In Between Dreams (10 page)

“An hour, tops. Mei said she’ll be out in a minute. We can watch TV until it’s time to get to the station.”

“Good.” Bailey stood up and stretched. Sam pulled her into his arms. She let herself fall into him, tucking her head into his chest. “What’s this for?” she asked into his sweatshirt.

“You seem shaken,” he said softly, running his hands through her hair.

“Not stirred?” she asked sarcastically.

“Come on. You can tell me. What’s bugging you?” Sam asked; he was genuinely concerned. Bailey could hear it in his voice. This is what
Bailey loved about Sam: his sincerity. He was always so genuine and sweet. She knew he changed Daniel’s words from time to time when translating to sound more appealing. Bailey really didn’t see a problem with that; it was good of him. He always wanted everyone to feel comfortable.

“Nothing, Sam. This has been one long mission,” she said, and put her arms around his neck and pulled him in tighter. “Thank you for being so concerned,” she whispered in his ear, and he held her a little tighter.

The door opened behind them, and Bailey and Sam broke apart. Bailey looked toward Mei’s room to see if she’d come out, but she wasn’t there. If it wasn’t her door that had opened…what was it?

She looked toward the door that led into the hotel room from the hallway. There was a skinny Asian man in the doorway with long jet-black hair pulled into sleek a ponytail. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt. He had tattoos from his neck down to his chest and arms. The man looked very similar to Yin, as if he came out of central casting for a Triad gang member. He was looking straight into Bailey’s eyes with disdain. His lip curled up at her, and Bailey’s mouth opened in shock. She saw him grasp the butt of what appeared to be a 9-mm revolver out of the waistband of his jeans. Without hesitation, he pointed it toward her chest and then toward her head. She panicked, yet it all seemed to happen in slow motion. She froze as she felt pure, unaltered terror while looking down the barrel of a gun.

“B,” Sam whispered frantically. “Duck,” he growled. She couldn’t react. Luckily for her, Sam seemed more than capable of reacting. Sam pulled her down, and gun went off simultaneously. She hit the ground and something struck her shoulder as she fell to the floor. This was bad. Really, really bad.

The next thing she heard was the man’s boots stomping toward Mei’s bedroom. The fear consumed her into a shocklike state. All she could think was
Mei was right
.

seven.

B
ailey abruptly sat up in bed with a loud and long gasp. She felt like she was taking her first breath after drowning under the waves of her dream. She reached up to feel her face and arms to make sure she was all in one piece. She instinctively looked at her right shoulder, half expecting to see a bullet hole and blood streaming down her chest. She could almost feel her warm blood spilling over her body. She saw nothing now. What had happened? Where was Sam? And Mei? Her eyes adjusted to the darkness as she was stuck
in between
that moment between sleeping and waking. Bailey swung her legs out of the bed leaning on her hands with her elbows resting on her thighs.

She glanced at the nightstand, picked up her cell phone, and began scrolling through her contacts. She wasn’t even halfway through when she realized that there wasn’t anyone to call. It was a dream; it had been a dream. A bad dream but still it was only a dream. She breathed heavily, trying to catch her breath. She gathered herself before getting a glass of water. She was slightly unsteady on her feet as she rose.

She leaned over and switched on the side lamp on her nightstand, which helped her to get her bearings. She was sweating profusely, and she felt dampness on her brow as well as under her arms. The dream had quickly turned into a nightmare. Bailey knew her vivid memory of events would fade in emotion somewhat as her conscious mind took control. “It was just a dream,” she mumbled before she chugged her glass of water that sat on her nightstand. “Just a dream.” It was her mantra.

She walked into the bathroom turning on the lights as she entered. Taking a paper cup from a dispenser on the counter near the bathroom sink, she filled it, not waiting for the water to cool. She gulped down the first cup and filled it again. She needed to calm down, to ease her mind. She let out a shaky breath and braced herself on the bathroom counter. She hung her head low in exasperation. She slowly looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was slightly sickened to see the woman looking back at her. She wondered silently how her life got so out of control. She slowly closed her eyes. She swung her body to where she knew the toilet was. Sitting down, she relieved herself of the long sleep’s retention and sat with her head in her hands. She tried to conjure up a happy memory to still her nerves. She kept her eyes closed and let her mind take her far away from her dreary studio apartment in Seattle. The face of her friend Jason appeared in her head. She let the memory of her senior trip with Jason engulf her.

They were in San Diego in the middle of their three-week road trip the summer after senior year. They were leaving San Diego on their way to Los Angeles, and they were late for checkout. Bailey stood by the door of the hotel room that she and Jason had slept in the evening before with her arms crossed.

“Jason,” Bailey yelled. “Your hair looks fine. Can we go? We were supposed to check out twenty minutes ago.” Jason was a tall and skinny openly gay man who liked to wear pink. He was sassy and exuberant. He was the best friend Bailey had all through high school. Bailey truly believed he would do anything for her. Jason was also known to primp at every opportunity. He liked his own reflection. He moved briskly to join Bailey for the next leg of their journey.

Bailey’s long hair was wavy and pulled into a side braid. She wore a flower in her ear that matched the color of her yellow lace snug tank top. Her jean shorts were tight, and her flip-flops didn’t match anything she was wearing. Jason had commented multiple times on the trip that “purple flip-flops don’t match
everything
, Bailey.” He said it in a snide, yet playful tone.

Jason had spent the duration of the trip in pink tank tops and swim trunks, as they went to either a pool or a beach every day. His skin was
bronze, and he made sure to have tanning oil with him at every point of the vacation.

Jason rounded the corner with his bags over his shoulder. “Oh! Let the melodrama begin. Oh God,
what
will they do to us? Twenty minutes late for checkout? God that is a punishable offense in the state of California! I think the sentence will be at least two years in the penitentiary. We better sneak out. Should I change into all black so we can go undercover?” Jason said with his normal joking satire. A playful smirk appeared on his face culminating his monologue. Every time he spoke, it was like a performance.

Bailey rolled her eyes at her best friend and ushered him out of the bedroom. “I just don’t want to get fined or something,” Bailey said.

Jason pursed his lips at her. “You say that like they’re waiting for
this
room in order for their hotel to continue functioning? They really don’t care if we’re twenty minutes late. This is Southern California. Twenty minutes late is basically early here,” he said. He was always able to simmer Bailey down.

Their room was on the first floor of a Marriott Courtyard. Bailey, and as the two walked the short distance to the lobby, Bailey handed her bags off to Jason. “Here, take these. I’ll check out,” she told him. Not waiting for an answer from Jason, she turned, walking over to the hotel registration. They weren’t the only party who checked out late. The line had three people ahead of her. She had to agree her drama about punctuality was exaggerated.

Jason shrugged while he watched Bailey walk across the lobby and queue up in the checkout line. He grabbed her duffel bag and sifted through his pockets for the keys. “Fine, but you’re driving. I need my beauty rest. I was up half the night thanks to your snoring,” he called after her. A couple of business travelers near the front door turned and gave Jason a “do you know where you are?’ look. He obviously didn’t care.

“My
snoring
?” she scoffed. “More like thanks to your sexting with Christopher.” This retort rang loudly through the lobby, which prompted a couple near some couches in the lobby to gawk at Jason and Bailey with wide eyes. The business travelers walking toward the
restaurant shook their heads at the outburst between the two. Bailey and Jason weren’t the type to turn off their personalities depending what atmosphere they were in.

“I cannot confirm or deny.” Jason laughed before heading out the front entrance on his way to the parking lot. When Bailey finally worked her way to the front desk, she turned in their keys and paid cash for the outstanding balance on their room before heading out to the car. She wanted to keep the credit card balance as low as possible in case they needed to use it. She thought,
Like bailing Jason out of jail for example
. The thought of Jason spending the night in an LA jail gave her the case of the giggles. Although it wouldn’t be nearly as funny if it actually happened.

When Bailey walked out of the lobby, Jason had already pulled up the black SUV, and he was in the passenger seat with the seat all the way back. Bailey crawled in the front seat and put on her “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” glasses, as Jason called them. “You know…” Bailey began, and Jason groaned. Whenever Bailey was going to start in on him, she always started with those same two words, “I just don’t get what you see in him.”

“I assume you’re not referring to George Clooney,” Jason verbally fenced a bit before the upcoming admonishment from Bailey.

“Him I like,” Bailey said. “Christopher, however, is a closeted gay man who has had thirteen girlfriends in the past ten months and refuses to speak to you in public.”

“Christopher is a hockey god with abs from heaven who told me he loved me two weeks ago,” Jason disputed. “Yeah, you got me, he’s in the closet, but to be fair, it’s hard to be out and also play a sport.”

Bailey heard a short car horn behind her from a fat, bald man in a convertible wearing a Hawaiian shirt who was clearly anxious to leave. “Sorry, sir, I know you’re in a hurry to get to Denny’s for the Grand Slam breakfast,” Bailey quipped. She drove toward the exit to the street, the dome of the convertible only inches from their bumper.

“Does he have to date a billion women while he stays in that pink fluffy closet?” Bailey asked rhetorically.

Jason adjusted his car seat to an upright position and took his sunglasses off. Bailey continued driving but knew she was about to get a
lecture. “Listen, his closet isn’t pink and fluffy, neither was mine. Mine was probably purple and well-fashioned, unfortunately for me it had a see-through door when I thought it had a one sided window.”

“I don’t—”

“Nope.” Jason put up his hand to stop Bailey from speaking. “You don’t get to talk; I’m talking now.”

Bailey nodded, and Jason continued his speech. “I don’t know what his closet looks like, but unfortunately I’m in there with him. It’s hard to come out in high school, and I know we’re graduated now but let’s be real—it’s his choice. And, yeah, he didn’t have to date all of those girls, but he didn’t sleep with any of them, so no
unmanageable
trauma was involved. Christopher’s choices are his own, Bailey. So step off.”

“Damn.” Bailey gulped and looked at Jason as they stopped at the light. “I’m sorry, Jas. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not going to,” Jason said matter-of-factly before he softened his face. “It means a lot that you’re
so
concerned. You need to let me worry about me.”

“Don’t get all mushy on me,” Bailey teased. “I just don’t want you to get hurt, because I’ll have to pick your ass up off the floor and I’m way too busy for that,” she said. She lifted her glasses to wink at him before turning on the radio.

Bailey started looking intently for road signs for the 101 North to Los Angeles. Her sense of direction also seemed to improve if she sat forward with her chin almost directly over the steering wheel. The on-ramp appeared on the right, and they joined the rush of thousands of drivers going quickly to their respective destinations. Bailey sat back preparing for a long drive.

“Play something fabulous. We have a while until we get to LA, and I want to chair dance the entire time,” Jason said.

“Oh, I love chair dancing,” Bailey responded with excitement.

“I know you do,” he said in a singsong voice and looked at his phone for a moment before turning the music down. “Speaking of sexting—” Jason said as he looked at his phone, fully intending on reading the most recent text message from Christopher.

“Ew.”
Bailey lifted one of her hands and covered her ear. “I don’t want to hear the details.”

“You wish,” he joked. “It’s a little note for you; ‘I just heard Brad Dunne is single. Tell Bailey to nonchalantly stalk him until he asks her out,’” Jason read out loud.

“How is it that
no one
can tell he is gay?” Bailey said jokingly. “And how exactly does one nonchalantly stalk someone?”

“
So
not the point,” Jason pointed out. “Brad finally broke up with his girlfriend. The same Brad you’ve been pining over for the last, I don’t know, four years.”

Bailey groaned loudly. “I actually knew him in middle school too.”

“Great. So your entire life you have pined over one guy, and now he’s single.” Jason clapped his hands. “Now is the time for a covert mission! We can follow him around, and you can just ‘bump’ into him in places.” Jason was getting excited, his voice was picking up. “We can invite him on a ‘group thing’ to the drive-in and then get him drunk so you can take advantage of him.”

“Ew.”
Bailey scrunched up her nose in disgust at Jason. “I’m a freaking lady. I would never—”

“And we can—” Jason said.

“No. We’re not doing anything like that. It’s not like I have all summer to just screw around,” Bailey reminded him. “Just because we’re leaving behind West Seattle High, doesn’t mean we’re leaving behind my very real and semisevere sleeping disorder.” Any time Jason tried to suggest Bailey get into a normal relationship, she would remind him of her double life. She believed she would never be allowed to have a normal life or have a boyfriend.