CHAPTER FOUR || ELI
The literal man of my dreams ran away from me.
I stared after him for all of about five seconds, my brain still completely blank from the shock of knowing he was real, before I decided to follow. I had been dreaming about him for my entire life. No way in hell was I letting him get away now.
I had no choice but to press through the sweaty, drunken mess of clubgoers, but I only lost sight of him when he stepped through the main door.
I was literally three seconds behind him—less time than it takes to take a deep breath in and let it out.
I wrenched the door open and stepped outside.
The air was still far too warm, even though the sun had set hours ago.
I stood there at the club entrance and scanned the sidewalk: a line of people, all of them on their phones, waiting to enter the club; a couple of pedestrians hurrying past, avoiding eye contact; and farther down, a street-involved individual slumped against the side of the building, dozing in and out of consciousness.
But there was no sign of dream guy. Of Nicolas.
My eyebrows drew together in confusion. How had he gotten away so quickly? Even if he’d sprinted off at top speed, I still would have seen him.
Frustration rose up within me. And, oddly enough, tears prickled in my eyes too.
Seeing his face had stirred something in my chest I hadn’t even known was there.
It had been like coming home, as impossible and ridiculous as that was.
Something vise-tight had unclenched in the very core of me, instinctively, even while my brain had been hamster-wheeling wildly, trying to make sense of the fact that he was, impossibly, right there.
Now he was, just as impossibly, gone. Like he’d never been there at all.
Why the hell would he run from me?
Because even apart from the how, the why made no sense either. He had recognized me too. I had seen it on his face.
Which meant… well, what, exactly?
Had he dreamt of me too?
The moment I considered the possibility, it seemed likely. He had stared at me exactly the way, I imagined, that I had looked at him—like he’d just seen a ghost.
But how could he be real?
Had I imagined him? Had my sleep-deprived brain invented something that wasn’t really there?
Maybe I was cracking up. That was a cheery thought.
I had worked multiple back-to-back shifts earlier in the week.
Sure, I had gotten some sleep the night before, but it’s actually impossible to pay down a sleep debt in any meaningful way.
Maybe my brain was broken now—projecting strangeness onto the world, seeing things that weren’t there.
I shivered in the too-warm air of a summer night in Los Angeles as the last of my adrenaline subsided, leaving me tired and trembling.
But no, I hadn’t imagined him, had I?
He had been there. And now, even though there was nowhere for him to have gone, he somehow had. Like he was some kind of ghost or something. But ghosts didn’t exist. And he did.
And I had left Sam in the club. At least several minutes had passed. She would probably be looking for me by now.
She’d only had seltzer water so far, but she was surrounded on all sides by drunk clubgoers. It was a trigger, for sure. And she was probably already drinking, even if she didn’t want to be. Or she was in there, wondering if I had ditched her. Or possibly both. Probably both. She needed me.
At last, I gave in. I made my way back into the club. And even though it was completely irrational, I couldn’t help feeling a deep, crushing loss. And I had no idea why.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” Sam breathed hours later, when I pulled the covers over her chest.
Her breath smelled strongly of mint. She had gotten sick on the sidewalk outside the club, and then again on the side of the road halfway home, and then—improbably—a third time the moment we got back and she had access to a bathroom.
Afterward, she’d rinsed her mouth out with water, then mouthwash, and then brushed her teeth while I watched from the doorway.
“It’s okay,” I muttered, even though it wasn’t.
Getting upset with her wouldn’t change anything, would it?
And it was just as much my fault as hers.
After all, I had left her alone in the club.
We’d been separated for at least a half hour before I finally found her sitting at the bar on the far end—farthest from the door.
She was on her third shot—at least—of tequila, already bleary-eyed and happy.
It was dark in her room. The door was open, but I had turned off the hallway light so it wouldn’t hurt her eyes.
I’d made her drink a glass of water and take some aspirin and a multivitamin before tucking her in—since alcohol consumption leaches essential vitamins and minerals from the body.
She’d feel more or less fine in the morning.
“Eli, no. It was your birthday—”
“Sam, it’s fine.”
“It’s not.” Her words came out soupy and slurred, but I could hear the emotion in them too. It wasn’t just guilt, either. There was a note edging dangerously close to panic. “It’s not fucking fine, Eli. It’s not! I wasn’t supposed to—”
She broke off and let out a shuddering breath. And then another. I listened, frozen in place. I tried to ignore the almost-physical sensation, like she had just punched me square in the chest.
“Just for this one night, I told myself I wasn’t going to do this,” she said at last.
I didn’t know what to say. If I could have found the right words, I would have said them. Instead, I just sat there with her, in the dark, and the silence stretched between us, a chasm I had no idea how to cross. She needed me, but I still couldn’t think of anything to say.
Useless. Helpless. Just like I always was, whenever it actually mattered.
“Eli?” she said after a long time—too long—had passed. She sounded tired, on the threshold of sleep.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I did. That much, at least, I knew how to say.
Her voice grew faint as sleep pulled her under. “I really am sorry.”
The change in her breathing told me she was already asleep.
I stood up, feeling miserable. I made it to the doorway and paused. “I know,” I said under my breath, so quietly she couldn’t have heard me, even if she’d still been conscious. I swallowed my shame and grief, shoving the emotions down where they couldn’t hurt either of us. “Me, too.”
* * *
I stepped out onto the back porch and lit up a cigarette, pilfered from my emergency pack. I don’t smoke often—maybe a few times in a bad week. Which is good, given that it’s one of the best and fastest ways to torpedo your long-term health. But tonight, I needed one.
Sam was still passed out upstairs, snoring softly. And I had already tried watching television, but nothing could hold my attention for longer than a few minutes. I couldn’t focus enough to read.
Though exhaustion stole through every fiber of my being—it was well past three in the morning, that eerie, liminal stretch of night when nothing seems quite real—I still felt far too unsettled to go to bed myself.
And I knew that the moment I fell asleep, I would dream of him again.
The mysteriously vanishing dream man who was apparently very, very real.
But even if I ever did cross paths with him again, he would invariably turn out to be just as bad as any of the other delightful gents I’ve dated.
He’d turn out to be a serial cheater. Or so commitment-phobic that it was pathological.
Or he’d have a substance-abuse disorder.
Or he’d be emotionally—and perhaps, at least occasionally, physically—abusive.
Or he’d be all of the above. Like my ex.
The ex.
Eric Jensen.
I had met him junior year of college. We’d dated off and on for two years.
I had thought I loved him. I had thought he loved me.
And then, four months into our relationship, right around the time the honeymoon wore off, he changed.
It was subtle at first—suggestions that we blow off family stuff.
My family stuff. My friends became our friends.
Then just his friends. And slowly, they stopped returning my texts. Until it was just me and him.
And then he got darker. Meaner. Every problem in our relationship was my fault.
When he ran off and got fucked up on drugs the first time, vanishing for three days without a word, it turned out I hadn’t been nice enough to him, understanding enough.
We’d had a fight right before that, and he thought I didn’t love him anymore.
And then, when I discovered he had been cheating on me, it was because I wasn’t fucking him often enough.
He had needs, didn’t he? Of course he did.
We broke up after each event. And I even stayed away from him—sometimes for days or weeks at a time. Then he’d come crawling back to me, begging me not to leave him. Didn’t I know how much he loved me? Didn’t I know he loved me more than anyone else ever could?
And though I hated myself for it, I caved every single goddamn time.
Sometime after our sixth breakup, he shoved me into a wall hard enough to crack the plaster. He cried most of the night, even though I was the one who probably should’ve gotten stitches. But I forgave him. And then he did it again.
After the third time, I finally woke up. I left him. He called me every day for three months after that.
He was the reason I eventually left Los Angeles in the first place, even though Sam had already started spiraling, her drinking problem getting far worse right after our mom died.
And Eric was the reason why.
He was why I chose to do medical school four hundred miles away, in San Francisco. I would’ve gone farther if I could have, but I needed the in-state tuition. Becoming a doctor is expensive enough without paying out-of-state rates. I quite literally couldn’t afford to run as far as I wanted to.
I hadn’t told him I was leaving or where I was going. Even though we’d been broken up for months at that point, I knew he’d still try to stop me. He’d try to drag me back in, even if it meant messing up my plans. Especially if it meant messing up my plans.
But I had been lucky, all things considered. He was an abusive, narcissistic fuck, but he had only wasted a few years of my life. And I’d gotten away from him relatively unscathed. A lot of people in similar situations weren’t so lucky.
That had been a long time ago. I’d sworn off dating for years after Eric, burying myself as far as I could in schoolwork, right up until I started my residency.
Then, encouraged by one of my well-meaning college friends, I took a chance on another resident who seemed perfect for me.
We dated for two months. Then it turned out he was a junkie.
And just like that, another couple of months down the drain.
It could have been worse. It could always be worse.
But dating anyone right now—especially the literal man of my dreams who may or may not have been some kind of hallucination—was off the table.
My last mistake with two legs and a cock—the married one—had reminded me that there’s nothing good waiting out there for me.
Only more liars and assholes.
I’d spent twenty-nine years learning a very simple truth: men pretty much suck. And I was done with it. All of it. Dating. Romance. Relationships. Waiting for the other shoe to inevitably drop. I was done with the whole thing. No more.
I let out a low noise of frustration when I realized I’d nursed my cigarette for far too long.
The cherry had gone out. With trembling hands, I fished my lighter out of my pants pocket and tried to relight it.
But the moment I flicked the little black Bic, I could’ve sworn I saw a flash of something in the branches of the massive tree overlooking our backyard.
Two pale pinpoints glinted back at me from the darkness. Inhuman. Reflecting the lighter’s tiny flame.
My heart stopped in my chest. Then it lurched into a gallop. Adrenaline surged through me. Some primal part of my brain that only understood predator and prey seized control.
I wasn’t alone.
And then there was movement. A blur of pale skin shot past my field of vision—too fast to follow.
I dropped both the cigarette and the lighter onto the porch steps. Then, without having to consciously decide, I whirled around, practically tore the back door off its hinges, slammed it shut, and locked it behind me, throwing the deadbolt into place.
I wheeled backward, the edge of my hip hitting the wall behind me. I stared at the back door for a long moment, expecting to hear—what?
A thud? Knocking? Scratching? The wailing moans of the damned?
Something.
But nothing happened. Dead silence.
I lurched forward, braced both my hands on the kitchen table, and sucked in huge gasps of air, trying to calm my racing heart.
I had imagined it.
I must have. It was the only explanation. Animals didn’t possess that kind of speed. And people certainly didn’t either. Nothing living could move that fast.
That thought tore a thread of nervous laughter from my lips.
Maybe I really was losing it. Seeing things that weren’t there.
That couldn’t be there. That would be ironic—all this time spent worried about what was going to happen to Sam, when I was the one on the fast track to losing my grasp on reality.
My phone chimed, and I jumped a half-foot at the sudden noise.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, straightening up. It was probably the hospital, wanting me to come in on my night off. Again. Given that I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t relax, and was apparently dead set on scaring myself shitless, the idea was tempting. Even if I was monumentally sleep-deprived.
But when I checked my phone, I saw it was a text message from an unknown number:
I know UR back in town. Still living at home?
My blood turned to ice in my veins for a whole new reason as I read the message. It was Eric. It had to be Eric. I had blocked his number the night before, when he’d texted to wish me a happy birthday. And now he was… what? Using a new number? One that hadn’t been blocked?
My phone chimed again. Another message:
I miss U so much. I’ll do whatever it takes 2 get back with U. I promise.
Then, only an instant later, a third message appeared:
See U soon, baby.