Louis and Tawny sat in silence at the breakfast table the next morning. Tawny glanced over at Louis, her eyes meeting his with a reassuring look. "What was on your mind last night, Louis?" she asked calmly.
Louis took a deep breath and focused his eyes on the table, gathering his thoughts. "It was the dream that I had, Tawny," he began. "It was a strange kind of dream. A series of flashbacks, beginning in junior high. Beginning with the moment when our eyes met for the first time, the first day of junior high." He looked back up at her, a meaningful look in his eyes.
He went on. "You know how it was back then, Tawny. Every now and then, I managed to produce these moments of sincerity, moments when I made it clear how much you meant to me and how much I needed you. Beginning with the time when I asked you to help me with that Larry Beale speech, through all those times when I admitted my mistakes to you, when I admitted, in one way or another, how much I liked you. That time I auditioned for SACCY and managed to stop you from going. That time I confessed my love to you, thinking it would be our final goodbye."
He paused again before continuing. "And in the dream that I had last night… I was taken back to all these moments in a series of flashbacks, except that I couldn't muster the courage to do what I wanted to do, to say what I wanted to say. Every scene faded away before I could say it. And it all ended with our awkward goodbye before I would move to DC. Except… Except it felt so different, like I knew I was losing you forever, having missed every chance that I had ever gotten." He squeezed his eyes shut and placed his hand over them.
Tawny gave Louis a sympathetic look, making an effort to suppress the acute pang in her heart. It pained her to think that Louis was suffering emotionally for no reason, suffering through dreams that had no basis in reality. It pained her to think that Louis was living in dreams and in the past when the reality had become so much better.
"Louis," she finally said. "Do you sometimes feel anxiety about…about losing me, for whatever reason?"
Louis fixed his eyes on Tawny's and let out a sigh. He felt more at ease, in spite of all the emotions that the dream had unleashed from the recesses of his mind. Because Tawny was helping him to confront them, lending him her wisdom and her sincerity, as she had always done.
"I do sometimes, yes," Louis said calmly. "It's a strange kind of anxiety. I sometimes pause to think about what you are to me and what you've been to me all these years. And I can't help but think you're all that I have and all that I've ever had. I remember when I was the hopeless troublemaker back in the day. No one believed in me, no one thought anything good would ever come out of me. Except you. Something must have told me that moment I first saw you, that you were my only hope. And over all these years, you always brought the best out of me, Tawny. If it hadn't been for you… I can't imagine what my life would be like."
He paused, the expression on his face darkening with a strange kind of fear, an abstract fear of what could have been. "Sometimes… Sometimes it feels too magical to be real, Tawny. I still remember that moment I first saw you, and all the feelings that it unleashed, like it was yesterday. And it sometimes feels as if everything since then has been a dream and I'm about to wake back up into reality. With everything the way it always was and was always going to be."
Tawny let out a sigh. No one could fill her heart with joy like Louis could, but no one could break it like he could, either. And it broke her heart to see Louis entertaining such thoughts. Yet she understood what it was that he needed from her. He needed from her the magic that she was to him, the magic that was ever so real. She took a deep breath, summoning her strength, and took both his hands in hers. "You know, Louis," she began. "I myself sometimes pause to marvel at how it could have been possible, the two of us. And it was the two of us that made it happen, Louis. It was the power of our love for each other that made it happen, against all the odds. This is something that we should cherish, Louis, not something that should make us fear what could or couldn't have been." She grasped his hands more tightly. "We've overcome everything that could have come between us over the years, Louis. All those moments we came close to losing each other, only to come out of it stronger, appreciating each other more than ever. There's nothing we have to fear. Nothing but fear itself."
Louis nodded slowly, letting her words sink in. "You're right, Tawny," he finally said. "There's no doubt in my mind that you're right. And yet… It's almost as if I entertain certain thoughts and certain fears in spite of myself, in spite of what reason tries to tell me." He paused. "It's as if I used to live in dreams so much that I just can't do without them. And now that the reality has become so much better than anything in my dreams, it's as if the only thing they can do is to disturb that reality as much as possible." He sighed.
Tawny looked intently into Louis's eyes. She lifted her hand and ran it gently over the side of his neck, across his shoulders, and down his arms, causing a tingling sensation. He took in the radiance emanating from her face, the strong yet affectionate look in her eyes, the power of her love sweeping away any anxieties that the power of her reasoning couldn't sweep away. "You just have to believe in the power of reality, Louis. You have to believe in me and yourself, the two of us."
Louis nodded slowly, letting her words sink in, feeling the power in her words merge with her loving presence into something magical.