Page 28 of In Somnis

This Tessa is present in all the ways a body can be and entirely absent in the only one that counts.

“Hey.” My smile feels shaky, but I brush the back of her hand with my fingers, where it rests limp against the chair. Her fingernails are bare, but she’s warm, which helps ease my worry. “Hey, girl.”

She doesn’t pull away or turn toward me with the fake glare how she might have when I’d startled her in the past. There’s nothing at all.

She’s nothing like the girl I’ve seen in the dreams I’ve had for the last decade.

I glide my thumb over her knuckles anyway. “I’ve missed you so much.”

When she doesn’t react, not even a twitch, my smile wobbles and dies.

Nora’s hand settles on my shoulder. “Hope is the cruelest kindness we’re given.” Her hand squeezes once before she pulls away. “I’ll tell Simon to bring the tea up to you both.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

The click of the door behind her echoes through every part of me.

Suddenly, I feel stupid.

So unbelievably, painfully stupid.

“I’ve missed you like crazy, you know? Every. Day. Since the day you just… disappeared.” My knees give before my courage does, and I sink onto the chair next to hers. “I mean, God, I showed up here because of a dream.” My laugh is shaky. “A dream, Tessa. Who does that? Who crosses the country because their best friend invited them in a nightmare? But… it tracks. This is my life right now.”

I look over at her blank expression and cringe.

“Big of me to complain about my life while you’re… like this.”

What I wouldn’t do to hear her laugh again, even just once. Tessa had the best laugh. It burst out of her whole body and turned into a snort if she got going. I miss her dragging me out for midnight milkshakes, flirting with the wrong men like it was a sport, and how she was always filling journals with chaos and poetry.

Then her light started to dim. She slept more and talked less, but still wrote constantly in her journal, but she stopped sharing any of it with me, as if whatever she was putting on those pages was too heavy or private for even our friendship. Then one morning, I woke up and found her lying exactly like this, eyes open, breathing steady, staring straight through the ceiling as if she were somewhere else entirely, and she never came back.

The school nurse didn’t know what it was, the paramedics didn’t, and neither did the hospital. Every specialist her mother dragged in left with the same answer.

Tessa is physically fine. But mentally…

I remember sitting alone in our dorm room, making tea at two in the morning because I couldn’t sleep, and I remember thinking, I should go be with her. I should be there for her. And I thought about the tuition my dad worked so hard for, and the part of me that didn’t know how to be useful in a crisis, I couldn’t cook my way through, so I stayed where I was.

I’d told myself I’d visit.

I told myself Tessa would come back.

Twelve years. Twelve years of telling myself that.

“I’m here now,” I whisper, my throat tight as I place my hand over hers again. “Even if you can’t hear me. Even if this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, I know you wanted me here. I know you did, and I’m not leaving yet.”

Even if this is as hopeless as the rest of my life.

A few minutes pass in silence before a small, painful laugh breaks out of me. “This is so not the future we planned, huh?” I draw in a shaky breath when I think back to the journal filled with plans for our restaurant. “I didn’t exactly get to finish culinary school either. A few months after you… after that day, Dad had a heart attack while making Mom French toast. We couldn’t afford tuition without his income, so I dropped out a year short of graduating and now my mom…”

The words crumble before I can finish them, and because my brain hates me, it latches onto the one thought I’ve been avoiding since I walked into this room.

If the dreams with her were real, then she already knows all this.

Right?

“I’m so tired, Tess. I’m so fucking tired of losing people.”

There’s a soft knock, and before I can wipe the grief off my face, the door opens. It’s the guy from earlier, Simon, apparently, gliding in with a silver tray with two steaming mugs.