Kev was the only one he knew that dreamt of falling. When he first had the dreams, he would crawl into his parents bed and they would ask what the dream was about. He would tell them, and they would always have a look on their faces that he grew to understand as perplexed. He would tell them about standing out in the street outside their house and looking up and he could see nothing but black pierced with little dots of light, and that’s the direction he would fall. He would fall up. His parents never knew what he was talking about. They told him that was silly, you would hit the bottom of the other level, and it’s not black with little white lights, it was all steel girders and floodlights. His dad would rub his face, shake his head, and go back to sleep, and his mom would take him back to his room to tuck him back in. She would tell him that the stories about there being a top level to the world were just fairy tales, and there was no such level that had nothing above it. Something always needed something else above it. He would nod and fall back asleep, only to dream the same dream. While at first the dreams were terrifying, filled with an agoraphobic dread of vastness, but he would grow to miss those dreams as the older he became, the closer the lights on the bottom of the next level up would seem. He would end up longing for the dreams, as they made him feel as though he could stand up straight for just a few moments in his bedroom before fully waking up. He would fall asleep every night with prayers on his lips, begging whatever deity would listen to give him that dream again.
On Tuesday morning, he had the dream again.
By the time Kev and his group of work friends left late and made their way to the local bar that same Tuesday night, the dream had been completely forgotten, Kev’s shoulders had assumed their familiar claustrophobic hunch, and The City’s lights dimmed in a crude pantomime of dusk. A stretch of infinite Tuesday stretched before Kev in his mind, none of them different, all of them holding nothing but a moldy sense that he was wasting his time. He filled his belly with cheap beer and pretzels, tried to appear happy, and was the first to leave. When he made it back to his apartment, Priya was waiting for him. Priya had been completely absent from Kev’s life for the last six years, as their relationship was the kind that ended suddenly due to things being said that could not be taken back. Kev faltered on the steps, thinking he had already started half-dreaming before he even got in his door, but Priya was real.
Let’s walk, she said. Kev nodded, tucked in his shirt, and they went back out, hands already intertwined. She spoke of her loneliness, he of his, and they walked and touched a long way from where either of them lived, all the way to the fault line connecting their plate to the next one over. Just as they reached this boundary, it happened. She turned to him, stood on her tip-toes while Kev’s hand fell into the small of her back, pulling her close. Her lips tasted so sweet and yielding, her hair more fragrant than he remembered, her cheeks warm and then suddenly wet.
I missed you. I’m sorry. I forgive you. Please. Only you.
Kev never had the dream again.