by Winter, Eden
“Shaken up. I was falling asleep when it happened, and I didn’t see any of it coming. I woke up and my life flashed before my eyes,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell him about either dream just yet, but I was glad Peter had driven to the house before we went on our almost-fatal adventure. Having him in the pickup truck with us changed something, but it also changed nothing. The same thing I saw in my dream had happened, but now I had dragged someone else into the equation to experience that fear. He would never have been a part of it if I hadn’t invited him to come with us.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. If I didn’t ask you to come, then…”
“Then we wouldn’t have spent today together. Despite what happened…. Man, I’m starting to think that I’m attracted to danger,” he said. He was completely serious when he said it. There was always something happening when he was around me, like he was some kind of protector or guide.
“What I’m saying,” he was correcting himself, “is that I am glad I’m here with you right now.”
“Peter,” I said.
He nodded for me to continue.
“I would really like for you to kiss me right now,” I said. He smiled and sighed through his nose.
“Only if you’re sure. I don’t want to scare or rush you or make you feel uncomfy in any way.”
I was already standing right in front of him by the time he finished speaking. I didn’t wait to hear him say anything else. I put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him.
The kiss was long and so, so soft at first, but I could feel myself getting greedy. I pulled him closer to me, and he wrapped his arms around my waist. He ran his hands up and down my back and put my arms around his shoulders.
I pressed my body up against his, wanting more of him. I was hungry and frantic now. I heard myself moaning into his kisses, and there was a shiver that went up my whole body.
I tugged at the shirt he was wearing.
“Take… this… off,” I said in between the moans and the kisses. Our hands were wild, trying to take our clothes off and still wanting to feel the warmth and the bliss of each other’s bodies.
I helped Peter remove his belt, and he unhooked my bra. I started walking backward clumsily, almost stepping over poor Tangerine. She let out a “mreow!” in protest and skittered off into the living room.
I was leading Peter to my bedroom. It felt good having his skin pressed against my skin. It felt right, and I knew we both wanted it. We both wanted each other and neither of us stopped or even hesitated.
When we got to my bed, we took the rest of our clothes off. Peter moved his face away from mine and looked down to admire my body. He wasn’t judging me or being a creep about it. He ran his hand on the soft peachy marshmallow of my tummy and kissed below my collar bone and right above my breasts. He lifted my face with one of his fingers, and I looked into his deep brown eyes.
“It’s very nice to see you, Samantha.”
I smiled because I knew what he meant. He was seeing me in a vulnerable state, in a place where I wasn’t able to hide from him or avert his gaze. He could see all of me. I wanted to feel embarrassed because I was so exposed, but I didn’t. I admired him too. I could see the beautiful tattoos that snaked up and down the whole of his right arm, his skinny frame and his long limbs, and how every part of him seemed to be chiseled. We were so different from each other physically, but something united us in our souls.
“It’s nice to see you too,” I said. I kissed him again, and he picked me up and gently placed me on the bed. Our kisses were still so wild and hungry. Peter lay on top of me, and my legs were intertwined with his. I ran my legs up and down his and rocked my hips back and forth. Peter matched my movements, and his own hips rocked with mine.
We were like this for a while—a ball of heat and longing and frantic energy. We were so engulfed by one another. I rocked Peter over and got on top of him. He squeezed my soft flesh and then moved his hands up my waist, along my belly, up to my breasts, and then pressed his fingertips into my back and clawed down.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I lowered my hips onto him. A soft purr escaped my lips once I felt him inside of me.
He started slowly, letting out the occasional grunt when I felt extra good to him. He couldn’t keep his hands off me. He ran his fingers along the contours of my body and took hold of me. He brought one of my hands to him and kissed it.
He was so full of passion and power. There was no way I could resist him. Every time he went deeper inside me, I reached a new level of ecstasy.
Peter raised himself up and kept rocking his hips. He and I were at eye level, and I could hear the deep rhythmic sounds of air escaping his lips. Knowing that I was making him feel that way made me all the more excited.
He clawed down my back again. I pulled at his hair until the tie snapped and broke off. His hair fell like black angel wings. He was so beautiful, every part of him. I had never felt this good before. No previous partner could even compare to what I was feeling.
Peter’s hips rocked faster beneath me, and I slid higher and deeper, enjoying the wetness and the way my insides lit up like small electric shocks with every thrust.
My body quivered as more and more of the electric shocks were building up inside me. I clung to Peter, holding the back of his neck and bringing his face toward mine. His breathing grew heavier and heavier. His sounds of pleasure were too much for me.
My eyes rolled back as I felt the deep wave of my orgasm crashing into every part of me. I shook violently and moaned so sweetly. I didn’t want the feeling to end. My body undulated, not wanting to let go of my hold on him. I tensed up and then felt instantly relaxed and at peace. The feeling was indescribable, and I didn’t want it to end.
I waited for the last gentle wave to hit me before bringing my face to his. I kissed him then and we fell onto the bed feeling both exhausted and satisfied.
“I didn’t realize just how tired I was until I felt your pillow,” Peter said. He stretched his whole body and sighed.
“You can spend the night if you want,” I offered. I don’t know why I offered. It was possible I was doing that more for myself than for him. But I really did want him to stay longer.
“Thank you,” he said. He kissed the black coils of hair on the top of my head.
“I may fall asleep,” he said in the middle of a yawn.
“That’s fine,” I said. He was right about not noticing how tired I was. I felt like I could sleep for days. But my eyes shot open.
“What is it?” Peter asked. I didn’t know that he could see me with my hair in my face or from the angle we were both lying in.
“I don’t want to go to sleep,” I said. I could feel that he was nodding. The fact that I didn’t need to explain every detail to him was both strange and wonderful. I kept having to remind myself I had no one to answer to but me.
“You don’t have to face anything you’re not prepared to face right away. Give yourself time. But don’t forget to take care of yourself. You’ll need to sleep at some point, and if you need me to be here for you when you do, then I will be here,” Peter said. I was glad that he said that. I appreciated his reassurance more than he knew. He was always telling me to take good care of myself.
“I will,” I whispered. I didn’t say anything more, but soon after, I could hear a gentle snoring.
Peter was fast asleep.
Chapter Seven
Bridge Over Troubled Water
“Mew.”
Tangerine was looking up at me with her big blue eyes. She sniffed the air around me and then took a gander at the book in my hand before she meowed again and slinked away. I was sitting in my living room and waiting for my sister to pick me up. She’d called me every day since the time we very nearly got into an accident. Her paranoia was sweet at first, but I didn’t know how long I could keep up the façade of being all right.
I had given in and told Peter about one of the dreams I had. I didn’t want to tell him about the gian
t blue and gold fish in my newest dream [which I could only assume was the fish of Cesar]. I was still sorting out my mind and trying to figure out if my dreams were now all going to be premonitions from here on out, or if the one that involved the crash had simply been a fluke. I had to figure out how powerful these premonitions were and if there was a way I could control when I wanted to see them and how.
Peter suggested that I speak more with my father. He was the only person I knew who even had a clue about what it was I was going through. The first time I had a vision around my father, I was still so confused about what was going on. My dad had told me what it was I had but didn’t give me as much information, which is what I clearly needed now. I should have asked him more questions. Now I didn’t want to bombard him, especially since my mom was back. There was a chance that he told her about me, or at the very least she knew about the powers his great-grandmother possessed.
Before my premonitions, I didn’t know it was even possible for humans to have powers. I thought being clairvoyant was a power only given to mystics or people who had the patience to cast spells. Now it was an ability that had hit me, and there was no getting rid of it. I was hoping for a miracle. Since I knew these powers weren’t going to go away any time soon, I wanted to be able to control them in some way.
I was staring at the pages before me, but I wasn’t taking in any of the information. I had gone to the library and picked up a small book about mythical creatures. There wasn’t that much information about the fish of Cesar. It had a brief history about the origins of the tale, the powers it possessed, and the pages upon pages of possible riddles it could answer. I was trying to memorize some in case I might indeed encounter such a creature.
I kept having to remind myself that the fish of Cesar wasn’t real. It was just an urban legend from my childhood. There were so many songs and stories and poems about the mythical fish, but none of it was informative; it was purely entertainment. I figured it appeared in my dream because it was brought up to me when I first met Peter’s friends. At least that was what I hoped.
But if there was the chance that it wasn’t a dream, I was going to have to do as much research on the fish of Cesar as I could. I wouldn’t know what to do if I came face to face with it, but I knew I had so many questions. Was it possible that the fish was so powerful that it could come to me in my dreams and ask for my help? Why me? What help did it need? Did my grandmother ever have visions of the fish too? Was the purpose of the premonitions to bring me to the fish, or was the fish just a mini quest in a proverbial sea of mini quests that would last me for the rest of my life? What if the fish had no answers for me? What if I was just going to have to go through this world blind, expecting but also not expecting to see a brief message of the future where I would be powerless to do anything?
I had all of these questions and no way of knowing how to answer them. It irked me that I might never know the answers. The fish could be real, but there was also a chance it could be a dud. What if it was just a giant elusive fish that wasn’t capable of any of the things we were taught in school?
I closed my eyes and I squeezed them tight. I didn’t want to consider any more theories or ask any more questions I didn’t have the answers to. Even the words on the page in front of me were all blurred together. I needed to know where to start in order to know where I was going.
Peter kept telling me to talk to my family. They were people in my life I could trust, and it was likely that they would know what to do. If they didn’t, then they would be a source of comfort while I figured it out on my own. He offered to help, but I specifically asked him not to. There was no use in putting someone’s life on pause just to help me out. He had too much going on in his life to be concerned with what was going on with me.
I sighed and closed the book I was reading. I would pick up where I left off after I went out with my sister. Maybe there were more books in the library that didn’t include jingles or cartoons based on a fish. The people who had claimed to see it were probably hacks, just like the people who were so sure that they could see aliens because of crop circles. The crop circles were more than likely made by bored and mischievous teenagers. Witches and warlocks had the spells to do it, pixies always liked to cause trouble, and a drunken flying fairy with nothing better to do could carve out a corn field if they really set their minds to it.
The people who saw the fish of Cesar had spotted it all over the globe. It came and went as it pleased, according to the different news reports that came from every continent on the globe, but it seemed to have taken a liking to our little town. So many people saw it in our lake. I always thought it was baloney. If the fish of Cesar was in our lake and it could shapeshift into any water creature, how was it possible for it to leave our lake and go to anywhere else on earth. Even when I was a kid I didn’t like or believe the stories.
And yet, it was the excuse I made for why I had fallen off the boat the other day. Nothing had triggered that lie, which had no connection with my premonitions. It came out of thin air. And now I was dreaming about it.
It couldn’t have been a coincidence. My premonitions made sure that I understood that.
I heard a knock at the door. It was Isabelle.
I was so glad that she was there. Spending one more minute alone while considering different conspiracy theories was not my idea of a fun afternoon.
Tangerine pitter-pattered toward the front door and moved around in circles. She meowed until I opened the door.
“Samantha, how are you?” Isabelle said in her usual sweet voice. She sounded very chipper, and she looked it too. Her hair was flowing free instead of how she normally had it with half of it tied up while the bottom half remained loose. She was wearing a top that had big blue polka dots on it and a pair of tight dark pants. I looked down at the T-shirt and loose-fitting jeans that I had chosen to wear and cringed. We had plans to go for a walk, and she still managed to look so pretty.
“I’m okay,” I said. It wasn’t a lie.
“Hey TanTan,” my sister said. She scooped up my cat and started kissing her face and her legs. Tangerine looked at me as if to protest and tried to wriggle free. Isabelle eventually put the poor thing down.
“You seem like you’re doing well,” I said.
“I am. Malcolm has been helping me through it. It wasn’t as frightening as my mind was making it out to be. It was unexpected, but we all managed to come out unscathed and now a bit more cautious about road safety.”
I resisted rolling my eyes at the mention of Malcolm. It sucked because I really liked him, but ever since I could have sworn I heard him call me ‘bunny’, I didn’t care for him at all. Peter told me to trust no one who wasn’t in my family, and he was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted Peter either.
“You bet. We’re safe and sound and that’s all that matters,” I said. I forced a fake smile.
“That’s all that matters,” Isabelle agreed.
*
The walk was much longer than I had anticipated. It must have felt like an eternity because I was going to tell her everything. My nerves got the better of me, and some of our walk was spent talking about Peter, Malcolm, and Mr. McLarry, and going to see our parents in a few days since our mother was back from her trip. The thought of our whole family being together excited my sister. She enjoyed positive connections so much.
I had to admit I was excited about the thought of all of us being together too. Not because it would give me a chance to ask my dad some questions, but because I could associate new memories with all the memories of my family.
Don’t get me wrong, I had some marvelous memories, but they had been tainted by Alex. I pulled away from my family because I didn’t think they understood me or what I was going through. I remember telling my mother that she was trying to sabotage the most important relationship in my life. She didn’t argue. She was like Isabelle, always trying to be calm and rational. It was my father who had spoken up about the abuse I faced and how I was dista
ncing myself from my family. I didn’t see them much at all after that.
So, I had a chance to make it right this time. It was impossible for things to go back to the way they were, but now we could create new and better memories that had nothing to do with that terrible time in my life. I vowed I would never choose someone over my father, mother, and sister ever again.
The sky was a dull pink that changed into purples and light blues. There weren’t that many clouds in the sky, and the view of the setting sun was spectacular, especially against the dark green of the treetops and the grass all around us. Isabelle and I were still walking through the park when I saw the bridge off into the distance.
“Let’s go this way,” I said. There were far more people in the park on that day. Most were seated under trees or sitting on the edge of the lake. A few had formed small walking groups, and they were walking in line and having long gossip sessions.
Isabelle and I seemed to be the only ones who were having a leisurely stroll through the park. I needed to feel relaxed if I was going to say what I was about to say. The bridge was getting closer to us, and I hadn’t brought anything up yet.
“Izzy, I want to talk to you about something,” I said. Isabelle’s expression changed for a second—maybe even less than a second. There was pain and fear in her eyes, but then the look on her face changed back to its usual beautiful expression.
“There’s something that’s going on with me. It’s a lot, so I’ll explain as quickly as I can. I hate keeping things from you, especially given our history, but I know that this is something I have to talk about because I don’t know what to do, or where to go from here, or what’s going on,” I said. Since there were people close enough to hear us, I tried to whisper, but my words came off like a panicked hissing.
“Oh, my goodness, Sam. Are you pregnant?” Isabelle said. She covered her mouth with both of her hands and she gasped.
