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I kiss the tip of her nose because I can’t help it. “Well, even when I was a lawyer, you were there in the back of my mind. The way you care about people, your empathy for others, it guided me a little. It was when I was faced with a case that I couldn’t excuse was when you really showed up.”
“I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit. Sure, you maybe skirted the line for a few years, but ultimately, you decided to give it all up because you couldn’t bend your morals anymore.”
“Tell me more about your book,” I say changing the subject.
She smirks at me but lets me get away with it. “It’s kind of a mix between Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and Babysitter’s Club.”
“That sounds interesting,” I say with a chuckle because it does.
She shrugs. “Well, you’re not my target audience but I might bounce some ideas off of you to make it marketable for all kids. My hero is into dinosaurs, anime, and loves to cosplay. Her dad dies and leaves her this time machine and she goes everywhere.”
“I love that you are writing science fiction. Remember how obsessed with time travel I was?”
She nods, burrowing into my shoulder. “It transferred to me. I kept thinking about our 1965 conversation that summer and Tom. Even though Serai travels back to see dinosaurs, she also goes back a year to see her dad before he was diagnosed with cancer.”
“Oh man, did you know Tom and I are still friends? He and his husband live in my neighborhood.”
“What? That’s so cool,” she says and it really is. “You have all these friendships from that summer that survived.”
“It was a special summer,” I say, threading my fingers through her silky hair.
She presses her lips to mine. “It really was.”
I spent many years trying to forget that summer but it never worked. Somehow, it got clearer every year. Not necessarily the day in and day out stuff, but certain moments seemed to sharpen and stand out more and more as the years went by. Aunt Lucy’s constant humming of Beatles songs, the sound the lifeguard stand made when we first sat on it. Mollie in her hoodie, zinc on her nose, swinging her whistle.
Then there are the memories that I wished I could have erased. Mollie kissing me, sucking my dick, riding my face. Every time we made love was seared into my memory, rearing up every now and then like a dirty little secret. I dreamed about her for years, and the dreams were almost always sexual.
“I dreamed about you,” she says like she can read my mind. “My roommate thought I was losing it that first year. I’d cry myself to sleep almost every night, then I had these dreams.” She stops and I wait to hear about them. Dying to know what she dreamed about.
“What kind of dreams, Hatchet?”
She giggles. “I like that you still call me that.”
“You know it’s because you tear my soul apart,” I say in a dramatic voice and she pokes me.
“Yes, I know, drama queen.” She hesitates, playing idly with my nipple. “The dreams were erotic in nature.”
“Ah, I see, so you’d wake up in a cold sweat, mid-orgasm, shrieking my name?” I ask, half-joking because I did actually wake up that way a few times over the years.
“Minus the shrieking, who does that?” she asks and I shrug.
“I do,” I whisper and she smiles.
“You had wet dreams about me too?”
“Damn, woman, of course I did.”
“Oh good, it’s nice to know I wasn’t alone in my wet dream misery.”
“Ooh, good hair metal band name,” I say and she pinches my nipple. “Wet Dream Misery.”
“So how many times did you shriek my name?”
“Let’s just say my freshman roommate was also disturbed by my crying and nocturnal emissions.”
“Aren’t we the pair?” she says, and I kiss her full on the mouth.
When she falls asleep, I carry her to her room, where I put her to bed, sliding in next to her. I pull her close, making her the little spoon to my big and feel hopeful for the first time in a very long time.
