First Real Kiss

“Thanks.” She disappeared into her house through the carport door. I watched. Her hips did have a sway, just like that dream of mine.

Coma vision, I should say.

The door shut.

What’s it like inside? Are there tourist location magnets, like I saw in the dream? What about the list on the fridge—does it include my favorite greek yogurt?

Hers was the only two-story house in the neighborhood. It could definitely have an upstairs bedroom. A place where I’d awakened in Sheridan Chandler’s bed.

But she hadn’t been Sheridan Chandler in the dream. She’d been Sheridan … Hotwell?

With a mighty clear of my throat, I located a nearby mechanic’s creeper and lay down on my back to roll beneath the Bronco to get to the chassis. Instantly, I was sixteen years old again. I was rocking the grease-under-the-fingernails, the Dickies overalls of auto-mechanics shop class, all merely by looking at the undercarriage. I got to work, humming classic rock songs in my head, since that was what the shop teacher had blasted on the radio while we practiced skills. This was cake.

“You like Van Halen?” Sheridan appeared beside me with a glass of lemonade and ice.

I rolled out from under the truck to meet her and accept the drink. “You recognize ‘Panama’ just from my humming?” Obviously, the woman was a goddess if she said yes. Cut from cloth made of pure gold.

She sang badly, “Panama-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” albeit very badly. “I like a lot of music. I kind of have a pop culture obsession.”

But could we go back to the fact she could sing songs from eighties hair bands? This woman got better and better.

“Actually,” she went on, “every person I meet I automatically assign them a famous doppelgänger.”

Oh, really? “Who’s mine?”

“Did you ever see that alien puppet guy, Alf, from that TV show? He’s got kind of sparse fur and nasty wrinkled skin?”

She thought of me as an alien aardvark? “Thanks. It’s nice to know you think so highly of me.” I glanced down at my frame. Really? I work out. I’m not that bad.

Beside me, she burst out laughing. “Stop it. You know you’re gorgeous.”

Lurch. My blood halted. Had I just heard those words? Our eyes met, hers sparkling green, and her neck blossoming with red and white patches. She was embarrassed.

No, she was into me!

She blurted, “How’s the oil change going?”

“Finished.” I glanced around the carport. There weren’t any signs of kid clutter. No skateboards or bikes or anything. No stroller or car seat, either.

What about that baby’s cry from the dream?

My post-concussion-newly-awakened curiosity was dying to ask whether she had had children with her late husband, but I knew better. Lola and her sports-loving husband Keith were childless—not by choice—and she’d drilled it into me to never ask. Ever.

The lemonade cooled my throat. “Thanks.”

She glanced at me over the top of her glass. This close, her rich green eyes sparked with the gold flecks I’d seen in my freakishly realistic dream. She blinked, her dark lashes falling and rising again in slow motion. When she lowered her glass, a single bead of lemonade remained on her lower lip. She parted those luxuriant lips, her eyes trained on me.

Breathing should be reflexive, but my body forgot how. All I was was the bead of lemonade, the flecks of gold in her irises, the next words Sheridan might say.

What’s in this drink? Something about this house makes me weird. Like I drank ether. Like I’m floating. Like I need to be with her.

“My husband died in a plane crash.”

My breathing restarted with a small gasp. “Oh.” Him. The guy whose truck I’d just fixed. “I’m sorry. How …” I wasn’t sure how to finish the question.

“How long ago? Eight years. We’d only been married two. He traveled a lot. When he got his pilot’s license, it only got more frequent.”

“You didn’t go with him? Not a traveler?”