It was the same dream.
Frustrated, Emily turned over in her bed, pounding the pillow a time or two to fluff it up again before she tried to get back to sleep. A minute or so later, she rolled over on her back, drumming her fingers against her stomach and staring at the ceiling. She rolled to her side and, with a glance at her alarm clock, quickly pulled the pillow down over her ears and across her eyes, as if it was the noise or the light in the room around her that was preventing her from getting back to sleep; that locking them out with the pillow would unlock the door back to sleep.
It wouldn't work. It never did. Emily had a good three hours to go before her alarm was set to go off, but she knew that she would spend most of that time awake and frustrated, troubled by the dream.
It was the same dream.
Emily had dreamed it a half-dozen times or more. Not that she had been counting. She never had any reason to expect that it was more than just a dream, or that it would recur enough times to keep track of. There was nothing in it to set it apart from any other dreams: A woman with piercing eyes and a sad smile, staring at her from the shadows. The eyes were unflinching, and Emily herself was unable to look away from them. They stared at each other as if in a state of mutual hypnosis, neither of them moving, neither of them changing her expression – until the woman gasped, suddenly. That was the point where Emily woke up.
It was never more than that. It was never less than that.
It was the same dream.
The first time she awoke from the dream, Emily was giddy, still slightly high on the scenario that her subconscious had created for her. There was something exciting about having someone stare at her like that; something unique in the initial exhilaration of a newly budding crush, making eye contact with an alluring stranger who returned your gaze.
When she awoke after the second time, she was frustrated that something which seemed so real was only a dream; that her subconscious mind was teasing her so cruelly; dangling a tantalizing fantasy right in front of her, but just out of reach. But when the dream came back the third time - and kept on coming back - Emily awoke confused, wondering who the woman could be, and why it was that she had become a recurring feature of Emily's dreams; what her subconscious mind was trying to tell her, and why it was being so persistent about it. Was it a warning? A premonition? It couldn't be just a coincidence.
The more times she dreamed the strange woman, the more angry and bitter Emily became. Without knowing the reason for the recurring dreams, she had no way of controlling them or making them stop.
There was no pattern to when the dreams would come; none, at least, that Emily could discern. They didn't come once a week - or in synch with her monthly cycles - and there was no apparent relationship with what she ate or how tired she was when she had the dream. Or how lonely she felt. Or how needy.
Emily spent one solid morning scouring the internet – all of her friends' posts, all of the news sites and blogs that she followed, all of the friends of her friends - thinking that she must have seen the woman's picture somewhere before.
She came up empty.
Her mom still had connections on the Rosewood Police Department, and Emily briefly considered setting up a meeting with a sketch artist, or looking through the missing persons files, or even the mugshots. But she didn't want to get her mother involved. Pam Fields worried enough about her daughter, single and living alone in Philadelphia. Emily didn't want her to worry that her daughter was losing her mind, too.
Finally, in desperation, she reached out to her friend from high school, Aria Montgomery. Aria was an artist, and, even though portraits weren't her specialty, she was competent enough to sketch a reasonable likeness. That was the theory, at least. It wasn't until Emily tried to describe the woman that she realized how little she knew about what she actually looked like. "Haunting eyes" and "a world-weary smile" might have been useful descriptions for someone who wanted to write a poem about Dreamgirl, but they weren't really helpful in explaining to Aria what the woman looked like. Aria painted her best interpretation of the woman Emily described, coming up with a beautiful picture of a woman - who looked nothing like the woman in the dream.
Opening up to Aria about Dreamgirl meant opening up to Emily's other best friends from back home, Hanna Marin and Spencer Hastings. As foolish and pathetic as she felt for admitting that she was having recurring dreams about this woman, Emily was okay with letting her friends know. They had been through a lot together in high school. Even if they did think that she was crazy, they would know that she was no crazier than any of the rest of them.
Emily half-hoped that Spencer would know what the dream – and the fact that she kept having it – meant. Spencer was no expert in dreams, but it was the sort of thing that they had come to expect that Spencer would know; the psychology of dreams and how to interpret them. Emily wasn't looking for some sort of enlightening prophetic interpretation. She just wanted to know what was going on in her head. And how to stop it. But Spencer was stumped. She only asked Emily the same questions that Emily had asked herself, trying to find a pattern behind the dreams.
The more Spencer probed, the further away Emily felt from the answer.
But, as far as Hanna was concerned, the answer was simple. "You just need to get laid," she told Emily plainly. "It's obvious that you're super horny, and your brain is just going to keep throwing this hot chick at you until you find yourself somebody to scratch that itch."
"And you're sure you haven't seen this woman somewhere before?" Spencer interrupted impatiently, ignoring Hanna's theory; still intent on solving the case.
Emily shook her head sadly. She couldn't even describe the woman to Aria, so she couldn't imagine that the woman was someone she'd seen in real life.
"Have you ever tried to talk to her?"
Emily shook her head again. "I always wake up before I get the chance. It all happens so fast."
"Well, the next time it happens," Spencer prodded, punctuating her words by waving her index finger in the air, "try to go back and finish the dream before you're fully awake!"
And so it was that Emily, lying there in her bed fully awake, found herself concentrating on the dream in an attempt to induce her subconscious to continue it and take it through to the end. She was starting to find it hard to breathe, with her face buried in the pillow. She started hoping that lack of oxygen would usher her into the realm of her subconscious, so concentrated on the dream with all her might, replaying it over and over and over in her head. In the end, it was that repetition that lulled her back to sleep – but the dream and the Dreamgirl had fled.
Emily's leg was swinging back and forth on the barstool as she nursed her glass of white wine. She wasn't at the bar because of Hanna's advice. Not completely, at least. She definitely wasn't there to try to get laid, but it did make sense that she needed to get out; out of her apartment, out of her routine, out of her rut. If her life was just the same old cycle of work, dinner in front of reality TV, and sleep, it was no surprise that her dreams should get stuck, too.
Emily adjusted the brightness on her phone to compensate for the dim light of the bar. She never understood why it was always so dark in there. Or, perhaps she did. The dim light was much more forgiving; much more conducive to getting people together. In the dark, it was easier to approach someone with the hope that you could get your personality out there - unlike in the bright light of day, when you might get shot down for any physical imperfections that the bright lights.
But Emily wasn't there to meet anyone. That was why she had chosen to do her drinking at The Rose Tattoo. The regulars there all knew her. There was no danger that any of them would try to hit on her. But there was decent shot at some friendly conversation and companionship.
Emily's heart started beating when she felt someone's eyes on her. She didn't want to look. She knew that it couldn't have been someone she knew, or that person would simply have stopped over and said hello. Someone was staring at her with a purpose. Emily wasn't in the mood for the mating ritual. But, although Emily wasn't returning the person's stare, it persisted. The only way out of the situation was to confront it.
Emily turned her head to the right, her eyes defiant. She nearly gasped. It was the woman from the dream.
It was impossible, but there she was: Dream, in full, three-dimensional color. Emily would've recognized those eyes and that sad, haunting smile anywhere. Even in the dim light of the bar. And that's when it hit her; that's why she hadn't been able to describe any of the woman's features. The woman's stare had come from the shadows. Could the dreams have been a premonition – or some kind of déjà-vu experience?
It was insane even to think like that. But there was no denying the dream was playing out right before Emily's eyes. She stared the woman down, her steely expression daring her to be real; daring her to make a move. The woman just kept staring with that slightly downturned smile. She looked trapped, somehow, or hopeless.
Emily heard Spencer in her head: Did you ask her her name? But before Emily could open her mouth, there it was: The stunned gasp from the end of Emily's dreams. Dreamgirl shot out of her chair as another woman came to the table where she was sitting, picked up a glass of beer, and tossed it at her before heading for the exit, walking quickly.
Emily recognized what happened next. All of a sudden, more of the dream was coming back to her – Dreamgirl throwing her head back, raising her hands and shaking them, holding them out at her side, soaked to the skin. Could there have been more to the dream that Emily had never remembered before? Or was her mind playing tricks on her, manufacturing a false memory to go with what she was seeing in real life?
The woman glared at her, apparently thinking that Emily was enjoying her misfortune. Rather than dwell on that thought, though, Dreamgirl quickly cocked her head, turning it in the direction the exit. When Emily saw that, she went into overdrive. Whatever was going on, she knew that she couldn't let it end the way the dreams did, with the girl disappearing before Emily could find out who she was and why she was staring so sadly. She knew that confronting the woman was her only hope of getting the closure that would put an end to those dreams. She virtually ran over to the table. "Are you okay?"
The woman looked at her, as if the answer to the question was so obvious that there was no need to say out loud. She cocked her head towards the exit again, then back at Emily. "I… I need to go after her," she said, her voice a soft rasp.
Emily grabbed her by the wrist, using both hands, and dug in her heels to keep her from leaving. "Do you really?" she asked, in a sultry tone. Dreamgirl looked her up and down and then dropped her shoulders, surrendering to the circumstances. "You're soaked," Emily observed. "Let's get you cleaned up." Still holding onto the woman's wrist with one hand, Emily put the other on the woman's shoulder and guided her towards the ladies' room.
Emily handed Dreamgirl a couple of paper towels from the dispenser as they stood face to face in front of the mirror, but there really wasn't much that she could do, other than watch as Dreamgirl did her best to dry herself off. She started with her face and hair, and then patted some fresh, dry towels against her shirt, returning the used towels to Emily, who wadded them up into a pile and kept the clean towels coming.
Emily wasn't sure where to begin, so she just started talking. "I… uh…" She chuckled nervously. "I know that this is going to sound insane, but…" She closed her mouth and snickered to herself, shaking her head slightly in disbelief. The woman handed off another wad of towels and looked up, her face looking annoyed but interested.
"Okay," Emily said, looking down at her feet. "I know that this is going to sound like a line or something, but… I've had a dream about this… About tonight. About you… uh…"
The woman froze where she was, her hand inches from her hair with a handful of towels that she was about to use to wring it out. She gave Emily a cockeyed stare.
"Okay, I know it sounds crazy, but…" Emily let the sentence go.
"Oh, no," the woman replied, without a hint of sarcasm in her tone. "I've had that same dream," she said, in all earnestness. Emily's eyes went wide and she leaned in, surprised but somehow relieved. "Only, in my dream," Dreamgirl continued, letting the towels fall to the floor and moving in closer, "we kissed."
"Ha ha," Emily mocked, pushing her away. She couldn't believe that the woman was actually trying to use this very personal, very traumatizing dream as a way to hit on her. But she should have known that the woman was a player. That, after all, was what had earned her the beer shampoo.
"No, I'm serious," Dreamgirl persisted. "Your hand was… here," She put Emily's hand on her shoulder. It wasn't a random choice. She had done a killer arms-and-upper-body workout that morning, and she knew that her deltoids were popping. That was also the reason she had chosen a gray tank top for her evening out. "...and my hand was here." She put her left hand on Emily's lower back, resisting the temptation to put it lower. She wasn't sure how much this strange but beautiful creature was going to let her get away with. "And then we…"
Emily backed her head away for a moment when Dreamgirl moved in, but, ultimately, with a roll of her eyes, she just went with it. She knew that the woman was lying about the dream, but she let her kiss her anyway. Maybe Hanna was right; she needed to get laid. Or maybe it was just that she wanted to believe that there was a reason behind her recurring dream. Maybe she wanted to think that they were meant to meet. Maybe…
"Your phone!" Emily abruptly pushed off of the girl and pointed in the direction of the woman's back pocket. "The screen is cracked!"
The woman smirked, reaching behind her to retrieve her phone and holding it up to reveal that the screen was, indeed, cracked. "Okay," she conceded wryly, "but you had a fifty-fifty shot at that one!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Emily asked, peeved. "Fifty percent of phones have broken screens?"
"Well…" Dreamgirl thought it over. "Well, no, I guess not," she said with a shy smile, "but you get my point. I mean, it was a safe bet, if you were trying to..."
"Trying to what?" Emily barked back, indignant.
"I mean, come on," the woman said, shrugging her shoulders. "You've been around. You know how it is, when someone's trying to… you know." There was that smirk again. "I mean, 'I've seen you in my dreams' isn't exactly an original line."
"Ooh!" Emily's grunt was somewhere between frustrated and angry, leaning more on the angry side, that the woman thought that it was all just some cheap ploy to try to pick her up. Emily didn't know how she knew about the phone, but she was starting to realize that more had happened in the dream than she had ever remembered before.
"I am definitely not trying to pick you up," she said bitterly. "I'm just trying to figure…" Emily paused, her eyes becoming wide. "Glasses!" she exclaimed, pointing her finger in the stranger's face.
The woman did a double-take, her eyes furrowed in confusion. "Glasses?"
"In… in your purse! You have a pair of glasses in your purse!"
Paige chuckled, shaking her head as she started opening her purse. "Well, you tried," she said condescendingly. "But you went too far. You pushed your luck one time too often. You got lucky about the phone, but, this time…"
The woman's face went ashen as she pulled a pair of glasses out of her purse.
"What the hell's going on here?" In an instant, she had lost all of her swagger. Emily observed her face's transition from confusion to rage, from ashen to red. "You… you and Gayle…" she said, as if trying to put the pieces together. "You set me up!"
"Gayle?" Emily protested. "Who's Gayle?"
"You know – Gayle!" Dreamgirl spat accusingly, "The one who…" She gestured up and down her body, indicating what Gayle had done with the glass of beer. She waved the glasses in front of Emily's face, accusingly. "The one who planted her glasses in my handbag and tipped you off that they would be in there!"
"I swear to you, I've never even met Gayle!"
Dreamgirl cocked her head, as though she were trying to decide whether or not to trust Emily. Emily leaned in closer, putting her hand on the woman's wrist. "Paige, you've got to believe me!"
Dreamgirl jerked her arm away. "How do you know my name?" Her body was trembling. She was full-on freaking out.
"What?" Emily wasn't even aware of the fact that she had used Paige's name.
"'Paige,'" Paige spat, leaning her head in a little too close to Emily. "You called me Paige!"
"I don't know!" Emily's voice came out high-pitched. She covered her face and started crying into her hands. "I'm just as confused as you are," she pleaded. She was just as scared, too.
Seeing Emily that vulnerable made Paige believe her. Or maybe it wasn't so much that she believed her, but that she didn't care anymore. She only felt protective of her. She put her arms around Emily and held her close, pulling Emily's head onto her shoulder. "It's okay. It's okay," she said softly. She leaned her head back and Emily, feeling her pull away, looked up to see what she was going to say. "I believe you," Paige said simply, looking deep into Emily's eyes before guiding her head back into place on her shoulder. When she sensed that Emily was starting to calm down, she backed off of the hug. "Why don't you tell me your name?" she asked, her voice coming out non-threatening, like preschool teacher's.
"Emily," Emily said softly, leaning back to look Paige in the eye.
Paige reached for the dispenser and handed Emily a paper towel, in a reversal of their earlier roles. "Emily," she repeated. "That's a pretty name." Emily smiled weakly, sniffling into the towel. Paige held her for a moment. She needed a moment; needed to slow things down. Everything was happening too quickly – not just with this stranger, who, apparently, knew her from her dreams – but with the entire night. An hour or so earlier, she had begrudgingly agreed to accompany Gayle to The Rose Tattoo. As friends. No drama; Gayle had promised. And the next thing she knew, Gayle, returning from the bathroom, caught her making eyes at a cutie at the bar and threw her drink all over her. And, before she could piece things together, she found herself in the ladies' room, with Emily telling her that they were destined to meet, or something.
Paige had been telling the truth about one thing, when she said that she believed Emily. She believed that Emily hadn't plotted the whole thing with Gayle. She also believed that Emily wasn't faking the whole thing. It would have been hard to fake bit about the glasses. Still, it all seemed a bit far-fetched. Paige wasn't going to read too much into it.
"Well, listen, Emily," she said soothingly, making a point of calling her by her name. "I'm covered in beer, and, now, I'm getting it all over you. Maybe we should go somewhere where we can get cleaned up properly?"
Emily nodded wordlessly. Paige put her hand on Emily's cheek and looked into her eyes. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Emily nodded again. "I'll be all right," she murmured softly.
Paige opened the door and led the way out of the restroom. Giving Emily's hand a squeeze, she assured her, "We'll figure this out."
Her voice may have sounded confident, but she was far from convinced.
The cool night air felt good on Emily's face, especially after the dense atmosphere in the bar – and the dense atmosphere of her conversation with Paige. "I live a couple of blocks from here," she heard Paige say. "Is that okay?"
Emily nodded. As they walked along, she asked, "Who's Gayle?" She wanted to say something to let Paige know that she wasn't just a frail, weepy girl. Her voice came out steady and strong, effectively making her point. She really did want to know who Gayle was – especially if there was any chance that Gayle would be waiting for them back at Paige's place.
Paige chuckled, with a faraway look. "Gayle is…" She exhaled heavily, through her nose, as she thought it over. "Gayle's like… You know when you get a piece of hair on your tongue, and you can't get it off? And then you don't feel it for a while, and you think it's gone, but it's still stuck on the tip of your tongue?" Emily shrugged a shoulder. "Well, anyway, that's what Gayle's like. She got it in her head, somehow, that she and I were meant to be together, and I just can't shake her. I mean, even now, after that scene in the bar, I'm sure she's blowing up my phone, telling me that I'd better get my act together before I lose her."
Paige had held up her phone to illustrate her point, and Emily concentrated on the cracked screen. She hoped that it would trigger more memories from her dreams; she was desperate to know what lay ahead of her back at Paige's place. She was confident that Paige wasn't going to take advantage of the situation. She had never felt unsafe, waking from those dreams. If they had been some kind of premonition of danger, she would have expected to have awakened short of breath, with her heart pounding.
Paige, as if sensing what Emily was focusing on, shook the phone a couple of times in her hand. "Weird how you knew about the phone, huh?"
Emily nodded. "I even recognize the patterns of the cracks," she said, making lines in the air that mimicked the lines on the phone.
"Do you remember anything else from the dream?"
Emily shook her head. "I never remembered anything beyond the look on your face just before Gayle through the beer at you before tonight, when we started talking."
"Oh," Paige said softly, feigning disappointment. "So, you don't know whether I get lucky tonight?" She immediately backed away and threw her hands up protectively. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding," she exclaimed with a disarming smile. "I'm sorry," she said coyly. "I couldn't resist!"
Emily knocked her shoulder into Paige, throwing her off stride. "I don't need a dream to tell me the answer to that question," she said wryly, and she mouthed the word, "No," drawing a circle with her finger and putting a bar through it.
Emily stepped through the door into Paige's apartment and, once Paige flicked on the lights, took a quick look around. None of it looked familiar. Emily had hoped that more memories from her dream would kick in, to give her some sort of clue as to how she should proceed, but, apparently, the well of remembrance had run dry. Emily twisted her head towards Paige and pronounced, "Nice place," with a polite smile.
Paige smiled back politely and gestured to the couch. Emily sat down, still a bit nervous, and put her hands on her knees.
It felt like the first class on the first day college; knowing what a classroom was, in general terms, and what the rules and expectations are, but, at the same time, not quite knowing how to handle oneself. Emily looked up expectantly.
Paige had moved into the kitchen, separated from the room were Emily was sitting by a counter that came up to her lower chest. "Can I get you a glass of wine?" Paige hoped the wine would help calm Emily down. And she definitely wanted something to calm herself down.
Emily nodded, smiling pleasantly. "That would be nice."
Paige dipped down under the counter, emerging with a bottle in one hand and a pair of glasses and a corkscrew in the other. "I'm afraid all I have is this 'two-buck upchuck,'" she said deferentially.
"It's fine," Emily assured her, brushing some hair away from her face as she followed Paige with her eyes.
Paige leaned over the coffee table as she opened the bottle. She poured a glass and handed it to Emily before pouring another for herself. After clinking glasses with Emily, with a quick, "Cheers," she took a seat in the recliner, giving Emily some space on the couch. "Oh!" she exclaimed, surprised as the change in posture caused her shirt to shift, reminding her that it was cold and wet. "I should probably..." She gestured vaguely towards the back of the apartment before getting up and disappearing back there, moving quickly. She emerged moments later, buttoning the top two buttons of a fresh shirt. She pulled another shirt out from under her arm and dangled it towards Emily. She was about to toss it to her, but Emily waved her off.
"I'm okay," Emily said, looking down at her shirt, which had only a patch or two of moisture left over from their hug in the bathroom.
Paige pivoted and tossed the shirt back into the room she'd just come from, shutting the door behind her.
"So," Emily said, placing the glass on a coaster, and returning her hands to her knees.
"So." Paige smiled obligingly, but she drew a blank. "Any more, um… revelations from the dream?"
Emily shook her head and reached for her wine glass, to give herself something to do with her hands. "No," she said, taking a sip. "I think that's it for the dream." She chuckled nervously.
"Does the apartment look familiar?"
Emily sighed and tightened her lips. "I keep trying to find something that jogs a memory but…" She shrugged her shoulders, looking sad and frustrated.
"Well, do you want to take a look around?" Paige offered, starting to stand. Emily gestured for her to remain seated.
"That's okay," she said. "I don't think I can force it. I wasn't trying to come up with memories when I remembered the glasses."
"Yeah that's just…" Paige gestured to show that her mind was blown. "Weird," she concluded. "I don't even wear glasses. Those were Gayle's. I have know idea how - or when - she put them in my purse." Paige stole a glance at Emily. "Or why." She had the feeling that she was starting to babble, so she picked up her glass, to keep her mouth from running on any longer.
After a moment of silent staring (not at each other, but just at the space in front of them), Paige thought to ask, "Have you ever had a dream like that before?"
Emily let out a long exhale. "No, I don't think so. Well, certainly not a recurring on like that one." She took a sip of her wine and wiped the edge of her lips with her thumb and index finger. She repeated the gesture a couple of times, thinking it over. "I mean, there's got to be a reason for it, you know?" she said, wrinkling her forehead as she looked at Paige. "I keep wracking my brain, trying to think whether I could've seen you somewhere, or whether we met." Emily glanced at Paige, who was smiling politely. "I mean... have we met?"
Paige smirked. "Only in my... Oh." She stopped herself abruptly and chuckled apologetically, realizing that this wasn't an appropriate time for the old, "only in my dreams" line. "Sorry," she said, shrugging her shoulders slightly.
Emily waved off her apology, more intent on getting to the bottom of the situation than on fending off tired, cheesy pick-up lines. "No, but seriously. Do you think we could've met somewhere by chance and just not remembered it?"
"Okay, this is going to sound like another line, but, trust me: If we'd met, I would have remembered."
Emily let out a shy giggle without parting her lips, the air escaping through her nose. "I would have remembered, too," she said, looking down at her glass.
Paige smiled. "You didn't have to say that, but, thanks."
Emily sighed deeply, deeply perplexed. "Have you ever had a dream like that? I mean, the same dream, over and over?"
Paige's answer was definitive. "Nope. Never. I don't think I've ever even heard of anybody having a dream like that."
"Oh." Emily's tone gave away her disappointment. "Because, I would have to think that, if the dream did have some significance for you and me, you'd be having dreams of your own, you know?"
"I guess that makes sense," Paige said, sounding puzzled. "But maybe you're just more accepting of those kinds of things than I am, you know?" Emily's look was saying that she didn't know. "Like, maybe you're the kind of person who can see the significance of dreams, whereas, for me, there would have to be… some other method of getting a sign to me."
On the one hand, what Paige said seemed plausible. On the other hand, Emily had never been the type to look for significance in dreams, until this one kept coming back. "Some other method... like what?" Emily was hoping that Paige had gotten some kind of sign, but she couldn't imagine what other method Paige had in mind.
Paige tightened her lips. "I… " She tossed her hands up and let them fall on her lap. "Honestly, I have no idea."
"Mmm." Emily shook her glass, watching the wine swirl around. It was getting more and more frustrating.
"What?"
"I don't know…" Emily sat straight up. "I just thought that, you know, the dreams had to mean something, and that, if I ever met the girl in the dreams, I don't know – everything would just become clear, or, I don't know – I'd find out that she'd been having dreams, too."
"Well, the dreams definitely have to mean something," Paige asserted. "Otherwise…" Paige wasn't sure what the alternative was. "Well," she conclude, "they couldn't just be random." Emily shrugged her shoulders, shedding some of her earlier confidence. "Maybe my dream just hasn't come yet."
"But shouldn't we meet after you started having dreams?"
"I don't know. Maybe I had to find out about your dreams before I could have dreams of my own." Paige was grasping at straws, but that was all that she could do. Whatever this was, she didn't want to let Emily slip through her hands; certainly not before they figured things out.
Emily rolled her eyes. "Anyone can have a dream if they're trying to have one," she said skeptically. A second later, her eyes got big. "Tell me something about myself!"
"Huh?" It seemed a bit early for a relationship quiz.
"Tell me something about myself. Something that nobody would know."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, if I knew those things about you…"
Paige gave Emily a sympathetic look. She wanted to help, but she didn't have any psychic powers. "I'm not sure that's the way it works."
Emily's face was sad and pleading. She was desperate – not desperate for Paige, but for some kind of closure; some kind of assurance that she wasn't crazy for having had those dreams, or for believing in them. "Can't you just try?"
Paige took a deep breath and leaned her head back. "You… put… coffee on your pancakes, I don't know!" She put her hands up, pleading ignorance.
Emily, who had just reached for her wine glass, dropped it onto the table where it landed with a clack. A thin line of wine started making its way across the tabletop.
Emily wasn't even aware that she had dropped the glass. She just stared at Paige with glassy eyes, looking as if she had been gut-punched.
Paige was immediately repentant. Ignoring the wine, which was now spilling onto the hardwood floor, she lunged for Emily, who, by then, was standing, with her back turned. "I… I'm so sorry, Emily," Paige said, tentatively touching Emily's biceps. "I wasn't mocking you, I swear. I just… I didn't know what to say."
Emily was half-smiling when she turned around. The rest of her face was somber. "You don't understand, she said softly," and she began telling Paige about her senior year in college, swimming at the NCAA championships in Nebraska. Her team finished in the top five – something of an over-achievement for them- and, to reward them for that accomplishment, and since they had to catch an early flight home the next morning, their coach told them that they could order room service for breakfast, knowing how much of a burden it would've been for them to get up and meet up for breakfast in the hotel's restaurant after what was sure to be a long night of celebration. The next morning, Emily and the two teammates with whom she was sharing a room ordered pancakes and coffee. The coffee came in an odd-looking slender pot, which Emily mistook for a syrup bottle. As she poured the coffee on her pancakes, she kept telling her teammates how impressed she was that room service sent them heated syrup.
"So, you really did put coffee on your pancakes?" Emily nodded. Paige was dumbfounded. "Whoa!"
"There's no way you could have known that," Emily said softly, more to herself than to Paige. She was looked into Paige's eyes, wondering whether Paige was thinking what she was thinking.
"I didn't know," Paige replied simply, staring unflinchingly back at Emily.
Emily took Paige's hands in hers, interlocking their fingers. "You know," she said, looking over Paige's shoulder towards the counter in the kitchen. She cleared her throat. "I just remembered something else. A…about the dream." When Emily hesitated, Paige squeezed her fingers, moving her head so that it fell in the path of Emily's gaze. Emily let out a small, nervous laugh. "In the dream, I, uh… I spent the night."
Paige tried to contain her shock. She lowered her head a little, staring back at Emily. "Are you sure?"
Emily moved her hands to Paige's cheeks and kissed her wantonly, with abandon. She didn't need any more confirmation. She let her tongue tango with Paige's for a few moments before she answered her. "Definitely," she asserted, moving in for another, deeper round of kissing.
A/N – Yeah, but if you think that ending is weak, you can, at least, be happy that it's not as bad as the original ending that I came up with (Emily wakes up in her bed, looks around to find that she's alone and curses, frustrated to find that, as real as it felt that time, it was still just a dream. She's almost to the point of tears when the bathroom door opens, and Paige comes out. She rushes over to the bed to comfort Emily, seeing how distressed she is. Then, Paige jerks awake, gasping for air, and Emily sleepily asks the question that Paige was about to ask Emily before she woke from her dream: Did you have that dream again?") (Don't bother trying to figure it out... It's just not worth it! ;-) ).
Thanks for giving this story a shot!