I loved the time we spent together.
Our conversations were always easy, never forced. He always made an effort to touch my hand when we talked or to hug me before parting, but he’d never pressed the issue of ‘where things were going.’ I mean, that’s only something girls worry about, right? He probably hadn’t even thought about it. Not to mention the fact that he’d kept his lips far from mine, and he’d never once—
not once
—mentioned anything that he’d admitted back at the cabin last month.
We weren’t moving forward, but we weren’t drifting apart. We were staying still, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Luke was perfectly fine with remaining in the ‘friend zone.’
Maybe he was comfortable not being confined to the boyfriend-girlfriend label.
Maybe he liked his freedom.
Or maybe… well, maybe I had no idea what in the world to think anymore.
“I have to do writing exercises,” I said, and Luke perked up. “Dr. Norwood asked me to write everything down. I have to think back as far as I can to where the dreams begin, and then write as much as I can recall.” I swallowed hard as I remembered the entry I’d completed just a few hours earlier. My latest nightmare had been a doozy. “It’s supposed to be a cleansing process—stop putting so much weight into something that isn’t real, you know? So instead of writing the end or the worst part of the dream, I’m supposed to create a new ending—something happier, something better. Something that makes me smile. I’m supposed to take the dream and put a spin on the outcome to make it something worth thinking about.”
“You’ve been doing that?” he asked, looking down at the journal on the table.
I clutched the notebook in one hand and nodded. “It’s supposed to help.”
“Has it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly.
Luke didn’t seem to understand. To him—maybe to everyone else—the treatment should’ve had one of two outcomes: it’d either helped, or it hadn’t. But it wasn’t that easy.
“The dreams have changed,” I said. “They were much more intense before, much more frightening. Conan was always there. Sometimes Derek… sometimes he never got back to the cabin in time to save me. Sometimes—
most of the time
—I watched myself die in that shower. That was the dream I kept having for weeks after we got home.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I was surprised to see that Luke had suffered the same reaction. His eyes had moistened, but he managed to keep from shedding a single tear.
“But then I started writing,” I said, tapping my fingers across the front of the journal. “Changing the outcome of the dreams, I guess. And… it didn’t really change the nightmares themselves. I suppose the goal was for me to fall back asleep and experience the dream all over again, but with the happier ending I’d come up with. That never happened. I’d just fall asleep and have a whole new nightmare, something completely different.”
“But they’re not as intense?” Luke asked.
“Yes and no. I mean, it’s a different kind of intensity,” I said, crinkling my nose. “That’s vague, I know.” I sighed, wishing I had a way to explain it to him. But the words weren’t there; how could I make someone understand something they had no way of understanding? “I’m sorry….”
“No, hey,” he said, reaching forward and taking my hand. “You have nothing to apologize for—”
“Well, I do,” I said, rolling my eyes to ward off the tears. “You asked me to meet you for lunch, and I’ve treated this like a therapy session.”
“I asked you to come to lunch because I wanted to see you,” he said. “And I’m open to hearing anything you have to say. Always. Okay? I don’t care if it’s about Charlie, Matt, Derek, or the fact that you think you’re losing your mind.” He smiled and shook his head. “You’re not, by the way.”
I smiled and nodded once.
“I know you say that, but you asked me here for a reason,” I said, watching one of my paper airplanes drift about twenty feet down the block. “What’s your angle?”
“Nothing,” he said, taking a drink of water. “No angle.”
“Except?”
“Except that I’ve been curious about something.”
“Ah, there it is,” I said, sitting straighter. “What are you up to, Reibeck?”
“Well,” he said, matching my posture. “There’s a pretty big day coming up for next week,” he said. “And you still haven’t asked me to join you.”
“Join me?” I asked, shaking my head. “Join me for what?”
“Your admissions meeting at the college.”
“Oh,” I said, shaking my head. “No. You’re not going to that.”
“Really?” he asked, wide-eyed and grinning. “And why not?”
“Because I’m not sure
I’m
even going,” I said, picking up my water to avoid meeting his stare.
I braced myself for his argument. I knew he was about to complain, argue, and throw his hands in the air—not for his sake, but for mine. I had every reason to doubt that he actually wanted to go himself, but I had every reason to believe he wanted
me
to.
No doubt that he (like Charlie and Matt) would lecture me about the importance of higher education. No doubt he’d tell me that I’d regret not going.
I knew Luke.
I knew exactly what he’d say.
“Well,” he said, creasing his brow. “If that’s really what you want.”
My eyes shot up from the table and met his stare.
“What do you mean
if that’s really what I want?”
He half-laughed and settled back in his chair. “If that’s really what you want, then okay.”
“Simple as that?”
“Simple as that, kid,” he said. “It’s your life; you need to do what’s best for
you
.”
I watched Luke for a moment. Something about him had changed in recent weeks… something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
I mean, we’d all changed.
I’d had chronic nightmares triggered by post-traumatic stress.
Kara had distanced herself, turned a little colder.
Charlie had become less protective and more accepting of what I wanted.
And Luke… well, he’d become agreeable.
But then there was Derek….
I pushed Derek’s recent behavior aside and focused on the man across the table. Our lunch came out about five minutes later, and we both enjoyed our meals in near silence. Every now and then he’d mention something about work or his family, and I barely brushed over Matt and Kara’s argument; I didn’t want to give him a lot of details when I didn’t have many for myself.
“Listen,” I said after we’d finished eating. I reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Thanks for lunch, but I’m going to cut this short if that’s okay? I’m exhausted. I just need to go home and rest for a little bit.”
“Sure,” he said, nodding once. He cleaned the corners of his mouth with a napkin and then set it aside. “Not a problem.”
We stood in unison, and he stepped forward to wrap me in a tight hug. My tense muscles relaxed inside his embrace, and I rested my ear against his chest. Listening to his heartbeat steady, I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath.
Something about standing so close to him, being underneath his protective hold… something about Luke… it just made everything so right.
“I’ll call later,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Get some rest.”
“I will,” I said, finally pulling away.
As I took a step away from the table—my dream journal clutched in my right hand—Luke reached forward and took my wrist. I turned back and met his stare, and he quirked an eyebrow as he glared down at me.
“Thirteen,” he said, and his tone was suddenly very serious.
“Thirteen?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Thirteen paper airplanes, Julie,” he said, looking down at the sidewalk, over at Grace’s shop, and then down the street. “Thirteen counts of littering. You know that merits a ticket, right? That’s one offense after another.”
I shook my head when I saw the corner of his lip quirk upward.
“Of course,” he said, bringing his stare back to mine. “If you were my girlfriend, I
might
be able to overlook it just this once.”
I watched Luke’s brown eyes soften as he squeezed my hand tighter.
“Wow,” I said, blinking a few times too many. “That sounds an awful lot like extortion.” I twisted my lips to the side with a playful smirk. “That’s a crime, too, right?”
Luke laughed and dropped his head. “Okay. Forget the airplanes. I don’t care.”
“Sounds good.”
“But I still want you to be my girlfriend,” he said quickly, and his smile faded into a soft grin. “I wasn’t joking about that part.”
My jaw dropped a couple of inches, and Luke took a step forward.
“Jules?”
“Huh?”
“Did you hear me?”
I nodded slowly and looked down at the ground.
“So….” He let a long breath pass through his slightly parted lips, and his breath tickled my skin. “Is that a yes or a no?”
Chapter Three
Wednesday, June 05
I’d dismissed myself from the table with every intention of going straight home and climbing into bed. Of course, the last thing I really wanted was to close my eyes, fall asleep, and wake up drenched in buckets of sweat, but I needed rest.
But after Luke surprised me with his question, or inquiry—one I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear—everything changed. I gave him a quick, sheepish answer and found myself walking away from him, clutching the key-shaped necklace I wore around my neck.
I wandered the streets slowly, not really in any kind of hurry to get home.
My mind kept replaying the nights I’d shared with Luke at the cabin. Things had been so rough at first; he’d seemed to have wanted nothing to do with me; his focus was firmly fixed on one thing—sticking to his orders and keeping me safe.
But as days went by, Luke opened up. We talked. We communicated. For the first time in… well, probably ever, we’d found a way to get through to one another. He’d expressed himself, and I’d listened. And vice versa.
We’d had moments, little moments here and there that gave me hope—the way he’d nurtured my wound after I cut my hand… the drive-in theatre… learning that he’d trusted me enough to give me something that had belonged to his mother.
I clutched the necklace even tighter as I continued through the center of town.
As much as I’d wanted to believe everything he’d said and done back at the cabin, I hadn’t been sure what to believe. I thought his honesty had only been something he’d offered up to relieve the boredom or to keep us both from going insane. I’d truly wondered if Luke would go back to his normal, distant self the moment we arrived back in Oakland.
But he hadn’t.
Again, I clutched the necklace.
What a gesture.
I recognized what it meant for him to hand the necklace to me, to trust me with something that meant everything to him. But even though I knew I’d recognized the magnitude of his gesture, I hadn’t told him so.
And I knew there was only one way I could ever repay him, to really show him that I loved and trusted him as much as he loved and trusted me.
My thoughts came to an abrupt halt as I turned the corner of Winston and Barkley and saw Kara coming out of the dry-cleaners. She carried a plastic garment bag over her shoulder, and I could only assume that the overstuffed bag was filled with the red, strapless, sequin gown she’d worn to prom a couple weeks earlier.
I picked up my pace as she placed the dress in the backseat of her car.
“Kara!” I said, calling loud enough to get her attention.
She looked up and caught my eye, opened her door, and got inside the car.
“Kara, please,” I said, jogging a little faster. I stopped outside the passenger’s side door and knocked on the window. She sat perfectly still, looking straight forward.
“I have nothing to say to you, Julie.”
“Kara, I’m sorry,” I said, not really sure why I was apologizing. But I’d deal with the details later. I just needed her to focus on
one
thing—talking to me. “Please talk to me.”
She gnawed on her bottom lip, and then she threw her seat belt off. She opened the door, climbed out, and then slammed the door shut behind her. She powered toward me with her tiny index finger outstretched.
“Your—cousin—is—an—idiot!” she yelled, and I took a few steps back on the sidewalk. “Who—does—he—think—he—is?”
“Um,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “I don’t know, Kara. What did he do?”
“What did he do?”
she asked, and her face twisted.
If I hadn’t known any better, I would’ve guessed that she’d expected me to already know the answer to that question.
“Um,” I said again, and I looked over my shoulders before lowering my voice. “Did he cheat on you?”
“Ha!” She threw her arms in the air, and I backed away yet again. But Kara barely gave me an inch to breathe. Every time I backed away, she stepped a little closer. I suddenly found myself backed against the dry-cleaners’ building. “I
wish
he’d cheated on me!”
“You wish he’d cheated on you?” I asked, probably sounding as dumbfounded as I felt.
“You—said—he—got—a—second—job—to—help—pay—for—college!” she yelled, and she jammed her finger into my shoulder with every enunciated syllable. “You lied to me!”
“Whoa,” I said, swatting her hand away. I rubbed my shoulder for a second—no doubt it was going to bruise—and stared at her. “Why are you mad at
me
?”
“You know Matt goes to the same gym as my cousin Jaden?” she asked, planting both of her hands on her hips.
“No, but I’m sure that’s relevant?”
“Your cousin took locker room discussion to a whole new level last week,” Kara said, grinding her teeth. “Jaden overheard Matt telling all of his friends about how he planned to further our relationship this summer. He told them—all those disgusting, mindless boys—about his grand plan, and he didn’t even bother to run it by me first!”
“Uh…?”
“He told them—
right in front of my cousin
—that he planned to propose to me!
Propose
, Julie! He was going to ask me to marry him!”
“Uh,” I said again because a guttural sound was about all I could muster. “How dare he?”