Because real would have meant that I'd let some sort of…
I struggled with it, not wanting to even give my delusional hallucinations a name. As if having sex with some kind of ghost could actually have been real.
I almost laughed with relief, lost in my own thoughts, as the doctor told Mark that they'd be back to check on me later.
For a minute there, I'd almost believed that I'd had sex with Cole's ghost, and watched him disappear with his satisfied, shit-eating grin when Mark found us.
And then I was here.
As odd as a sudden onset of an out-of-nowhere, severe, nut allergy was, the idea of Cole being a ghost that came back to the party to haunt it and have sex with me was way more odd.
Suddenly the one waitress's words rolled through my mind. She'd said, "Eating that will make you dream of your one true love. Don't you want to know who you're destined to spend eternity with?"
That's probably why I dreamed what I had when I was passed out on the floor in the hallway. That, and the other waitress's offhand comment.
"You haven't truly lived until you've had a ghost's penis," she'd teased, holding up a white-chocolate banana half.
My delusional hallucination explained, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Mark turned to me as the others left.
"You scared the shit out of me, you know."
"I'd imagine so. I scared myself, to be honest. I'm glad you found me so fast. If I really was as bad as you say…"
"You were. I thought…"
He didn't finish his thought, but the rest of the sentence was written in the concern in his eyes. He'd thought I was going to die.
To lighten the mood for us both while we waited for the allergist to come down and run some tests on me, I said, "You would not believe what I was doing while you were saving me."
"What do you mean?"
"I didn't know I was lying there dying. In my mind I slid through that door and followed you down the hall to one of those rooms. You grabbed me, never saying a word. You pulled me inside and you pinned me against the closed door and we…"
The curtains pulled aside again right then, and a different nurse popped her head in.
"Oops, I thought Dr. Maddox was still in here. Sorry, carry on."
The curtains closed as swiftly as they'd opened and Mark said, "Yes, please. Carry on. What did I do to you after I pinned you against the door? I want to hear all about where your naughty mind was while you were passed out, cause it definitely beats the reality of what I was going through during that time. Don't leave out a single detail. Did I unzip that hot dress you were wearing and kiss my way down from your lips to your breasts?"
I don't know where the nerve came from to tell him every teasing, delicious detail, probably from all the epinephrine still pumping through my veins, but tell him I did.
I lingered on the part about how he had me pinned facing away from him so he couldn't kiss me from lips to breasts, but he could, and did in my hallucination, yank my dress up and finger me.
I mentioned that I'd worn no panties, and hearing him groan during that part of my story egged me on.
He asked me if I'd been wet for him and I whispered, "So wet that after only a few teasing strokes of your fingers you couldn't resist pulling yourself out of your scrub pants and sliding home."
"Ah hell, Hannah, I'm tenting my scrubs right now. I like your version of events way better than the real ones. What happened next?"
"Are you sure you can handle what came next? If I'm making you uncomfortable…" I teased, glancing down at the tenting he mentioned. I still couldn't believe I was teasing him so brazenly. We hadn't actually had sex yet, but my words were so bold, like phone sex but without the actual distance or aloneness that came with it.
"Very uncomfortable," he agreed. "But we can fix that later, once you've recovered. Keep going, your story is hot as hell."
I told him everything.
Well, almost.
I lingered on how he turned me to face him, and how I wrapped my legs around him as we came together against the cold, metal door.
I also told him how we straightened ourselves up, left the room to go back to the party, and ran into him in the hallway saying, "There you are! I've been looking all over for you! What in the world made you go exploring through the halls of this old place without me? You know it's haunted, right?"
"Wait, what?" Real Mark looked as shocked now, hearing my story, as I'd felt then.
"I know, right?" I added, "And then you saw the guy I was with walk out of the room right behind me, adjusting his pants, and you said 'Who the fuck is that?' and you punched him! Only it went right through him as he disappeared.
I turned to you confused as all hell, and then boom! I was here. You were calling my name and asking me if I knew what had happened to me."