Page 54 of In Somnis

A cold ripple skates over my skin as I turn the page to the next entry. Being watched? By who?

There was a man in my dream, and he wasn’t like any of the other people in my dream. I couldn’t change his appearance or make him leave. He just smiled at me. But it was a nice smile, a very nice smile.

It sends a small chill crawling up my spine, and I can practically hear her voice in my head when I read her dream entry of the next day.

Okay, so this is going to sound insane, but… he was there again.

Like he expected me.

Another entry about him.

I didn’t invent him on purpose. He just keeps showing up, like my mind decided to replace who it really wants with someone who doesn’t make me feel as if I’m begging for scraps.

Then another.

I should probably be disturbed by how vivid it feels, how real he seems, but I look forward to it. To him.

If dreams are wishes, maybe this is the first time mine have listened.

He keeps showing up.

It’s like the universe finally gave me a version of love that doesn’t hurt.

Shit.

I sit a little straighter as I read the entry from another night, the last bite of the muffin forgotten halfway to my mouth.

When I dream of him, it feels steady in a way my waking life doesn’t. Safe, almost. I don’t have to pretend or brace for disappointment. I don’t have to wonder if I am asking for too much. It’s ridiculous, and I know it’s ridiculous, but he makes me feel free. Like maybe my heart is tired of hurting and decided to give itself a decoy to breathe for a minute. But what if he’s not a decoy? What if he’s the only version of love I get to have?

My thoughts are still racing when I turn the page and read the next entry.

I couldn’t care less if my own subconscious conjured him for me.

If I could stay here with him, I would.

I close the journal over my thumb and stare at the opposite wall, a slow, creeping oh shit threading through me.

I was right.

All those dreams I had of her over the years, the conversations, the laughter, the nights she felt more real than the people in my actual life, they weren’t only grief hallucinations, wishful thinking, or the brain’s weird way of coping. They weren’t my mind inventing her. They weren’t mine at all.

The reason she looked so vivid, so alive, so Tessa every single time is because she was. She was there. She was conscious.

And I wasn’t.

But how the hell did she do it?

How did she manage any of this?

The muffin sits like a small, warm stone in my stomach as my fingers tighten around the journal’s spine.

If she could learn it…

… if she could find a way into dreams so deep she never came back out…

… maybe I can learn too.

Maybe I have to.