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Johnny went to the window and tugged aside the sheer curtain to look down into the backyard. “Not one like this. Lots of people here tonight. Big deal. Celebrities, even.”

“Should I care about that?”

He gave me a strange look and tugged off the towel to scrub at his hair. As always, I couldn’t look away from his body. He was so beautiful. The only sort of art I could really appreciate.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I guess not. I don’t, really. They come to drink my booze, eat my food, smoke my dope. Fuck in my pool.”

“So why do you have these parties, if you don’t really like these people?”

Johnny dropped the towel and crossed to me, pulling me to my feet. He looked down at my clothes, the
Dance with the Devil
promo T-shirt, my soft pajama bottoms. He rubbed a thumb over my nipple, caressing his own face. He pulled me a little closer.

“Who says I don’t like ’em?”

When he kissed me, I opened for his mouth. Tongue on tongue. But aware that Jen was watching me, I put a finger over his lips and stopped him before we could get any hotter.

“Johnny.”

“Yeah, babe?”

“You know there’s more to you than just those movies and those photo shoots, don’t you?”

He gave me another strange look. “Are you gonna tell me I should be an artist again?”

“Not that you should be. That you are.” I looked at the file of his drawings I could see on the dresser. “You’re really, really good.”

He shrugged. His hands cupped my ass. His cock pressed against me, not quite hard but definitely considering it. “Thanks.”

“I mean it.”

He put his forehead on mine, looking into my eyes. “Emm, Emm, Emmaline.”

I smiled. I was supposed to be guiding this somehow, and not doing a very good job of it. I put my arms around his neck. “Yes, yes, yes.”

His gaze searched mine seriously. “When you say that, I almost believe you.”

“It’s true. You’re very talented.”

His eyes narrowed the tiniest bit. “Art ain’t as easy as acting. Or posing.”

“Isn’t that what will make it all the more worthwhile?”

He laughed a little. We were moving, not quite dancing. Swaying to the music that had begun drifting up to us from the yard outside. I could hear laughter and splashing. A party was, indeed, starting up.

“I don’t know,” Johnny said. “Lots of things I think are worthwhile.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“You,” he said.

I cupped his face in my hands. “Johnny. You know…this isn’t real. You know that, right? Us, now?”

He shook his head slightly. “You’re wrong. It’s all real. You and me, Emm. This is real.”

I sighed. “No, it’s not. It can’t last. I can’t keep doing this.”

“Why not?”

It was a simple question, but I couldn’t form my mouth on the answers. I tried, I really did, but Johnny stopped my efforts with a kiss that got deeper, harder, longer. I knew I should end it, that I was supposed to somehow be guiding this and making it my bitch instead of the other way around. I was too distracted.

And what could it hurt? This kissing? This fondling? It was good. It felt good. It wasn’t hurting us. It wasn’t real. I could wake up anytime I wanted. Right?

“Come down to the party,” Johnny murmured into my mouth as his hands rubbed my ass. “It’ll be fun. Sandy’s not coming.”

“You bet she’s not,” I said. If there was one thing I could control about this, it would be that.

He laughed. “Don’t let her bother you. She don’t mean anything to me. You know that.”

“Yeah, aside from the fact she’s your ex-wife and mother of your child.” I made a face at him.

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Yeah, well, you should learn from your mistakes, too.” I poked him in the chest, then pressed my hand flat over his heart.

I felt it thumping. I felt his warmth, heard his breathing. I could smell him. I let my eyes flutter closed. All of this, so real.

All of it fake.

“I have to go,” I told him, because leaving without an explanation, even in a hallucination, felt rude.

“Don’t go.”

I laughed, not trying too hard to pull away. “I have to!”

“You don’t have to. You can stay here with me forever.”

His grip tightened on my ass, holding me in place. Unease slipped through me. His gaze was hard, his mouth thin. Not smiling or joking.

“Johnny, don’t. I mean it. I do have to go.”

He shook his head again. “Why? Why do you always have to go?”

He kissed me, hard. There wasn’t anything soft or sensual about it. It was angry, and I pulled away.

“Stop it.” I pushed away from him.

This time, he let me go. He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then crossed to the chair and grabbed up a pair of jeans he pulled on over his bare ass. He tugged a white tank top over his head, too, and ran his fingers through his hair before tying it into a ponytail.

I watched him with my arms crossed. Angry and feeling stupid, because I’d put myself in this place on purpose, and I couldn’t seem to change anything. Well, if I couldn’t make him do what I wanted, I could at least wake up.

Except, I couldn’t.

I closed my eyes. I opened them. He was still there. I tried again. Nothing.

“Shit,” I said miserably.

“Yeah, it’s shit,” Johnny said.

“No. Not… This isn’t…” I shook my head. Even if this wasn’t real, I couldn’t have him thinking I thought anything that had happened was shit.

Stupid.

Johnny looked out the window again. “Is it because of all that shit out there?”

He’d spoken in such a low voice, I almost didn’t hear him at first. I took a few steps closer. I felt the wooden floor beneath my bare toes. I heard more laughter, splashing, music.

Johnny looked at me. “Is it because I’m nothing special?”

“No! How could you even think… How could I?” Because if he was saying it, it meant I was the one thinking it. This was all me, everything here. I shook my head.

“Because I’m afraid, then?”

“I don’t know what to say.” My mouth moved, words came out, but I wasn’t sure where they came from. I blinked again and again, but nothing changed. My heart sped up. Triple thump. I was sweating.

“I mean because I’m afraid of trying to be something more than the guy in those movies. The one everyone wants to fuck but nobody loves. The pretty face with nothing going on behind it. Is that why this isn’t real for you?”

“That’s not what I mean at all. I don’t think that. I know better. I know you, Johnny. I know what you become. Who you are. What you can be. That’s all.” I swallowed, my throat thick with emotions I couldn’t decipher.

I needed to sit but satisfied myself with putting a hand on the back of the chair instead. I touched him, half expecting my hand to go right through him like smoke. Like a ghost. Like the fantasy I knew he really was.

He turned to me. “Then don’t go. Stay here with me, okay? Come to the party. Spend the night. Wake up with me in the morning.”

“I don’t belong here, Johnny,” I breathed. “I’m sorry. I just don’t.”

“But something’s keeping you here,” he pointed out. “Something’s bringing you back.”

“Just smoke. Just dreams. This isn’t real.”

“It’s real to me,” Johnny shouted so fiercely I took a step back. “It’s fucking real to me, Emm, okay? It’s been real since the first fucking time you showed up on my doorstep, and every fucking time since! I don’t care if you’re crazy or whatever the hell’s going on, I don’t care. Just…stay. Please.”

He reached for me, and I let him hold my hands. I let him pull me closer. I let him kiss me, soft and deep. And I felt myself drifting. Giving in. Instead of waking up, I felt myself falling deeper into this dream.

“I’ll do whatever you want. Stop making the movies. Hell, I’ll stop the parties. I’ll get a real job, if you want that. I’ll wear a fucking suit and tie, buy a car, pay my bills on time. I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Emm. Just don’t keep walking in and out of my life, making me crazy.”

“I want you to be an artist,” I told him. “I want you to be everything you can be, that’s all I want. And I want to be with you, Johnny. I just can’t do it here.”

“Why?” he asked, face pleading.

“Because I don’t belong here. I don’t belong in this place.”

He cupped my breast, thumb passing over my nipple. “You feel real to me here. You feel like you belong.”

I put my hand over his. “But…I don’t. And whatever this is, it’s wrong of me to keep doing it.”

“Whatever this is,” Johnny said with a humorless laugh. “What is it for you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do,” he said. “I love you, Emm. And I want to be with you.”

“You are with me.” Tears slipped over my cheeks. I tasted salt. “We’re together. Just not here. Not now.”

“Then when?”

“In the future.” It sounded crazy, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m from the future. I’m crazy. I make all of this up in my head. It’s not real, you’re not. This isn’t. All of you are something I just made up.”

“Stay, anyway,” Johnny said.

I tried again to wake. Nothing. I tried to make something else happen. Change the room. Change his frown to a smile. There was only one way to do that.

“Just a little longer,” I said. “I’ll come down to the party for just a little while.”

Had I ever made anyone so happy before? Johnny hugged me. He kissed me. He smiled, which I loved, and he took my hand as we went down the stairs and out the back door. He held my hand as he introduced me to people whose names were familiar even if their faces weren’t. He kissed me in front of them. He brought me drinks, which I drank and got tipsy from.

Time passed. The night went on. The party got more raucous. I saw a couple fucking in his pool, just as he’d said. I saw people smoking dope. I saw some shooting up, though I turned away at that, the sight of them injecting their veins disgusting and scary. I saw a lot of things at that party, but everywhere I went, I also saw Johnny.

Had I ever spent so long here before? Maybe something had broken, and if it had, I’d been the one to break it. I’d forced this on myself, trying to figure out a way to stop it, and now I was becoming truly afraid I wouldn’t ever get out of it.

People talked to me, and I answered. If they thought I was drunk it was because I slurred my words a little. Weaved a little in my walk. I saw Johnny from across the pool. He was looking at me, expression concerned, while a young woman in a terry-cloth halter top, her breasts like watermelons, tried without success to grab his attention.

Everything was hazy, like it wanted to spin but wasn’t. And I couldn’t wake up. I took another drink, tossed back a shot in a way I’d never done in real life. Fire burned my gut.

I stumbled into the kitchen through the back door. Ed was there. He looked up, eyes wide, mouth open.

“Holy fucking shit. Where the fuck did you come from?”

“Outside.” I looked at the bottle in front of him. The cigarette. The drugs. The notebook.

This was the same as the last time, except the bottle was already empty, the ashtray overflowing, the drugs gone with only the needle left behind. I blinked and went to the sink to splash cold water on my face. Also like the last time.

“Holy fucking shit,” Ed said. “You were there. Then you weren’t. What the fuck? What the fuck?”

“Maybe you’re high,” I said cruelly, my voice thick like syrup. “Maybe you’re crazy.”

“I am crazy,” Ed said.

We stared at each other across the kitchen. Heat shimmered between us. That’s what I thought. But it wasn’t heat, it was something else. Something invisible pulled me, tugging at my belly like a string attached to my guts. I twitched.

“Fucking crazy,” Ed said. “You were there, and then you weren’t. Did you know I wrote a poem about you, Emmaline?”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“You don’t like it. You’re not impressed.”

Something tugged me harder. I went to my knees right there on the kitchen floor. They smacked the linoleum, hard and painfully. I put both hands flat on the linoleum, wondering if I were going to fall. Puke. Pass out? How could I pass out when I was already unconscious?

“Oh, shit,” Ed said.

I closed my eyes.

The world shook.

Then the world wasn’t shaking, just my bed. Just me. I opened my eyes, blinking, and Johnny’s face swam into view. He had my shoulders and was shaking me.

“Emm!” he cried when I focused on him. “The fuck are you doing?”

“She was just trying—” Jen began, rubbing at her eyes.

Johnny glared at her and gathered me close. “Fucking bright idea!”

Jen looked scared. “Is she okay?”

“I’m fine. Johnny! I’m fine!” I pushed him away a little bit so I could catch my breath. “Seriously, lay off.”

He cupped my face and looked into my eyes. To Jen, he said, not meanly but not in a voice filled with sunshine and light, “I think you’d better go.”

She did, squeezing my shoulder before she left. “I’ll call you.”

“Yeah,” I said, too tired to get up and fight him to go after her, wanting really to just curl up next to him and knowing my friend would understand.

When she’d gone, Johnny kissed me, my face still in his hands. Then he looked into my eyes again. “What the hell were you doing?”

“I was trying to figure out if I could control the fugues,” I whispered, hating that I felt ashamed.

He drew in a slow, shuddering breath. Emotions flowed over his face, too many for me to discern. “And can you?”

“Apparently not,” I said sourly.

Johnny shook his head. “Don’t do it again.”

Annoyed, I turned my face from his. “Is that what you want? Me to just do whatever you say?”

“No, Emm.” Johnny turned my face gently to face his again. “I just don’t want to lose you all over again.”

Chapter 25

I
t felt like something had broken inside me, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Whatever had made my brain skip and jump back and forth from dreams to consciousness seemed to be…not repaired. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that. Not fixed. Broken worse, and yet better.

I didn’t go dark again for a week in which Johnny hovered over me so mercilessly I thought I might kill him. Then another week passed with me clearheaded. One more. At the end of the month, spring was inching into the air and I hadn’t even dreamed of Johnny-then in regular sleep.

I did make an appointment with Dr. Gordon, ostensibly for my yearly woman care, but I had her check out everything else, too, including a new CAT scan. I didn’t protest when she suggested it. We talked a little about my night in the hospital and my treatment options, and though I know she wanted to put me back on higher doses of antiseizure meds, I resisted.

“I already have trouble remembering to take my birth control pills every day. Adding in another dose of something else would be a pain in the butt,” I said.

Dr. Gordon shook her head. “Are you sure you don’t want to switch over to something a little less difficult for you to maintain, Emm?”

I laughed, which always feels awkward while sitting on a paper-covered table in a flimsy gown. “Nah. I’m okay. I’m in a stable relationship right now, not having multiple partners—blah, blah, blah—and we use condoms, although I think we’ll have the talk about STDs pretty soon and get rid of those. Besides, he’s had a vasectomy.”

She chuckled. “Sounds like you have all the bases covered.”

I shrugged. “I don’t want to go back on drugs if I don’t have to. That’s all.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “I know you don’t. I know. But as your doctor, I have to at least offer the treatment I feel is best, even if you don’t want to follow my advice.”

I nodded. Dr. Gordon had known me a long time. “Right. But I think we both know it’s not really going to make a difference in the fugues or even in my management of them. They come. They go.”

“They come, they go,” she said. “I wish we could figure out some better answer than that for you.”

Of course she did. So did I. So did my parents, friends. So did Johnny. But none of us were going to find something better, so I had to accept what I had.

My mom had driven me to my appointment, not because Johnny couldn’t but because we’d decided to have a mother-daughter bonding day. After my appointment we went to lunch, saw a movie, then came back to my house where my mom was going to sort through my closet and see if any of the stuff that didn’t fit me would work for her.

Talk about depressing, giving your mother hand-me-downs because she’s losing weight and you’re…not.

I was happy for her, though, as I watched her spin around in a long peasant skirt I’d bought on sale and had never worn. Frankly, never would, and not because it wasn’t the right size. It had been an impulse purchase, the color wrong for me, the material not my style. But it looked great on her, and I told her so.

“Oh, you think so?” She smoothed the skirt and spun in front of the mirror again. “I love this. I’d never have picked it up for myself.”

“I know. Maybe it was fate I saw it that day at Marshalls.”

She checked the tag, as I knew she would. “I’ll give you the money for it.”

“No, you won’t.” I shook my head and my finger at her. “No way.”

She sighed. “Emmaline.”

“Mom, no.” I found a blouse in my closet, too, and handed it to her. “Try it with this.”

She held it up, then glanced over her shoulder at me. “Oh, before I forget, I have a couple of boxes for you in my trunk. Your dad found them in the crawl space when I was cleaning out some stuff for the church bazaar yard sale. There’s a bunch of your things in there.”