My Kind of Woman

31. Normalcy; You've Got It All

When I slept, I dreamt soundly. No adrenaline, no jolting to wake, no terrors. I dreamt that I was in The Time Traveller's Wife, that I couldn't stop skipping through time, and Mio was waiting back in a shared house. Waiting for me. I dreamt that I visited her when she was younger; almost the same height, longer hair that fell down against her back, big smiles that made her eyes squint closed.

In the dream, it was a frigid, winter night. I was in a puffer coat, my chin nuzzled into a scarf, hands plunged in my pockets and balled to keep the chill from creeping in. I could feel it. The fingers of ice, the dropping temperature, hear her voice. Across the street, she was waiting at a crossing point, waving goodbye to a group of girls, similar age. She was in a pair of tights, a navy skirt and a button-up coat. Her scarf was the same one I was wearing.

Her eyes found me from across the road. A car whizzed between us. In the dream, I didn't feel that aching hole that had burned into me from missing her. I felt comfort, relief. Like it was a common emotion. It was a different life. She was smiling into her scarf, like I was smiling into mine.

She came across the road with quick, skipping feet - an obvious hurry in her step.

"You're back," she said, and had a much heavier accent than I knew her to have.

"How old now?" I asked.

"Eighteen," she replied, "what are you here to tell me?"

I shrugged, my scarf lifting up against my cheeks. "Nothing too much."

She just stared at me. The ends of her fingers were bright pink in the cold. Her hair was half tucked into the wrap of her scarf, framed about her heart-shaped face.

"Don't get married," I said in the dream. My voice was floating, hanging on the frozen wind, my vision was wobbling. She was talking to me, and I think I was replying, but all I could hear was a car horn honking. It was so loud.

I woke, sharply inhaling. Someone was knocking at the door. My sleep-heavy brain immediately registered danger and I clumsily jumped up off the step. My hand fumbled for the bat.

I didn't have time to think about my sweet dream, or try and wake myself up. My anxiety had thrown me back into reality, making my hands tremble.

She wouldn't knock.

I knew she wouldn't knock.

Realising it was only likely to be the mailman, I laid the bat down by my pillow on the step and reached for the door knob. My breathing had only calmed slightly. I tried to steady it with rhythmic breaths, counted in and out, but once the door was open, that rhythm faltered.

My heart dropped into my stomach and shattered at the sight of Mio standing in my front porch. For a moment, I thought about just slamming the door in her face, like I had done to Jackie a week before. The hole in my chest was aching all over again. But I didn't slam the door, I didn't shoo her out. Maybe it was because under the heartache, I'd really been praying that I'd see her again.

But for what?

She looked worried, her eyes skipped over me, not resting in any one place. I couldn't tell what she was thinking at all.

Closing the door on her wouldn't do much. The damage had already been done, just from seeing her so close to me.

I think she wanted to come in, so I stepped aside and nodded her in. She looked at me for a few more seconds before stepping inside and pressing her back to the wall as I closed the door.

"You're not going to school," she said, knitting her brows softly.

I shrugged, standing opposite her, back against the bannister beams. "It's personal."