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“Something tells me you’re not usually a white wine kind of dude.” Dream stepped around the kitchen island and came over to me.
“What, just because I’m a Green Beret you think I can’t enjoy a crisp glass of white every now and then?”
Dream laughed as she placed the glass in my hands, her fingers grazing mine.
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, Duncan?”
“Happy to keep you on your toes.”
She tilted her head toward the couch, and I followed her over. Once she was there, she began frantically pulling pillows and blankets away to clear space for me.
“Sorry – this is kind of my bed and workstation all in one.”
“No problem. Glad to see that you are working on your art.”
Once a space had been cleared for me, I sat on the couch and leaned forward to look at the sketches. They were amazing, of course, with pictures of the Charmed Bay coast done in spectacular detail.
“You know,” I began. But I didn’t finish the sentence – no doubt she knew what I was going to say.
“I do know,” she said, nodding and pursing her lips. “I should be doing this full-time. But it’s trickier than that.”
“Scary, sure. Tricky? I’m not so sure. A woman with talent like this…I can’t imagine you having to grind for too long before you get a good thing going.”
She smiled warmly. “That’s nice of you to say. I mean it. But for the time being I’ve got so much on my mind. Figuring out my art career, if I’m even going to have one, isn’t even close to the top of my priority list.” Her expression turned grave, as if whatever had been troubling her appeared in her thoughts at that moment.
Part of me wanted to not let up, to give her some more words of encouragement. But the better part of me knew that I needed to get to the point, to the reason I’d come.
“Anyway,” she said, shaking her head as if coming out of a trance. “I could tell from the moment I opened the door that you had something on your mind. What’s up?”
I took a sip of my wine, trying to decide where to begin. It was bizarre. I’d spent the drive going over in my head exactly what I wanted to say to her. Now that I was there, now that we were alone, my mind was totally blank. There was something about Dream that made it hard to think straight.
Or maybe it was just those tiny shorts she had on, the way she was sitting with her legs crossed that put her full, luscious thighs on display.
I cleared my throat, deciding to start with the name at the center of the issue.
“Adam.”
The smile vanished from her face the moment I said the name. She glanced down, quickly taking a sip of her wine, her thumb rubbing up and down the glass’s stem.
“I’ve been thinking about what happened at the market, what Clarissa said. Just the idea of Adam coming back here after what he pulled and trying to get into your good graces…it makes me mad, to put it really, really freaking lightly.”
“Well, he certainly tried,” Dream said, her voice lower than usual.
“He what?” My fists balled up at my sides. “If he hurt you again, I’m going to--”
“Calm down, he just found me in town and tried to apologize for all the bullshit,” she said, her facial expression making her seem more distant, as if she wasn’t really there with me. It was clear that whatever happened earlier had really upset her. “He tried to tell me he was a different man, that he would change.”
Anger boiled up in me, and I clenched my jaw hard for several seconds to try and let the rage pass. It did, and I went on. “And did you tell him to fuck right off?”.”
“Well-- not exactly, no.”
“Listen, I know that I have no right to tell you how to live your life, but please, Dream. I care about you, and there’s no reason why you should waste even a second more with someone like him.”
She listened attentively, the warmth in her eyes suggesting that she was more than receptive to what I was saying.
I could’ve stopped there. I’d made my point, that she shouldn’t be with Adam. What more needed to be said?
But I didn’t stop there, and what came next seemed to have left my mouth of its own accord.
