Dream of Me

I was young when I’d first heard my mother and father talking. It was well past bedtime since I had school in the morning, two was not a suitable time to be wandering your estate. I was sixteen years old, pressing my back against the wall and taking small, silent steps to get closer to my father’s study, where he and mother were talking in the most hushed tones.

Mother had embraced father, her hands gripping his forearms as her face held nothing but hysterics, tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, “Nolan, what does this mean? He should have met her a whole year ago, the latest!”

My father had his hands on her cheeks, brushing her tears from her face as he tried to hush his true love, kissing her cheeks and against the tear streaks. “Jade, my dear Jade, perhaps he is a late bloomer?”

My mother, a human instead of a Spade like the rest of our family, looked through my father’s eyes continually, “Nolan, has there ever been record of this happening before?”

My father’s face turned down, shaking his head. My mother began to sob once more, fearing that I’d never meet my soul mate like I should, like her and my father had met each other. My eyebrows merged together as I looked down, waiting for my father’s reply. “Perhaps she has died. That’s the only reason why a Spade never meets their Dreamer, when the person they’re tied to dies.”

I sobbed aloud, my hand clutching my bare chest directly over my heart. Dead? She can’t be dead. I threw my head back against the wall as I slowly sank to my knees. How could they have hidden this for a whole year from me? Tears sprang to my eyes as my heart rammed in my chest. She couldn’t be dead; I hadn’t even dreamt of her, how could she die before I got to meet her?

My mother and father moved to the cracked open door and pulled it open to reveal my broken body, convulsing in fits of sobs and anger. This was supposed to be the rest of my life, she was supposed to be the rest of my life, how could she be dead? My mother crouched down onto one knee as she rubbed my arm soothingly, “Darling… how much did you hear?”

I looked between my parents, my angered gaze stabbing both of them continually as I yelled, “She’s not dead! She’s not!”

“Oh, Noah,” My mother crouched down more to wrap her warm arms around me.

I pushed her away from me, jumping to my feet; I bit my trembling lip hard enough to make it bleed. I wouldn’t appear weak not in front of them or anyone else for that matter. I looked between both of them and wiped angrily at my eyes, letting my split-open lip bleed if it must, I wasn’t going to clean it up. “She’s not, do you hear me? I would never let that happen to her!”

My father reached out to press his hand atop my shoulder, “Noah, son, there’s no way you could have saved her, and you would have never known her to save her. Do you understand, son? There was nothing you could do.”

I threw his hand off my shoulder, looking him dead in the eyes as I held my breath to quiet my convulsing sobs. “She’s not dead; I just haven’t met her yet. I will, though, I will. She’s alive, and she’s going to love me as much as I’m going to love her.”

My father licked his lips, his eyes glancing between the ground and my face. His arm coiled around my mother’s waist, pulling her into him, close and loving just like I’d hold my Dreamer. “Noah, son, are you trying to convince me or you of this?”

I glanced between the floor and their faces, filled with hurt and tears; I saw nothing more than disappointment from their sadness. I shook my head, pushing away from both of them as I walked through the large manor and ran up the stairs to my bedroom. I didn’t look back, I just bounded through my door, whipping it shut the second I crossed the threshold. My room was large and dark but illuminated by small a lamplight on my desk that I had forgotten to turn off.

I threw my back against the wall and slowly slid down the dark grey-painted wall. My tears resurfaced; there was no going against what my father had said – he was right. There was nothing in history about a Spade ascending after fifteen years of age. I was the only one who wouldn’t have someone who understood how to touch me, hold me, love me; I’d be alone for the rest of my life wondering what if.

My hands folded over my face and tears surged down my cheeks. I would never know her name, I would never hear her voice, I would never feel her touch, I would never memorize what made her laugh, or how her body would fit perfectly into mine like a puzzle piece. I don’t know how long I cried that night, all I know was that dark dissipated into day before my tears dried.

Mother came in at seven and I was still in the same position except with my comforter wrapped around me, staring at the grey wall across the room. I heard her come in, but I never saw her. No, all I saw was the paint on the wall, manifesting swirls and images – imagining what our life could have been like, what her name was, what our kids would look like, how she laughed. All of it.

“Noah, darling? It’s time to go to school. Are you … dressed … yet?” She was standing in front of me now, blocking my perfect reverie. “Noah Ryker, why aren’t you dressed yet?”

My eyes scaled up my mother’s frame until I felt like I was staring into a giant’s eyes. My voice croaked with the ache of sleep and the pain of heartbreak. “Mother, try being stripped of father. He’s dead. You’ll never see him ever again. Don’t you honestly and completely think that school is the least of my worries, let alone whether I’m dressed or not?”

My mother sighed and tried again, badgering once more to break through my insomniac-induced depression. “Noah, darling, your life can’t stand on pause because of what happened last night.”

“You’re right, but today, it can.” I allowed my head to fall into my knees due to anguish and this never-ending pain radiating through my chest.

Mother crouched down at eyelevel and placed her hand on my cheek, sighing and trying to hold my gaze with hers. “Noah, sweetheart, I understand that you’re in…” mother’s voice broke off as tears filled her eyes, “That you’re in the hardest place you could ever be in, but sometimes you have to put yourself aside for your father’s sake.”

My eyes filled with steaming tears that burned my eyes and flamed pathways down my cheeks, yelling without a care to who heard, “She’s dead, mother! I don’t care about father, about Nathan, about you, about school, or about anything!”

Her arms flew around me in that second as she buried my face in her shoulder and held me as tightly as I could imagine my Dreamer holding me. “Noah, shush, sweetheart, it’ll be okay – it has to be.”

Tears filled my voice, but not my eyes for this moment, “I’ll take truancy and whatever other kind of consequences that come with that, okay? Just… just get out of my room.”

I spent the rest of the day and two days after that in my room. I didn’t eat, I tried to sleep, I didn’t shower, but most importantly, I didn’t move from my spot. I pressed my hands to my face and tried to ignore the world for what it was worth. And in this moment, it was worth next to nothing. Scratch that, it was worth absolutely nothing without having her.

Family members and close friends came to see me to explain the importance of carrying on as if nothing had happened. Somehow, this had transformed from despair on my part to security on my father’s. He didn’t want anyone of importance to know that I was without a Dreamer. He didn’t want anyone to know that I was at such a disability. A series of family members, friends of me and of my father flooded into my room one by one and they all had the same talk about how I needed to be strong and confidential. What a bunch of bullshit.

My hands were over my face again as one of my uncles kissed the top of my head and left the room, just as he finished having the same reoccurring conversation. When I opened my eyes up next, there was a young teenager in a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top kneeling in front of me.

“Why are you crying?” She asked. She had the most magnificent brown eyes that had flecks of green and a dark red that reflected her blonde hair. She was thin but curvy, she had long legs like a runner and her eyes were the most beautiful, most breathtaking feature of her whole body.

My mouth parted and my eyes searched all over her, up and down as I tried to memorize what she was, how she held herself, everything. I gulped quietly as I wiped my eyes and just stared at her. A blush crept over her features as she looked down and laughed, looking back up and clearing her throat with a cough.

“Why are you crying?” She repeated.

I gulped and cleared my sandpaper throat as I smiled slightly, “Because I thought I’d never meet you. I thought you were… I thought you had left me before I could even meet you just once.”

She was kneeling down on one knee and hugging the other knee to her chest as she rested her cheek against it. Shaking her head slowly, she laughed and shrugged. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Who are you, again?”

I laughed and shook my head as I held out my hand, palm turned up for her to grab hold of, “My name’s Noah, just Noah for now. And you are?”

She looked between my eyes and the ground, darting them back and forth nervously as she took her lip between her teeth. Clearing her throat as well, she released her lip and smiled, “My name’s Angel Esperanza Reed.”

I shook my head, my heart pausing for a moment as I breathed in her scent. She was mine, she didn’t know it yet, but she would. She was meant for me, and I was meant for her. “That’s the most gorgeous name I’ve ever heard.”

She shrugged and took my outstretched hand, when her fingers closed around mine; I took a deep breath in, and let it out as I pulled her slowly into my side. I wrapped one arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist as she nestled in and sat beside me. I could tell she didn’t know why, but she was leaning into me with just as much dependence that I did. She didn’t object and say that she thought her name was ugly, just embraced the compliment.

After a few short minutes of silence later, she started to giggle under her breath. I turned my head towards her with an arched eyebrow. “What would be so funny at this moment, hmm?”
She shook her head, shrugging, “You do know that your lip is bleeding, right?” She reached her hand up and wiped the blood from my lip and then wiped it into the thigh of my sweatpants. She reached up again and wiped under my eyes and wiped the remaining tears into the thigh of my sweatpants again.

I started to lean in and just when I was about to kiss her, she took a breath in, fueling my endeavor to kiss her, then exhaled, “Why were you crying?”

I stopped where I was, pausing as my lips were mere centimeters from hers and my breath was coming out short and rugged. I licked my lips and opened my aquamarine eyes to take in her brown ones flecked with dark crimson and green, “I told you already. I thought I would never meet you. I thought… I thought you were dead, Angel.”

“Why would you think that?” She asked softly against my lips, her soft sweet breath coming out warm as she searched through my eyes, snuggling closer into my side and slowly moving her arms around my neck.

I looked up and exchanged my warm cozy bedroom for a hilltop that was just beside a cliff, overlooking the Atlantic as waves crashed into rocks yards beneath us. She was so transfixed in the midnight blue water crashing against the cliff wall and collection of rocks beneath us, watching the water rise into a wave and clash against the dark wall. I took this as my opportunity to start speaking.

“You and I are different, Angel. There’s this otherworldly human called a Spade, sometimes people abandon that title and simply call them ‘Sleep-Seekers’. They have the ability to inhabit people’s dreams and dig around for certain things, get certain information from people that are unwilling to give it straight. A Spade gets tied to their soul mate between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. Their soul mate completes them, heals them, makes them stronger, comforts, holds, and loves them the way they need. It’s just in their blood, in their hearts to understand what they need at certain times. It’s never been reported in history that a Spade had met their soul mate after the age of fifteen. This fact concludes that their soul mate had died before they could meet. You only have one soul mate, obviously, so…”

“That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.” Angel cut in; looking over her shoulder at me as she sat with her knees crushed to her chest and stopped watching the waves. “I know how it is to lose someone that you love and never get them back. My parents died last year, now I live with my twenty-one year old brother, Gabriel. They concluded me as an insomniac. So, I don't really... sleep that much. ”

I looked at her pointedly, searching over her hurt expression as it all began to sink in under the surface. I whispered slowly, “So, that’s why I didn’t meet you last year.”

She raised her eyebrow slowly; I scooted closer to her and sat with my legs folded and pulled her to sit in my open lap. She leaned back against me easily, turning her head toward me. She sat quietly for a moment and stared at my facial features, memorizing them I presumed. Her soft hand moved against my stubble filled jaw line, her thumb rubbing against my cheek as she finally parted her lips to speak, “That’s why you were crying – because you thought I had died, and you’d have to live forever without ever knowing me, because you’re a Spade. Right, am I right?”

I smiled at her, nodding slowly as I whispered gently against her lips as she moved closer to me, “You have never been more right, Angel.”

As I whispered her name, she searched through my eyes with her own, closed them slowly, and pushed her lips against mine, wrapping her arms tightly around my shoulders. She kissed me with passion, softness, and nothing short of love, it was the most amazing first kiss and it would always go down recorded as such. I had ascended because I had finally shared a dream with my soul mate – or as we Spades call them, our Dreamer – I had ascended and I already felt stronger and more alive with her wrapped up in my arms like she was at this moment.

I had found her, she was alive – she was breathing, thriving, beautifully alive. Angel Esperanza Reed was gorgeous and alive and kissing me with the most tender, sweetest lips one person could have.

And she was mine.