The Memory Of Us

Chapter 3

The kiss was tender, the lips on the other side soft and perfectly shaped as if made to fit over Mina's own.

A breathy sigh escaped her parted lips, her hands sliding to occupy the sides of the boy's face hovering over her as she fought to keep him from pulling away, from revealing the face she knew awaited her on the other side.

"You shouldn't be dreaming about me." The boy above her whispered softly against her lips, emitting a soft satisfied sigh of his own as his words escaped.

"I don't want to." Mina whispered back, her eyes fluttering closed as the lips above her disappeared and a cold hand brushed swiftly across the skin of her cheek, simultaneously sending an immense chill down the spine of her back and a jolt of electricity through the rest of her body.

"Then stop." The voice urged softly, his hand migrating from her cheek to the corner of her mouth now, where his thumb tantalizingly stroked, eliciting similar jolts of electric sensations.

"I can't." Mina admitted, her voice breathy as the thumb of the boy above her danced across her lips.

"Open your eyes." He ordered, the insistence in his voice evident even through his silky tone.

"I don't want to."

Mina could hear the rustle of his clothes as he moved, and yet she still found herself taken aback at the sensation of his lips returning to her own and she found herself unintentionally rising from the bed, following his lips, unable to let the sensation go.

"Open." The voice ordered once more and this time, against her better judgment, she listened, but she found herself wishing she hadn't as she took in the features of Khalil's face that she had memorized almost perfectly.

Her breathing erratic, Mina bolted upright in her bed, clutching her comforter and sheets to her chest as if they might somehow protect her from one of the same dreams she fell victim to every time she closed her eyes and attempted to sleep.

She shouldn't have been dreaming about Khalil, even her dream persona knew it, but she couldn't help that, in the deepest depths of her being, she still somehow managed to garner some sort of twisted feelings about the boy.

She hated herself for it and she had found herself wishing, more than once, that she would lose the ability to feel entirely.

Things would be so much easier that way.

"Mina Joyce!"

Mina's fingers slipped from the blankets of her bed as she jumped slightly at the sound of her grandma bellowing her name, and a confused glance towards the digital clock on her blindingly white nightstand brought her to the realization that, for once, she had managed to sleep through the night.

"Mina Joyce!" Her grandma's voice echoed through the house once more, directing her attention back to her closed bedroom door.

This time her voice was much closer than before.

"Mina Joyce!" She shouted a third time, this time both the loudest and closest of all.

Mina was sure she was right outside her door now, and the rhythmic knocking that echoed through her room a moment later confirmed her inference.

"Yes?" Mina yelled, rubbing the sleep still lingering behind her eyes as her grandma gently pushed open her bedroom door.

"I'm assuming you're not going to school today?" Her grandmother inquired, nodding her chin in the direction of the clock beside Mina, and Mina followed her gaze, reading the time for a second time.