dreamland

fifteen

I held onto her thin lock of hair and wrapped the wand around it carefully as she painted her toenails the color of bricks.
I told her I hated the color, it looked like the bricks at our elementary school, but she argued that it was actually crimson glow.

The doorbell rung once and I looked out my window and jolted back.

Shit, I dropped the black wand, blowing on my finger. My mom was in the bathroom fixing her hair or doing her makeup, I wasn't sure.
My dad was already taking a nap on the couch as he always did before my aunt's Christmas parties. They were excepting me to be the one to open up.
I knew my dad wasn't a heavy sleeper but he was hopeful—and lazy, that I would open up so he wouldn't have to get up.

I reached the front door, my feet slipping softly on the wooden floors with my cream socks.
I opened the door and he looked up at me.
I didn't know what to say.
I shivered and he looked me up and down, where are you going, he asked.

I looked down at my red sweater dress and then back up at his face.
I was starstruck, I would have expected just about anyone else, but never him.
Him? At my house?
He was smirking which confused me and derailed me even more.
Last time we spoke; I'd been such a bitch when I should have just said thank you.

Slowly, I said, a Christmas party, rubbing my hands up and down my arms.

He nodded his head and neither of us said anything for a long minute.
I kept looking at him, expecting him to say something distasteful. Maybe that was why he was here on this snowy afternoon.
He was here to tell me off.
Or maybe I'll beat him to it, and this will end with a door slammed on his face which would awake my dad.
Or maybe it wouldn't and maybe it would all lay out like a perfect wonderful dream, like in one of the many that were so recurring lately.
I'd dreamt about him just last night and now that he stood before me, I felt this anxiousness, as if he had actually been in my dream, coming closer and closer to my mouth. It had actually occurred, in dreamland, and he knew too.
His scent and soon his lips combining with mine within that dream.

I swallowed, still looking at his dapper face tucked under his black knit hat. He pulled his gloved hand out his pocket and reached for my hand and placed something small and cool in it. I looked down at it, as he closed my palm. I peered up at him.

What, how did you find this, I uttered before dropping my voice to a whisper.
I looked back at my dad as he snored softly, his fingers touching the wooden floor.

I looked back at him and his eyes didn't meet mine for once. You really don't know how to say thank you, he said as he simpered softly.

I'm serious, how, I didn't even tell anyone I'd lost these earrings, I said.

He shook his head still simpering with the knowledge that aha, he knew something I did not and stepped back, I gotta go, have fun, he said.

It always felt that way around him.
I stepped out onto the bungalow and said his name, tell me, I persisted.
The frigid air made me retract my step back inside where my feet slipped again.
I needed to know, I was so confused.

Who's this, my dad asked.
I looked back at my dad and then at him.
He blinked and squinted his eyes at the boy of my literal dreams.

This is the guy that pulled me out the snow, I said slipping the earring onto my left ear.
His keen eyes darted to my ear where the earring dangled loosely before simply sitting there beautifully. I brushed my hair back and looked up at my dad's bedraggled hair.

My dad looked at him, still blinking, his eyes hurting from the daylight and from being awake. Thank you for that, my dad said waving his hand just barely.