The Sound of Us

Chapter Five

It's a dream.

Although, that doesn't seem to deter him. His hand slides up my arm, slowly, the calluses on his fingertips feeling like sandpaper against my skin, and sends gooseflesh rippling up my body. We're swaying on a dance floor. People shift around us, shadows, moving to a song that sounds so familiar. I can't remember the name of it, but he's humming along. I feel his throat vibrate with the notes as I press my face into the nook between his shoulder and neck. He smells like cinnamon and the sticky sweetness of wine. 

I want to ask who he is—but then I stop myself. I'm not sure if I want to know.

He pulls me closer into him. His embrace is like iron, complete, solid. It's a wholeness I can't explain, like there is nowhere safer, and no place I am more welcome or more at home. 

The spheres of lights spiral across the dance floor. We've stopped dancing, and just stand there in the dark, listening the sound of our breath, my heart to his, existing.

He says my name, and my eyes draw up to his. They remind me of melted emeralds. No, I don't know him at all, but every atom in my body feels like it wants to. 

"Junebug."

I jolt up on the couch.

A sliver of light leaks through the closed curtains, and between them, I can see the morning. The beach is sandy white against cobalt waves. I sit up on the couch, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand. A runner jogs by down on the surf. I watch him, trying to remember my dream. What was it? Something about green...green what? I frown, and silently study the dark condo.

When I fall asleep, I usually have nightmares. The same one, really, repeating the night he died, trying in vain over and over again to...I don't know. Not save him, because he's dead. You can't save the dead.

But in those nightmares, I still try.

The stranger in my dream reminded me of him though, like vanilla reminds you of chocolate, or summer reminds you of the beach, and that only makes me miss Dad all over again.

I can still see Dad sitting in the kitchen chair, sipping his morning coffee. Still in those terrible red and yellow swim trunks, belly overlapping his waistband, sunscreen smothering his nose and bald forehead. Sometimes, he passes just out of the corner of my eye, flipping pancakes by the stove, humming "Tequila Sunrise." And sometimes I hear his footsteps, long but light, like he always had pep in his step, coming out of the bathroom.

I blink away the coming tears. The memories I have of him are so insignificant compared to his life, they hardly do him justice. I've almost forgotten what he sounded like, what he smelled like. I'm scared that when I forget, a part of me will die too.

Maybe, when I finally forget what he looked like when he smiled, those forgotten memories will leave me hollow and dry. 

Sinking back onto the couch, I curl into the blankets and pretend to go back to sleep. It isn't until three in the afternoon until I finally get my lazy butt off the couch, and put on my bathing suit. I refuse to look into the mirror in the bathroom. I know what I'll see. Not enough to be anything. Not enough to be too fat and not enough to be too skinny. Not athletic enough, and not flabby enough. I'm short like my dad, and minimally endowed like my mom.

To put it plainly, I'm a wreck in a bathing suit.

Last night while Mom and Chuck played tonsil hockey, I found a magazine Maggie snuck into my duffle without me noticing. The Juice is probably one of the worst tabloids out there. At least, it's something to read, so I take it down to the pool with me.