Dream of Me

I wanted to memorize him, I wanted to memorize every perfection and every flaw; I wanted to make sense of everything and anything that made Noah – Noah. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and never let go, but right now wasn’t the best opportunity since he was driving a car and I wasn’t. So, I just stared. And every time his eyes darted back to mine, and every time I tried to hold his gaze and he tore it away, I was compelled to keep looking until I could stare into the depths of his soul through his eyes. That’s what they said, right? That the eyes were the portal, the mere beginning, to the soul?

When we pulled up to a stoplight, I watched him stare at the red light for half a second before he turned his eyes toward me and then lunged for the kill. One soft hand pressed to my cheek where his thumb strummed a beat and the other pressed possessively and comfortingly to the back of my head as his face drew nearer. I couldn’t take my eyes away from him though; something inside me compelled my eyes to stare until his started to droop closed and his lips overtook mine.

There was an aching want in the pit of my stomach, my hands going on the outside of his to grab at his arms and my back arched. Pushing my lips against his with a bit more pressure, he did the same, forcing me to groan out softly. His lips turned up into a smile in the kiss and he slowly turned his head to the side, his hand pressing to the back of my head with more force. The world was on pause for a moment as a Spade and his Dreamer finally shared a first kiss… three years late.

Until it wasn’t. A car behind us beeped impatiently as his hand experienced a spasm against the horn of the car. A second later, Noah pulled his lips from mine and pressed them back for one small encore. Then, he turned back in his seat and slammed his foot down on the pedal, looking into the rearview mirror and rolling his eyes at the impatient driver. Still, I couldn’t take my eyes away from him.

But he didn’t miss a beat as he turned his eyes to the side but kept his head straightforward, “Now, are you done staring at me?”

What kind of ludicrous question was that supposed to be? Of course I wasn’t done staring at him, and I figured I never would be since we were destined for eternity. I smiled instantly, I knew he liked the fact that my eyes were only on him and I loved his attempt at pretending he didn’t. I shook my head slowly, careful not to take my eyes away from him or blur my vision so I couldn’t focus wholeheartedly on him.

With my eyes locked against him, one thing I didn’t appreciate was that time seemed to fly by, what felt like five seconds was five minutes and he was ushering me into his lofty, small apartment. I take that back, it wasn’t small per say, it was comfy, cozy even. It just wasn’t what I expected him to have. He pointed around the living room, “Living room,”

With the jerk of his thumb behind us he said without taking his eyes away from mine, “Kitchen,” putting his arm around my waist, he nodded his head toward a door that was slightly closed, “Bathroom.”

Turning us around, we stopped at the only completely closed door that I had seen yet. I could only imagine what this room was, but the hesitation in his voice made me seem like he felt as if he couldn’t trust himself. He looked down at me, not even acknowledging the closed door in front of us. I turned my head up toward him and I wasn’t expecting his mouth to be so close to mine, so I closed my mouth quickly to quiet my gasp. “My bedroom,”

I smiled and moved forward, grabbing his hand that was wrapped around my shoulder. I twisted around on my foot, used as a pivot, and twirled into the door, opening the vertical slick of wood, and pulling the both of us through the threshold all in the same beat. He was smiling down at me, that same look of distrust in himself sitting in his eyes as I flung us down onto his bed. We collapsed down on our sides and he wrapped his arms around my waist loosely as I did the same around his neck.

Alone, complete without interruptions, it was the first real time we could focus on each other without the rest of the world getting in the middle of it. He parted his lips softly and I jumped forward and crushed our lips together with a small noise creaking from my throat. Before I could memorize the feel of his lips, he pulled away with a small, short-breath gasp.

I opened my eyes and found his opening as well. He was smiling with that sweet little smirk and whispered against my slightly parted lips, “Was it everything you were expecting?”

The smiled branded on my lips only grew wider as I shook my head, a slight, gentle giggle shaking between my lips as I whispered back, “Not in the least, it was so much better.”

This time it was Noah who bounded forward, forcing me to flip onto my back and grab the backs of his shoulders to pull him in fully to me. His body pressed against mine softly, but his lips felt urgent, gentle but in complete demand, and I found myself getting used to it quite quickly. One of his arms was wrapped protectively around my lower waist and the other was wrapped securely around the back of my neck. I found myself crushing into him just as much as he crushed against me, I wanted no spaces, I wanted to get lost between where he began and I ended.

I wanted to go on kissing him, it was far too easy to tell that much was true, but he pulled away from me by half a centimeter once more. I tried to reconnect our lips, but he shook his head slowly, his hands framing my cheeks and strumming a beat there. It was soothing to say the least, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t still confused and concerned on why he broke away from me. “What it is?”

Noah shook his head and smiled as I mulled over what he had said in the past twenty-four hours. There was something he’d said that I couldn’t push through the barriers of my mind, like I knew what it was, but it came up blank anyway. My eyes welled up with tears and I buried my face into the cracks between the pillows, Noah quickly pushed under the pillows with his arms and wrapped me up in them, pulling me into his chest. He didn’t ask me what was wrong; he didn’t question the random outburst of tears. He just held me and ran his fingers through the tips of my hair, his chin in the crown of my head as he whispered lyrics to a song that I hadn’t heard before, but I didn’t question it. I just knew things were going to be worse now than what they were before, even if I couldn’t figure out what the future held for us. “Noah,”

“Yes, Angel?” He replied instantly, well before I could even finish my thought. His voice was hoarse, rugged, and scratchy and he knew I loved it like that. I shivered internally as well as externally.

“Noah,” I tried again, “What happens to us now?”

He was silent, unmoving, I wasn’t even sure he was breathing at this point, to be honest. He knew what I meant and he knew I was beginning to understand what was going on. The embrace turned from soothing and comforting to protective and crushing as he dragged me into his lap and curled his arms around me like he was shielding me from everything beyond the space on the bed.

I framed my hand against his cheek and strummed my thumb against the stubble coating his jaw line. I looked down as I tried to remember that something he had said, but nothing came to mind and I had a feeling he was blocking it from my mind and forcing me not to remember what I was trying to, if Spades could even do that. This round, he won. I looked into his eyes and tried to look through the blank façade, but that still was harder than any one person thought it would be, even for his Dreamer.

“Noah,” I tried once more on this endless endeavor, “What happens to us now?”

Still in this crushing embrace he had me in, I heard his breath quicken and a hearty sigh fall through his lips. “I – I don’t know, Angel. It’s hard to tell, really. Things change from here on out, does that make sense?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, Noah. I’m not, I’m your Dreamer.” I chided him as my brows furrowed together, merging until I could feel the anger and hurt fill my face.

“You don’t even know what it means to be a Dreamer, Angel. Don’t sit here and try to make it sound like you do.” He growled in response.

My brows continued to furrow together and it was easy to see my feelings were hurt and that he was the cause of them. “I thought you told me all that time ago that Spades and Dreamers just knew how to comfort, protect, hold, and love each other – that it was just a natural instinct, Noah. You remember that, or was that a dream all on its own?”

He didn’t take that very well. He grappled around, twisted me in his lap and intertwined our fingers, pushing me backwards and down into the bed. He straddled me and pinned me deep into its softness but his breath came out forced and heavier, as if he wished he didn’t have to be soft about his pinning me down. To tell the truth, as frightening as he looked right now, I was no fool, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, accidently or internally. There was no nerve or fiber in his whole being that could even fathom the thought in hurting me. So, I waved it away. I stared him with my gaze set and my jaw locked. I had nothing to say to him at this point and he knew it.

Even though we stayed like this for only a few short minutes, his breathing never calmed, it actually got more rough and shaky as he clenched my fingers between his. “Do you always have to pick a fight with me, Angel? Can’t you just let it go? Just once, let everything I say not be taken as literal? Please, for my sanity?”

I looked out of the corner of my eyes and tried to fight against his hold, but as I pushed my hands up, he shoved them deeper into the bed after slamming them into the velvety brown bedspread. I huffed a sigh.

“Why are you being so snappy with me? I don’t understand what I did for you to verbally attack me like you did. Your head is either too far up your ass or too far in the clouds if you think that I’m the only reason why we argue as much as we do.” I whispered through a cracked voice, not trying to expose how hurt he was making me feel at this point.

He shook his head and pushed himself off my body and sat up by the headboard. He exhaled slowly and ran his fingers though his hair, shaking his head gently afterwards. I began to sit up and all the while, his gaze never shifted toward mine, and I almost didn’t care that it didn’t. But, I said almost, which means I did care. Far too much, if you asked me.

“I don’t know, Angel. I don’t know! Is that what you want to hear?” Suddenly, his gaze was shifted and attached to mine in the same second that I looked from the bedspread back to him. “Is that what you want to hear? I don’t know what happens from here, but whatever happens, you know I’ll take care of you. Don’t you?”

I couldn’t even attempt to take my eyes from his in this moment, it was like gravity wouldn’t allow it, or maybe it was just me who wouldn’t allow it. I whispered slowly, “But who’ll take care of you?”

With his tongue darting between his lips for nothing shorter than a second, he said quickly and almost defensively, “I am more than capable of taking care of myself.”

I stared over at him and just watched him; there was nothing more I could do than just that. He looked back down at me, his stare was harsh and pointed, like daggers as he challenged me to open my mouth and say something else to him.

Finally, I turned my eyes away from him and whispered as disgustedly as I could muster. “You need to stop being so stubborn.”

I pushed up from the bed and walked out of his room, slamming the door behind me as if to make it that obvious barrier between me and him, the space that I needed for my own sanity and he best not cross it. I looked around the one bedroom apartment, contemplating on where I should go. There were only three places that I could go without getting too far from him: the front room, the kitchen, and the balcony. I figured I’d give him a run for his money and sneak silently out onto the balcony, making sure that I left the front room light off and kept his curtain encasing all the glass before the sliding-glass door intact.

After I settled down onto the comfy patio chair in the corner and propped my legs up, I listened to the darkness and natural nighttime sounds as I closed my eyes and just waited for time to pass. I don’t know how long I waited until I heard his footsteps quickly scurry around the entirety of his apartment.

“Angel? Baby, come on. I’m sorry. I just… Angel?” That’s when insecurity and panic entered his voice. Before I even had the time to walk back inside, Noah was sprinting out of the apartment, down the two flights of stairs and bounding himself out of the front entrance. He was running up the street, still in my line of vision, and twirling round and round searching for me.

He had his hands in his hair and I could hear him hyperventilating from all the way on the third-floor balcony and it broke my heart. He was twisting around and folding in on himself as he searched the premises for me. He said my name through his heaving and started to pull at his hair as he felt the loss of me, not knowing my exact whereabouts were scaring the daylight right out of him. I could feel it, he was afraid that someone had taken me, and that he wouldn’t know how to get to me. He knew exactly who it was who had taken me, but couldn’t understand why I felt so close. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed as evenly as he could, turning his head toward me slowly as he followed our shared feelings back to the source.

He opened his eyes to my worried expression, my hand gripping my neck and the other shoved through my hair as my body began to gently shake with the scare of what his thoughts were mimicking. I didn’t know what I just did then, how I connected back to him like I just had. It wasn’t like I was a Spade like he was, I was just his Dreamer. Did I get some sort of cool superpowers like he had? Or was it just the intense connection that I just felt a moment ago? Could I do that all the time if I wanted to, without there being some big scare to entice it?

By the time I was done reeling over my mantra, Noah was sliding the door open and joining me on the balcony where he sat down on the long tanning chair that he had placed in the other corner of the balcony. He gripped me at my hips and pulled me down beside him, kissing my cheek with a gentle passion as he skimmed his lips over to connect against mine. Tangling his hand in my hair, he added a gentle amount of pressure as he pulled me tightly into his chest, his legs twisting around each other as I released a soft sigh of content and happiness.

“Try to sleep some, love.” He whispered slowly against my lips after he got me all riled up and solely focused on his kiss. How rude.

I bit back my yawn as I grumbled like a helpless child, “But I’m not tired.”

The melodic chuckle resounded softly from his throat as he detangled his fingers from my hair and went about smoothing the twisted and curled-over locks. “Yes you are, don’t lie now.” He kissed against my temple, “I love you, Angel.”

I didn’t want to say it back, not because I was afraid I wouldn’t mean it, but because I was afraid that we were moving too quickly, and I’d like my first real relationship to be done right. So, I laughed breathlessly against his lips and nodded slowly, pressing my head against his collarbone as he buried his face in my hair, inhaling silently at my natural scent that caused a sigh to exhale from him and shivers to protrude from me. My hands gripped against his shirtfront as I reeled myself closer into him, our legs further tangling and our bodies joining at the fronts, I savored this feeling of being in his arms. It was the sweetest feeling I ever felt in all my days, and it filled me up with the tightness in my chest and the butterflies flinging around in my stomach, stars in my eyes that only cleared to his face as I nodded off into sleep to the even breathing coming from his chest.

***

When I woke up, all I saw was the streetlight from the parking lot just outside his bedroom window. I don’t remember being transported from the balcony to the bedroom, and to be honest, I don’t even know how he did it. As I rolled over onto my side, though, I found that my Noah was nowhere to be found and all rationalities like using the bathroom, finding some food, watching TV because he’s not tired, stretching from a bad dream, or getting a glass of water to ease a too dry throat all deserted my mind. My hand climbed through my hair as I looked around the silent bedroom and nothing scared me more than this.

I could hear voices from where I was, with the window pushed open and the bedroom door only half-closed. I could distinctly pull Noah’s voice from the equation far too easily, but the other voice – high-pitched and quite feminine – I had never heard of in my whole life. I knew it seemed completely irrational to get jealous, but the liquid fire I felt in my stomach that flamed towards the sky fueled me. I pulled the blanket back and started to wander to the window.

“I have to go, okay? She’s waking up, and I need to be there for her when she does.” Noah said vehemently, that scowl he always used to prove his point that he was angry and he didn’t care what you had to say about it shoved through his lips as I could picture him crossing his long arms across his chest.

The female voice scowled in a high-pitched grunt that carried too loud up to the bedroom window, “What are you even doing, Noah? Was it really worth it?”

I could hear the growing growl fall angrily from Noah’s lips as he snapped with the words too personal to his answer. “Of course it was worth it. You supposedly have a Dreamer, Anna, don’t you?”

There was the sound of a hand meeting the skin of Noah’s cheek, and I could feel it against my own, and it really hurt. And that really pissed me off. I turned away from the two Spades and crawled into his big, warm, welcoming, Noah-scented bed and hugged a pillow that smelled so much like him it burned my nostrils. Distantly, I could hear Noah, “I have to go, Anna, and don’t let me catch you snooping around here ever again. You understand?”

I didn’t wait around for her answer, I forced my eyes closed and buried my face into his pillow, curling up into a ball and waiting for his warm embrace to return.

Silently, he crept back into the bedroom and into the bed itself, slowly pulling the pillow from my grip and laying his head on it and wrapping me up in his arms. I rolled restlessly away from him and he wound his arm around my stomach, slowly reeling me in until my body curled against his and he buried his head in the crook of my neck, fitting like a puzzle piece. He pressed his lips into my collarbone like he had done earlier and whispered the same three words as well, his arms tightening and soon his soft snores filled the room.

They were like a lullaby all on their own, making my lids droop, but still I couldn’t shake the thought of this Anna person walking around at God-knows what time, pulling my Noah away from me to have some conversation. I’d figure it out, one way or another.