Falling In Between

by Devon Ashley

  “If anything, I’d think he’d find it comforting to have someone sitting beside him.”

  “Yeah.” I inhaled a deep breath through my nose, summoning the courage I was about to need. “So what’s his birthday? I wanna read him his horoscope. Personally, I think he’s a Libra.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

  “He just looks like a flirt. I mean, look at me. Two days and he’s already got me eating out of his hands reading this crap.”

  Margaret chuckled and flipped through her binder. I think my heart quit beating – too afraid the loud thump would cover up her voice as she answered. “Uh…March twentieth.”

  I gasped silently, my chest heaving and expanding to maximum capacity, and my eyes bugged out. Thank God she didn’t look up right away to see that. My heart sped up triple-speed and I felt red and flustered.

  “What’s that make him?”

  I gratefully buried my head behind the wall of newspaper sheets. It was difficult to calm the shaking in my body and smooth out my voice. “Pisces. Compassionate, romantic and imaginative.”

  “Oh, well that’s much better than flirt. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled, and listened as she walked away from his bedside and left to continue her rounds elsewhere. I dropped the paper on the bed and just sat there.

  Immobile.

  Dumbfounded.

  Scared.

  I was ready to hear something completely different. I hadn’t let myself believe or really fixate on this yet, cause there was only a one in three hundred and sixty-five chance he would have the same birthday.

  I thought no way.

  I thought I was making this all up in my head, and that the physical description of the man that kept me safe and warm each night was just spot-on accurate to the physical body that lay before me. I mean, we’ve all got twins out there somewhere, right?

  I sluggishly picked up the phone on the bedside table and numbly dialed one of the only two numbers I’d ever bothered to memorize. Sophie picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Soph?”

  “Jenna! Where are you? You’ve been AWOL all day. I even checked to see if you landed in the nurse’s office.”

  “Sorry. I’m up at the hospital. Do you think you could come meet me in my old ward? In 34B?”

  “OH-MY-GOD!” she burst. “Are you back in the hospital?!”

  “What? No! I’m just volunteering.”

  I heard her mumble a curse on the other end. “Jesus, Jenna! Don’t do that.” She breathed a sigh of relief and I’m sure she was shaking her head in annoyance.

  “So can you come?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll be right there.”

  “And Soph?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just you, okay?” I definitely didn’t need Robert convincing her to let him pick me up.

  “Yeah, alright.”

  I hung up the phone, pulled my feet into the chair with me and just rocked my body back and forth for a bit. So what did I know so far? I grabbed a pen and notepad from the table’s drawer and made a list.

  1. Chance and I died on the same day at the exact same time

  2. Chance appeared in my dreams the day after my meds ran out (I just remembered this. He appeared to me the night before my first date with Robert)

  3. Chance and Evan are identical in physical appearance

  4. Chance and Evan share the same last name

  5. Chance and Evan share the same birthday

  I obsessed over these points for half an hour, trying to come up with an alternative to the crazy idea that Chance and Evan were one in the same. When Sophie arrived, I felt even more scared. To admit this was social suicide – paddy wagon-worthy. She lifted her eyes with interest when she scanned Evan’s unconscious body.

  “Cute. Who’s he?”

  I resumed rocking my body in the chair. “Chance. This is the guy I’ve been dreaming about every night.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she scanned him again. I was surprised when all she said was, “Well, he’s cute and all, but still not as hot as that Supernatural guy.”

  I groaned and rubbed my brow bones hard with the heels of my hands. “Sophie, no. This is the guy that’s been in my dreams every night. A guy that apparently died and came back to life the same time I did, and has come to see me every night since.”

  There it was. The scrunched-up, what-the-fuck face I knew was coming my way. I threw the notepad from my lap at her and she reluctantly took her eyes off me long enough to read it.

  “So what do you think?” I asked, nervous cause her face wasn’t changing from that horribly critical expression.

  She huffed. “I think it’s time to get a head scan.”

  My face soured and I dishearteningly replied, “I had a follow-up scan after Christmas. Nothing.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe they’ll see something now.”

  Annoyed, I said, “Soph, forget the head scan. I may be guilty of an overactive imagination but there’s nothing physically wrong with my head.”

  “Soooo, let me see if I’ve got this right. You think that this guy here,” she waved her hand over Evan’s body, “can somehow travel to your head every night just to please you six ways from Sunday? Seriously?”

  I buried my head in my lap and tried to muffle my scream of annoyance.

  “Jenna, we’ve had this conversation before. The dreams aren’t real. You’re probably just feeling guilty cause you’re ready to give yourself sexually to Robert and you feel bad cause you’ve been screwing some random guy in your head every night.”

  “Not random,” I muttered, and rested my chin over my knees.

  “Yeah, I know,” she mocked rudely. “Evan here. I mean, their names don’t even match. That’s your first clue right there that this is all in your head.”

  “They’re identical, Sophie!” I snapped.

  “So you saw the guy before! You were both in the same ward at the same time! You were probably rolled past him in the hall while you were going in and out of consciousness!”

  “I questioned it too. So last night I asked him what his birthday was. They match, Sophie!”

  “Well, kudos for you,” she scoffed. “You’ve got a little ESP in you. It’s not enough, okay? Trust me, the two of you are not sharing some type of brain frequency.”

  I huffed and buried my head in my knees again, on the verge of crying. I heard her rip the page off the notepad and crumple it up.

  “Do not self-destruct on me Jenna. You’ve got a good thing going with Robert and I won’t let you flip out and ruin it.” She whacked me in the back of the head with the notepad, and when I looked up at her, she was pointing at me. “You’re gonna go to bed tonight and you’re gonna kick that Chance out of your head already. And if that doesn’t work, I’m gonna order your old meds off the internet, cause those seemed effective at keeping him out.” She rounded the bed, tossed the paper in the trash and motioned for me to follow her.

  “No, they just kept me from dreaming.”

  “Perfect! A little less dreamin’ will do you some good. Now come on. Step away from the coma boy cause my Beetle is now pulling out of Looneyville station.”

  We didn’t speak the entire way home. When we got back to school I buried myself under my bed covers, completely numb, and drowned out the world using Sophie’s mp3 player. I’m not sure how long I lay there, but eventually someone rubbed my arm and brought me back to life. It was Sophie, and I pulled the headphones from my ears.

  “Robert’s at the door. I told him you’ve been sick and sleeping all your spare time away and that’s why he hasn’t seen you. But you need to tell him this yourself so he doesn’t get all pissed off at you. Luckily you look like death at the moment so this whole sick thing might actually fly.”

  I slowly dragged myself out of bed, wrapped the blanket around me and opened the door. His eyes widened when he took in what I was sure was the most disgusting version of me he’d ev
er seen.

  “Jeesh, Jenna.” When he reached out to caress my face and I saw the concern and warmth in his brown eyes, I felt ashamed all over again. “Do you need anything?”

  I shook my head no and said, “Just give me a few days to let it pass, okay?”

  “Yeah, alright.” He leaned in and gently kissed my forehead. His lips lingered, and breathing in the familiar scent of citrus and lavender cologne, my guilt burst through the layer of numbness I’d created and rose to the surface once more.

  I pulled away and gave him a weak smile as I waved goodbye, then softly shut the door between us. I glanced in the mirror on my way back to bed and couldn’t even laugh at how horrible I looked. My skin was pasty and sallow and my eyes were red from some unavoidable crying, and my eye cavities almost looked sunken from the shadowed bags that now resided beneath them. My hair was a complete knotted nightmare and somewhat resembled Johnny Depp’s do in Edward Scissorhands. Yep…saw that one with Chance just last week. I fought hard to stop thinking, from wondering if that’d be the last movie I’d see with him. I plugged the headphones back in my ears and buried myself under the covers once more.

  I awoke in the middle of the night when I rolled over and suddenly found myself atop Chance’s chest. The motion brought his tranquil body to life too, and he reached out and wrapped his arm around me.

  “How long have you been here?”

  He shrugged and stroked my cheek softly. “Few hours maybe. You seemed so tired and I wasn’t sure if you were still in a bad mood, so I just wanted you to rest. Like last night.”

  My heart melted a little. No! No, my heart cannot melt from him anymore! I rolled my body out of his grasp and back to my side of the bed.

  “Still mad then?”

  “No. I’m not mad. I’m just…confused. And when I get confused, I tend to back away from things.”

  He rolled up against me and hitched his head up on his arm. “What are you confused about, sweetie?”

  “You. Me. What the hell it is going on in here.”

  “What exactly confuses you about us?” he whispered in my ear. Then he began to nibble it, and I felt my strength begin to dissolve, like it always seemed to do in this fantasyland. I swear the air was filled with some type of drug-induced aphrodisiac. It was so hard to fight his advances when I liked the way his lips traveled down my neck the same time his hand worked its way up my shirt. And it didn’t help that my fingers plunged themselves deep into his hair no matter how many times I told them to stop.

  His nibbles paused just long enough to whisper that he loved me. “Do you really mean that?” I asked breathlessly.

  I felt a puff of air on my neck before he released a weak chuckle. “Do you really doubt that?”

  “No, it’s just…” He lips moved down to where his hand was and my back began to arch towards him, making it extremely difficult to keep my thoughts on track. “Stop. Please, stop,” I begged, but he didn’t take it seriously and my body continued to lightly spasm from the love bites. It took an insurmountable amount of strength to push on his chest as I begged him again to stop. I inhaled a cleansing breath, hoping it would calm the fire burning wildly within. “I need to tell you something and you’re really not gonna like me for saying it.”

  He looked down on me with narrowing eyes. “How bad is this on a scale of one to ten?”

  “Bad.”

  He sat up, and silently waited as I pulled my shirt back down and followed him up.

  “I need you to promise me something first.”

  He groaned and stroked his eyebrows outward.

  “You’re gonna be mad and you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but when I’m done telling you all this, you have to promise that you’ll actually try to do what I ask.”

  His body stiffened, but after a moment he was able to give me a long, mellow, “O-kaaaaaay.”

  “First off, where do you go when you’re not with me?”

  Confused, he asked, “Is this a trick question? We’re always together.”

  “No, we’re not. I go to school during the day. Sometimes I hang out with other people.” Like Robert. “I only see you at night. When I’m dreaming.”

  He huffed and rolled his eyes. “Jenna–”

  “Think about it! You just said that we’re always together. But Chance, you’re a senior in high school. When’s the last time you remember being in class? And your family? When’s the last time you sat down to dinner with them?” I could see him contemplating my words, but he still didn’t look like he was gonna believe me. “Don’t you see? You can’t be with me all the time. We’re not together all the time. And you’re not spending your time away from me at school or at home. So where do you go?”

  He took a deep breath and opened his mouth, but quickly closed it again. “So you’re saying I’m dreaming?”

  “Actually, I think we both are. Only I get up each day and live. You…”

  “What?” he asked. “I what?”

  “You’re in the hospital. I’ve seen you. You’ve been in a coma for like five months. Your name isn’t even Chance, it’s Evan.”

  That did it.

  “Alright.” He jumped off the bed. “This is ludicrous. If you want to skip the sex, just tell me flat out. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything you didn’t want to.”

  I jumped off the bed too. “Would you stop? Please!” I grabbed him and he let me hold him firmly in place. “A part of me loves you too, and I love that we’ve had this time together. But it’s all just been a fantasy. And I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life in here.”

  “Yeah, alright,” he mocked. “So, I’m going to go for the night. Since you’re playing this off as a dream, I’m going to hit the stop button now and let us start fresh tomorrow.”

  He pried my hands from his shirt and turned towards the door. For the first time in my life, a surge rose within me and I pushed him hard from behind. “Don’t mock this!” He turned to face me and I slapped my hands into his chest. I didn’t hurt him, but his eyes were widened by my brazen antics. “I’m serious! You have nowhere to go when I’m not here to guide the dream. You’re just this leech of a visitor that jumps in every night cause your soul or mind or whatever is drawn to mine for some reason. Like we’re connected.” I grabbed his collar and yanked him closer. “I don’t want you in here anymore. Do you hear me? I want you out of my dreams and you need to get back to reality.”

  I could feel the tears begin to well behind my eyes.

  “So, what? You don’t want to see me anymore unless I’m in the ‘real world’?”

  “Yeah, that’s right!” I snapped, furious at his use of air quotations. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that I only wanted Robert in the real world. But I let him assume, afraid he’d never try to leave otherwise.

  “Jenna, this is crazy and I’m going to stop this fight before it gets any worse.”

  “You can’t avoid this. The next dream will just pick up right where we left off. The dreams never reset.”

  “Jenna, whatever. I’m leaving.”

  Once again he turned his back on me. “Stop!” I shouted, the tears beginning to flow and my throat constricting. “I’m giving you an ultimatum.”

  He paused and looked over his shoulder. “You’re giving an ultimatum? You?” He shook his head and added, “Don’t say anything you’ll regret tomorrow, Jenna.”

  I couldn’t believe I had tears streaming down my cheeks. I needed him to take this seriously and I was coming off as an emotional teenage girl.

  “You promised me when this began that you would do what I asked no matter how crazy you thought I was or how mad you got at me. So here’s what I want, and if you love me at all, you’ll do it.”

  He was clearly done with me at that point, but he forced himself to stand firm long enough to hear me out.

  “When you leave me tonight and walk out that door, I want you to pay attention to where you go. And when you realize that you’re not actually waking up from this fanta
syland, I want you to find your body and realize it’s lying somewhere in a hospital bed. And if you can’t accept what I’m saying right now and you can’t find a way to believe I’m telling the truth, then I don’t wanna ever see you in here again. Ever! You wanna ever speak to me again? Then you do it from your own damn body!”

  I woke up with tears streaming down my face and my pillow completely saturated. If Sophie heard me, she let me be. And Chance didn’t return once I finally found my way back to sleep again.

  The next day was a normal volunteer day and I was nervous to see if he took my outburst to heart, but I was disheartened when I got there and Evan was still in a coma.

  Still, Chance didn’t come to me at night. Not Tuesday. Not Wednesday. Not even Thursday. Nor did Evan wake up.

  I was beginning to convince myself that Sophie was right and I really had made it all up in my head, and that Chance really was gonna stay gone cause I’d finally learned to shut him out. But something inside me missed him. Missed us. And though my heart was more in favor of Robert, a part of me really did want Chance. And it hurt that I was sure I’d lost something I could never get back.

  I could almost feel the warmth of his skin pressed up behind me, his breath tickling the hairs on my neck. “Jenna,” I could hear him whisper in that smooth and sultry tone. My body melted as his hand traced the curves of my body and his lips nibbled my neck and ear.

  But the love bites felt real – too real. And I felt the heat of his breath when he whispered my name. I opened my eyes and turned to see Chance, his body pressed tight against my back.

  He leaned in close, and when I parted my lips he didn’t hesitate to press his upon mine. He’d never kissed me that passionately before. He gripped me tight and flattened his body over mine, like he was afraid I’d disappear right out from underneath him if he didn’t hold me tight.

  “I’ve missed you,” I said breathlessly, squeezing the words in between kisses.

  He smiled. “Then you really don’t want me to beat it?”