It was possible that The Legend of Zelda had not factored as prominently into Cole’s dream as he had declared. There had been no swordplay or rupees or evil warlords, and it wasn’t quite so cerebral as to feature different branches of parallel timelines. Though the skimpy little tunics weren’t too far off.
Neither were the different branches of parallel timelines, come to think of it. Cole sort of felt like that’s what was racing through his brain right then, jumbling up his reality and making him feel as weird as Laila seemed to think he was acting.
In that way that dreams sometimes do, it had felt like a completely accurate snapshot from life and an unquestionable work of fiction, all at the same time. It was definitely Laila, and he was pretty sure it was him. But not because he ever saw himself. He just felt it all. They were in a bedroom that he knew was theirs, together, in a house that he knew was theirs, though nothing was ever stated to inform him of that. It wasn’t a room he’d ever actually been in, he was pretty sure, and he had no reason to think it was a room that truly existed, but while he slept, he was as familiar with that dream bedroom as he was with his real-life room in his real-life house. And in the dream, Laila’s laugh was the same, and her eyes were the same, and her hair was the same, and the way she looked at him felt normal, and the way he touched her wasn’t awkward at all. But he was pretty sure she’d never actually looked at him like that in real life. He was positive he’d never touched her like that. He’d have remembered. If he’d ever touched her like that, Earth would have shifted on its axis and never recovered. How could the world ever have righted itself after that?
Look, it wasn’t like he’d never had dreams about her before. Those sorts of dreams, even. It wasn’t like he was proud of it, but the fact remained that he was a red-blooded, healthy, breathing male who was attracted to women and who happened to have a beautiful woman as his best friend. This same beautiful woman had been his best friend when he was a pubescent teenager, so no, this wasn’t a first. And though he’d always done all he could to prevent those thoughts from slipping into his head, there was only so much that could be done. He didn’t have control over the forbidden territory his mind trespassed into while he slept.
He’d always strived to be a gentleman, even when he was young and obnoxious. He’d been brought up to respect women. To respect everyone, actually. But his grandparents—his grandmother especially—had always placed special weight on how he needed to treat women. Not because women were weaker or needed his help or because it was his responsibility as the heir apparent in a patriarchal society. Nah. Nothing stupid like that. Even his grandfather, who rarely had the time of day for anyone he met, didn’t buy into any of that rhetoric. He was an equal-opportunity curmudgeon.
As far back as he could remember, Cole had felt deep affection for women. Sure . . . like that. Again, red-blooded, pubescent, yada, yada. But he also understood now as he probably didn’t then that the reverence he felt for the women in his life wasn’t necessarily shared by most other boys his age. But then again, a lot of other boys probably hadn’t hit the women-worth-revering jackpot quite as often as he had.
Cole was the only child of a single mother who had adopted him on her own, persevering over a system that didn’t make it easy to do so. And he was the beloved only grandchild of one of the kindest, most remarkable women ever to live, in his opinion. Cole’s mom, Cassidy, was the child of his grandmother, Eleanor, and her first husband, Cormac Dolan—a despicable man, by all accounts. Eleanor had spent years making excuses for the man, but when he transferred his abuse to Cassidy for the first time, all of Eleanor’s excuses imploded. She had some family money and may or may not have pocketed more than her “fair share” of Cormac’s family money. That’s how Eleanor had told the tale to young Cole, with a glimmer in her eye, and even then, he’d felt fairly certain she deserved more than whatever she made off with.
Without any real plan apart from escape, she and Cassidy had headed west. Slowly. Exploring everything that intrigued them. They made it all the way from Evansville, Indiana, to Adelaide Springs, Colorado, where they stumbled upon a four-day spectacle of Revolutionary War reenactments, more than thirteen hundred miles west of the war’s westernmost battlefield. On the second evening of Township Days, they’d met Bill Kimball, dressed in his regimentals and a tricorn hat. The rest was Cole’s history.
Laila was his history too. And his present. Every other person he had ever truly loved had let him down at some point. They were human, and he tried not to hold that against them, but he could go down the list of the ways their humanity had broken his heart. Brynn and Wes had left without saying goodbye. Addie had broken her promise to keep in touch. His grandmother had died too soon. His mother had sought ways to fill the holes in her own heart while disregarding the holes in his. And his grandfather . . . Well, Cole hadn’t come up with a short, easy way to categorize that one yet. But Laila had never broken his heart.
“Hellooo . . . Earth to Cole.” Brynn’s voice interrupted his reverie. Or his mindlessness. It interrupted whatever was happening in his head, thank goodness.
“Sorry. Did you say something?”
Brynn was standing beside him at the island in the kitchen, holding a coffeepot. “Need a refill?”
“Oh. Yes, please. Thanks.” He held his cup out, and she filled it.
“What’s up with you?” she asked as she returned the pot to the countertop next to the stove. “You were quiet all through breakfast.”
“Was I? Sorry. Just tired still, I guess.”
He was glad that Sebastian didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the conversation. He was sitting in the center of that horseshoe-shaped sofa, facing away from the kitchen with his nose in the New York Times, Murrow curled up asleep beside him. The less Sebastian was aware of how distracted Cole was, the better. Seb wasn’t one to pry, but he rarely had to. That was the problem with one of your closest friends being a brilliant journalist with all sorts of Pulitzers and stuff. He tended to get to the heart of things a little too quickly sometimes, and when you were once again surprised by his insight and investigative acumen, he’d just say things like, “Yeah, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had a similar response when I got him to admit he’d never read Charlotte’s Web.”
“Did something happen with you and Laila?” Brynn’s eyes lit up as she leaned over the island toward him.
“What?!” Cole motioned her away with his hands and shushed her as he looked behind him. Could he still hear the shower running? Check. Was Seb still focused on his paper? Double check. “No!” he whispered emphatically as he moved closer to her. “What are you even . . . I mean, what are you talking about? Something happen . . . like what?”
Nice job, Cole. You said all the right things. If only you’d said them in the right order.
Yeah, he hadn’t handled that so well, and he knew it right away. If he’d had any question about that, Brynn’s eyes, which now seemed to be taking up her entire face except for the little part at the bottom reserved for her O-shaped lips, would have answered the question pretty quickly.
“Oh my gosh, Cole. Did something happen? I was just joking. You know . . . because I’ve been asking off and on for our entire lives. I didn’t actually think—” She covered her mouth with her hands and then spoke quietly through her fingers. “Is this finally happening? For real?”
“No!” He looked behind him again. Shower. Newspaper. No meteors shooting through the sky or other signs of the apocalypse. He just needed to breathe and rein her in. “No, Brynn. Nothing happened.” He laughed a little bit in a way he hoped communicated, Oh, Brynn, whatever shall I do with you? Casual and unaffected, as he had been a million other times throughout his life when someone got it in their head that there had to be something romantic going on under the surface of his and Laila’s relationship. “I’m just worried about her. Her back, I mean. She can’t take those pills during the day, obviously, so I was just thinking maybe we should ease into the sightseeing slowly. But I know she won’t want to be the reason we don’t do something. You know?”
“Oh.” Her eyes and lips bounced back to their normal shapes as order was restored. “I was thinking we could hit up some museums. Do you think that would be okay?”
“Sure. Yeah, I bet that will be great. I’m probably worrying for nothing.”
With that bit of business taken care of, Brynn began showing Cole some of her new kitchen appliances. Apparently, the jet-lagged newlyweds had been up at 4:00 a.m. opening wedding gifts.
Sebastian’s paper rustled as he began folding it up, and then he brought the topic back around. “Still thinking MoMA and then tea at BG?”
Cole wasn’t sure if it was New York Seb or Married Seb or Back to Being a Journalist Seb who had started saying things like “MoMA and then tea at BG,” but regardless, he was going to need more time to adjust.
“I think so,” Brynn responded and looked at Cole. “I think Lai will really like BG. It’s on the seventh floor of Bergdorf Goodman and just down Fifth from MoMA.” Cole stared at her blankly, and she smiled. “Museum of Modern Art.”
“And Birddog Newman?” He was playing up his “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” status for effect a little bit, but not too much. “What’s that?”
“Bergdorf Goodman. A department store. I think Laila’s mind is going to be blown. And then maybe we can—”
“Did you call for a table?” Sebastian asked.
Brynn shook her head. “I’m sure they’ll be able to get us in.”
He stared at her. “Seriously? You’re just going to leave sitting by the window to luck? I’m not sure I even know who you are anymore.”
She slapped herself on the forehead. “Oh my gosh, you’re right.” She turned to Cole and put her hand on his forearm. “There’s a great view of Central Park. Okay, I’ll go call. Be right back.” She pulled her phone from her pocket as she rushed to their bedroom.
Cole chuckled as he watched her go, but the humor faded quickly.
“So, tell me. What happened with you and Laila?”
Cole repeated his shushing and waving-away panic from before as he hurried over to the couch. “Nothing! Nothing happened.” Crap. He’d done it again. “I seriously don’t even know what you guys are talking about. Happened how?”
Not smooth. Not smooth at all.
Sebastian crossed his ankle up over his knee and grinned. “Brynn’s name makes things happen pretty quickly in this town, so you can hem and haw if you want, but she’s probably going to be back here in about—”
“I had a dream.” Cole looked around one more time and listened for the shower yet again, and then sat across the horseshoe from Seb and leaned in. “A dream. You know?” Heat rose to the top of his head. There were not words for how much he hated this. All of it. The fact that it had happened, definitely, but mostly that he was having to talk about it. “About Laila. Nothing happened. It was just a dream. But I guess it sort of weirded me out. That’s all.”
“Well, yeah. I would think so. Knowing someone as long as you two have known each other, and then all of a sudden . . . that’s in your head? That could really mess with a guy.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” Cole released his breath and leaned against the back cushions of the couch. Okay. This was okay. He could talk to Seb about this. Of course he could talk to Seb about this. Seb would contribute sanity to the situation. This was good.
Sebastian chuckled. “Honestly, it’s sort of shocking that this is the first time that’s happened.”
“Well, I mean, it’s . . . not.” He sat up again and leaned his elbows onto his thighs. “It’s not like it’s happened a lot, of course. But . . . a few times . . . through the years.”
“Oh. Gotcha.” Seb picked up his folded newspaper and reinforced the crease. “That’s not fun. I bet that’s led to lots of uncomfortable post-dream interactions, as much as you and Laila are together.”
Cole dismissed the idea with a shake of his head and a slight shrug. “No. Not really. I’ve never given it much of a second thought. I know I can’t control what happens while I’m asleep, but I am pretty good at erasing the images once I’m awake, I guess.”
“Huh. Yeah. That’s good.” The paper went still in Sebastian’s hands as he raised his eyes and met Cole’s. “So what was different about this time?”
Heaven help President Bashar al-Assad if he ever had an inappropriate dream about his best friend.
Sebastian had gotten right to the heart of it. Of course he had. Man, that was annoying sometimes. From the look of it, Murrow took after his human. He was staring up at Cole with the same inquisitive and confident furrowed brow. Good job, Seb. You can put our new Pulitzer Prize next to my food bowl.
And as much as Cole didn’t want to spend any time analyzing or talking it out, he couldn’t deny that he was now being forced to consider the sticking point that probably needed to be addressed. What had been different about this time? He couldn’t pinpoint much that stood out about the dream itself. Not that he’d had the same dream before. The dreams had spanned from the absurd to the ridiculous through the years, as dreams are known to, but the only thing absurd about this one had been the intimacy between him and Laila. There weren’t any pink elephants or flying Doc Atwaters or cameo appearances by Steve Harvey on the set of Family Feud.
“We asked one hundred people, and the top four answers are on the board: What’s the fastest way to make things painfully uncomfortable between two single adults who are just friends and happen to be sleeping next to each other in an enclosed tent bed that used to belong to Blake Lively Jr.?”
“I guess . . .” He paused. Water was still running. Brynn was still out of the room. Murrow was still salivating over the scoop he and Sebastian were about to land. “I woke up and she was there. You know? And I am so comfortable with her, Seb, I can’t even tell you. This isn’t some sitcom episode where one person turns their head and tries not to look or pretends not to look while the other changes clothes. We’ve spent so much time together and know each other so well, we have a rhythm. Even in the situations that are a complete break from routine, like being in New York, we have a rhythm. She can change clothes three feet away from me and she doesn’t ask me not to look, because she knows I never would. That’s . . .” How could he describe something that was so set-in and sacred that he’d never given it much thought? “I would never want to do anything to jeopardize that. Not ever. Her trust, I mean. The level of trust. The comfort.”
Cole’s hand went to his chin and scratched, almost out of compulsion, as he thought of her squinting to see him and leaning in and stroking his face. “But this morning, I was sort of touching her when I woke up.”
“Touching her?”
“Yeah. Nothing major. My arm was just sort of across her, making sure she didn’t fall out of bed or anything. As you’ve now witnessed, pain pills make her loopy. Always have. But I didn’t want to put her on the inside of the tent in case she woke up in the night and the darkness and unfamiliar surroundings spooked her.”
Sebastian shifted his propped-up foot back to the floor. “Got it.”
“So, yeah. I was touching her. And her face . . .” Cole chuckled and looked down and began scratching behind Murrow’s ears. He’d evidently grown bored with the interview. “She was, like, an inch from me.” He looked back up at Seb, smile still on his lips. “She’s blind as a bat, you know. She was noticing that I had shaved, but in order to really see, she was, like, right there.” He put his hand in front of his face to demonstrate.
Sebastian released air through his teeth and leaned in to talk even more quietly. “That sounds pretty intimate.”
Cole shrugged nonchalantly in the exact same moment that he felt the panic rising in his chest again. Here was where it got tricky. “Yes and no. I mean, yes. But . . . the physical contact wouldn’t have felt so intimate if I hadn’t still been waking up, I think. Waking up from the dream. And there was this moment that I had to actively think about and put effort into the stuff I never have to think about. The stuff that’s always been as built-in as breathing.”
“What do you mean?”
Cole swallowed hard. “I mean . . .” He spoke through tight lips and clenched teeth. “I kind of started to . . . pull her closer. Against me. You know? There was a split second when I almost . . .”
Nope. He trusted Sebastian, and if there was anyone he could talk to about this, it was him—since his absolute most trusted confidant had a bit of a conflict of interest where this particular situation was concerned. But he couldn’t tell him about the split second when he’d had to fight against every instinct in his body, raging and rebelling inside him, telling him to pull her beneath him and pick up where the dream had left off.
He swallowed again and shook his head. Unfortunately, when he did, the image in his mind didn’t budge. “I’ve just never had to think about that before.”
Sebastian took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it quickly as Brynn came back into the room.
“We’re all set for BG.”
“Then what are you thinking for dinner?” Sebastian asked.
She leaned her hip against the kitchen island. “We have reservations at Gabriel Kreuther. Cole, you’re going to flip out over this place. Some of the best food I’ve ever tasted. I don’t know if you like caviar, but—”
“I was thinking Bar SixtyFive at the Rainbow Room.” Sebastian’s expression turned down in visible disappointment.
Brynn guffawed. “The Rainbow Room? Are you kidding? I mean, it’s good, but it’s so touristy.” By way of explanation, she added to Cole as an aside, “It’s on the sixty-fifth floor of Rockefeller Center, and I think everyone always thinks they’ll see a celebrity.”
“Are you seriously rolling your eyes?” Sebastian asked his wife, then looked over at Cole. “We had dinner there with Jimmy Fallon and his wife about a month ago, and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were eating together with their wives, two tables over. Besides,” he added as he turned back to Brynn, “our friends here are tourists. And if someone with a lot of pull could get us a table by the south window, right across from the Empire State Building, that might make a pretty spectacular impression . . .”
She sighed. “Fine.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket again and huffed back off to their bedroom.
Sebastian watched her go with a besotted grin on his face. “I almost feel bad about that. She’s right. You would have absolutely flipped over Gabriel Kreuther. Ah, well. We’ll have time.” He turned back to face Cole, and then they both froze as the sound of the shower shut off. Confident that Laila wasn’t coming out right away, Seb leaned in a bit and whispered, “Are you going to be able to handle all of this? Being with her round-the-clock and everything?”
Yes, Cole was weirded out. That much was true. And it was true that he had been thrown off balance. But he and Laila had made a deal. They had the entire length of the trip to make memories and pretend that the saddest separation of their lives wasn’t going to be waiting for them after this vacation. He wasn’t going to ruin that. And, strangely enough, it was thinking of all that in response to Seb’s question that made him feel as if his equilibrium was returning.
He chuckled to himself as he felt the panic subside. Throwing his hands up in the air, he relaxed into the back cushions of the couch again as the rogue adventures of his unconscious mind began to make sense. “It’s because I’m scared of losing her. That’s all this is.” He would have chastised himself for being so dumb about it all—for panicking and allowing it to affect him the way it had—if the relief hadn’t felt so good that there wasn’t even room for disparaging emotions. “I think my brain’s just working overtime to figure out a way to make things work—especially since we made a deal not to try to convince each other of anything while we’re on the trip. And then you throw in being around you two, who are still on your honeymoon, essentially, and the tent bed and all of that . . .”
He exhaled deeply and then reached over and punched Seb twice on the knee with his knuckles. “Thanks, man. I’m fine. I was just making a big deal out of nothing.”
“If you’re sure . . .”
“Totally sure. I mean, I still need to clear my head a bit, I guess. But this is Laila we’re talking about. Yes, to answer your question, I can absolutely handle all of this. I’ve been with her nearly round-the-clock for the better part of forty years. This morning was weird.” Laughter spewed from him as he thought again about how ridiculous he had been. “But it’s over. Now it’s back to normal, and there’s no reason whatsoever why I would have any other inappropriate thoughts of her flood my brain while I’m asleep. But if they do . . . so what? Whatever my dreams try to do to me has absolutely nothing to do with reality. I’ve got this all under control.”
“Hey, guys?” Laila called from the bathroom door that had just cracked open. “Who’s out there?”
Cole smiled indulgently and rolled his eyes at Sebastian. She probably needed help reaching something or for someone to bring her something she’d forgotten. This was Laila. And they had a rhythm.
“Just Seb and me right now. Need something?”
“No, it’s fine. Just . . . Seb, close your eyes. Are they closed?”
Sebastian quirked his eyebrow in confused amusement and then closed his eyes and covered them with his hands for good measure. “Yeah, they’re closed.”
The grin spread across Cole’s face as he turned on the couch to face the direction of her voice. What is she up to?
“Okay, good.” And then she streaked out of the bathroom wrapped only in a fuzzy gray towel knotted tightly around her at her chest and stretching down to the middle of her thighs. Her hair was wet and stringy, ringlets bouncing off her back as she ran out of the bathroom, across the room, and back to her bedroom, trilling, “Keep ’em closed! Keep ’em closed! Keep ’em closed!” all the way. It happened so fast. Cole turned away as quickly as he could, but obviously not soon enough.
And then he couldn’t help but look at her again as she reached the bedroom door and said, “I have my contacts in now, so I can officially declare that the clean-shaven NYC edition of Cole Kimball is a total hottie.” She winked at him and called out, “Thanks, Seb! You can open your eyes now!” as she shut the door behind her.
Sebastian uncovered his eyes, and though he hadn’t seen a thing, the context clues—which now included a trail of intoxicating scents that had been transported with Laila on a stream of steam, along with a gobsmacked Cole trying to remember how to breathe—probably made it easy enough to connect the dots. He cleared his throat, adjusted his position on the couch, and opened his New York Times again.
“So glad you’ve got it all under control.”