He looks up, sees her, and smiles. It brightens his face, making him look devastatingly handsome. She cannot help but return it. She hesitates briefly before making her way to him.
“What’s this?” she asks when she gets to the piano.
“A new piece. Do you like it?” Metis says.
“I love it.”
“Doesn’t it remind you of something?” he asks, looking at her with the usual intensity that makes her heart flutter.
“Luce,” she says.
He looks back on the keys. “It just needs something more optimistic. So I’m changing it slightly.”
She thinks of her dream.
“Metis?” she whispers.
He looks up. “Yeah?”
“I—I . . . umm . . .”
His hands stop moving. “What is it?”
She feels a tingling in her flesh. “I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”
A small smile touches the corner of his lips. “I won’t.”
She breathes in a deep breath. “Last night . . .”
She feels blood rushing to her cheeks. He looks at her with curiosity.
Only a month left.
She sighs. “It’s nothing.”
She turns away and looks out the window. The trees in his backyard are gray and bare. They stand dark against the pale February sky.
He reaches for her hand, his movement tentative, unlike the way he commands the piano.
“Tell me.”
What would Benja do?
Be brave.
“I had a dream with you in it,” she says in one breath.
She feels a squeeze on her hand.
“What was it?”
She looks at him. “We were in a cottage on a beach. I’ve never been there before, but it felt so real.”
She watches as blood drains from his face.
“It was real, wasn’t it?” she whispers.
He nods.
“You know?”
“I’ve always known.”
“How long?” she asks.
“Almost from the beginning.”
“So, at the concert, you knew it was me?”
“I thought you were a mirage,” Metis says.
His eyes dig as if trying to read her mind.
“Are you upset?” he asks.
She searches her feelings and shakes her head.
“It’s surreal and strange. And I’m a little freaked out. But no, I’m not upset. I’m actually . . . happy. It’s weird.”
She feels his trembling hands on her waist. She places her palms on them, and the quivering subsides. In one quick movement he pulls her onto his lap. He circles his arm around her and holds tight.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” he says. His face is buried in her neck, breathing her in.
He pulls away and looks at her. His eyes drink in her image, satiating the thirst of a man who had just survived a trek through the desert. His hands reach toward her face. The movement is tentative but becomes more assured once he touches her skin.
A kiss. Soft at first, like the flapping of wings. The pressure intensifies and leaves her breathless. It feels just as she remembers from her dream. Butterflies flutter inside her stomach. But there are so many questions swirling inside her head.
She breaks away. “How?”
“Dreams since the beginning of the cycle. Feelings. I thought I was going insane. But one day on the subway, I saw red graffiti on the wall. It triggered something in me.”
“The one that looks like a flower?” she asks. “What does it mean?”
“I rode the train back and forth so many times like a madman. Then it became apparent to me.”
“What is it?”
He takes her hand and puts something in the middle of her palm. A silver ring. She picks it up and studies it. The familiar design looks like a flower. Except it is more than a flower. It’s a shape within a shape, entwined as one. The outer design is of interwoven lines that form a nine-point mandala. Inside its center is a square with indented sides.
She hands it back.
“It’s yours,” he says.
She looks at him.
“Please,” he says.
She eases it onto her left ring finger.
“That’s where you used to wear it,” he whispers.
“Why do you have it?” she asks, staring at the foreign object on her finger. She is afraid to look at him.
He clears his throat. “I’ve always had both rings. We must have decided in the last cycle to keep them together. I found them hidden in a chair cushion in the living room. I knew what they were as soon as I saw them.”
“How do you know so much?”
He takes in a deep breath. “Absinthe.”
She feels the wind knocked out of her.
“You’re a Dreamer?”
He nods.
“You knew Benja, didn’t you?”
He looks down. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to hate me.”
Aris searches her feelings. Once she may have hated all Dreamers. She blamed them for enabling Benja’s obsession—for giving him drugs that propelled him into madness. But all the dreams Benja had of his old lover were his. The unlawful behaviors were his too. Metis did not break into her house or threaten her, and he was a Dreamer.
“I don’t hate you,” she says. “Tell me more about what you remember.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How many cycles?” she asks.
“I don’t know. At least one. Maybe two or three. I’ve seen many memories—several were of us inside this house—but we were always similar to the way we are now.”
She finds it strange to have a man who only a few months ago was a stranger to her tell her they once had a life together. He remembers a lot. She can tell by the way he looks at her with the possessiveness and longing of a lover.
“What was I like?” she asks and realizes the bizarreness of the question.
“You had the same mannerisms you do now. You were often surrounded by trees. Gardens. Parks.”
She imagines them walking hand in hand on a path with green trees arching above.
“You loved to read,” he adds.
“I still do,” she says.
“And I often dream of us on a beach,” he says.
Her face feels hot. She looks down, trying to hide the smile that she cannot suppress.
“You smiled like that in my dreams.”
“I must have been happy,” she says.
The feelings are becoming too intense. She shifts her eyes to the small garden behind the house. The roses and wisterias are
