Achieving Unbroken
Chapter Thirty Seven

—

"Dancing on the line of a dangerous love,
You could break me overnight
But there's no one like us"
Good Girls | LANY

—

Jason
[Wednesday, July 28th, 2018 - 11:46 PM]

This dream is significantly different than the ones I'm used to.

Joey isn't here. I'm not at the party, I'm not in the bathroom, I'm not falling onto my knees in the front lawn and I'm certainly not sitting in an ambulance while I hold my brother's hand for dear life. There's no tears, no screams, no distress. No sirens echoing my ears that drown out my peers' gossiping voices and nervous tones. I don't even feel sad, or angry, or like my heart could stop beating right along with Joey's.

I feel alive.

From what I note around me, I'm in my bedroom, which has a golden glow illuminated throughout.

Correction: We are in my bedroom. Lilla is here too, wearing... One of my t-shirts? Looking down at myself for the first time, I realize that I'm just wearing boxers.

This is the moment where I detect the dangerous territory that this dream is wandering in. But I'm not consciously in control here, I can't just wake myself up before something happens that I can't take back.

As I sit on my bed, I just watch Lilla rummaging through my dresser drawers and closet.

"I really have to start leaving clothes here," she huffs, and my face stretches into a grin without hesitation. I feel my body pick up and legs start to walk towards her. On autopilot, my arms wind around her stomach, pulling her close against my chest.

"Why? You look so good in mine," I mumble into her hair. She giggles, high pitched and dreamy, leaning her head back onto my shoulder.

"Mm, but it's getting increasingly uncomfortable to walk around in front of your family without clothes of my own."

"Don't worry about my family, they love you." I press a kiss to the side of her head. "Aren't you more worried about wearing my clothes in front of your parents?"

She shrugs under me, resting her arms on top of mine and letting herself fully relax.

"They don't care. They are fully aware of how often I wear your clothes; after every load of laundry they hand me a stack of folded clothing and tell me to drive to your house and bring it back to you."

"That's a flawed system. Every time you come over to return clothes, you stay for hours and leave with more clothes."

"I know."

"Then why don't you change it?"

"And stop getting an excuse to come over as much as I do? Never." The smile that she turns around and gives me is blinding as her arms wrap around my neck, pulling me in towards her.

We're kissing. And for a small, split second, I know that I have officially crossed the line into the territory I was oh so worried about. But I can't think about that now, because I'm kissing Lilla Harris, and I'm not sure my brain could come up with anything that feels better than this; because this is the greatest feeling I've ever experienced.

My hands press hard against her back, wanting her as close as she could possibly be. I feel a tug on my head, and I automatically know that it's her hands in my hair, a feeling I've thought about more times than I would like to admit.

Her bottom lip is in my mouth, and I pull it in more, because somehow, even though we are pressed together head to toe, she feels out of reach.

And I know why.

This isn't real. I'm not going to have this; I'm never going to have this. Even if I ever have the honor of a kiss with Lilla, it won't feel like this. This is just what I want, what I hope. This is not what I am actually going to get.

I feel myself drifting away from the dream as reality bleeds into fantasy. Trying to relieve myself of this beautiful, out-of-reach torture, I pull away from the kiss, from her body.

A harsh grey begins to dominate the yellow glow, reminiscent of a destroyed roll of film. Lilla is expressionless, staring ahead at me like a robot, no true emotion.

I fall backwards onto my bed as I observe this all crumble around me, and when I make contact with the mattress...

I jolt awake.

"Yo, man, you okay?" Patrick grunts from his bed, rolling over to face my bed. My head turns to look at him. "You were grunting and rolling and whisperin' and shit."

"I'm fine." Even with my quietest voice, I still sound loud in the dead silent room.

"'Kay." He rolls back over. "I won't tell Lil that you were dreaming 'bout her," he adds over his shoulder.

My body jumps at this comment, like I'm waking up from another dream.

"What?" I hiss.

"I told you you were whispering. All you whispered, over and over, was her name."

—

Lilla
[Thursday, July 29th, 2018 - 12:05 AM]

"Oh my God," I mumble to myself in realization, hardly coherent to anyone but myself. Propping myself up on my shoulder, head spinning from exhaustion, I softly but rapidly shake Piper on the shoulder. "Pipe, oh my God."

"You're too young for a midlife crisis, Lilla," she groans, not moving from her current position.

"What about a midnight crisis?"

Piper doesn't roll over, but she cranes her head to look over her shoulder, and even in the pitch black I can see the glare in her eyes.

"I'm going to punch you for that joke later."

"God, I'm sorry I woke you up at midnight, but if I tell you why I woke you up at midnight can you be chill for like, two minutes?"

"I was chill when I was sleeping. You ended that."

"I just dreamt that I made out with Jason."

She doesn't respond at first, but I see her peel her arm out from under the covers and flail around a little while trying to find the switch to turn on the lamp. Once she succeeds, we both whimper and squeeze our eyes shut at the abrupt bright light, but recover fast.

"Just making out? Like, PG-13 or like lowkey Rated R?"

"PG-13," I insist. "I was just at his dad's house, in his room, and—"

"And what?"

"I was wearing one of his shirts." Before Piper can get too excited, I push her to sit fully down by her shoulders. "We were just kissing, Pip. But at some point, I realized how fake it was, because it was just too perfect. I was too happy, he was too good of a kisser. I pulled away, things got blurry, and I woke up."

"You woke me up because you kissed Jason Oakland in a dream?"

"Yes."

"Fucking hell," she murmurs, twisting to turn off the lamp, and she flops back down into bed, jerking the covers over her head. "Call me when things get interesting."

"This is interesting, asshole! Jason and I have a strictly platonic friendship—"

"You two are going to be fake dating for most of senior year. That doesn't sound 'strictly platonic.'"

"But what does it mean, Piper? Is it trying to tell me something?"

A loud groan comes from her side of the bed, and while she doesn't turn the light on, she rolls over to face me. I'm sitting up against the headboard.

"Have you thought about kissing Jason while you were awake?"

"Yes, but—"

"But it sounds like you wanna make out with Jason. Or more. I'm not inside your brain," her body lulls back into it's original position. "Do whatever you want with this information. Tell me what you decide after I've gotten eight more hours of sleep. Goodnight."

I don't bother to keep trying to get her to talk to me. She doesn't want to, and I'm a big girl; I can figure this out all by myself.

First, I need to accept the fact that I want to kiss Jason Oakland.

Looks like I'm not going to get much more sleep.