Naked. Man!I saw everything—franks and beans included—in the dim light from the bathroom behind him and the open door leading to the living room.
It was such a shock that it cut my screech off midstream as I covered my eyes, squealing, “Penis!” instead.
“Fuck, shit, sorry,” Jackson stammered, and I heard him shuffling away from me. “Where’s the fucker who hurt you?”
“Eating Thanksgiving dinner with the Golden Girls?”
“Not the time to be cute, Sadie. You don’t have to protect him, ‘cos I won’t get into trouble for killing him, I promise you. Come out motherfucker,” he bellowed, making me jump and feel sorry for my neighbor again. She might wear a hearing aid that she said she took off at night, but I swear she lied when she said she didn’t hear anything from my apartment.
“Jackson, there’s no one here, I promise. I had a nightmare. I dream vividly, and it’s usually about something I’ve watched or read, which I’ve never understood. Still, apparently, it isn’t that unusual…” I broke off, feeling like a total idiot now.
“You’re safe to look again,” he sighed, and when I lowered my hands, I saw him standing with his hands on his hips, wearing black sweats and no t-shirt. It wasn’t a bad view, but mini Sadie from the south didn’t even raise a finger to wave at him. “So, that was a dream?”
“A nightmare,” I stressed. “When I dream they’re like that as well, but they don’t make me shit my pants. Figuratively,” I added when his face scrunched up, and he took a step back.
I swear, even though it was still relatively dark in the room, I saw his cheeks turn scarlet. “I’m sorry about, well, you know,”—he waved at his lower half with his hand—“Your ugly fat cat puked on my leg, so I jumped in the shower. You were out cold, so I didn’t think you’d wake up. Then I heard the scream when I was drying off, and I didn’t think and—”
That’s when the dam inside of me burst. No, not the tear dam, the laughter one. It came out with so much force that I fell backward on the bed and had to hold my side because I got a stitch.
Ironically, it also rocked me back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, the last thing I remembered was trying not to snort and failing as tears streamed down the sides of my face and into my hair. Oh, and I had a bitch of an ache in my stomach muscles when I sat up. And what made it start all over again was the fact that Jackson blushed as soon as he saw me and struggled to make eye contact with me all morning.
I could see why they said that laughter was the best medicine, though, because I felt lighter than I had in years.Chapter TenSadieTwo weeks later…
I felt like shit. This morning I’d woken up to three postcards from Orson. Dad had men in charge of getting them before I did and handing them to the police, but somehow he’d managed to bypass them this time. Lucky fucking me. That was problem number one.
Problem number two was what was on them, and it was making me feel nauseous.
“What’s the relevance of this school?” Jackson asked, pointing at the sign on the first one.
Rubbing my face with both hands, I did my best to settle down to try and push the nausea away. “It’s the school I went to—Hawes Down.”
“Fuck,” he hissed. “And the close up of this white door with the number four on it?”
I could see what he was talking about clearly in my mind, seeing as how I’d grown up in that house. “That’s Mum’s house. I grew up in it until she died, and then we rented it out because she owned it outright and moved in with Nan. Before I moved, I discussed it with my brother and sister, and we moved her into it so she could sell hers and have some money to play around with. He sent one before with the street sign on it, The Glade, so now he’s taunting me with the front door, too.”
“Hate to ask it, babe, but the last one—what does this area mean to you?”
I didn’t want to look. Raising my head, I stared at the picture in front of me, seeing the nightmare play out again like it’d only happened yesterday. “That’s the crossing on the road called Pickhurst Lane where Mum was run over by a driver who was five times over the limit.”
“You need to call your dad, honey. Tell him what’s happened, and I’ll put these in a Ziploc bag, okay?” he said gently, rubbing my back with his hand.
It was fair to say that Jackson and I had become good friends over the last two weeks. We laughed a lot, made fun of each other, spoke about stuff, and I’d even helped him with his online college work. Even though I was pissed at his brother—and also even though I understood his reasons for checking out, because I’d done it myself over the years—I liked the guy, but only as a friend.