Page 11 of True Sight (Nat. 20, #4)

CONRAD

S creeching tires. A woman’s scream. The distinct sound of metal crunching.

And suddenly I feel like I’m drowning and water is filling my lungs.

I can feel myself fading, unable to breathe, when suddenly I’m taking in gulps of air and sitting up in my own bed, soaked through my shirt in sweat.

My lungs are doing everything in their power to take in as much air as possible as my hands scrub down my face.

It’s been a few days since my last nightmare but they’re all the same.

The sound of rubber against asphalt. The vision of a woman’s face—my mother’s face—staring back at me, bleak and lifeless. And the distinct feeling that I’m about to drown if I don’t wake up in time.

As my eyes adjust to my bedroom I notice that I am, in fact, not drowning in anything other than my own sweat.

After taking a deep breath, I peel the shirt off of me and toss it to the floor.

While my heart rate slows, I stand from my bed and walk to open up the door to Annie’s kennel to let her out, which she happily accepts.

We’ve come to an agreement that at night she has to sleep in her kennel.

She dances around my feet as I walk towards the bathroom to turn on the shower.

As I pass the kitchen, I notice that the clock on the oven reads 2:45 and that the sun is still fast asleep just like I know I should be.

But the nightmare had come, just like it had four days ago, and now I’m wide awake.

Friday. The nightmare. Getting Henry’s text at 4:00 a.m. after I’d been up for an hour.

He asked me why I was up and I lied to him by saying I couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t a full lie, but it wasn’t the full truth either.

I hadn’t been able to sleep but the reason for my lack of rest had been kept close to the chest. Not even my friends know about the nightmares and I plan to keep it that way.

The only person who knows about them is Hanna and that’s because I’m paying her to fix me.

It has been months of dealing with the same recurring nightmare and years of my friends telling me I need to lighten up.

For some reason, the nightmares are happening more frequently now—at least two to three times a week.

And the ‘stick’ as my therapist likes to call it had been shoved so far up my ass a long time ago that I don’t even seem to notice it anymore.

But everyone else does and I don’t want to be a burden to them or become so insufferable that they don’t want to hang out with me anymore.

I’ve already lost my family; I can’t lose the people I choose to call family too.

Thinking about the nightmare I’ve just woken up from, I remember Hanna’s request that I write them down and track them in a journal of sorts.

Being me, I refuse to get a journal to write them in so I opt to just write them down in a note on my phone.

I always leave my phone in the bathroom to charge because sleeping with your phone in your bedroom will kill you.

Picking it up off the bathroom counter, I half expect to have a text message waiting on me from Henry.

If his schedule is the same as it was a few days ago, he’ll be teaching a class sometime soon.

I can’t believe he’s getting up in the middle of the night to teach classes for people back in London.

I think I’m weirdly addicted to work but he’s in a different fucking universe.

And why is he always so happy all the time?

No one can truly be that happy all the fucking time.

Every time I’ve seen him or talked to him there’s this energy radiating out of him that reeks of positivity and joy.

It’s annoying.

When my phone illuminates in the darkness, I find that I have no new messages waiting for me.

A sense of disappointment pings in my chest which I think is odd because what do I have to be disappointed about?

So what if he hasn’t texted me? Having a text from him outside of business hours would be a severe invasion of my personal time anyways.

Not like he seemed to mind that because he texted me several times this weekend with questions about his project.

I’d started to collect them in his own special note on my phone so I could answer them all at our weekly meetings, the first of which being today.

I curl my lip at the thought of him sitting across from me, his green eyes watching me as I work on his project, asking me more questions than a normal human would.

Deciding that if I’m going to be of any use today, I know that I’ll need to shower fast and try to get back to sleep.

I’m meeting him at eleven per his request which means if I shower in less than fifteen minutes, I can get back to bed a little after three and still get a solid four hours of sleep.

I strip out of my boxers and step under the hot water.

As I start to rinse the cold sweat off my skin, I take a few deep breaths.

I always find it hard to relax after a nightmare but over the last few months, I discovered that a nice hot shower and fresh clothes helped take the edge off.

I turn under the falling water and let my mind bounce around the thoughts that clog my brain.

How, no matter what I try, the nightmares still come back.

That I’ll have to tell Hanna about tonight’s nightmare when I meet with her on Thursday.

How I hope that when I see Henry later this morning, he doesn’t ask me any stupid questions or tell me that I need to sit up straight.

That his eyes remind me of evergreen trees or a forest of old oaks that always stand strong and steady.

I shake my head at the last one and wipe some water out of my eyes. Where the hell had that come from? Why am I thinking about Henry, in the shower of all places, and the color of his eyes?

“You’re just tired. Hurry up and get out of the shower and go back to bed,” I mumble to myself.

Following my own direction, I step out of the shower, wrap a towel around my waist, and head back to bed.

Once I have on clean clothes, I crawl into bed and stare at the ceiling.

It’s only then that I remember that I didn’t put Annie back into her kennel and she’s sitting on the floor beside me, begging me with her eyes to be allowed to come up.

“Well, come on then,” I offer with a wave of my hand. She takes a big leap and settles herself into the crook of my side, curling up into a ball and falling asleep almost instantly.

As I lay there in the darkness, I wonder if I’ll make it through till morning without the nightmare coming back. I wonder about how my meeting with Henry will go and why I thought about his eyes the way I did. Pure exhaustion, I’m sure.

But if that is true, why are they the last thing I think about as I drift off to sleep?

And why, as I do, does my core feel a little warmer than it should?

On time as always because when I’m late my skin starts to itch, I sit at the same table we’d met at last week.

Looking at my watch, I note that it’s exactly 11:05 a.m. and there is noticeably no Henry.

I chew on the inside of my lip as I look around and notice all of the other people mulling about and sipping whatever drink they’d ordered.

They all seemed on time, why isn’t he? I mean, really, how fucking hard is it to be on time for things?

I try to qualm the rising feelings of irritation and annoyance I feel bubbling up inside of me.

Letting go of needing everything to be perfect and exactly as I planned is something I’m working on.

Malcolm would love to know this little piece of information after years of me giving him a hard time about being punctual.

“Hello there,” Henry’s voice singsongs as he pulls the chair out across from me. “So sorry I’m late, I had a meeting go a little too long over at the studio.”

“It’s fine,” I grind, opening up my laptop to show him the early developments I have for him.

“Are you alright?” His voice curves as he asks, causing his English accent to sound even thicker than before. My eyebrows crease in the center of my face as I look at him.

“I’m fine, why?” Suddenly I pull my shoulders back and sit up as if a rod has been implanted into my spine. Maybe he’s about to comment on my posture again.

“You look…well if I’m honest, you look exhausted,” he comments, looking at me with concern in his eyes. I shake my head, surprised by his observation but more surprised by how much his concern impacts me.

“Uh, yeah, maybe I am a little. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“Why not?”

“ Why not ?” I repeat, my words coming out defensively.

“Yeah, why not? You didn’t sleep well last night and then again last Friday.”

“How did you know I couldn’t sleep last Friday?”

“You told me so after I texted you in the morning after class and you responded almost instantly. Remember?”

Oh .

In my exhausted state I’d completely forgotten about our texts from last week.

“So why aren’t you sleeping?” He leans across the table on his elbows and when he gets closer, I notice two distinct dimples creating divots in his cheeks. My finger twitches in my lap, suddenly wanting to press itself into one. What the actual burning hell is wrong with me?

“Why do you care?” I snap, wanting to move past this conversation as quickly as possible. He doesn’t flinch at my assholeness in the slightest but squints his eyes at me like he’s considering something.

“I care because I think we can be friends and I care about my friends’ wellbeing. You mention you’re not sleeping more than once and then you show up to our meeting looking like you got hit by a bus. A good friend wouldn’t ignore those things.”

“Gee thanks,” I scoff before crossing my arms over my chest. “And who says we’re friends? You hired me to do a job, remember? And isn’t that why we’re here in the first place, to talk about the work I’m doing for you and to answer your questions? ”

“Is something happening? I know we only just met but you can talk about it with me?—”

“I’m having nightmares, okay?” I nearly shout at him.

My chest is heaving up and down and the words feel hot as they escape the back of my throat.

“I’ve been having them for months now and recently they’re happening at least several times a week.

They wake me up and then I can’t sleep and now I have a dog who’s always in my face and needs to be walked three times a day and even when I let her get into bed with me I still can’t fall back asleep so then I’m just awake until the sun either comes up or I eventually pass out again. Are you happy?”

Henry sits back in his chair and presses his tongue into the inside of his cheek awkwardly. He looks like he’s about to speak again but I interject before he can.

“I don’t really want to talk about it if you don’t mind. I’d like to keep some resemblance of personal boundaries and privacy.” My arms are wrapped even tighter against my chest and my nostrils flare. He waits for a few moments to see if I have anything else to say before speaking.

“What’s your dog’s name?”

“ What ?” I’m ready to get up and leave but the way he looks at me and the amount of money he’s already paid me keeps me glued to my chair.

“You said you have a dog. What’s its name?”

“Why are you?—”

“You said you don’t want to talk about the nightmares so I figured we can talk about your dog. Or is that also off limits and outside your resemblance of personal boundaries and privacy?” His tone mocks my own as he cuts me off. I shift in my seat and glance around the coffee shop.

“Her name is Annie. ”

“Annie, that’s a cute name. The sun will come out tomorrow,” he sings and I can’t help but roll my eyes.

“Yep. That’s the one.” He’s smiling back at me now and I worry for a moment he’s about to break out into song. The warm September sun breaks through the old windows and casts a light across the top of his head, highlighting the soft auburn color of his hair.

“Is she cute?”

“Some people would say so.”

“You think she’s cute. And you love her, I can see it written all over your grumpy face.” He wiggles a finger in my face and scrunches his nose at me.

“I do not have a grumpy face,” I argue, annoyed that regardless of how much time people spend with me they have no issue seeing that I am, in fact, a grump.

“Okay, you don’t have a grumpy face, sorry I brought it up.” He raises his hands in front of him as if I’m threatening him with a weapon. “I’ll file your grumpy face under things we aren’t allowed to talk about.”

I scowl at him from across the table and check my watch, needing something to do with my hands. Between his tardiness and my little confession, we’ve wasted half an hour of our meeting already.

“Can we just talk about your project, please?” I sigh, turning my laptop a little more so he can see the screen.

“Sure, we can just talk about my project.” He smiles, putting his dimples on full display again.

My fingers move across the trackpad to wake up the sleeping machine and I type in my password.

“Hey, do you think we can hangout sometime?” My eyes lift to meet him hesitantly.

He’s leaning on his elbows again and has his head dipped low as if he just told me a secret.

“I don’t have many friends here—well I think I have one but she’s also an instructor I just hired so I don’t know if that counts. ”

“And I’m the guy you hired to build you a fully custom website and app. Why am I any different than she is?” I have enough friends already and a few I never wanted in the first place. Unfortunately for him, there is no friendship application I’m currently handing out.

“I don’t know, you just are,” his voice trails off as he looks at me with a lazy grin. I squint at him, unsure and overall unenthused by the entire idea. But part of my job is making my clients happy and if letting him believe we can be friends makes him happy, so be it.

“Sure, maybe. But not on Wednesdays, I have standing plans on Wednesdays.” I open the file I made specifically for him that answers the question he asked me on Friday and turn my computer to show him.

“Fine, just not on Wednesdays,” he smirks before turning towards the computer and finally focusing on work instead of me.