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“Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, the four of us will be here all night. Both your room and the young men’s have been attended to by evening housekeeping. Two of us were in each of the rooms when hotel staff were present.”
“Thank you, Steve. We appreciate it,” Dad said.
“If you need anything during the night, please don’t hesitate to let us know. You can either step outside your doors, or my card is beside each phone in your rooms. If dialed, it’ll come straight to us.” Steve pointed to his earpiece.
Before Patrick and I headed into our room, Mom hugged both of us and Dad told me how proud they were of me.
“Get some sleep, you two. Don’t stay up too late watching TV,” Mom warned.
As soon as I shut and locked our door, I heard Steve say, “Ward, Dawson, and Hawkins are all secure for the night. We’re on standby.” I assumed he was relaying that info to someone else who wasn’t with him outside.
When I walked into the sitting room area, Patrick came over and put his hands on my shoulders and shook me.
“Dude, Hollis! Can you believe this? Security, and everything Corey said about tomorrow. This is so great. I am so happy for you, man. You’ve worked so hard for this.”
“Thank you. It’s all kind of hard to believe. I mean, I guess we’ll see how tomorrow goes. You know how things get hyped up so much and then fizzle out.”
“You won’t fizzle. Dude, you’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen. My God, can you even grasp that?”
I shook my head, then pulled off my shirt and headed to the bedroom to finish undressing.
“I kept thinking about how much Chase is going to love having security around,” I said as Patrick and I went about our evening routine of getting ready for bed.
I always did fifty push-ups and sit-ups before bed. While I was doing those, Patrick was getting our clothes ready for tomorrow. We talked more about tomorrow and how cool it would be to see other high school kids.
In the bedroom, there were two king sized beds separated by a wide nightstand. There was a huge TV on top of the dresser against the wall opposite the beds. Since both of us were tired, we opted to watch TV in the bedroom. That way if we fell asleep, we were already in bed.
“Which bed do you want?” I asked him.
“This one.” He flopped onto the one closest to the bathroom.
We channel changed and mostly watched MTV until about eleven o’clock. I made a comment about a video, and when Patrick hadn’t replied, I looked over at him. He was asleep and slumped down on his pillow that was propped against the headboard. Sitting on his stomach was a bag of pretzels from the snack bar in our room. I shut the TV off and took the pretzels off his t-shirt. I set the bag on the nightstand and shut the light off before I crawled back into my bed.
I woke up to Patrick’s strained voice and bolted upright. I stretched my arm out and turned the light on and saw him writhing around. The sheet and blankets were crumpled at the foot of the bed, and his feet kept sliding in place. It was almost as if he were trying to push himself away. His left hand had the bottom sheet in a death hold, and his right hand gripped his hard-on over his boxer briefs. The look on his face was one of pain and anguish as his voice quietly begged for someone to stop doing something. His head was pushed back against the pillow at a weird angle so that his neck was taut with outlines of his veins visible.
“Patrick,” I called as I pushed back the sheet and blanket and got out of bed. I sat on the side of his bed and took hold of his shoulder and gently shook him. “Patrick, you’re having a dream.”
I covered his hand and tried to get him to relax and release the sheet beneath him. He finally started to react to me, though it wasn’t in a good way at first. His hand let go of the sheet, and he tried to push himself away from me, but I kept my hand on top of his.
“Stop, please,” he murmured. He was trapped between his nightmare and reality.
“Patrick. Patrick, open your eyes. You’re having a dream,” I urged while I held his hand tightly. Finally, his eyes opened and met mine. He looked absolutely terrified. “It was a dream. There’s no one else here. Just us.”
His eyes flicked to the dark entryway to the sitting room.
“I promise, Patrick. It’s just us.”
As he looked around the room, it dawned on me that the unfamiliar surroundings might have contributed to him having the dream in the first place. He was still wary and pushed himself upright as he tried to get his bearings straight. I moved my hand to his upper arm and rubbed on it. I hoped it would maybe help him shake off the dream.
I’d woken him up numerous times before from nightmares since he’d moved in with us. He always needed to get his surroundings straight, and if he wasn’t able to settle down, he’d read or write for a while. But there was something about the look on his face that told me he wasn’t going to be able to settle down easily. His eyes kept moving around the room, almost as if he was concentrating on the dream he’d just had and trying to recall it.
“Patrick.” I squeezed his arm. I didn’t want him to think about the dream. His eyes flicked to mine and then to the clock on the nightstand.
“Man, I’m sorry, Hollis.”
“Don’t be. It’s okay.”
“It’s late, and you have an important day tomorrow—”
