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There.
The most gorgeous, wonderful thing I’ve ever seen. “I dreamed of you.”
A tear glimmers in his eye and he takes my hand, bending to kiss it. “No, that was me, Brandi, me.”
This time when I close my eyes, because they’re so heavy, it’s not oblivion that takes me, but sleep.
The story is beyond insane and I can only remember flashes. Jessica turning up. Jessica coming at me. I hit her. And… and she stabbed me. I don’t remember that. But everyone’s told me I’m a hero.
I’m in a private room now, and every day Travis has been there. His brother had to come with Brian to get him to go home and sleep and he was back the next morning. That was last week.
And me?
I’m healing. Apparently, it was touch and go and I remind myself of all this every time I’m alone, like now. I’m healing and fine and a survivor.
My personal life is still a mess because I don’t know what’s happening. Not beyond the moment I walk out the door. Not any of that.
The idea of the divorce still going through is hanging over us. Just because he’s here means he’s a good man, he cares. But he hasn’t said that he loves me.
The days I’m stuck here, we haven’t discussed what comes next.
What we’ve been doing is talking.
Travis and I are getting to know each other. TV shows, books, music, all the things we never once really discussed. He brought me some awful spy book that I wouldn’t touch and looked offended when I told him that. Offended and thrilled. I told him I like romance, especially fantasy and paranormal and the like. He thinks ghosts aren’t real; I’m sure they are.
He told me my taste in music’s just the kind of stuff kids listen to. I called him old.
And it’s nice.
The fighting and arguing and debating and having fun.
All of it.
We don’t talk of Jessica or the divorce or the problems we have.
We talk about my time on the streets and the fact the only life I knew until my grandparents found me came skating way too close to me doing things I didn’t want to do to survive. Things my mom did until she died. All those boyfriends she had who left her money. How she spent that money after selling herself on drugs first and me second.
How I learned to be smart, wily, and closed off to protect.
I told him Maya taught me a lot, like friendship and loyalty and how my grandparents showed me how to accept.
We don’t talk about the baby that never was.
But there’s a closeness, almost intimacies that happen. Some days he stretches out on the bed on the side I’m not hooked up to things. He holds me, my own personal hot water bottle, and I can close my eyes and pretend this is how it’s meant to be.
And I revel in it, take it down deep into me like a hoarder.
I’ll take it. I’ll take anything I can get.
Because I know it’s coming to an end.
I’m no longer hooked up to the machines, healing well I’m told, and the day’s fast approaching when they’ll let me go. I’m looking forward to it because with all my visitors, I keep running out of time with Travis and I want every second I can get.
Until I’m released, and I have to go home.
We haven’t discussed it.
When he wakes me from sleep sometime later, I’m feeling good, better than good.
