Page 5 of We Live Here Now

4

Emily

I’m dreaming, I know I’m dreaming because although I’m back on that narrow cliff path, I’m wearing a hospital gown and a ventilator mask on my face and not my shorts and T-shirt.

I’m walking ahead of Freddie, like I was then, annoyed at the heat of the Ibiza sun that burst through the clouds just as we’d reached the trickiest part of the hike and at the baked sandy stones that make my footsteps unsteady. I didn’t even want to do this walk; I wanted to stay by the pool and have some time to myself. But Mark and Iso paid for the whole holiday, the luxury villa, the ridiculous chef, and none of us could say no. Cat is up ahead with Russell, and I know she’s not struggling but she didn’t want to come either. I could tell. The six of us, different-colored threads once wound tight around the spool of friendship, now unraveling, pulling in different directions.

It’s all slower in the dream than it was, as if with each step I’m being dragged through honey to the inescapable future. Freddie’s close behind me, and while we’re making an effort for the others, we’re in foul moods with each other. We haven’t had sex once since we came away and it’s really starting to piss him off. I walk a little faster, trying to put some space between us—a space big enough for all my secret guilt—and a few pebbles scatter over the edge. It’s not a sheer cliff edge here but maybe a fifteen-foot drop undulating to fifty in places. Far enough to kill yourself, for sure, and hearing the noise, Iso looks back at me. Iso, hair white-blond, perfectly beautiful, my oldest friend—is she even really my friend anymore or are we habit?—shields her eyes with her hand to check I’m okay, but I wave her and her perfect thighs on.

“I’m okay,” I call out to her. In reality, I’m so very far from okay. I’ve done something terrible, I’m consumed by a guilt that stops me sleeping and has left me with a growing reminder of my mistake, and in moments everything is about to get very much worse.

“You don’t have to, you know.” It’s Russell’s voice and in the dream he’s momentarily there beside me, before I start to climb the incline I’m about to fall from. “You can turn back now.” In the dream he whispers with a stale breath. “Bad things are that way. You’ll die if you go that way.” He starts to fade then, evaporating as I look at him.

“It’s too late,” I answer, confused. “I’m already there.”

The rest of the dream replays as it happened. I hear Freddie muttering behind me about going faster, close on my heels, pressuring me to speed up. I take a large stride and bite my tongue to stop myself from saying a million things I might or might not regret, and instead I focus on the promotion and starting my new role in ten days and the lie I’ll tell Freddie so he’ll never know, and then, as I swat a fly away from my face, I stumble forward. At least I think I stumble—or did he knock into me—and as I turn to confront him, my ankle twists under me, I lose my balance, and as I tilt backward—no no no no—I stretch my arms out to Freddie, my hands grasping for him. He reaches out. He does. I know that. I see that. So do the others, turning back to see why I yelped, but his fingers don’t even brush mine and I’m sure he could lean farther forward, and our eyes meet and as mine plead, all I see is fear—and is that relief?—in his. And then I start to fall.

In the dream I go from the endless terrifying fall straight to the broken bones and the beeping hospital machines and the sepsis and the fever and the coma and the—

Death is cold. Even when just for a little while.

Death is so very, very cold.