Dreams of 18(20)

And my weird hang-ups won’t stop me.

It’s a small town. I bet someone will know where to find him. My plan is to go to the bars first and ask about him and –

“Holy shit,” I breathe out and halt in my tracks.

Someone bumps into me from behind but I don’t move or pay attention to their mumbled apology and my anxious heartbeats.

Because I’ve found him.

I’ve found Mr. Edwards.

Or at least, his truck. His black truck is parked across the street, and like a lunatic, I run toward it.

It’s definitely his truck.

There’s the Connecticut plates – which apparently, he hasn’t changed – and that’s his plate number that I could recite even in my dreams.

It’s parked right in front of a bar. There’s a window to the side, a big window, and without thinking about it, I approach it.

The interior is neon-y and dark. The walls are made of dark wood and there are leather booths to the side, along with a few free-standing tables in the back.

The place is somewhat crowded, and I scope through it, looking for him. For that one man for whom I drove thousands of miles and crossed multiple state lines.

And in a rush of breath, I find him.

My legs stagger a bit when I see him sitting in one of the leather booths close to the window.

“Holy fucking shit,” I whisper. “Mr. Edwards.”

He’s here.

I found him.

And God, he’s glowing.

Something is illuminating the contours of his body. Even through the tint of my sunglasses, I can tell its sparkly and bright.

It’s something out of a dream.

Thousands and thousands of dreams that I’ve had. Some drunk, some electric. Some psychedelic and stoned. Some lonely and horny.

But all of them about him.

I press my hand even more aggressively on the glass window, probably leaving the print of my fingers and palms.

In fact, I give my entire weight to the thick glass as I watch Mr. Edwards.

He’s sitting alone, all shiny and magnificent and I’m finally basking in his light after ten months.

Ten fucking months.

Right now, his head is bent and except for the dark mess of his hair, I can’t see anything else of his face. His elbows rest on the wood, his strong, veiny forearms exposed.

He caught me with those hands when I stumbled the night I kissed him, my feet tipsy and my body drunk.

I bite my lip as a great big shiver runs down my spine.

I know I’m flushed; I can feel the heat spreading all over my skin. It’s the kind of heat I haven’t felt in a long time. It has nothing to do with the prickling.

It’s different.

It’s from the olden days, thick and edgy.

I’m itching to go to him and I don’t even care about the logistics of it all, the front door, approaching him through the crowd and all that.

But then, I become glued to my spot like I’ll never move again. Because he’s not alone anymore.

A woman approaches him.

She’s tall, made taller by the heels she has on. She moves toward him slowly and with swaying hips, which look very rounded and soft in the tight dress that she has on.

I can’t tell the color of it through the lens of my glasses but I think it’s dark and appealing. Mostly because Mr. Edwards lifts his eyes, finally.

So far he’s been staring down at the bottle like he doesn’t care for the world, like nothing is interesting or worthy of his attention. But now something has suddenly appeared.

As soon as his spiky lashes flutter up and his eyes come into view, I breathe on to the glass, fogging it up.

Those eyes.

Hazel, chameleon, unpredictable.

So unpredictable that I used to make up silly guessing games about them. I used to wonder about the nuances and shades of brown and green when he was unhappy with one of his players.

On the night of the kiss, his eyes appeared black.

I wonder what color they are now, as he’s flicking his gaze up the body of the woman, both emotionlessly and with such laziness that I can’t help but bite my lip again as I feel every fucking inch of it.

The woman is smiling in what I think is a seductive way, so I guess she can feel it too. The intensity of his eyes.

For some reason, it makes me want to claw through the glass and run to them. It makes me want to stop them.

Should they really be looking at each other that… sexily in a public place? There are people here. There needs to be some decorum.

Then, I forget everything when he deigns to lift his face.

At last, I can see his features. I can see the sharp jut of his cheekbones and that hard jaw. God, he has a beard now.

A beard. Thick and dark. Almost wild like the front yard of his cabin.

At the discovery, I really go and claw my fingers on the glass, digging in my nails.

While the woman who’s now bending over him, exposing her fantastic cleavage, buries her fingers in that beard of his.

Mr. Edwards turns to the side and opens his powerful thighs and she steps into them. When she does, he smiles.

Jesus Christ, he’s smiling.

Not the full-blown smile. No, he’s too serious and too stern for that. It’s half a smile. Maybe even less than that: a quarter of a smile. And since he doesn’t do it often, or at least I haven’t seen him do it a lot, pull up his strawberry lips like that, it has an effect similar to a thunderstorm.