Everything comes into his comprehension in this same moment. The sunlight cracking through the window curtain, the soft splash of the ocean against land outside and below. The not-so-soft revelation that crashes into his track of conscious thought.
He'd dreamt about her again.
For what it's worth, he felt awful. He had done this before, of course, back when he'd had nothing to lose, but not like this. Usually it was the fantasy that he'd already had locked away in the recesses of his writer's brain somewhere, brought out to play because of her smirk, her lips, her snarky comment fused in with the (playful for him, flustering for her) banter that never ceased between them. Usually it was something he chuckled about later in the day, something he let meander around, something he occasionally joked about with her, him being the only one with knowledge of how real it had been in a certain R.E.M. state. He'd been unabashed, had nothing to regret because neither of them were committed to anyone, and while he'd been crossing his fingers in hopes that that would change, it gave him an out for the less-than-subtle thoughts his mind was harboring.
No, it was never like this. This time it was a real, tangible thing- a person, sleeping next to him, though facing away. That's probably for the best, considering that if he had to look at Gina right now it would only fuel the disappointment he felt in himself. Guilt slowly crept up, through his still-waking thought processes, regardless of how hard he immediately tried to force it back.
His brain split, one part telling him to calm the hell down. You can't decide what you dream, he tried to say. Another chided him because you're here. With Gina. Not Kate. You spent the night in the Hamptons with Gina. Not Kate. Get yourself together, or it's going to bite you in the ass.
But there was another part, still, that urged him to ponder this a little more. Pay attention to how his heart (among other things) was aching, how the disappointment coursed through his veins, not in himself, but simply because it wasn't Kate lying next to him. How every nerve in his body wanted to indulge in his dreams, and secretly knew that those dreams wouldn't be stopping any time soon. How he needed to tell her how he felt, even if he didn't know what that was yet, and if Demming in all his handsome robbery glory hadn't come into the picture, it just might have been his gorgeous Kate lying next to him right now, in his gorgeous Hamptons house, with the gorgeous weather outside on the verge of summer. The dream from the previous night wouldn't have been a dream at all, and neither would his other fantasies, abstract or on paper. They could all be very, very real.
A sigh brings him out of those forbidden thoughts. A sharp (and if possible, irritated?) huff of breath that he's heard plenty of times before, the sigh from his ever-hurrying, never-sated ex-wife. He's been physically situated like this on countless instances, and he's been mentally there with Beckett just as many, but now his worlds are colliding and he can't possibly blame Gina for it because if there's one thing that all of him can agree on, it's that he did this to himself. He'll be doing the opposite of blaming her- he'll be overwhelmed with guilt for the rest of the day or, worst case scenario, the rest of the summer, every time he looks at the hard lines and stern expressions of his ex-wife's trying-so-hard-to-care face. He'll try to compensate for the dream that she's completely unaware of (because he'd be an idiot to ever actually confess to her about it). Yes, with sex, with cooking, with actually working on the book that she hasn't stopped nagging him about since day one (because she tries to separate their work and personal lives, but they always end up far less than what either of them would like to admit). All with a countenance that hides his feelings entirely- then again, doesn't he do that already, constantly fighting to keep himself at arms length from her every day?
Yet these thoughts are barely there, they're all running through his mind at once, and for reasons he doesn't want to visit again all that's really being focused on is Kate wouldn't sigh like that.
Back in reality land, that part of his brain that is duly disappointed with him (probably that damned thing some people call a "conscience") is telling him he has to stop. Things are different now. She was different.
Which meant he had to be, too.
See you in the fall.