The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

“Huh,” she finally says, and I go back to my phone. I know I probably should have offered to get her coffee, or at least show her where the cream and sugar are, but I don’t. There’s a part of me that wishes she’d leave so I can be alone with myself right now, not that that ever helps either.

Finally, she sits across from me. Sips coffee. Waits until I put the phone down. I know what’s coming and I look away, torn between the urge to leave so I don’t have to face this and the urge to tell her everything and see if she stays.

“If you want to talk about it, you can,” she says, and it makes my chest tighten. My heart pound. I have the same urge as ever: smile and laugh and tell her it’s nothing. That I don’t even remember the dream, sometimes this happens, it’s not a big deal.

But Kat’s here, and she’s not flinching, and it makes me brave.

“It’s not what you think,” I tell her.

“I don’t think anything.”

“Of course you do,” I say, the words coming out before I can stop them. “You think I have nightmares about firefights and IEDs and bravely fallen comrades and rescuing civilians from bombed hospitals. I don’t even have good nightmares.”

“There are good nightmares?”

“You know what I mean,” I tell her, pushing a hand through my hair. “The ones you earn by doing heroic shit.”

Kat frowns a little, and I brace myself: here it comes. The pity, the sweet soft oh you poor thing.

“I need your therapist’s number so I can tell him you said that,” she finally says. “Because you two need to unpack it.”

I open my mouth, then close it. Stare at her, lost for words.

“Fuck. Sorry,” she says, and puts her face in her hands. “I just woke up, that was—”

“No,” I say, and she peeks at me through her fingers. “It was—where the fuck have you been all my life?”

“You blew your first chance,” she says, faintly pink.

“What a terrible idea that would have been,” I say, and she snorts.

“You can still tell me, if you want,” she says a moment later, and yes, her voice is a little softer now, a little less sharp but I don’t mind.

“It’s a bathroom door,” I start, and then stop. I realize I’m waiting: for her to scoff and say that’s boring and stupid, for her to roll her eyes and realize I was right about good nightmares.

But she doesn’t say anything. Just waits.

“I’m drunk, in the dream,” I say, and I lean my elbows on the counter top. I don’t look at her. “I’m walking through a filthy apartment, and I know I just heard something, but I don’t know what. It’s quiet, but there’s a light on under the bathroom door. And when I reach it, I wake up.”

I inhale, exhale. “All that for just a door.”

Kat extends her hand, palm up, on the countertop. After a moment I put mine in it, her fingers warm from the coffee mug.

“Tell me you don’t think I’ll believe it’s just a door,” she says, so gently it’s soothing.

“I hardly ever open it any more,” I say, and in that moment, I know. I’m picking the second option: seeing if she stays. “I didn’t last night. Usually I can wake myself up first.” I swallow, stare at our linked hands. “Usually I don’t have this dream.”

I look away from her at that, at the twin echoes of guilt: that I still have nightmares, all these years later. That if I were a better person, I’d be unable to forget and have them all the time.

“But sometimes I open the door,” I hear myself say. “And Mike Hernandez is in there, and the floor is covered in blood, and the gun is still in his hand.”

“Jesus, Silas,” she whispers. Squeezes my hand so hard it hurts, and I revel in it.

“It was my fault.”

“I doubt that.”

I look away again, instead of at her. I’ve got my other hand to my mouth, the knuckle of my thumb against my lips, the edge of my teeth sharp, grounding me.