Not even amazing, mind blowing, toe curling, eyes-rolled-into-the-back-of-your-head sex with Kevin could take away my stupid nightmares.  We’d spent most of the afternoon in bed having all sorts of exploratory fun and then fell into a comfortable sleep wrapped up in each other’s limbs.  One moment I was happily dreaming about Kevin’s body and all of the things I wanted to do to it, and then the next I was back in my nightmare hell.

All of my nightmares about 9/11 were horrible, but the worst of all of them was the one where instead of being in my apartment watching the buildings fall, I was actually at the foot of the buildings.  I’d be running around trying to get the police and firefighters to listen to me and get people to evacuate but no one would listen.  I’d also have my cell phone to my ear begging and pleading Sean to get out of the building but he kept telling me how he was “fine” and I needed to calm down.  Then just as I was nearing a total meltdown yelling at a police officer we would hear the roar of the buildings starting to fall (both at the same time in the dream) and look up to see that horrible cloud of debris falling down at us.  I’d freeze, totally unable to move, and just before the cloud enveloped me and the cop I would see Sean’s body falling and I would reach out to him.  But every single time, I’d miss his hand by just a smidge and then the debris would smother me and I’d wake up trying to catch my breath. 

I somehow managed to wake from the nightmare without waking Kevin.  Typically he woke up when I jolted awake or at least reached out in his sleep and pulled me into his arms but this time he kept sleeping soundly, obviously exhausted from our Sexual Olympics for sure.  I watched him sleep as I took shaky breaths and wiped the tears from my face cursing the nightmare in my head.  He was so freaking stunning.  Everything about the man was beautiful and I found myself having one of those moments of “this can’t be my life” while I looked at him.  Did we really pretty much profess our love to each other without actually saying the three words?  Did he really tell me he was more into me than he’d ever been into his wife?  Everything seemed so surreal.  I leaned over to kiss his forehead and then carefully slid out of the bed figuring I’d be up for a while thanks to the nightmare.  I already had his Superman tee shirt on from when I’d gotten cold after we’d stopped screwing and started cuddling before passing out, but I picked up the pajama bottoms that had been tossed onto the bench at the end of my bed and slid them on before leaving the room and walking out to the living room.

Vinnie was laying in the middle of the living room floor going to town on one of his chew toys… drool hanging from his jowls as he looked up at me and began panting and wagging his tail.  I couldn’t help but chuckle at him and I sat down on the floor with him, “Hi, baby…” I said and wiped his drool off with a towel that specifically stayed in the living room for drool wiping purposes.  He gave me Vinnie kisses and then went back to chewing on his toy.  I watched him for a while and gave his ears a good Mama Rub before kissing the top of his big head and going into the kitchen.  I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and checked the clock, it was only 10:30 at night.  I smiled at how Kevin and I’d spent the afternoon and evening then picked up the phone and dialed Christian’s number as I pulled leftovers from the fridge.

He answered on the third ring, “Um, shouldn’t you be having mad passionate sex right now?”

I chuckled, “We’re taking a break…” Vinnie came trotting into the kitchen when he heard me dishing out leftover pasta from the night before into a bowl.  My Mama’s cooking could cure any heartache and I was so happy to have a bunch of it in my fridge at the moment. “Plus I think my child is lonely…” I tossed him a meatball which he happily caught in mid air and probably didn’t even taste as it went down his throat without being chewed.  “He’s been ignored all afternoon since you guys left…”

Christian laughed in my ear, “Well I suppose you have to come up for air occasionally… Where is your Sex God?”

“Sleeping,” I said and leaning against the counter to eat, Vinnie following every move of my fork with his eyes.  “We wore each other out.”

“Good girl… but why aren’t you sleeping with him?”

I shrugged, “I was… but now I’m not.” I put a forkful of pasta in my mouth. 

“Nightmares?”

“Mmm hmm…”  I looked at Vinnie who had a massive drool rope hanging from one side of his mouth. I sighed and reached out with a napkin, “Vin, must you drool so much?  Go eat your own food, baby…” He sighed a doggie sigh but then went over to his dish and snacked on his dog food.

“Well before we talk about the dream, you have to tell me one thing…”

“Okay…”

“In a word, how was the sex?  You can tell me all of the dirty details later…”

I chuckled, “In a word?”  I paused and sighed then smiled, “Amazing.”

I could practically hear his grin through the phone, “I’m so happy for you…”

“Thanks, babe.”

“You’re welcome, now tell me about the dream.  Anything new?”

I shook my head, “No.  It was the shitty one though.  Scared the hell out of me as usual.”

“I hate it when you have that one… I’m sorry, baby.”

“It’s not your fault…” I said shrugging again.  “But I think I need to tell Kevin about it, Chris.”

“Wow… I didn’t expect you to say that.  I mean, I’m glad you did… but wow.”

“It’s not fair to him to have to keep waking up with me crying and not know what’s going on, you know?”  I rolled my eyes as they filled up with new tears, “I don’t know how to do it though… I’ve never told anyone.”

“I know… but I think it’s time, and I think Kev’s the right person to tell.”  I bit my bottom lip and covered my eyes with one hand as I began crying.  Christian sighed at the sound of me crying, “It’s going to be okay, Kel.  Maybe actually telling someone about it, someone who wasn’t there, will help.  Maybe you’ll tell him and it’ll lift that weight off of your shoulders that is always there.”

That made me cry harder and I had a hard time choking out words, “Maybe…” 

“But like you said, if anything it’ll help him understand better, right?”

“Yeah…” I said and brushed the tears off of my face with a napkin and put my bowl in the sink.  I grabbed my bottle of water and stepped out onto the deck to sit and watch the ocean.  It was a clear, warm night and the waves were calm.  I made a note to myself to open up the bedroom window when I went back to bed so we could sleep to the sound of the water.  “I just get worried that if I tell someone about it, it’ll change the way they treat me.”

“How so?”

“I don’t mean that I think hearing the story will freak him out and he’ll run away or anything… I just… I think that one of the reasons I never tell people about how Sean died is because I’m more afraid of how they’re going to react.  Like, when I tell people my dad died of cancer, they always go from the ‘I’m so sorry’ face to the ‘Oh that’s so sad’ face and then they tell me about someone who they know who had cancer too.  But how do you react to hearing that someone was killed on 9/11 unless you knew someone too?  It’s not like I can tell someone that and they can say, ‘Yeah, my cousin was killed in a terrorist attack too…’ It’s just not common.”

“Well yeah, but they don’t have to have had the same kind of loss to know how hard it is to lose someone.”

“I know, but I feel like pretty much everyone has some sort of tie to that day.  Everyone remembers where they were, and how they felt, right?  But for a lot of people it ends there.  They think of it as a horrible time and a very sad thing, but that’s it.  But for us, it’s so different because every time we see that footage we’re seeing him die.  And when we see pictures of the buildings beforehand, we can remember being there and looking out of the windows.  We can remember how high up his floor was and think about how far down the ground was.  It’s just not something that most people can wrap their heads around.  Hell, I can barely wrap my own head around it most of the time.”

“So is it that you’re worried about them feeling overwhelmed by it all, or that you’re worried they’re going to ask you things about it that you’re not ready to talk about?”

“I…” I paused and looked out at the water while picking with my fingers at the wrapper on my water bottle sitting between my criss-crossed legs.  Vinnie came out of his dog door and climbed up onto the double chaise with me and plopped down putting his head in my lap.  I ran my hand over his head and felt more tears coming on, “I don’t know… I’ve never thought about it like that.  Maybe you’re right.  Maybe the whole reason I don’t talk about it is because of the questions that people might have.”

“I know one time after we’d moved down here I met someone on the beach who asked where I was from because of my accent and I told her I’d grown up in New York and then lived in the city during and after college.  We just sort of naturally ended up talking about 9/11 and she asked me if I’d known anyone who’d died that day.  I told her yes and she was really nice about it but after a while she did kind of get like overly detailed with her questions.  Like, I don’t think she meant to be so blunt, but I was the first person she’d come into contact with who had been there so she was really curious… it was definitely a different experience from when someone finds out and they’re just shocked and then they move on.”

“Right.  Maybe that’s what I’m scared of.  Having to face things I don’t want to and feeling like if I don’t answer their questions I’m letting them down.”

“You know you have the right to tell anyone to buzz the fuck off if you don’t want to tell them something, babe…”

I chuckled, “I know… Can you imagine how my book tours would have been if people knew that Tuesday Morning was partially based on my life?”

“Yeah it would have been hell…” he said and laughed.  Christian had gone with me on pretty much all of my book tours to keep me sane.  He knew how hard it was for me to talk about 9/11 even when I was just talking about the fictional characters in my book. The official story as presented by my book company and by me was that I knew several people who died on 9/11 and that I’d been close enough to it all that day to see it first hand out of my window.  All the truth, just leaving out the facts about who those people were that died and how one of them was my baby brother.  The only people who knew the whole story were the people who knew me before it happened and I’d kept it that way for almost seven years.

“Will you be here with me when I tell him?”

“Of course… whenever you’re ready.”

“Maybe if you’re here I won’t freak out…” I said and laughed at myself knowing full well that I would still freak out about it with or without Christian there.  He laughed too knowing exactly why I was laughing, “Whatever, you know what I mean.”

“I do, and I’ll be there. Any idea when you want to do it?”

I shook my head, “No.  Soon though, before we leave for New York.  He has to know before I get on the plane.”

Christian laughed a little too hard at that statement and then apologized, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to laugh that hard, I just imagined you having one of your meltdowns on the plane and him looking at you like you’d gone bat-shit crazy.”

I smiled, “Be nice to me…”

“I am!  I’m letting you pour your heart out over the phone to me aren’t I?”

“Mmm hmm…”

“And I’m taking you shopping tomorrow for a ball gown aren’t I?”

“Uh… this is news to me…” I said and laughed.

“I was gunna call you but then kept putting it off because I figured you were in the throes of passion with Kevin.  But yeah, I think you and I need to make a road trip tomorrow and go hunting for a fabulous ball gown.” I groaned and he laughed, “It’ll be fun… I’ll take you to that snazzy mall near Orlando with all of the glamorous high end shops in it and then will buy you lunch at the Cheesecake Factory…”

“You had me at Cheesecake…” I said and giggled.

“See, I know how to make you happy.  Plus I’ll feed your Starbucks habit all day too.”

“You really do love me…” I cooed.  “You going to pay for my dress too?” I asked with a smirk.

“Um no.  But I’ll happily help you spend your money. I’m coming to get you at ten.”

“Ten?! Jesus…”

“With travel time, shopping, and eating, yes… we have to leave at ten or we won’t be back here until the middle of the night. So set your alarm, Pookie.”

I rolled my eyes, “Pookie… whatever.”

“Oh and as much as I love him, Kevin can’t come.”

“Why?” I asked laughing.  I didn’t expect Kevin to want to go dress shopping anyway, but I found it humorous that Christian wasn’t allowing it.

“Because we’re going to find you a dress that’ll knock his socks off when he sees you in it and he can’t see it until the night of the ball.”

“It’s not a wedding dress, babe…”

“No shit, Sherlock.  But it’s important. It’ll be the first time you and he are all gussied up for a big fancy shindig together and you have to make that entrance that’ll make him stop and think, ‘Hot damn, that’s my woman…’”

I giggled, “And then he’ll realize that I’m not his date…”

“Exactly!” he said and giggled with me.  “It’ll insure that you have some ah-maz-ing sex that night.”

“Well that’s already a given, honey…” I said with a grin and felt the blush spreading over my cheeks.

“Fine, even more amazing then…”

“Mmm…” I said and we both laughed.  Vinnie picked his head up and began wagging his tail which told me that Kevin was up.  He saw us out on the deck and I smiled and waved, “Speaking of… someone just woke up.”

Kevin slid open the door and stepped out onto the deck, he was wearing pajama bottoms and nothing else.  The sight of his body made me shiver.  Vinnie stood up at the end of the chaise to greet Kevin and he smiled as he scratched Vin’s head.  “Hey, buddy…” he said quietly and then sat down in the spot Vinnie had vacated sitting facing me.

I moved forward and wrapped my legs around his waist.  He smiled looking at me and I grinned at his fantastic bed head, “Hey sleepy…”

He kissed me on the lips and smiled while sliding his hands over my ass and pulling me even closer, “Hey yourself…”

Christian chuckled in my ear, “Is he buck naked and ready to go?”

I laughed, “Shut up, dork…” I shook my head and rolled my eyes, “Christian says hello…”

Kevin smiled and spoke toward the phone for Christian to hear, “Hi, Chris…”

“I did not say hello… I asked if he was buck naked…” Christian laughed.  “But I do say hello now.”

“Uh huh…” Kevin leaned in and was kissing my neck gently, slowly driving me mad.  “So ten tomorrow…”

“Yes, which gives you several hours to get your groove on with Mr. Hotness and then still get some decent sleep before you have to get up for our shopping extravaganzaaaaah.”

I sighed but smiled. My eyes were closed to take in the feeling of Kevin’s lips on my neck, his hands squeezing my ass, “Okay…”

“Love you…”

“I love you too… thank you, for… well you know.”

“Yeah… anytime.  Now go play with your man, at least one of us will be getting laid tonight…” he laughed.

“Poor Chrissy-Poo…”I chuckled.  “Joey’ll be home tomorrow, right?”

“Yep,” he said and I could tell he was smiling.

“Alright, honey… hasta pronto…”

“Don’t forget the condoms…” he said and laughed again.

“Never do…”I said with a grin.  “Later, baby.”  When I thumbed off the phone and put it down I opened my eyes to see Kevin watching me with a grin, “Do you know how hard it is to talk on the phone with you kissing me like that?”

“Yep…” he said with a dirty smirk.

I pulled at his neck and brought his face to mine for a kiss.  “You’re lucky I enjoy it…” I said after the kiss.

He laughed and wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug, “So what’s going on tomorrow?”

I groaned then laughed putting my head on his bare shoulder, “Shopping for a ball gown.  You’re not allowed to come.”

Kevin laughed, “I’m not allowed?”

“Nope… Christian’s rules.  But we should be back here in time for dinner.” I picked my head back up to look at him, “Can you handle a whole day without me?”

He shook his head and slid his hand up my back underneath his tee shirt, “I don’t know…” His hand was so warm against my skin.  “Maybe I can handle it if I get you all to myself for the rest of the night.”

I ran my fingertips across his back where the elastic of his pants met his skin and grinned at the way it made him squirm, “You all rested up for another round, Heartthrob?”  He pressed his body up toward mine and I could feel just how ready he was.  I ground my hips against him which made him moan and made me smirk, “I’ll take that as a yes.”