Something She Can Feel
As the clouds shifted in the sky, ambling about like tumbleweeds, my thoughts buoyed between not wanting to think about Dame and hearing him call my name. I tried so hard to block it out, but then, when I felt Evan’s body loosen and then freeze next to me as he descended into sleep, I heard the silence in the room and realized I was alone again. I could sink into my mind and have my secret to myself.
And then I saw him. The brown skin on his arm as we sat at the table at t
he Cypress Inn. It was so chocolatey, so smooth, I could hardly see the hairs curling up at his elbow. He moved his arm from the table and then to his chin, where I stroked it as he smiled at me, laughing and saying something I couldn’t even hear, because I was looking at his lips, his teeth, the dimples in his cheeks.
In the bed, with this image in my mind, I looked up at the moon and slid my hand between my legs. I thought of Dame until I fell asleep next to Evan.
“Journey!” Evan’s voice crashed into my dream. Still between both worlds, I began to open my eyes.
“Huh?”
“Your alarm clock—it went off ten minutes ago. You have to get up to get ready for work.”
I rubbed my eyes and looked at Evan, who was standing in front of me, wet and with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was leaning toward me, his yellow face was so close to mine he looked like a little bobblehead threatening to bash in my brains.
“You must’ve been really tired,” he said, hitting the alarm beside me.
“I guess.” I looked around the room quickly.
“What?” Evan asked.
“What?” I was still laying in the same spot.
“Are you going to get up?”
“Yeah,” I said, sitting up.
“And what were you dreaming about?” He turned to walk toward his closet. “You kept groaning all night.”
Chapter Fifteen
“It was a wet dream?”
“Shh ! Don’t be so loud,” I said to Billie, who was supposed to be in the downward facing dog position. We were in the middle of a class at the yoga studio I sometimes let Billie believe she was dragging me to, talking about the dream I’d had that morning. Billie jumped out of position totally and just sat in Indian style next to me. “And it wasn’t a wet dream,” I went on. “Only a man can have one of those. It was just a fantasy. Like I used to have when I was younger.”
“First off, I have wet dreams all of the time,” she whispered.
“Too much information ...”
The namaste transitioned into the next pose.
“And second, you haven’t had one of your freaky fantasies since college.”
I flipped over with the rest of the class, but Billie just sat there. A woman in front of us was bending over and I could see her head from between her legs. She rolled her eyes.
“I know,” I said. “And that’s what was so odd to me. It was just like it came from out of nowhere. It was so real.... So hot. I could really feel him touching me. And—”I lowered my voice a bit more—“when I woke up, my”—I looked down between my own legs—“was still ...”
“Oh, girl, that’s some damn dream,” Billie said, patting herself with her towel.
The woman in front of Billie rolled her eyes visibly this time and Billie rolled her eyes right back.
“So maybe it’s because you and Evan are having more sex right now,” Billie added. “Like your sexual life is being reawakened and so is your sexual psychological mind.”
“Well, thank you, Dr. Billie Freud.”
“It’s either that or you’re really sexually frustrated about something else.” Billie transformed with the rest of the class into the traditional resting position where we laid on our backs with our elbows tucked beside our torsos.
My head cocked toward the ceiling to open my airways. I didn’t say a word to respond to her suggestion. I hadn’t told her about Dame. About him showing up at the school and us riding around. I also failed to bring up the phone call. I didn’t know why. I usually shared everything with her. But this made me feel embarrassed. And gossiping about the situation would only make it more real to me. More like an actual situation and not just some misguided events I needed to forget about.