From My Dreams

Chapter 5

Hayley had trouble coming to reality after waking up because of how real the dream had felt. This was the second time it was happening, right after the previous one. One second she was on a gorgeous beach looking at the sunset with her head resting on the man's shoulder and the next, her alarm broke her dream.

She woke up with her hair all frenzy. It was as if the wind from the beach had actually blown her hair all over her face. When that thought hit her, her eyes widened. She looked at her legs hidden by the quilt and wondered if she had somehow brought back sand from the beach.

With a three-second countdown, she pulled the quilt open and looked at her legs. "No sand," she scoffed at how silly she must have looked and sounded to herself. "Great thinking, Chen. Great....thinking."

The morning had been a slow one at the boutique. There weren't many customers because of the end of the sale season, which made Hayley decide to close up early. There was no point looking over at her older paintings hung there and wondering about her previous dreams. Instead, she took a walk around the block as she let her mind wander.

Could it have been real?

Could it have been that in another life, she and the young man had been together and she was just reliving her memories?

Could it be that all her dreams were actually her experiences in her past life?

She had other theories as well, but in the end, she came to the conclusion that she was never going to figure this out. It was probably time to just go with the flow and stop trying to get it to make sense. The universe worked in the most mysterious ways and it wasn't for someone like her to figure out the workings of the cosmos.

She stopped walking before a crossing and hugged her coat. Looking at the passing cars, she thought about how she could read novels in the fantasy genre to get over the previous night's dream. She needed an escape from reality and this time, she did not need her dreams.

It was time to pay her library a visit.

Hayley got on the first bus from the corner and tried to keep herself from smiling. She was going back to her library after a really long time. She was really excited to be among those familiar shelves of books again.

Walking through the double glass doors, she waved at the assistant on the counter. "Hola Gloria!" Hayley said.

"Hola Hayley!" Gloria waved back.

They would have made small talk if a customer hadn't come to check their books out. Hayley pointed inside to indicate that she would be looking at the books that she wanted to borrow. The elderly man who helped around to search for the books gave her a salute. She stopped and gave him a proper salute before heading to the fantasy section of books.

After browsing through and not finding anything that she wanted to borrow, she had an epiphany. Maybe she needed to try something new. It was time to ask the librarian for their suggestion. She walked out of the aisle and searched for the familiar salt-and-pepper-haired librarian who could help her out.

She heard voices on the opposite aisle that made her enter that aisle. She found the librarian, but they weren't alone.

The man that the librarian was talking to had his back towards her, but his hair looked really familiar. He was wearing a very familiar black-coloured sweater and the way he brushed his fingers through his hair was all too familiar.

The librarian saw Hayley and said that they would be with her in two minutes, and that was when the man turned around.

Hayley gasped softly.

It was him.

It was definitely him.

It was undoubtedly him - the young man from her dreams.

His eyes widened when he saw her and he looked at her up and down, not being able to believe that she was standing in front of him just as she was surprised.

They started walking towards each other as if they were the opposite ends of a magnet. Every step they took was with precision. What if this wasn't a reality that they wanted to break by making a decision that wasn't supposed to be made?

But they were real after all.

"It's you!" They said at the same time.

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DUN DUN DUN!!!!
We are halfway through the story btw!