Page 40 of The Diamond in the Rough

It was a terrible idea.

For so many reasons.

First of which was the fact that I was absolutely going tosee him again in a work context, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to meet his gold-brown eyes. Not after this.

I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, feeling the wetness in my shorts cooling. My muscles felt loose, but I wasn’t any more tired than I had been.

I knew I shouldn’t do it. Knew in my bones that what I was considering was unethical. Invasive.

Wrong.

I couldn’t stop myself.

No, that’s not true.

I could have.

But I didn’t.

He was standingby the river, his back to me, a wind that I knew was cool ruffling the waves of his black hair.

I always brought people here in dreams, wherever here was. A river, sometimes shallow, sometimes deep, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but always the same river, water rushing cold over stones. Sometimes there was a willow tree—like there was now—and sometimes an open field or a dark, foreboding forest.

I tried, for a while, to keep track of when this place—my subconscious? my psyche? I honestly don’t know—looks each way, but I wasn’t really able to figure out any sort of pattern.

What the wind and water did absolutely reflected my mood. The more anxious I was, the more likely it was to storm, to flood, to gust.

Right now, the wind—forceful, but not violent—revealed my anxiety. The swiftly moving water reflected my nerves.

I walked up behind him, not knowing how he would react.

Afraid he would be angry—knowing that he had every right to be angry because I was invading his sleep.

He was looking around himself, studying the landscape, so he saw me before I figured out what I was going to say.

He smiled.

He had no idea I was a dreamwalker on top of everything else—if he had known, he would have reacted very differently.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, sounding amused.

“Hi,” was all I managed to come back with.

Was that what he’d expect me to say in a dream? If I were in his head? I had no idea. I’m not sure what’s going on in my own head most of the time, much less anyone else’s— Well, okay. I do actually have a pretty good idea what goes on in other people’s heads, just notwhy. Which makes guessing what they’re going to do or say difficult.

Then I realized that he wasn’t particularlysurprisedto see me. Amused. Almost… pleased.

That was not going to stop me from thinking in inappropriate ways about Raj Parikh.

But then he drew my attention back to him.

“So, do you have any idea where we are?”

For a second, I thought he knew that this was all in my head, not his. But then I realized that he couldn’t possibly.

I shook my head, the wind tugging my too-long nondescript blond-brown hair in front of my eyes.

Raj stepped forward. “You know I’d never do this in real life, right?” he asked, laughing a little.