I shook away the embarrassment, recalling bits and pieces and that sting of rejection yet again and then hopped as delicately as I could over to the door that separated the bedroom from the main one.
I opened it a crack and peered inside. Derrin was on the couch, half-covered by a blanket, and twitching. For a horrible second I thought perhaps he was sick or having a seizure but then in the grainy light I saw his brows come together in a look of pain and he softly cried out, “Carmen. Carmen.”
Carmen? I wondered if that was his ex-wife, the one who had died. Poor guy. He obviously wasn’t over her yet. No wonder he wasn’t throwing himself at me. Not that expected him to but when you’ve got a drunk naked chick in your bed it’s hard not to dwell on it and feel slighted.
I watched him for a moment, unsure of whether to wake him or not but when his yelps grew deeper and more pained, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I hopped over to him and stood at the foot of the couch.
“Derrin,” I called out. “Wake up.”
He didn’t. I said his name again, louder, then I grabbed his leg, giving it a squeeze. I didn’t want to get any closer than that when it came to waking someone from a nightmare.
I chose wisely.
Suddenly he bolted out of the couch, practically leaping sideways until he was standing on the ground in a crouch, a gun drawn, his eyes focused stiffly on the blank space in front of him.
Actually there was no gun at all – his hands were empty – but he had made the motion as if he pulled one out from under his pillow and was holding it.
Okay then. Maybe he knew more than something about guns.
“Derrin?” I said softly.
He slowly turned his head to look at me, his chest heaving, and blinked a few times as he took me in. Then he looked down at the way he was posed and slowly straightened up.
“Sorry, I …” he trailed off and pressed his hand against the back of his thick neck, looking behind him at the couch.
“You were having a nightmare,” I told him. “I heard you in the other room. I didn’t want to wake you up but …”
He nodded and licked his lips. “Some nightmare,” he said, looking visibly shaken.
“Did it involve guns?” I asked, nodding at his hands that were clenching and unclenching.
He shook his head slightly. “No.”
“Did it involve Carmen?”
He looked at me sharply. In the dim light his eyes looked like black holes. It scared me a little but I stood my ground.
“How did you know?”
I gave him a shy smile, feeling awkward over it all. “You were calling for Carmen.”
He sighed and sat down on the couch, his face in his hands.
I gingerly hopped over to him and sat down beside him. “Want to talk about?” I asked hopefully.
“Not really.”
I chewed on my lip for a moment, considering the options. I guess I could tell him the truth about me for once, at least one little slice of the truth. “I have them too, you know.”
He rocked his head to the side and peered at me inquisitively. “Really?”
I nodded. “Yup. Usually the same ones, though in the past they were less frequent. Now I get them all the time. Ever since the accident.”
“The accident,” he repeated.
Shit, I’d forgotten I’d only told him so much about that.
“Yeah. The hit and run. I guess it triggered something.”
“That kind of trauma would do it. What do you dream of?”
And here’s where things got complicated. I hemmed and hawed about it for a moment and then decided to just bite the bullet. Sorry little pun, but there it was. But I wasn’t about to tell him everything.
“It’s usually me and my brother and sisters in our house in La Cruz. It’s a little town, just north of here on the curve of the bay. We’re sometimes in bed and then my brother comes into the room and tells us we all have to hide. Sometimes it starts when I’m already in the closet. Sometimes I’m alone, sometimes it’s all of us. Sometimes I’m under a bed. Sometimes I’m out on the street and watching it all happen.”
His leg pressed again mine. “What happened?” he asked gently, his voice low. “In the dream?”
“Some men come to kill us all. They kill my mother. My father is already dead at this point. We’re all spared because we were hiding and the cops came soon after. But in the dream, sometimes we all die.”
He frowned, his body stiffening. “What do you mean in the dream you sometimes die? Did this all happen in real life?”
I took in a deep breath, trying not to choke up over it. I so rarely talked about it because the tears often came after. It’s like it wasn’t real unless I was saying it outloud, as if my words could conjure it from the air.