Page 95 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

Sean pointed at him. “You’re not getting any.”

Everyone laughed, including me. This is what people did in times of crisis. They rallied around and tried to instil humor and lighthearted banter to diffuse a tense situation.

But there was a fine line between laughing and crying. One minute, I was laughing at everyone’s jokes and the next I was sobbing.

My mom moved to the seat next to mine and wrapped her arms around me. “I know, baby, I know.” She stroked my hair and held me while I cried.

When I was all cried out, I sat back in my seat and stared blankly into space. “This doesn’t feel real. Just this morning, he was fine and now…” I swallowed. “I’m so scared. He’s in an operating room right now and they’re performing brain surgery on that big, beautiful brain of his.”

My eyes filled with tears again, but I blinked them back and gave her a watery smile. “He’s such a wonder. The way he sees the world and the way he lives so fully with all this enthusiasm, it’s contagious. He brings so much color into my life. We drive each other nuts too,” I laughed.

“Like when he brushes his teeth, he squeezes the toothpaste from the middle. And then the tube bends in half and falls out ofthe cup all the time and I’m always trying to fix it and squeeze it from the bottom. You ingrained that in me.”

My mom laughed. “Nothing worse than a wonky toothpaste tube.”

“Right? And when he shaves he leaves all the little hairs in the sink. It drives me nuts. And he always,alwaysputs milk or juice back in the fridge when there’s only like a tiny sip left. Last week, I woke up in the middle of the night because he was yanking the quilt away from me. He said I’m a cover hog and I had them all, but he had nothing.

“But you know when it’s hot out and it’s too hot to sleep? He’ll flip his pillow over and give me the cool side. And he’s always the one who cleans the shower drain even though my long hair is always blocking it. One time when he was away, I called the plumber and told him my drain was blocked. It was just my hair. And when Gabriel was teaching me to drive, he kept hitting an imaginary brake and slamming his head against the headrest like my driving was giving him whiplash. He’s so dramatic but it made me laugh.

“And I just think…that’s what love is, you know? The stupid, little everyday things when you annoy each other and get on each other’s nerves but then you make each other laugh and you think,I could never love anyone as much as I love you. No one makes me laugh the way he does. I don’t want to fight over the covers with anyone but him. I don’t want to clean anyone else’s stubble from the sink. I don’t want to squabble over who ate the last bagel with anyone but him. I don’t want to doany of thiswithout him.”

“You won’t have to,” my mom said.

She sounded so certain that I believed her. Gabriel would come through this like a champ. He was going to be okay, and fifty years from now, we’ll be celebrating our golden anniversary.

I knew we would make it,I’ll say.

I never doubted it for a minute,he’ll reply. You’re the love of my life. My once in a lifetime. Not only in this life, but in the next, too.

I’ll nod, fully convinced that nothing could ever keep us apart.We’ll find each other in every lifetime,I’ll say.

And then we’ll dance in the rain. Two lovers whose hearts beat in sync. Whose smiles hold all the secrets of the universe.

We’ll still be living like Bohemian artists. I’ll still think he’s sexy, and he’ll still read me poetry and serve me coffee in bed.

What a beautiful life we’ll have.

What incredible memories we’ll share.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

You would thinkthat when your twin flame burns out, you would know it.

Your brain would send warning signals.

Red Alert. Red Alert.

SOS. Emergency. Emergency.

You would feel a piercing stab in your heart.

Your organs would shut down and all the air would seize in your lungs until you were left writhing on the floor, gasping for your last breath.

The world would stop spinning. The stars would refuse to shine. And the sun would never rise again.

But when I lost the man I love, I was buying a Snickers bar from the vending machine.

It got stuck so Eddie shoved his shoulder against the machine, throwing his whole weight into it.