sixty miles an hour.
And it was then I saw that, incongruously, on the wall behind me was a large bright red emergency button. I slammed my hand down hard upon it and the responding beep of the alarm filled the air. Yet still no one moved. I struggled to get out of my chair but I was every bit as much imprisoned by the table as I had been on that actual night. Why couldn’t they hear the alarm? It was almost a deafening klaxon, but my friends remained oblivious as they sat at the table and waited for death to join them.
As the car careered toward us, I relived the moment that had haunted so many of my dreams over the past five years, and then, finally, I found my voice. I screamed, not once but several times, and only stopped when the sound of breaking glass exploded all around me.
Only it wasn’t glass, it was the china base of the bedside lamp that my thrashing arm had knocked from the nightstand.
I sat up, hearing the thunderous pounding of my heart, waiting for it to slow down. Only it wasn’t slowing down at all; if anything, it was getting louder, and as I swam to the surface of full consciousness I could hear Jimmy calling my name as he all but took the door off its hinges with his frenzied hammering.
Still not entirely awake, I swung my legs off the bed and stood up, only to sit sharply back down again as one of the broken shards of china pierced the sole of my foot. I swore loudly and clambered over the bed to reach the door before Jimmy woke up every other occupant of the floor.
We would have been a peculiar sight to any onlooker who happened to be passing down the corridor at two o’clock in the morning. Fortunately, there was no one around to see Jimmy, with his hair awry, standing semi-dressed on the threshold to my room. He had at least taken the time to pull on a pair of jeans, but I noticed that, like me, he too was barefooted.
He strode purposely into my room.
“Are you all right? I heard you screaming.” His eyes raked the room, looking for the cause of my terrified cries, and there was no disguising the alarm in his tone, which struck me as odd, for aren’t policemen trained to stay cool in an emergency?
“Nightmare,” I said succinctly, hopping over to the room’s only armchair to avoid standing on my damaged foot.
He let out a huge sigh of relief.
“Oh God, is that all? I thought you were being murdered in here. And then when I heard that crashing sound …”
“I had a little argument with the bedside lamp.”
It was then that he noticed the way I was cradling my left foot in my hand, while a slow but persistent trickle of blood oozed from the deep cut on the sole.
“Rachel, you’re hurt! What happened?”
Not for the first time I wondered if he was really in the right line of work. His powers of deduction seemed flawed, to say the least.
“I stood on one of the broken bits of lamp in my hurry to get to the door before you broke it down.”
I knew that I must have sounded a little ungrateful, but the nightmare still had me in its thrall and my foot was actually very sore. Instantly he was by my chair, gently prying my hands away from my injured foot.
“Here, let me take a look.”
Gingerly I laid my left foot in his outstretched hand, already preparing to wince at his touch, but he was infinitely gentle as he supported my heel in his palm, examining the wound, which was still bleeding profusely.
“Let’s get this cleaned up,” he announced, getting to his feet. “I don’t think there is anything in the cut, but we need better light than in here to be sure.”
Before I realized his intention, he had bent and scooped me into his arms and was carrying me toward the bathroom.
“I can walk,” I protested. “Or hop.”
He ignored my comments and kicked the bathroom door ajar with his foot and flicked on the light. As he looked around for somewhere to deposit me, I was acutely aware of the unfamiliar, although not unpleasant, sensation of being held against his naked chest. Less agreeable was the realization that my nightdress was incredibly short and, as a result of my nightmare, was clinging revealingly to my sweat-dampened body. I tried to pull down on the hem but only succeeded in displaying even more of my cleavage by doing so. Fortunately, Jimmy’s attention was all on my foot.
He lowered me onto the edge of the bath and used the shower attachment to slowly cascade water over my foot and ankle. It stung a little at first, but I didn’t dare fidget too much, trying as I was to maintain what little modesty I had left with one leg lifted over the edge of the tub. Never before had I felt in such desperate need of underwear.
Under the soothing rivulets of water and the fluorescent bathroom lighting, Jimmy took careful stock of the wound, and when he had determined that it was clean of foreign objects, he pressed firmly down on the cut to stanch the flow of blood. The bathroom was tiny, no doubt designed for single occupancy only, so we were by necessity very close together. So close that I could hear when his breathing, instead of slowing down now the initial panic was over, began to increase in pace. I knew then that it wasn’t just me who was aware of the intimacy of the moment. With his thumb still covering the cut, his fingers were moving in slow, almost imperceptible circles upon my ankle. I didn’t know if he realized what he was doing, whether the caress was intentional or not, but his actions weren’t helping my heart to resume its normal rhythm.
Something new was happening here, and the very air in the small enclosed room seemed to pulsate with a heady and unfathomable emotion. Jimmy looked up and there was something in his eyes I had never seen before; he would have recognized it, though, for it was reflected back at him on my own face. The moment seemed endless and we remained locked within its intensity, neither daring to speak or move for fear of breaking the fragile cocoon around us.
“Jimmy,” I breathed uncertainly, reaching out a hand to touch his chest. My fingertips rested there only a moment, just long enough to feel the strong pulse of his heartbeat reverberating against them, and then, with a determined shake of his head, as though denying what was happening, he got roughly to his feet. He took several moments longer than necessary to return the shower to its stand and shut off the water, but when he turned to look at me once more, that something in his eyes was gone. The fragile interlude between us might never have been.
“I think it’s stopped bleeding now but you should probably put a plaster on it, if you have one.”
“Uh-huh.”
He left me then to dry my foot and dress the wound, while he returned to the bedroom and busied himself methodically clearing the carpet of broken china.
I watched him in silenc
e from the bathroom doorway, fascinated by the display of his muscled arms and back as he bent to his task. I wanted so badly to reach out to him that it felt like a physical ache. I knew then that my feelings for him had strayed off the path of friendship. But clearly, I could see that Jimmy did not reciprocate those feelings. Whatever territory we had almost ventured into a few minutes ago was clearly somewhere Jimmy didn’t want to go. If I pushed it, I could lose him forever, and I couldn’t cope with that again.
“There,” he said, straightening, “I think I’ve got it all, just watch where you walk.”
“Thank you.” My voice was a little subdued but I don’t know if he noticed. What he did notice, however, was my sudden involuntary shiver in the coolness of the bedroom. He came over and put an arm around my shoulders.
“God, Rachel, you’re freezing. Have you got a dressing gown or something?”
I shook my head. I’d only packed the bare essentials and I certainly hadn’t been expecting company in the middle of the night.
“Well, let’s get you back into bed before you catch a cold.”
He bent as though to carry me again but I ducked from his grip and hobbled the short distance over to the bed. He gave a small laugh at what he thought was my stubbornness, and I was happy to let him believe that’s all it was. Far better to have him think I was being pigheaded than for him to realize the effect his proximity was having on me.
I scrambled under the blankets, the coverage they provided being even more welcome than their warmth. To my surprise Jimmy didn’t appear to be in any hurry to return to his own room and settled himself down to sit on top of the covers beside me on the bed.
“So what was this nightmare about then, the one that made you decide to trash the room like a rock star?”
I gave a small smile. “Oh, nothing really.”
“It didn’t sound like nothing to me. You really scared me, you know.”
I looked into his face and knew he was telling the truth.
“Sorry,” I apologized, not really knowing if I was saying it for worrying him, for what had happened in the bathroom, or for any and all future transgressions. “The dream was the usual one. Usual for me, that is. I was dreaming about the night of the car accident.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
I nodded sadly.
“Ever since the accident?”
“Ever since you died,” I corrected.
We were both silent then, temporarily at a loss for words.
“But why are you still dreaming it now?” Jimmy asked suddenly, turning on his side, the better to see my face. “Why now, when you know it didn’t really happen like that?”
I shook my head miserably. “I don’t know.”
But then a thought occurred to me, a really obvious one. For the thing I didn’t know, what I was really in the dark about, was what had actually happened on that fateful night. Because that was when reality had split into two different realms for me. Perhaps when I understood what had actually transpired, the imaginary second life would lose all substance and disappear like the mirage everyone said that it was.
“Tell me everything. Tell me what you remember about that night, from the moment we sat down at that table.”
Jimmy read the need to know in my voice and, as though to protect me from the truth should it turn out to be painful, he put an arm around my shoulders before beginning.
His story was just as I remembered it being. Even the air of camaraderie and friendship came to life again at his recollections. I didn’t interrupt at all until he mentioned the penny he had given me.
“I kept that!” I cried out involuntarily, before correcting myself. “Or rather, in my other life I did. I kept it in my jewelry box. I couldn’t throw it away, it seemed like my last link with you.”
He smiled, but said nothing. And then another thought occurred to me.
“And we’d made arrangements for the following day. I remember that now. You’d asked me to go round the next day to see you and you’d sounded really mysterious about it. I wondered about that for years. What had you wanted to talk about?”
Was it the light, or had his cheeks deepened in color at my question?
“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t remember after all this time.”
I let it go without comment, not wanting to divert him from his tale. But I couldn’t help but wonder why he had just lied to me.
The story continued true to my memories until we reached the point when we had all begun the frantic dash from the table to escape the oncoming car.
“… and we all managed to get clear of the window before the guy drove into it.”
“But I was stuck. I couldn’t get free, a chair was blocking me in. Didn’t it happen that way?”
He was silent for a moment, seeming to almost weigh up what to tell me.
“It all happened so quickly, it’s hard to say. Perhaps you were the last to get clear.”
There was something he was glossing over here and I wasn’t about to let it rest.
“No. I wasn’t the last. My dad said that you got hurt, so obviously you were still near the window when the car crashed through. What happened?”
I realized then what he was reluctant to tell me.
“It is as I remember it, isn’t it? You came back for me. You pulled me clear.”
He looked strangely embarrassed to admit it.
“We all kind of helped each other get away.”
I shook my head. I could still see it so clearly: everyone had moved back, everyone had been safe, everyone but me. But one of them had come back to rescue me.
“You saved my life.”
For a moment it looked like he was going to continue to deny it, but then he heard the certainty in my voice and went instead for humor.
“I couldn’t let you die and take my lucky penny with you.”
But I wasn’t going to let him divert me.
“You saved my life.”
His answer this time lost all flippancy, and with desperate honesty he replied, “How could I do anything else?”
I didn’t know what to say. There are no words to convey that sort of gratitude, to repay that kind of debt.
“And you got hurt.”
I raised my hand and lifted the hair away from his forehead, revealing a small white jagged scar that ran down from his hairline to the level of his eye.
“It’s so like mine,” I breathed in wonder. “The one I thought I had,” I corrected. “Except mine was deeper, longer.” I let my finger trace the line of his scar. “Mine went down here,” my finger ran over his cheek, catching slightly on the roughness of bristle, “and then went to here.” My finger continued to etch the blueprint of the remembered scar, but instead of stopping where my disfigurement had ended, I continued to trace a pathway to his mouth, coming to rest upon his slightly parted lips.
Electricity crackled between us. The moment in the bathroom suddenly paled into insignificance compared to the potently charged atmosphere.
Gently, oh so gently, he drew the tips of my fingers in between his parted lips, flicking against the sensitive pads with his tongue. My entire body shuddered with a frisson of excitement.
And then I was in his arms. I truly cannot say who made the first move; it could have been either of us. All I knew was the force of the passion in his kiss and the feel of his long hard body pressed against mine.
Time became suspended as our kisses deepened, the heat of our passion welding my body to his with an intensity that astounded me. His hand trembled slightly as he slid the nightgown from my shoulders, but he had no need to be hesitant. I wanted this to happen just as much as he did, maybe even more. And in a sobering revelation of clarity, I finally acknowledged that I had been waiting for and wanting this very moment for years but had been too blind to see it.
As his lips and hands traveled over my exposed flesh, I heard a low throaty murmur of pleasure escape me. I couldn’t believe how wantonly and readily I was responding to his tou
ch. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before.
The bedcovers were kicked aside and I felt no embarrassment to be naked in front of him. Given our long friendship, I would have expected this to feel wrong, maybe even vaguely incestuous, but nothing before had ever felt so right. Our ragged breathing tore into the silence of the room, and the trembling that coursed through Jimmy’s body as he covered mine shook me with its intensity.
I don’t remember when he first began to pull back. One minute we were fused together, our mouths and hands exploring and delighting, and then, all at once, it was just me. The hands that held my shoulders, arching me closer to him, were now gently, but insistently, pushing me away.
Embarrassingly, it took me several moments to realize what had happened. My fumbling fingers were still struggling with the buckle of his jeans when his hand came down to encircle my wrist and move it away. The red mist of passion began to lift enough for me to see his face. The fire was almost gone and had been replaced by a determined steely strength. Stupidly I refused to acknowledge what he was doing and reached up to kiss him once again, opening my lips against his, sure I could elicit his response and reignite the flame.
But it was gone. Doused. I didn’t care what his reasons were for stopping, I only knew I didn’t want to.
“Oh God, don’t stop, please don’t stop,” I begged, all pride abandoned. I kept my eyes riveted to his and actually caught the moment when the last ember of desire was extinguished in their blue depths.
He lifted himself off me in a quick and decisive move, half turning away to sit upon the edge of the bed.
“I have to, Rachel. Don’t you see that?”
Clearly I did not see, and still refusing to acknowledge his withdrawal, I shamelessly reached out to try to pull him back to me, but he was like a rock: cold, hard, and immovable.
Without turning to look at me, he picked up my discarded nightdress and tossed it back in my direction.
“Cover yourself up.”
Those three words sliced through my desire, carving into my very core. I grasped the cotton garment and quickly struggled into it, feeling humiliated and dirty. I had thrown myself at him, there was no other way to describe it; I had virtually begged him to take me and he had rejected me. How much clearer did he have to make it? Oh, sure, he had responded at first, but I realized now that had just been a natural male response to a woman trying to seduce him. A physical knee-jerk reaction, nothing more.
