Peppermint

Chapter 38 - Dreams Never End

***ALEX***

"Dude. How many funerals have you been to in the last year?"

"One," I tell Gabe. "All the others were demonic cremations, remember?"

He picks up the fire tongs sitting between the two of us so he can stoke the fire for a minute. Then he puts the tongs down on his other side so he can scoot closer to me. I'm tempted to move a little closer to the fire myself, but it's roaring higher and hotter now, so it's reaching me better at this point on the cabin floor. Plus, I don't want to move away from Gabe. Not now that we're having this time to ourselves, probably the last for a while. Who knows how long it'll take until we see each other in our dreams again? It's not like it happens every night.

"I don't believe it," he says.

"What? That I went to a funeral?" I reach for my phone in my pocket, but with my fingers still cold - fingerless gloves, so impractical in weather like this - it's hard to stick them into said pockets. Even with my jeans, as always, being slim instead of skinny. "I should've come to this dream in my suit, then I could bloody prove it."

"You didn't really wear a suit, did you?"

"A suit by my standards. Luckily for me, everyone whose memorial I've been to, they wouldn't have minded if I'd shown up in a T-shirt and cargo shorts."

"For me and Fionna, for sure, but for...?" I sense he doesn't want to say it because if so, it would clash with so many years of irreligion on his part. Not that I was much better about that. I've only willingly been to church once or twice in the last five years, and even then because I was at such a low point - struggling to recover from another fresh tidal wave of grief - that I'd have taken any attempt at spiritual healing I could get. And it never worked. The magic of church left me years ago, and no wonder, now that I know the first face to whom I was supposed to always be praying. And the second, I'm still reeling from seeing him go. Will I meet the third one day too? Assuming the Holy Spirit even has a face to begin with.

"Josh wouldn't mind," I say. "You'd have fucking loved him, man."

"You're probably right," Gabe says. "You're also a breeder."

"And you're a cocksucker."

His arm snakes around my neck from behind. "Pussy eater."

I wriggle away from him, then drag him closer to me by his neck and kiss the shaggiest part of the top of his blond head. "Buttfucker."

"You should try that sometime, you cheeky bastard."

"Yeah, if I ever date someone who's into it."

Gabe relaxes, sinking into my grasp. "For an icy boy, you're hella warm."

"Really?" I look down at the long sleeves and pants still plastered to me. When did I get them so wet? Did I go swimming in a frozen lake?

"You don't remember?" Gabe asks. "Well, to be honest, we're always waking up in these dreams halfway through the narrative. And..." He takes my hand for a second. "Good, your extremities ain't so dead anymore."

"Why would I-?"

"Hell if I know. I came in to find you drowning." Now it's his turn to kiss the top of my head. "Dude. Why?"

"Why what?"

"Don't play dumb. Why do you dream about your own death?"

"You really want the answer?"

"No, but what I want is to be the one cuddling you, not the other way around. Tell me the truth or your ass gets spooned."

"Good luck."