In Her Wildest Dreams

Chapter Two-2

Ellie moaned. She opened her eyes. Alone, as usual. She stared at the space where he’d been sitting on the edge of her bed. Of course, he wasn’t there. She always woke up at the most inopportune moment. She rubbed her eyes, feeling frustrated and disappointed, the usual aftermath of her recurring dream. “God, I miss Darren!”

Throwing off her covers, she glanced at the other side of the bed, the empty space where Darren should be right now. If he were here, maybe she would have someone to help relieve her pent up need. After all, the dream guy wasn’t real, but the yearning he left behind was.

Darren wasn’t going to be here, she thought bitterly, because he was too damn busy, and had been for the last three months. He was trying for partner in his law firm and needed to rack up the billable hours. That was well and good for his career, but not for their s*x-life, which was almost non-existent. They only saw each other a couple of times a week and almost never made love. Didn’t he miss her?

She glanced at the phone on her bedside table. The impulse to call him gripped her. “No. You promised yourself.” She hated how desperate she felt. But in the last four months since her grandfather’s funeral, she’d fallen apart with grief. The elderly man and she had been very close, and Ellie missed him horribly. Her grief was as fresh as if Grandpa had died only yesterday, and she worried that Darren had tired of her heavy emotions. She feared he found all the time he spent working as a sort of “vacation” from their relationship. She wanted Darren to feel supported, not hung on, but she couldn’t help it. She tried to brace herself. Unfortunately, the time they spent apart only made her miss him more.

She squelched another strong urge to call him, certain that such a show of emotional need would repel him, especially since he told her so many times how he’d been attracted to the strong, independent career woman he’d met when she'd interviewed him for an article. Since then, however, she’d showed him plenty of her weaker side.

In the wake of her dream, her mind reeled, both from the s****l intensity of the images and her roiling emotions. There would be no more sleep for the time being.

She rose and went to the bathroom. A hot shower was always a good thing on nights like this. Undressing as she waited for the water to heat, she ran through her dream in her mind, wishing Darren would come to her bed, naked, the way this dream man did.

Ellie stepped under the spray. She closed her eyes, reveling in the relaxing massage. She already knew the answer to her question.

Darren was her first serious boyfriend, the first man she had let through the barrier of painful shyness she had erected after her mother’s death twenty years ago. He had charmed his way in with his sparkling, hazel eyes, boyish face and Monty Pythonesque sense of humor. The ardent attention he paid her, the flowers and promises of love hadn’t hurt, either. For her, it had been a serious decision to let him in, both into her heart and then her body. She had grown to love him over the year and a half they were together, and the memories of how he’d wooed were strong; she thought of them every day. She hoped that when this busy period had passed, their relationship would go on as usual, especially since her thirtieth birthday was only a couple of days away. Certainly, he’d have a plan.

After a long, hot shower with plenty of body wash, Ellie turned off the spray, dried herself, and wrapped her long blond hair in a towel turban. She put on her fluffy blue bathrobe and stepped back into her slippers. Feeling energized rather than relaxed, she decided to make a cup of tea and watch the city lights twinkle from the living room window.

Her younger brother, Paul, was seated at the kitchen table, working on his Master’s Thesis in philosophy. His books and papers hid the entire surface of the table. He was bent studiously over them, but looked up when she walked in, grinning when he saw her. “You dreamed about Lover Boy again, didn’t you?”

Ellie smiled at her perceptive brother. She couldn’t be angry with him, even when he teased her about sensitive matters. One look at his tousled blond hair and laughing, blue eyes, and she felt only love. She was glad for their closeness and for his company in the apartment. The place would have seemed horribly empty without him there. “How did you know?”

“You get a certain look in your eyes.”

She sighed as she filled the kettle and set it on the stove to boil.

“Too bad he’s not real, El. I bet he’d treat you like a queen. A lot better than Derwood ever did.”

Ellie wrinkled her nose. “I always knew I let you watch too many Bewitched reruns as a kid,” she replied, but she understood the barb. Paul had never liked Darren. He always felt that the man was using her and didn’t genuinely care about Ellie. Paul was very loyal to her, and they were very close since she’d been the one who looked out for him after their mother died. Their father had remarried two years later and started a new family, one in which Ellie and Paul never felt they completely fit.

She leaned against the counter, her arms folded in front of her. “How’s your paper going?” she asked, deciding to change the subject.

Paul sighed and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. He yawned. “Not so bad. I’ve had enough of Nietzsche, though, for a while.”

Ellie smiled. “I’m proud of you, little brother,” she said. Paul had grown up timid, too, after losing their mother. He was a teacher's assistant at the university while he worked on his Master’s, and Ellie was amazed at how well he’d overcome his lack of confidence. He could now get up in front of a classroom full of college students and talk to them about a subject he loved.

She saw Paul’s cheeks color, and he looked down. “Thanks, El.”

Ellie took down two mugs from the cabinet and put a tea bag in each one. “Don’t worry, Paulie, I’ll be out of here in a few minutes. I know you need quiet.”

“No problem.” He was already reading again. Suddenly, he looked up. “You know, Ellie, you could use some quiet, too. You still haven’t gone to the farm since Grandpa left it to you.”

The water in the kettle began to hiss. She shrugged. “I know. I’ve been waiting for it to warm up there. Winter lasts a lot longer in Puffin Cove than here in Boston.”

Paul looked at her. She knew by his expression that he could tell she was lying. “You know that’s not why, El.”

Ellie turned back to the stove, staring at the kettle. A small trail of steam escaped from the spout. “I know.” They both knew she hadn’t gone to check on the house because she was afraid to put that much distance between her and Darren.

“If he loved you, he’d go with you.”

“Can we not talk about it?” She spoke above the rising whistle of the boiling kettle and turned the heat off. Lifting the kettle off the burner, she poured the steaming water into both mugs.

“Sorry.”

Ellie sighed and picked up the mugs, carefully depositing her brother’s tea on the only clear spot she could find on the table. When her hand was free, she ruffled Paul's hair affectionately. She knew he only said those things out of love. “Don’t be. Good luck with your thesis.”

He smiled at her and turned back to the mess of books and papers in front of him.

She passed into the living room and crossed to the patio doors. The nights in April were still a bit too chilly to stand outside in her robe, so she watched the Boston skyline from the window while thinking about the farmhouse she had yet to claim.

Grandpa Ellis always wanted her to have a home to come back to, a place that no one could ever take away, the way life took away her mother.

"You’ll have a place to set your roots, Ellie," he’d said on one of her last visits to the nursing home.

Ellie remembered the beauty of the rolling green hills, rocky coast and the rambling old farmhouse with the huge front porch, complete with swing. She hadn’t been there since the summer before her mother died. They used to go blueberry picking in the field behind the house and walking by the harbor at high tide to watch the seals swim around. But then, her father had remarried, and they stayed in Cambridge with her stepmother. In the years that passed, both she and Paul got busy with college and careers.

I should go there. She sipped her tea, lost in her thoughts. As a freelance writer and journalist, she was not tied to an office. She had her laptop, her assignments and spec articles to write. She was free to come and go as she pleased.

Only, she didn’t feel free. She was tied to her hopes around Darren.

Darren. The thought of him came with the returning urge to call. This time, she gave in.

His phone rang four times before the answering machine picked up. “You know the drill,” his message quipped in his confident tone before it beeped. Ellie sat, not speaking. The hand holding the receiver trembled. Why wasn’t he picking up the phone at this hour?

Her heart lurched painfully. What if...? She couldn’t even finish the thought, shaking her head so furiously her towel turban loosened, releasing her long, blond hair. She reached up and dragged the towel off her head, just before hanging up the phone.

She sat quietly in the dark living room. A c***k of light showed through from under the kitchen door. She thought about going and asking Paul what he thought, but decided against it. He shouldn’t be disturbed. Besides, he’d then know she called Darren and would probably give her an earful about it.

Unable to go back to bed, she flicked on the television, lowering the volume so as not to distract Paul. A Clint Eastwood spaghetti western was on. Ellie wasn’t a fan of westerns, but the film was the only thing on this late, so she sat back and watched while she finished her tea. Nothing else could help her get her mind off the bad feeling she had about her phone call to Darren.

If the city were safer to go out alone at night, she would have been tempted to drive over to Darren’s apartment in the North End. Paul, however, knowing her desperate moments, had made her promise not to go out without him. She didn’t want to worry her brother, so she kept her word, even though her heart raced with fear.

Ellie sighed as a commercial came on and muted the volume. She stared at the ads on the screen while her thoughts wandered back to the house in Maine. A long suppressed ache for her childhood summer home rose in her chest, and she could almost hear the breeze blowing through the tall pines in the forest and hear the seagulls’ cries as they circled over the water. Maybe I’ll go soon. Grandpa Ellis would have been upset at her procrastination. Aside from working hard as a farmer and a lobsterman his whole life, he’d been a lieutenant in the Army during the Second World War and his military discipline had remained with him until the end. He wouldn’t have waited so long to claim his inheritance.

Then her fear about Darren rose again, and she knew she wouldn’t be going to Maine any time soon. Not while she waited for Darren.