California Dreamin'

It’s hilarious actually.

I widen my eyes at him, and he secretly gives me the bird finger from the armchair that he’s sprawled in.

I want to laugh but I don’t.

Tomorrow’s going to be so exciting. Well, once the big talk is done and over with.

Thirty minutes later when we’re in the kitchen though, I regret it. I should’ve laughed right then because I don’t think I’m ever going to laugh again. A very familiar feeling for me but God, this time it feels so real.

So, so real. More real than the illness I have.

Because Dean and my dad are in his study right now and they’re talking. While I’m out here with my mom and my brother in the kitchen.

As soon as they left to go talk, Mom dragged me into the kitchen and gave me some stuff to do—I honestly don’t know what—to keep my mind off it.

“It’s going to be okay. Let them talk,” she told me sternly.

But I can’t focus on anything other than what’s happening inside my dad’s study. I’m running through multiple scenarios in my head.

I’m picturing how it will happen. How they will break the news to us that everything’s okay now. That Dad doesn’t mind if I date Dean.

Will they walk into the kitchen together? Will my dad ask me to see them in his office? Will he have questions? I bet he will.

I imagine and imagine and yet nothing prepares me for it at all.

Nothing prepares me for what Dean says when minutes later, he comes into the kitchen.

Alone.

We have this huge island in the middle, made of white marble, and I’m standing on one side of it and Dean on the other. We’re right opposite to each other.

Technically, the very first thing he should see as he enters the room is me. I’m right there, right where his eyes should land.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t look at me.

He only looks at Mom, who smiles at him. I was doing the same, smiling at him, but at the expression on his face, my smile dies down.

Dean appears grim. And tight. Strained.

I grab the edge of the island to keep myself steady.

“Smells nice in here,” he says to Mom, his voice deep and deceptively unaffected by whatever’s causing him to look like that, so withdrawn. “But I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on dinner. Thanks for everything, Willow.”

And just like that, he turns around and leaves.

I hear his footsteps walking down the hallway, the hallway where I crashed into my dad, the hallway where my dad embraced him like a son.

That was like, two hours ago, right? Dad and Dean hugged each other two hours ago and now Dean’s leaving.

How’s that possible?

The sound of the door shutting behind him wakes me up and I run after him.

I know Dad said no running inside the house, but I don’t care. No one stops me either. I don’t hear my mom calling out for me. I don’t hear my brother.

They don’t stop me from dashing down the hallway, ripping the door open and launching myself into the winter night.

“Dean,” I call out as I see him walking down the brick pathway.

He doesn’t stop. So I take off after him, climb down the porch steps and pump my legs to go catch up to him.

“Dean, stop,” I pant, grabbing hold of his sweater at the small of his back when I do catch up to him.

He stops then but doesn’t turn around.

I see his shoulders heave. They shift and ripple up and down in a jerky motion. I feel it in my heart that begins to jerk as well. I can’t call it a beat. My heart isn’t beating smoothly. It’s jerking rhythmically in pain.

“Dean?” I whisper his name again. As a question. A plea for him to turn around, a call for help because my heart is hurting so badly.

He hears it and faces me.

His breaths are coming out of his mouth in vapor, same as mine I think, as he says, “Get inside the house, Fallon. It’s cold.”

He looks at me, at what I’m wearing, and that’s when a cold breeze hits my body. Or perhaps that’s when I feel it hitting my body.

I’ve got a Harry Potter t-shirt on along with a pair of jeans. I’d taken off my sweater and coat and even my socks a long time ago.

So now I stand here in clothes that are barely any protection from the weather but it’s okay. I hardly feel it.

I hardly feel anything other than his pain.

“What happened?” I ask him, stepping closer, my bare feet sticking to the brick walkway with cold.

“Get inside the house,” he orders, his face edged with shadows and his eyes so dark that they make me think of the depths of a bottomless well.

“No, not until you tell me. Did he say something? He said something, didn’t he?” I grab his sweater with both hands. “I told you that I’d talk to him with you. I told you—”