I Choose You

26. Unexpected (Edited)

Edited 

Sometimes when I sleep, I have dreams of when my mom was still around. Only the dreams are nothing like life was when she was here. The dreams are better.

Sometimes I dream that her, Dad, and I are a perfect family. That instead of her screaming and yelling at me all the time, I come home, and she tells me how proud she is of me. She tells me how absolutely proud she is that I've worked so hard, that I've put so much effort into the things that matter most to me. She hugs me, and kisses me, and smiles, and even cries a little too. Sometimes I dream that her and Dad go to dinner together and leave me with the babysitter. That when they come home, they're laughing and smiling, and that they look at each other as if there was no one that could waver the love they had for each other. And when I dream that dream, I always wake up sad...because a part of me still remembers a time when they used to look at each other like that. When it wasn't just a dream.

Tonight, I have that same dream, but this time it's different. It's not Mom and Dad standing there, laughing and smiling, and looking at each other like their each other's world.

It's me... and Aiden.

I'm not quite sure what wakes me up after that dream. I don't know if it was the initial shock at what I had actually dreamed, or if it was the sound of my phone blaring right in my ear, since I'd accidentally left it lying right next to my pillow. Either way, I bolted upright with lightning fast reflexes, only to feel a whole new level of head rush. It felt like I had just gotten a sledgehammer dropped on my head—no doubt from the fact that I had fallen asleep crying—so I wasn't exactly jumping to answer my phone. Who on earth was calling me at two in the morning anyways?

I grabbed my forehead, massaging it with the palm of my left hand, while somehow managing to answer the phone with my right.

I probably sounded like I was dying. "Mmm—hello?" I rubbed my temple, bringing my knees up to my chest.

"It's me," Aiden's voice spoke, and I felt my heart stop. I felt it stop. I felt it stand still in my chest. Stop beating for a split second.

"Aiden?"

"Yeah."

I gulped. "Hi,"

There was silence for a few moments, before I suddenly heard a clinking! sound at my window. Like something was clicking against it repeatedly. Clink. Clink! Clink!

"So, listen—" I shoved the covers off of me—clink!—holding the phone tightly against my ear and getting up to check the window—clink!—and when I did I nearly had a fatal heart attack right on the spot, "I'm at your window."

I looked out the glass, down at the dark—haired boy who was standing in my side yard in below freezing temperatures, throwing pebbles at my window like something straight out of a romance novel. What was he doing here at two in the morning?

I set my phone on my dresser and unlocked the latches on my window, shoving it up as hard, but quietly as possible. He pulled the phone away from his ear and shoved it into his pocket, looking up at me with his brown doe eyes. In that moment, it felt like he was staring straight into my soul.

"What are you doing here?" I said.

"I was walking..." he scratched the back of his head—at two in the morning?— "and I just— ended up here." he looked up at me, blinking.

Something seemed strange about Aiden in that moment. He wasn't...angry. And he kept rocking his shoulders up and down with his hands in his pockets, blowing his breath out in the cold air and staring at the smoke coming out of his mouth like he'd never seen such a thing.