In Between Dreams (12 page)

Bailey laughed at Olive’s exaggeration. “I saw you last week.”

“Yeah, but a year’s worth of stuff has happened to me since then. Cocktails before the show?”

“You’re on,” Bailey said. “I’m excited to hear all about it. I miss you. I also miss having a life.”

“Stick with me, boo. You’ll get one,” Olive promised foolishly. “Listen, I gotta go. I’m meeting Jackson for drinks and James for dinner, so I have to get ready for two dates at once.”

Bailey lifted her eyebrow. “The perks of being a player,” she quipped playfully.

“I loved that book,” Olive said excitedly. “Well, I didn’t read the book. But the movie was good.”

“Wallflower,” Bailey corrected as she scrunched her face in almost embarrassment. “It’s
The Perks of being a Wallflower
.”

“Hmm…I thought it sounded wrong. See you Thursday,” she chirped, and Bailey heard the click of the phone. Bailey chuckled tiredly. Olive was a handful and a bit of a ditz, but Bailey loved living vicariously through her. She had enormous energy that Bailey adored and was jealous of. She was always going, always moving.

Bailey fell back and let out a groan of despair. She didn’t want to get up. She didn’t want to work. She pouted before looking at the clock. 4:32 p.m. “That’s basically five,” she mumbled to herself before sitting up and stretching. She justified not working after four because Sierra always went home at 4:15 p.m., and decided if her boss wasn’t in the office, she didn’t have to be hard at work at home. She dragged herself out of bed and sent her mom a text.

Wanna get coffee with me?

Her mom texted her back quickly.

I heard you were feeling better. I’ll make dinner for us. Come over in an hour
.

Bailey felt new energy; she was hoping she’d say that. A real meal sounded like a nice change of pace from a life of microwavable entrées. Bailey briefly wondered if her oven actually worked. She continued getting ready to be in the outside world. She was excited to be out of her apartment.

She was also very happy that she’d be able to catch up with her mom and eat her cooking. Bailey believed she should be a caterer; that is how delicious Ann Regan’s food was. Ann could make anything taste good. Ann was also an expert when it came to comfort food. Comfort food is exactly what Bailey needed. It would go perfectly with her mood. She still felt out of it since her most recent sleep attack.

Bailey showed up fifteen minutes early to Ann’s house with a bottle of wine and a movie for the two to watch after dinner. Ann lived in a small house in Greenwood on Aurora Avenue. The house was buried underneath the shade of trees and bushes and had a small one-car garage behind the house that was in no way connected to the home. When Bailey was sixteen, she demanded to live in the garage so she could sneak out of the house easily, although the reason wasn’t portrayed to her mom at the time. The area still looked more like a bedroom than a garage.

She knocked lightly on the red door of the brick house and waited for Ann to yell: “Come in.” Bailey thought she heard Ann mumble something, so she let herself in.

She walked in the doorway through a small hallway that led to the living room. She looked at all the pictures of herself on the walls as she
made her way through the living room to the familiar kitchen to find Ann stirring a pot of pasta. Bailey had an immediate feeling of wellbeing in seeing her mother cooking dinner.

“Hey,” Ann said, and Bailey kissed her cheek to say hello before grabbing a couple wine glasses.

Ann was a short woman, shorter than Bailey by a foot. She had short blond hair and a round face like Bailey’s. Bailey and Ann shared their petite button noses and their full lips, but Ann’s eyes were a bright blue and her hair had always been blond, although now the blond came from a bottle to cover her gray that was growing in.

“Dinner is almost done. I’m so glad you’re feeling better.” Her mother was always a comfort and nonjudgmental when it came to the sleep attacks. She had been the one to help her with the condition the most. Especially when she was younger.

“I wasn’t sick, Mom. It was a sleep attack,” Bailey reminded her, and her mom just waved as if to silence her.

“Same thing,” Ann said in her normal simple explanatory tone.

Bailey shook her head. “No. I’m not sick.”

Ann shrugged. “You say tomato, I say—”

“No one says to-
mah
-to,” Bailey interjected with a scoff. “How’s work?”

“It’s basically
Groundhog Day
. Every day looks the same. How is Sierra? Is she angry you’ve taken so much time off?” Ann asked as she strained the pasta, and a wave of steam hit the air. Bailey stared at the deep blue countertops and black cabinets. She liked the look and feel of her mom’s place.

“I told you, Mom. She knew my situation when she hired me. As long as my work continues to be A-plus quality, she’s okay with my leaves of absence. She is just careful on the types of assignments I get if I’m in one of my attacks,” Bailey explained for what seemed like the hundredth time. Bailey knew her mom meant well by asking her about work. She just worried. That’s what moms do. They worry.

“I know, I know. It just seems to be more frequent of late and that worries me…” Ann began again but stopped herself. “But you’re an adult now.”

“Exactly,” Bailey agreed, “I brought a movie over. That one you wanted to see.”

“Not the one where the main character is invincible, right? I saw that on a plane,” Ann said before bringing a plate of pasta and a couple pieces of bread to the dining room table that sat between the living room and the kitchen. “You wouldn’t believe the movies I see on planes,” Ann said with an eye roll. Ann was a beacon of normality that she often needed when her life was spinning out of control.

“No, I brought the one about some weird personality disorder,” Bailey told her before taking a bite. “
Mmm!
Mom. You’ve outdone yourself.” Bailey had not tasted real food in quite a while.

Ann hit her on the back of her head lightly. “Thank you, but swallow before you talk. You’re never going to get married with those manners,” Ann scolded. Some things never changed, and she would always see her as a little girl.

As if my manners are the reason I’ll never get married
, Bailey thought to herself with a smirk and took a sip of wine. “Okay.” She was so engaged in the eating of this delightful meal to stop and have a conflict over table manners with Ann.

After finishing their dinner, Ann went back to the kitchen to clean up. Bailey never offered to help, because she knew her mom would just shoo her away. She walked into the open living room and looked at the pictures that hung on the walls. A picture of herself and her father stuck out to her. The photo was at a lake in one of the southern states. Bailey picked the picture up and examined the photo. Her dad was wearing jean shorts and a football jersey, and she was just a girl. No older than five or six. Her mom must have taken the photo.

Max Regan had jet-black hair that was always combed back. He had a great full hairline for a man of his age, and he never quite smiled for pictures. He only gave a half grin. He had green eyes that Bailey had inherited from him that wrinkled on the sides when he was laughing and just one dimple that appeared on the side of his face when he gave that infamous half smile.

“Where was this taken, Mom?” she asked, and held it up. Ann squinted to get a better look at it before looking up to think.

“I think that’s from your fifth birthday. Max—I mean, your father insisted we take you to Atlanta. You were born there, you know?”

Bailey thought it was funny how Ann told stories. She said them like Bailey didn’t know a single detail about her own life. “Yeah, I know,” Bailey said, and put the picture back and continued walking around the room.

Ann changed out the pictures every couple of months; there were always different photos to look at. It was strange hearing Ann say her father’s name. Max. She didn’t hear it very often.

Bailey looked at another picture of the three of them in a studio setting. Each of them had big fake smiles and was awkwardly putting their hands on each other’s shoulders. Everything about the photo was awkward, but it was a constant that Ann always had up because it was the last photo the family took together.

Bailey thought about how much her dad hated that picture. She thought about her dad and mom’s conversation as they left the studio.

“I look old,” Max had said. He was looking in the sun-visor mirror of their Jeep Cherokee.

“Oh, you do not,” Ann had argued, and pushed her short blond hair behind her ears. “You look handsome as always.”

Max had looked at his wife. His dark black hair had begun to gray in the front, and his nose was scrunched up as he grinned at his wife. “You have to say that, because you’re married to me.”

“Yeah,” Ann had scoffed. “Marriage makes it so I have to be nice,” she had said sarcastically. “You’ve seen your parents, right?”

“Now that is a good point,” Max noted.

“Can we go?” Bailey had finally whined, and Max looked back at his daughter with a teasing look.

“Queen B has somewhere to be.”

“Everyone knows our world revolves around Queen B,” Ann had joined in.

Ann’s voice knocked Bailey out of her own thoughts. “I made you a bowl.”

“Huh?” Bailey spun around to see her mom handing her a heaping bowl of ice cream. “Oh, thanks.”

“Of course,” Ann said, and sat on the couch. “You’re getting too skinny.”

As Bailey drove home that night she thought about her dad, she thought about how much she missed him.

She thought about the trip they took to New York when she was younger. She could barely remember it. They spent the whole time with family friends, but she did remember one day vividly.

“Dad,” six-year-old Bailey said, looking up at Max with wide eyes. “Where are we going?”

They were on the subway, the train stopped, the conductor mumbled, and Max grabbed Bailey’s hand and ushered her out of the subway car. They walked up the stair with the crowds of people and onto the street.

“We’re going to go feed the ducks,” he said with a wide grin.

“I love ducks,” she squealed.

It was just Bailey and Max. Ann had stayed with the family friends and went shopping with the old woman they were staying with. The older man had to go to work.

They walked through a large park. Bailey took in the sights with wide eyes, grinning at all of the different people, places, and things. Max stopped at a food cart on the sidewalk. “Want a hot dog?”

Bailey nodded with excitement, and Max put up two fingers. “Two hot dogs, please,” he said to the man. “How you doing today?”

“I’m doing well. It’s not too hot today,” the man answered.

“Yeah, it’s nice day for a walk,” Max smiled. “Do you keep moving the cart to stay in the shade?”

The man shrugged and handed Max the hot dogs. “I never thought of that.”

“It’ll change your whole life,” Max said, a laugh in his voice. Bailey stared between the two men in confusion. This wasn’t their city. How did Max know this man?

Max paid the man, tipped his hat to him, and handed Bailey her hot-dog. “Let’s go,” he smiled down at his confused daughter. “What’s wrong?”

“How’d you know that man?” Bailey asked, her expression bewildered.

“I don’t,” Max stated plainly.

“Why were you talking to him like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you knew him…”

Max laughed and shook his head. “I was just being friendly.”

“But you’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” Bailey pointed out, a pout on her lips.

Max let out another laugh. “No,” he pointed his finger at Bailey. “
You’re
not supposed to talk to strangers.”

“What’s the difference?” Bailey asked with a head tilt.

“I’m an adult,” Max said plainly. “You’re a kid.”

“When do I start being friendly?”

Max thought about this for a moment. “When you’re big enough to punch a grown man in the gut.”

Bailey laughed at this as they walked toward the duck pond.

Thinking about Max almost always led to thinking about Rodney.

Psychologists had always said that Rodney was created by her subconscious to cope with the loss of her father. Her sleep attacks started occurring about a year after he died, and the common consensus was that it was her way of coping with his death. However, that didn’t explain why they were still occurring.

Rodney and her father had a couple of things in common. All the things they had in common weren’t obvious. Bailey had to dig deep to find the similarities. They both looked out for her; they both had a no-nonsense way about them. But Rodney was much harder than her father. Max always had a joke in him. He always began and ended the day laughing.

She also had the same feelings that were attached to both of them. She believed if she followed their lead in life, or in the dream world, everything would be okay. Her dad was so smart; he always gave such great advice. He was a comfort to everyone that he spoke to.

Rodney was also smart. He was brilliant actually. He always knew exactly what to do. He had gotten the dream group out of lots of unmanageable situations. He could talk his way into anywhere and out of anything.

Her mind drifted to a memory of Rodney.

Bailey had been hyperventilating. She was supposed to get one of their clients to the tornado shelter, but he ran off to get his wife from work. Bailey had tried to tell him that Daniel was getting her, but he wouldn’t listen.

“Bailey.” Rodney had handed her a paper bag he had found in the kitchen. “It’s okay. Daniel will intercept him.”

Bailey had felt a stray tear fall down her face. “How do you know?” she cried into the bag.

“I just know,” Rodney had said, putting his hand on her head and patting her hair softly. “You’re going to be fine. He’s going to be fine. I
know
it.”

Rodney was not one to comfort people. He was the type of man to say something like, “you’ll live” and “move on.” But the great thing about Rodney was that he knew when someone really needed him, and that’s when he was there for that person the most.