In Your Dreams // phan

t h i r t y n i n e

"Hey, my little Dandelion," I started as Dan got into my car on Friday, slowly, his face stony and pale. I creased my eyebrows immediately, pausing my lean in for a kiss. He buckled himself up slowly, not looking at me, only looking down. I wracked my brain for possibilities. Bad dream? Maybe he was dreaming about my brief bought with depression. Though, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that, while that kind of dream would make him feel slow, sad, even, it shouldn't make him look so betrayed. So I didn't know what it could have been.

"What's wrong, Danny?" I asked, taking one of the hands he was staring at in his lap. He swallowed, and looked up at me with a fake grin plastered on his face.

"Nothing. Just tired. Can we go, please?" I didn't want to pester, because I knew he didn't want to me to, but I had to. I had to know what was wrong, and if it was something I could fix.

Maybe it was about the marriage comment that one night. I didn't want to say anything about it, in case he didn't remember it, or didn't hear it, or didn't want to talk about it. But I saw the way he slumped around this past week, the way he didn't want to kiss me, even when there was no one around. It is me. Whether or not the actual thing that happened to make him look so upset was me, the entire thing revolved around me. And that thought made me sick to my stomach.

"It's not nothing. It's something. You can tell me." I whispered, squeezing his hand. He shook his head and tried to pry it from my grasp.

"Can we just go, Phil, please?" He begged, turning away from me. I brought my hand up to his face but he smacked it away, curling up again as if it would protect him from me. My heart was pounding, my face was hot. Dan was mad at me. I didn't want him to be mad at me. I wanted to fix this, but I couldn't figure out how.

So, instead, I just started the car, and drove in silence.

We got to school and Dan jumped out of the car, rushing to get his things and leave. But I had other ideas. In the quickest sprint I've ever run, I made it around the car and to him before he managed to get his bag. I grabbed both his wrists, making him drop everything in his hands to the ground, and making him look up to me, startled.

Okay, that was my whole plan. I knew how to get his attention, I just didn't know what to say once I did. Should I talk about it? The thing I said in the middle of the night that I meant but didn't mean to say? The future I hope we'd share but didn't want him to hear about? The way I wanted to hold him and never let him go? The way I'd give up everything just to see him smile?

In my silence, he decided to speak up.

"Why do you love me?" He asked quietly, looking down, his cheeks red from what I could only assume was resulting from the stares we were receiving from the rest of the student body. But I couldn't care less about them. My entire world was in front of me right now, asking me why I loved him.

I paused. "Because you're my soulmate. Because you're perfect for me." This was obviously the wrong answer, because tears started to leak out of my soulmate's beautiful brown eyes. I gauged the situation. Something was seriously wrong, and I was 99 per cent sure it was me. And my ignorance was not doing me any favours.

"So you wouldn't love me if you didn't dream about me?" He asked quietly, the hoarse sound of a cry lingering in his words. I brought my body closer to his, my grip on his wrists still unbreaking, not allowing him to escape. But he didn't seem to mind when our chests were pressed together, when there was no space between us at all except for the few centimetres I left between our mouths so he wouldn't think my answer was yes.

"Of course I would!" I said, finally releasing one of my hands to pinch his chin and make him look up at me, tears wetting his eyes and leaking from the edges. "You're perfect for me, Daniel." He shook his head, making his hair fall in front of his eyes as though he was creating a protective curtain between us, but I brushed it away without a second thought, the part of my brain that wanted Dan to explain to me what was wrong just barely winning against the part that wanted to kiss him until he made sense.

"Would you still marry me if I wasn't your soulmate?" He asked. There it is. There's the conversation we both didn't want to have. There's the stressor, the trigger, the thing that made Dan's bags dark under his eyes, his hair mussed as it was when something was on his mind and he didn't trust himself to use a straightener, the thing that plagued both of us but we both pretended it didn't. Here's where I had to come clean.

Marrying someone who wasn't your soulmate was taboo, but not unheard of. The people who never found their soulmate, or couldn't love them for one reason or another, the people who fell in love with someone else, they tried to hide it, but they were discovered. Many people had to think for a long time before they married their soulmate; do I love them because they're my soulmate, or because I have reason to? Would I love them if they weren't? Would I be standing here right now, in a nice dress or a tux or whatever attire they would wear for the wedding, if I wasn't destined to be with them?

"Yes," I found myself saying, despite all the hazy thoughts. "Yes, because there is no way I could love someone else as much as I love you." He started crying then, full on, choking, body rocking sobs that were loud and wet, making him fall onto my shoulder and bite the fabric of my shirt in order to muffle it, making his hands shake and heart beat fast. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him closer to me, if it was even possible, and let him cry. I didn't shush him, I didn't try to sooth him. I even felt myself begin to cry at just the feeling of him sobbing, tears leaking from my eyes as I realised what I had just said.

Did I just essentially propose? That's not how I wanted it to go. Usually, in my fantasies, Dan said yes. He didn't start sobbing.

But at least he was holding me. At least he didn't run away and never look back. At least he wasn't disgusted and repulsed by the thought of being my husband, the thought of moving in with me and starting a family, of sleeping in a bed that we shared, just the two of us. The idea of all the crying, all the laughing, all the pain and happiness and wonder and disgust and heartbreak and contentedness and love being shared between us until death did us part.

I knew what I had to do. Just like when I confessed my love for him the first and second time, I had to make this right. I knew I was going back on the promise I had made to both Dan and myself that I'd let him lead, but this was too important to let sit in wait. I am a helpless romantic. I kiss my soulmate. I tell him I love him. I tell him I want to marry him. I ask him to marry me. Nothing about this has changed the way I've felt about soulmates.

"My parents are liars," Dan sobbed, and I just held him. He didn't elaborate, and I didn't ask him to. I just tried to tell him I loved him without really saying anything.