A Beginner's Guide to Dream Interpretation
Emma pushed the blanket away and rolled onto her side. Her alarm clock was kind enough to show her that another three minutes had passed since the last time she’d checked, and she sighed wearily. An hour and thirty eight minutes had passed by now, and she was starting to understand that she was only managing to drift further and further away from her intended goal of slipping into sleep and forgetting about her day. She wondered if that ever worked, falling asleep when you needed it too much. She pulled the blanket back to her and tucked it under her chin as the day she was trying to leave behind came flooding back to her.
There had been six minutes to go until the alarm clock on the small bedside table beside her would ring an incessant sound throughout the room. Jenny was still asleep, and adorably at that, but she couldn’t dwell on that particular observation, not with the dream that she’d awoken with. She got out of bed and dressed quickly and silently in the semi-darkness, leaving her to leap at the alarm clock when it started blaring in the quiet room. She cursed herself for not shutting it off sooner when she saw Jenny stir.
What would Jenny think of you? she chided herself as she watched Jenny sleepily sit up and hug her arms to her body, like the last thing she wanted to be doing was waking up. She’s going to think you’re really weird, not to mention completely crazy, like she isn’t enough for you all of the sudden, another ugly thought whispered to her, and she roughly snatched up her jacket that had fallen from her distracted grip.
“I’m-I’m going to head down and catch the earlier bus,” she managed to speak from tight lips, and Jenny nodded sleepily, with the sweetest little smile beginning at the corner of her mouth. “I’ll see you later,” she added, because it felt weird leaving without saying anything else. She picked up her bag and headed for the bedroom door, when her breath caught at Jenny’s warm hand wrapping itself around her own and tugging lightly to bring her back. She turned to look at Jenny’s stunning, sleepy eyes, and they smiled at her as that hand pulled her down a little, and then Jenny brushed the hair off of her face and reached up to meet her lips in a series of short, soft kisses.
It was supposed to make things better, make whatever strange mood that had latched onto her that morning simply disappear, but instead she only felt the growing need for air. It was quite clear that Jenny would be angry at her once she knew.
“I have to go,” she whispered, and couldn’t bring herself to look up into Jenny’s eyes to see her reaction from the unintended coldness in her words. “Don’t fall back asleep,” she warned playfully, forcing herself to smile before she left the room. She pulled her jacket tighter as she quickly descended the stairs. It comforted her only a little to realize that Jenny most likely had fallen back onto the warm bed and begun to drift off. She hoped it would help her forget the unusual morning that she’d caused for them both.
Half an hour later, Emma knocked on a light grey door in an apartment building she visited so often recently, that she’d begun recognizing neighbors in the lobby. She tried hard to clear the mess in her mind, figuring that she could use a distraction that would have nothing to do with her dream.
The dream she wasn’t thinking about.
She winced and shut her eyes. Not thinking about it, she told herself as the lock on the other side of the door clicked out of the way, before the door opened smoothly.
“Hello, sweetheart,” her aunt greeted her warmly, with exhaustion in her kind eyes.
Emma forced a smile onto her face. After greeting her aunt, she felt a discomforting pull in her gut as her gaze fell down to the older woman’s swelling stomach. “How are you feeling?” she asked as she fidgeted with the straps of her bag.
“I’ve been better,” she answered with a tired smile. “This little one’s really taking a lot out of me,” she confessed with a pat to her lower stomach, and Emma nodded on cue as she looked at the way her aunt soothed the baby with a slow stroking motion. Images floated to the front of her mind of that dream she was helplessly trying to avoid, and it almost came as a relief when they heard a cluster of noises coming from the back of the house. After a brief moment of silence, Claudia’s slow-building, watery cry for her mother began, and quickly rose to screeching levels. Emma saw her aunt sigh and rest a steadying hand on her swelling stomach again as she turned toward the noise.
“I’ll get her,” Emma offered as she closed the front door behind her and dropped her bag by the hall closet. She made her way to Claudia’s bedroom, and found the little girl sitting with tear-stained cheeks beside a messy pile of toys that had spilled out of the overturned toy box.
“Emma,” Claudia sobbed unhappily. She reached her arms up, and Emma helped her out of the mess.
“What is it, munchkin?” she asked softly between the little girl’s heart-wrenching sobs. “Are you not having a good day?”
Claudia gulped down air and shook her head. “No one’s playing with me,” she cried as she tried to burrow her way into Emma’s side. She rubbed at her tired eyes and angrily kicked away the toy resting near her socked foot. “All they care about is the baby,” she mumbled with her arms crossed tightly. “Papa promised to play with me this morning, and then he left for work after breakfast, like he didn’t even remember.”
Emma wrapped an arm around the little girl’s shoulders, and Claudia clasped the fabric of her shirt in return, like she did when she wanted to be hugged.
“All they ever say is that I hafta be a big girl now, because the baby’s coming soon, and everyone needs to help out. I don’t even want that baby to come,” she whimpered as more tears fell onto her warm cheeks.
They’d had this conversation before, on at least three separate occasions in the last month. Still, it tugged at Emma’s heart to see Claudia so distressed. They sat on the small bed for a short while until the little girl calmed, though the frown on her face had stayed. After releasing a sigh, she slid down from the bed and started putting the toys back into the box she’d frustratingly overturned earlier, the one that sat beside her grown-up girl desk. Feeling briefly glad to have company in the petulant department, Emma followed suit. She handed her cousin a plastic robot toy, and Claudia placed it on top of the box beside her shiny princess crown.
“I have a few hours,” Emma said after glancing at her watch. “And I’d love to play with you,” she offered brightly, and Claudia looked up at her with big, sad eyes, like she didn’t believe it. “What do you say? Are you up for playing something fun?”
Claudia seemed to think about the proposition for a long moment. “Only if it’s really fun,” she answered, and Emma snorted quietly, imagining Jenny’s reaction to that answer, and filed away the expression on her cousin’s face away to tell her girlfriend about it later. “Is it gonna be really fun?” she asked in order to bring Emma’s attention back to her.
“Of course,” Emma answered in playful offense, and Claudia tried to hide the chuckle that was climbing up her throat and threatening to spill from her lips.
“Really?” she asked unsurely as she dried the tear trails on her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
“Really, really,” Emma answered back.
“Really, really, really,” Claudia said in a giggly voice, and brushed the hair from her face that had fallen from her loose braid.
Emma smiled at her, impressed that she’d managed to guide them past the beginnings of a scheduled morning tantrum.
“Let’s play Mama and Baby,” Claudia suggested as she ran back to her bed to get her little blue blanket. “Me and Addy always play Mama and Baby. It’s really fun.”
Emma’s smile fell a little when her cousin wasn’t looking. “We can play something else,” she suggested lightly.
“You can be the mama first,” the little girl decided, ignoring Emma’s last comment as she placed the shiny princess crown on her head.
“Mamas wear crowns?” Emma wondered aloud as she balanced the small plastic crown that dug slightly into her scalp, wondering what kind of cruel joke the universe was playing on her.
“Of course,” Claudia answered in the same playful Emma had used a minute earlier, with one hand on her hip like she meant business. “When I’ll be a mama, I’ll always wear my crown.”
“Will you now,” Emma mumbled to herself, unable to keep from thinking that Jenny would love this.
“Yes,” Claudia answered, naturally taking her seriously. “Now I’ll be the baby, so you hafta tuck me into bed because it’s nap time. Babies have to sleep a lot. Like, all the time. Did you know that?”
“I did,” Emma confirmed as she rose from the floor and scooped Claudia up, minding the plastic crown on her head. Claudia laughed happily as she looked down, seeing how high she was from the floor. She wriggled her way under her blanket and grinned up at Emma.
“Now you have to sing to me so I’ll fall asleep, but that’s the last hint I’m gonna give you, because you’re a mama now, and you hafta figure this stuff out on your own, okay?” the little girl said as she reached above her head for Mr. Bear.
Emma internally rolled her eyes as she took a seat on the floor beside Claudia’s small bed. “Okay,” she agreed. She sang a few of Claudia’s favorite songs, and the little girl began singing along at some point, but kept her eyes shut of course, because she was supposed to be sleeping.
A couple of hours passed before Claudia retired the game. She didn’t really announce it, just slipped off her crown and set it in the toy box before grabbing the light colored photo album on her bookshelf.
“Do you wanna see what I looked like as a baby?” she asked Emma as she climbed up onto her bed and opened the photo album carefully on her lap. As soon as Emma took a seat beside her, she pointed to the second picture on the page. “That’s Mama when she was pregnant with me. I’m in there,” she explained with her finger resting on the floral fabric of her mother’s dress draped around a large bump. “And then here I am when I was born,” she continued on the next page, motioning to three photos, one after the other, of a tiny creature wrapped in pink and lying in a hospital bed.
Claudia guided them through nearly every photo in the book like she’d given this demonstration a few times before, but Emma was happy to listen. She knew these pictures by heart. She’d been there at the hospital that day. Her father had come to pick her up right after school.
“Do you think the baby is gonna look like me when I was born?” the little girl wondered aloud.
“Yeah, I think the baby will look pretty similar,” she offered, and Claudia looked quite pleased about that. When she turned to the next page, Emma felt herself cringe a bit.
“Look, Emma, that’s you!” Claudia announced cheerily, and pointed to a photograph that did a superb job of showcasing Emma’s blushing cheeks, ridiculous hair, awkward stance, and poor choice of outfit.
“Uh-huh,” she replied with far less enthusiasm.
“I want a picture with the baby like this one of me and you,” the little girl decided. “I even know what I’m gonna wear when we go to the hospital. I’m gonna wear my new red dress, and then I’m gonna give the baby a kiss on the head, and then I’m gonna say, ‘hello, baby, I’m your sister, and my name is Claudia, and I am four years old,” she explained as she flipped through the pages of her photo album.
“Come on lovies, snack time,” Claudia’s mother said gently to them from the doorway, and the little girl smiled up at her before sliding down from the bed.
“Emma, follow me!” she called back as she skipped her way to the kitchen.
“I’m right behind you,” Emma told her as she put the photo album back on the shelf and smiled up at her aunt.
“I think that’s the first time I’ve heard her excited about this baby,” the older woman said with mist in her eyes and joy in her smile as she looked at the spot where her daughter had been before turning out of sight.
Emma shyly grinned back as they walked down the hall to join her.
Claudia cried when Emma had to leave to catch the bus to work. Emma’s hands shook slightly from the piercing screams that trailed after her as she made her way down two flights of stairs and out to the street. Her phone beeped in her back pocket, and she fished it out quickly to see Jenny’s name flashing on the screen. All she could think about was what her aunt had told her as they’d made their way to the kitchen for snack time. ‘You’re amazing with her. You’ll be wonderful at all of this one day.’ It echoed unwantedly in Emma’s mind.
As Jenny’s name flashed again, Emma accepted defeat. I can’t do this, she said to her silently, I’m sorry. She silenced the call and shoved the phone into the depths of her bag as her bus approached, and tried not to think about it too much.
She’d messed up two orders, and nearly spilled creamy mushroom sauce on a plump woman in a deep purple dress within the first two hours of her shift. The cook eyed her strangely, but she’d tried to keep busy, because she couldn’t small talk. She needed to keep moving. As long as she was moving, there was something to distract her from thinking.
Sort of.
Okay, so maybe her plan wasn’t so perfect, but she didn’t have time to think up a different one. On her fifteen minute break, she sent Hotte a not-completely-uncharacteristic voicemail to meet her online after work, or else, because she might have kind of avoided two of Jenny’s calls and another couple of texts, and some small part of her reasoned that if Hotte remembered that she wasn’t a completely horrible person, then she might feel better about doing it.
She was well aware of how completely insane that sounded.
When her shift manager came out to the back parking lot in complete panic, Emma agreed to stay longer and cover for the new girl that had flaked out on her shift. She didn’t think about it much, she needed the distraction anyway. After correcting her meet time with Hotte in another voicemail, she headed back to work, leaving her mobile in the break room so she wouldn’t feel it vibrate in her pocket if Jenny called again. You’re an idiot, she told herself as she tied her apron and grabbed a pencil from the cup on the counter to write down the order of an older couple that had been seated in her section.
Forty minutes after she’d left work, Emma was showered, and in clothes that didn’t smell like a restaurant, and impatiently waiting for her computer to load. She’d managed a few words to her parents, but had escaped to her room as soon as she could. Hotte was going to tell her that she’d made a mistake, a big one. She did, of course, know that already, but she still needed to see him, even if it was pixelated through a screen.
“You look awful,” were the first words out of her mouth when her best friend’s face appeared on the right side of her screen. She hadn’t intended on saying that. She’d figured that she’d start with something more normal, like ‘hello’ for instance.
“I slept for three and a half hours,” Hotte murmured back unhappily as he rubbed his eyes and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose to blink up tiredly. “Not even,” he corrected himself, “like, less than that. I’m so tired,” he whined.
“Isn’t it like, noon there now?”
Hotte twisted around to look at the clock on the far wall of the library, forgetting that he had the time displayed on the lower right hand corner of his screen, and hummed his assent. “We were studying all night,” he clarified with extremely sleepy eyes. Emma almost felt bad for forcing him to meet her. Almost, because if she didn’t tell him soon, she was going to burst right there in her bedroom, and that didn’t sound like a particularly enticing way to go. “What is it?” he asked her kindly, even with the rasp of too little sleep in his voice.
Emma shifted uncomfortably on her bed. She mustered up her courage and forced the words out of her mouth. “I had a dream that Jenny was pregnant.” She’d been counting on feeling some shred of relief once she’d shared that information with someone else, but Hotte’s expression twisted into one of appall, then confusion, and then pure anger. It would take Emma another few minutes to realize that her uneasiness had muffled her words, so that when they’d climbed up the blue cords of Hotte’s headphones, the only words he actually caught of her confession were ‘Jenny’ and ‘pregnant.’
“What?!” Hotte exclaimed loudly enough to turn a few heads from the study tables around him.
“I know,” she agreed, misinterpreting his whirl of emotions as being directed at her, because what was she thinking?! No, no she still couldn’t think about it. It was too…no. She wasn’t thinking about it. It was completely insane. And it wasn’t like she wanted Jenny to be…that, because they were just kids, the two of them, and it was like…complicated and stuff anyway, it wasn’t like it could just happen, and whoa, when did she start thinking about them having kids? She shut her eyes, and took a breath to quiet her mind. She lowered her gaze, not entirely glad that someone finally understood her distress, because it was only making her feel worse.
“I’m going to kill her!” he hissed into the microphone hidden in his laptop, and Emma looked up at him in complete confusion.
“What?” she asked in a quiet voice, because he was sitting in a library, and since he wasn’t doing a swell job of staying quiet, she figured that she’d set an example for him. Something beneath her skin began to crawl, as even the mere idea of Jenny and Hotte being angry at one another was tugging her heart in six different directions, all the while sending more thoughts flying frantically in her mind.
“How long has she been chea-….what was she thinking?” he demanded to know after being shushed again by someone off-camera.
Up until that point, Emma had pinned her growing confusion on a restless night’s sleep and an endless double-shift, but she looked up at Hotte like maybe she’d zoned out of their conversation and had missed some crucial piece of information. She hadn’t seen him look so angry in a while. His nostrils were flared, and his eyes were bright with rage. “Hotte,” she said gently, and his eyes softened just a little. “I had the dream. Jenny doesn’t even know about it,” she clarified.
Hotte’s lips moved like he had intended on saying something, but no sound came out. She waited patiently for a moment, giving him time to work his thoughts into words. “You had a dream that Jenny was pregnant?” he breathed from either relief or out of respect for the library’s quiet environment, she wasn’t really sure. She nodded all the same. “A dream, like one that isn’t real,” he continued slowly, and she nodded again. “Oh,” fell from his lips in a sigh of relief. “Okay. So I don’t have to act on that whole if-you-hurt-her-I’ll-be-on-the-first-plane-back-and-make-even-your-dentist-wish-he-hadn’t-been-born…thing.”
“Wait, what?”
“Nothing,” he answered quickly, dismissing that part of their conversation as he cleared his throat to switch gears. “You dreamt that Jenny was pregnant,” he stated for them both, so there would be no more confusion. As the words left his lips and entered through his ears again, he finally understood them. “You mean like pregnant-pregnant?” he asked as his eyes grew uncomfortably big for Emma’s liking.
“I really only think it has that one meaning,” she answered uneasily.
“Wow,” Hotte continued, ignoring her play at snarkiness. “That’s…huge. Do you guys even…want…? I mean, you’re still like, really, you know, young…and stuff. Not that I would be against it…because I wouldn’t be…”
Emma pressed her forehead into her hands and felt the tension push down on her brain. “I don’t even know where it came from,” she couldn’t help but whine.
“Don’t you?” he offered, before rubbing at his tired eyes again. When Emma didn’t offer an answer, he supplied one of his own. “Maybe because your aunt is, like, really pregnant, and you’ve been helping out with Claude almost every day this week, and everyone around you has been talking about babies all the time.”
Emma thought back to her morning spent with her small cousin, and that new favorite game of hers, of pretending to be a mother or a baby, and how eager Claudia was to show off all of the things she’d learned about babies. The little girl was quite convinced she was an expert on the subject by now. Emma had then come home to find a small pile of tiny baby clothes beside the couch that her mother had surely purchased in preparation.
“Not to mention that you love Jenny, so, I don’t know, it seems kind of, natural, I guess, that you’d dream about her being, you know.”
Emma leaned back a little and tilted her head as she looked at Hotte through the screen of her computer. A hinted smile curled one side of her lips as she regarded him with, “Your dream interpretation skills have gotten a lot better.”
He laughed at that, and she savored the sound.
She sighed as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “Anyway, I woke up and Jenny was there, and I, I panicked, because I can’t tell her that I’d dreamt…that.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Hotte, have you not been paying attention? She’d think I was completely mad! And maybe I am. God, this is a mess.”
Hotte stayed quiet as she ranted. She looked unappreciative of the smile on his face, and frowned until he’d explain himself. “Emma,” he said to her slowly, and it grounded her immediately. He smiled again before continuing. “Have you met Jenny before? She’d probably understand even if you fell into a life of crime. Besides, I think she’d find it cute. She finds everything you do cute, or sweet, or otherwise fluffy and warm. Have you noticed that?”
She refused to let him see her think this over. She covered her eyes with her hands and winced at how complicated everything felt. “Stop making sense, you’re confusing me,” she demanded, and he chuckled at her. “It was just a stupid dream,” she insisted one final time, though everything except the literal meaning of the words she’d spoken was strongly suggesting otherwise. “It’s not like I need to think about it ever again, right?” she asked with extremely hopeful eyes, ones that couldn’t take even a hint of disappointment right at that moment.
Again he stayed quiet for a moment, letting her realize in her own time that while she claimed she didn’t have to think or talk about it, they’d spent the entire conversation on it so far. “You should probably tell her,” he offered finally with a supportive little smile.
“Yeah, right,” she answered petulantly. “Because that won’t have her running out the door,” she muttered with a dismissive roll of her eyes, quite hating the way she was acting, especially with Hotte. She’d kind of been hoping he’d say something else for her to shoot down, because she was in control as long as she was being defensive. “Besides, that might be a little difficult, seeing as I’ve been avoiding her all day,” she mumbled, afraid to look up. She knew what was waiting for her. When she did meet his gaze, he gave her that look, one that said as-your-best-friend-for-life-I-feel-the-need-to-tell-you-that-you’re-being-a-complete-idiot-right-now. At the beginning of their friendship, that look had belonged entirely to her. Over the years, Hotte had learned to do an impressive impersonation of it, and nowadays they shared that expression quite equally.
She appreciated that he didn’t say it out loud. “Call her,” was all he’d actually spoken, and it was enough.
There was something rather sweet about how simply he could read her. It came in handy when your best friend could understand you better than you could understand yourself sometimes. He was always telling her to talk to Jenny, and he was always right, and the fact that he’d gotten so angry before made her want to reach through the screen and throw her arms around his neck. As her mother’s voice floated up the stairs, she released a heavy sigh. “I have to go,” she told him, letting that unspoken feeling of longing for her best friend fit into an increment of time.
“Fine, leave then,” he huffed, but he’d said it softly, teasingly, like he always did.
Not many people knew it about Hotte, but he was absolutely terrible at goodbyes. When he’d left the country, she was the last one to see him off. He was a complete wreck, but only at the very end. Only with her. ‘I expect six emails waiting for me by the time I land in America,’ he’d said with a glint in his eyes. ‘Only six?’ she’d replied with a watery smile of her own. He flashed her a grin and pulled her into a tight hug, which they held for a while as people continued their day around them. ‘This is it,’ he’d murmured quietly into her hair. ‘It’ll never be it,’ she’d replied. That was how they said goodbye. That was how they’d always faced the world. He’d released her from the hug after another long moment, and then blinked up teary-eyed, turned around, and walked into his next adventure.
“I’d just like to state for the record that I’m right about this.”
Emma looked up to see her best friend fold his arms across his chest and pout. “I know you are,” she answered with a roll of her eyes. “Oh, and Hotte?” she added as he’d begun to lean away. “If you ever harm Jenny or her dentist, you’ll have me to answer to,” she warned with kind eyes and a tight smirk. He was always doing that, letting her leave the conversation with a feeling that things were going to work out, and she loved him for it.
He grinned back at her, stuck his tongue out, and hung up.
Twelve minutes later, Emma had lost count of how many times she’d paced the length of her small bedroom, mobile phone in hand. Her heart beat erratically in her chest, her palms were sweaty, and if this hadn’t have happened to her before, she might have thought that she was on the verge of dying. Jenny’s phone number was pulled up on the screen of her mobile, teasing her to call. Her nerves were bubbling in her stomach, spinning in her chest, and pinning her voice down at the base of her throat, leaving her in no position to hit ‘send’ on her phone to start the call, but she did anyway, and tentatively brought the phone to her ear as she released a shaky breath.
The first time she’d called that number, she’d gone through more or less of the same bumbling routine. She and Jenny weren’t a couple yet. They weren’t really friends, either. And she didn’t particularly have to call, she just needed to be sure how many pages that report for politics class needed to be. She might have kind of known the answer, technically speaking, but it didn’t hurt to be sure. She hardly noticed herself slipping into the memory now, leaving her unprepared for when Jenny picked up.
“Hey,” Jenny said quietly, and Emma’s mind went to work on deciphering every emotion tucked into that beautiful voice speaking that one word.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she wanted to shout. “H-hi,” she said instead, and moved the phone into her other hand so she could wipe her clammy palm on her jeans. I was with Claude all morning, and you know how much of a handful she is sometimes, and then…and then work was really crazy…and then Hotte needed to talk, and then my parents needed my help. Her mind built excuse after excuse for her to use, and she shoved them all away. “I’m an idiot, and I’m sorry,” she said assertively, because excuses were a stupid way to go. She heard Jenny sigh quietly on the other end of the line.
“I missed your voice today,” she confessed sweetly, and Emma’s stomach churned from the guilt.
“Please forgive me,” Emma said barely above a whisper, when the only other thing her mind could come up with was a looping plea of I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
“Okay,” Jenny agreed, and somehow that one word turned the guilt in Emma’s gut into sadness; sadness for Jenny that she’d masterfully crafted in a day of useless panic.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked gingerly as she pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling the growing tension of the conversation that they weren’t having, the one where she was telling Jenny the truth behind this whole stupid day. This was so not what Hotte meant.
“Yeah,” Jenny answered plainly.
Silence fell between them. Emma didn’t want the conversation to end, but she couldn’t come up with one single useful thing to say that was both honest and something Jenny would want to hear.
“I love you, Emma,” Jenny told her after a moment, and it was stripped of all fanfare. It was just simple, reassuring, and sweet, and so very much like Jenny.
Her heart broke a little at those words. “I love you too,” she whispered back, and when she’d climbed into bed a few minutes later, she tried to reason with herself that it made more sense to sleep apart tonight. Although, who was she kidding?
As the time spent trying to fall asleep stretched to two hours and thirteen minutes, Emma snatched up her mobile from the bedside table, and the screen blinded her with light in greeting. She shut her thoughts out long enough to write and sent a text to someone who meant the whole world to her: ‘Sleeping apart was a really stupid idea.’ She looked at the words she’d written for a moment, knowing that Jenny was fast asleep by now, and released another breath of tired air as she placed the phone back. She collapsed on the bed and threw the blanket over her face in another futile attempt to fall asleep.
Her heart raced when the small phone vibrated quietly on the wooden surface. She blinked a couple of times to make sure that she was seeing the name flashing on her screen correctly, and then remembered to actually answer the call.
“I thought you were sleeping,” she said with relief and longing flooding her voice, as she realized that she wouldn’t have made it to morning without speaking to Jenny again.
Jenny took a moment to answer, but when Emma finally heard her voice, it was full of love as she replied, “I thought you were sleeping too.”
Emma’s eyes closed as she filled her lungs with air. Emotion surged inside her as the day washed through her again. “I’m really sorry,” she mumbled in a watery voice, because how could she have been so stupid? “God, I’m…” she trailed off as mist covered her eyes.
“Okay,” Jenny replied quietly.
They were quiet for a long minute, both at a loss of words, both caught at the tail-end of an argument that hadn’t actually happened, though all of the ricochets had landed on them. Emma swallowed painfully, and tried to think of something more to say, some way to do right after a full day of mess-ups, but her thoughts swirled around too quickly to be caught and spoken. There were too many things she needed to say, and none came out.
“Can you come over?” she asked in a frail voice, because nothing could replace having Jenny there beside her. The idea of having Jenny drive over now was bordering on reckless, seeing as there were only a few hours left before they both had to wake up and begin a new day, but she couldn’t listen to reason. She needed Jenny in a desperate way.
“If you want me to,” Jenny answered just as quietly, and something about the way she’d spoken those words made a single salty tear slip away from Emma’s eye and soak into her hair.
“I want you to,” she replied quickly, and the pressure in her chest began to lift. “Are you awake enough to drive?” she thought to ask with another glance at the time.
“If you’ll keep me company,” Jenny answered with a smile in her voice. Emma took the slight rustling sound floating into their call as Jenny pushing the blanket off of her legs, and imagined her grabbing some clothes from the chair. She sniffled and smiled gratefully when she heard Jenny pick up her keys.
She waited patiently on the front steps of her house. She hugged her arms close, enjoying the cool wind that returned late at night during the summer months. When she saw a car turn onto her street, her heart fluttered wildly inside her chest. She held her breath as the same car parked smoothly on the curb, and a beautiful girl stepped out of the driver’s seat in her favorite pair of jeans and a thin sweatshirt Emma had left there last week. A happy, sleepy smile curled her lips as she wrapped a hand around the locket resting against her collarbone, and bashfully curled the soft material of her sleeve in her fist.
Their hands met shyly as soon as they were close enough, and they quietly moved through the silent house. Emma stroked her thumb across the back of Jenny’s hand in a motion that said ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ and ‘I love you endlessly,’ and Jenny’s fingers gently squeezed back to show her understanding.
Street lamp light filtered into Emma’s room, creating golden yellow hues in the darkness, and neither one of them reached for the light switch when they entered. Jenny stripped off her jeans and sweatshirt easily, and a small smile flickered onto her face when Emma held the blanket open for her to climb into the spot beside her on the small bed. For good and bad, the bed forced them close together, and Emma was sure Jenny could hear how hard her heart beat against her ribs, like it was trying to tell Jenny all the things Emma’s mouth wouldn’t be able to, in some type of heartbeat Morse code.
“Hi,” Emma finally breathed when Jenny was settled in beside her. She felt nervous like she had in the beginning.
“Hello,” Jenny replied with a soft smile. She cupped Emma’s face, and Emma felt the air in her lungs escape.
“I’m so sorry about today,” she forced herself to continue, because she more than owed this to Jenny. She felt like a broken record, but simultaneously felt a growing need to say those words six thousand more times, if only that would convey it properly.
“You’re forgiven,” Jenny whispered warmly, and Emma pushed herself a hair’s breadth closer, because now that Jenny was here, she couldn’t stay away. “What’s on your mind, my love?” she breathed then, so quietly as to not interrupt whatever Emma seemed to be working out in her head. Even without light, she could see that Emma was wrapped up in something.
Emma surged forward, and kissed her with her eyes shut tightly.
“I missed you,” Jenny whispered against her lips, and Emma kissed her again, because she couldn’t say what she needed to say, but she had to make Jenny understand. Their bodies aligned and pressed together, separated only by thin layers of clothing that had quickly warmed by their burning skin as they shared kisses that were driven by need.
“I had a dream about you,” Emma blurted out suddenly, and kept her hold on Jenny’s wrists that rested on her collarbone, afraid that she would pull away. She listened to Jenny catch her breath for a moment before more words spilled from her lips. “I had a dream last night that you were pregnant.” Shivers raced across her skin as she heard the words she’d just spoken.
“O-okay,” Jenny replied in an off-guard whisper, and Emma took immense comfort in the fact that she stayed close.
“And then I freaked out, because it seemed so…real for a minute there, and-and that’s just crazy. I don’t even know why I, I mean, what it means that I…and it’s not like I’m thinking of us having kids or, or a baby or anything…I mean, it’s not like I don’t ever want us to, but, uhm, you know? I mean, maybe someday, because we’re so young, and we’re just, we’re just kids, but in a while, if that’s something that…but it’s, I-I know that…” she heard broken words continue to fall from her lips, and Jenny was doing her best to follow along, but she’d lost the point she was trying to make, and panic swelled in her gut, because talking about this was reminding her of her dream, and how it had actually felt…warm. She wasn’t panicked in the dream at all. Jenny had looked stunning, half asleep in her arms, with one calm hand on her swelling stomach, and a lazy smile that complimented her impossibly striking eyes, and…
“Em?”
Emma took a breath, trying to remember when she’d last put a period in one of the many half sentences she’d spoken in her endless ramble. Panic returned to her veins as she tried to recall just what she’d said in that ramble, but all thoughts slowed to a halt when Jenny’s hand moved up to her cheek. She couldn’t help but turn in toward the touch and press an open-mouthed kiss to her warm palm. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled again, wondering where her entire vocabulary had vanished to so quickly.
Jenny’s warm touch disappeared, leaving cool air to brush against her hot skin. “I wish you wouldn’t say that,” she said quietly, and Emma bit her lip nervously.
“Why?” she asked without releasing the thin sliver of flesh.
She felt Jenny shift slightly on the bed, and sent another small thanks that the small bed kept her from breaking contact entirely. “Because I’m glad you had that dream,” was Jenny’s answer, warm and understanding as usual. “What was I wearing, anyway?” she added lightly, to show Emma that they were okay, and she could relax her surely furrowed brows.
“You’re glad?” Emma asked in utter disbelief.
“Yeah,” she whispered simply. “I’ve had that dream before.”
“You had a dream that you were pregnant?” Emma heard herself ask with more incredulity than she’d intended to disclose.
“No, I had a dream that you were pregnant,” Jenny answered, and Emma could almost hear the blush that came paired with those words.
“Are you insane?” fell from her lips before she could stop it, and Jenny laughed quietly before sneaking a kiss to her cheek.
“Not last time I checked,” she replied warmly.
“But we’re-“
“Not having kids anytime soon,” Jenny finished her thought. “I know.” Emma saw Jenny’s lips curl up into a beautiful smile in the semi darkness. She liked that smile. She felt a hand rest on her waist and tug her closer, so their bodies pressed together again, and their legs tangled beneath the blanket. “I’m glad you had that dream, because,” she murmured warmly before hesitating for just a moment, giving away the fact that she was also a little nervous, and Emma felt her grip her locket, “because it means that you see a, a future, where we’re together. And happy, from the sounds of it,” she added as she rested their foreheads together.
A look of innocence that bordered on naivety pulled across Emma’s face. “As opposed to a future where we’re not together?” she wondered aloud, because that thought hadn’t really come up in her 24-hour panic attack. Not realistically so, anyway. There was just enough light spilling in from outside to catch Jenny gazing adoringly at her as a moment of silence fell between them. Emma would have felt uncomfortable if not for the quiet yet intense joy that pooled in Jenny’s eyes that even the darkness couldn’t mask.
“Watch it,” Jenny finally spoke, and her voice was so warm that it was nearly a murmur, “or you may get lucky tonight.”
Emma laughed softly, and it came out like a bubbly hiccup. She felt her emotions nearly spin out of control from changing so quickly in the course of one conversation. She took in air and released it quickly in a relieved little sigh, glad not to be carrying that load anymore. “I don’t want to wake up in three hours to another day away from you,” she whined as she snuggled herself securely in Jenny’s arms, and rested her heavy head on her shoulder. Her body began to relax when a quiet, happy hum left Jenny’s lips. “I’m sorry in advance for being grouchy once that alarm clock rings,” she added, and her eyes blinked big in surprise when Jenny’s hand came up to cover her mouth a moment later.
“I’m cutting you off from apologizing anymore today,” she whispered in her ear, and the sound swirled delightfully in her head.
“Thank goodness today’s basically over, then,” Emma mumbled cheekily behind the warm hand.
Jenny was quiet for a minute after that, and her hand trailed under the blanket to pull Emma’s shirt up enough to draw slow lines across soft skin. Emma nuzzled her neck as sleep started weighing down her eyelids. She closed her eyes dreamily when Jenny’s voice sounded again as she said, “Wait until Claudia hears about this.”
Emma’s eyes flew open, and she lifted up on her elbow to stare at Jenny in pure disbelief.
Jenny shrugged lightly and nonchalantly continued, “Well she did marry us, and babies would be a most natural progression,” as her thumb stroked a slow line down Emma’s cheek.
Emma’s jaw fell open seconds before she was able to release sound. “You are not telling her!” she ordered in a breathless hiss as her lips disobeyed her and pulled up in a smile.
Jenny giggled angelically. “No, I’m not,” she assured in a breath drenched in happiness, “but your face just now…” she trailed off, happily accepting Emma’s lips crashing into hers. She chuckled into Emma’s mouth as her hands wrapped around the collar of her shirt to pull her closer. She then turned them over in a practiced motion, and felt victorious when Emma released a whispered moan as she settled her weight on her. When she pressed one thigh between both of Emma’s and leaned down for a kiss, the warm weight of her locket rested gently on the base of Emma’s throat.
For one single moment, they shared a look that was partially masked by the darkness, but spoke more than their words had managed all day. Emma sent a hand to the back of Jenny’s neck, causing delightful tingles to roll down the length of her spine. When their lips met again in a slow kiss, those tingles turned into sparks of electricity.
“A white, summery nightgown.”
“What?” Jenny murmured in a voice thick with sleep.
Emma smiled into the darkness. The images she’d tried to avoid all day had come back to visit, and they were just as warm as she’d remembered. “That’s what you were wearing in the dream.”
With her eyes still closed, Jenny reached for Emma’s hand and brought it to her lips, where she pressed a soft kiss to the inside of her wrist. She followed it with another kiss to her hairline, then the bridge of her nose, and then Emma lifted her head enough for their lips to meet.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied lazily between kisses. “Sweet dreams, my love,” she whispered when Emma rested against her again, now that thin layers of clothing where no longer obstructing their bodies from meeting.
Emma pressed a final kiss to the spot where Jenny’s shoulder met her neck. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered in return.