For All You Have Left

Chapter Twenty-Three The Dream

“You’re so cute when you sleep.”

I turn my head over on my pillow.

“Andrew,” I whisper.

He’s standing in the doorway. His honey-blond hair with its sprinkled russet streaks sweeps across his forehead and covers the tops of his ears.

“Let’s run away together,” he says, taking the few steps from the door to my bed.

Instantly, I feel a happy grin shoot across my face.

“Okay,” I whisper.

He lies down beside me, puts his arm around my waist and pulls me closer to him. I let him do it, but as he does, I stare into his dark brown eyes. I just keep searching them, trying to make sure they’re real, until suddenly, I feel tears start to fill my own eyes.

“Baby, don’t cry,” I hear him say, bringing the back of his finger to a place under my eye and wiping away my tears.

I try to laugh because his eyes are real, and he’s really here with me, and I have nothing to cry about.

“We were a small-town scandal, weren’t we?” I ask, through my tears.

He keeps his eyes in mine for several moments. He’s wearing a smile, but it’s faint.

“What if we never would have…,” I begin.

“Shh,” he says softly, as he breaks his stare from my eyes and moves his lips to my ear.

“Logan, we weren’t a scandal,” he whispers. “We were in love.”

I take a minute and let his last word echo through my ear, and then through my mind and finally, through my soul. Then, I grab a hold of it and tuck it away inside my heart.

“Andrew,” I say and then stop and wait for his eyes to find mine again.

“What, babe?”

“Is there hope for us?”

He pauses and draws a long breath.

“For us…I don’t know, baby,” he says, at last, forcing the air out of his lungs. “But for you, yes.”

I watch his lips gradually turn up at one end.

“Hope is a funny thing when you think about it,” he goes on. “It’s always right in front of you.”

My gaze falters and falls to the pillow.

“You just have to see it,” he whispers.

I look back up into his eyes and then sigh.

“Andrew.”

“What, babe?”

“I miss you,” I say.

He squeezes me tighter, and I can smell his cologne on his tee shirt. I breathe it in until I feel as if my lungs are going to explode.

“Andrew,” I say again.

“Yes, baby?”

“Let’s go to Paris,” I say. “I always wanted to go to Paris with you. Will you go with me?”

I watch his lips quiver, trying to turn up, but they don’t ever make it to a smile. And instantly, I feel the warm tears pressing against my eyelids again because I know what that look means.

“Okay,” he says, slowly nodding his head. “We’ll go to Paris.”

He takes my hand.

“We’ll go tomorrow,” he whispers.

“No,” I say.

I start to shake my head.

“No,” I cry.

There are tears falling down my cheeks like rain now.

“We have to go today,” I cry. “Life will tear us apart, Andrew. We don’t have tomorrow.”

Suddenly, my eyes open, and I’m frozen. I look around the room. Everything is normal and still and quiet. I wonder why I’m awake, and then it hits me. I quickly turn over and look to my left. There’s no one there. I lose my next breath, and my heart sinks. I reach up and touch my cheeks. There are no tears on them, but I feel as if there should be.

I take a deep breath in and then slowly push it right back out again before I peel the covers back and sit up on the side of the bed. I really hate my dreams sometimes. And I can’t even call them nightmares because I love them too. I love them, but I hate them because I can’t stay in them. They’re my tortured dreams.

I close my eyes and try to replay every moment of the dream in my head. I try to replay his boyish, raspy words and his warm, soft breaths against my skin. I try to remember the smell of his cologne and the perfect way his shaggy hair fell across his ears. I try to replay it all — exactly the way it used to be. And then I get to the part where I realize exactly the way it is, and my heart aches.

“No,” I cry.

I double over and cradle my face in my hands. I miss him. I miss his voice; I miss the certain, special ring it used to have to it that always made me feel loved. I try to recall the hum of his words, the ebb and flow of every syllable as it trailed off his lips. In my dream, the voice sounded perfect — like a song, my favorite song — but now, I can’t hear it anymore.

I want to go back and change everything. I can’t help but think that if we never would have gotten married that day, that things might have been different. It might all have played out differently if we had just waited. And maybe it was karma — getting back at us for eloping or for being too young.

I pull open my nightstand drawer. In a corner, under the marriage license and a birthday card from Hannah, I slide out a ring and slip it on. At least Hannah hadn’t found this. I twist the ring slowly around the base of my finger with my thumb. And I let my eyes get lost in its little diamond and its little, breakable promise inside. Then, after a moment, I fold my other hand over the ring and bring both hands to my chest.

“Forever and a day,” I whisper to myself, before I slowly slide the ring off and carefully tuck it away again, underneath the marriage license and the birthday card. And then I close the drawer.