Dreams of 18

The creak of the floor, the wooden slats of the headboard, the unpolished door of his closet. Things that I’ve come to love.

It’s open now, the closet door, and I can see my dresses hanging with his plaid shirts.

I put them in there as a joke, telling him that if he keeps buying me all these dresses, then I’m taking over the closet. His reaction was to flip me over and fuck me doggy style on the bed with his thumb in my ass, while he made me watch our clothes together. Every time my eyes would fall shut, he’d tug on my hair that he’d wrapped around his wrist and tell me to keep watching.

He’d ask me, Which one’s your favorite, baby?

And when I’d tell him – the one with pink roses on it – he’d ask me why. He’d ask me to describe it to him exactly like he didn’t know what it looked like.

They still look pretty, my dresses along with his shirts, hanging there.

Everything about this place looks pretty. I can’t believe I thought that this cabin was falling apart. I mean, Graham has done major work over the past weeks and there’s still more to be done but I don’t even care.

I like this cabin.

I love this cabin.

I love it because this is my home. This has become my home in the past weeks.

My things are everywhere.

On the nightstand and on the floor, and when I walk out of the room, I see my pink bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom. Even the air smells like me: strawberry.

This is my home.

My home.

I don’t know why I keep chanting it over and over in my head. I don’t know why it’s hitting me only now that this cabin in the middle of the woods is the first place that I’ve belonged.

But it is.

It hits me even more when I walk down the hallway and I find him there.

My feet come to a halt.

He’s here.

I thought he’d be gone. I thought he’d be at work by now. I thought I had time.

I had more time to prepare myself.

God, he’s here and he’ll have all these questions and I thought I was without fear and I was up until I saw him but I’m not.

I’m just so, so weak.

So weak that I whisper his name. “Graham.”

His back tenses.

He’s sitting on the couch, facing away from me. His shoulders seem to be slouching, bent forward, and I realize he’s got his elbows propped up on his sprawled thighs and his hands lying limply between them.

But all his muscles bunch up at my whispered call.

I see them rippling under the thin t-shirt he’s wearing. He usually sleeps bare-chested but by the time I wake up – always later than him – he has one of his old t-shirts on along with his plaid pajamas.

He stands now and slowly turns toward me. He looks… lifeless.

So blank and empty, almost.

It makes me weak in the knees. They almost buckle. I didn’t think he’d look like that. I thought he’d be… angry.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I thought he’d be mad at me for lying or maybe he’d be disbelieving or something like that. I didn’t think he’d look so defeated.

Yeah, that’s kind of how he looks.

Like he’s lost all the battles and all the wars and now he has nothing to live for.

“You’re home,” I whisper uselessly.

“Your bag. This is what you have in there.”

His voice is flat. No modulation, no high tone at the end alerting that it’s a question. But it is one and he’s waiting for me to answer him. Even though he knows already.

Fisting my hands, I nod. “Yes. I-I carry them everywhere.”

By them, I mean my old journals. The ones I used to write in before I went to Heartstone and stopped writing altogether. The ones that held my dreams and desires and him.

I can see my journals all scattered around on the coffee table, and I know he’s read them all.

“And the pills,” he continues in that flat tone of his.

At this, my chest heaves with a broken breath. There are pill bottles everywhere too, alongside my journals. I left them sitting on the side of the stacked journals for him to find.

“Yeah. I-I need them sometimes. When things are bad.” He keeps staring at me and so I go on and explain, “I was on a regular medication. B-before. But they took me off and now, I have these. For when things are not good.”

I keep my pills right alongside my dreams, all contained in my fat hobo.

I don’t know why I do that, why I keep my dreams and my medication together. Maybe it is to remind me of something. Of things I can’t do now. I don’t know, I just lump them together.