“You can’t still be contagious,” Winona complains, but she doesn’t try again; most of her patients are immunocompromised and I knowshe takes keeping herself healthy seriously. “Stay safe on your drive back tonight. There’s apparently a blizzard coming; don’t want you getting caught up in it.”
In my desperation to make it from one day to the next, I have neglected to keep up with the weather. I pull out my phone, swallow my despondence, when I notice that there are still no new texts waiting for me, check the radar—and there it is, an ominous, swirling cloud of purple and white sweeping toward the city.
“Then I really have to go,” I say. “Good night.”
Winona squeezes my shoulder, like she can’t help but express her gratitude through touch.
“Thanks again, Sulley. For everything. And no pressure to come Sunday; you need to rest, and I know Sophie would understand.”
“And miss out on her sick moves?” I laugh. “No way. See you then; save me a seat.”
Eleven
As foretold, a blizzard descends upon the city. I avoid the worst of it by the skin of my teeth, turning into my building’s garage just minutes after the first fat, wet snowflakes land on my windshield. Onix, who is thirteen years old, arthritic, and doesn’t have any time for this shit, is greatly displeased by the change in the weather. Ten minutes into our squinting hobble down the street and he’s done, employing all seventy pounds of his bulk to drag me back home.
The next morning the snow turns to hail and then to sleet. I spend the morning in my office slouched in my chair, fending off sleep, watching my clinic appointments disappear from my schedule and googling inane things like “why did he ghost me” and “getting over a crush in your thirties.” I’m halfway through a video by a self-proclaimed feminist dating coach advising me to “teach myself to be disgusted by his disrespect”when my assigned medical assistant pops open the door. I hurriedly silence my phone and place it face down on my desk like a guilty kid, but luckily, he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Your eleven forty no-showed, so I’m heading to lunch early,” he informs me.
“That’s fine,” I say, my words swallowed by a yawn. “I’m going to take a nap. Tell whoever’s covering you to wake me up if someone shows up.”
He nods and closes the door, and I’m alone again. The exhaustion I’ve been fighting to get through my clinic day suddenly weighs heavy on my shoulders, and I slump forward onto my desk, nestling my head in the dark space made by my folded arms. My eyes flutter closed, and between one second and the next, I’m gone from the world—
—and waking, abruptly, to a new one. It’s all white: endless white walls, white sheets only distinguishable by the shadows in their folds under a gossamer white canopy. I look down at my body and see white silk and delicate lace: a robe that might have once been worn by a 1940s starlet on her way to seduce her producer.
“I’ve missed you,” a voice says.
I snap toward it, my heart leaping as adrenaline surges within me. I shouldn’t be surprised to find Julian here, now that he’s established himself as a recurring player in my dreams, but Iamsurprised to hear him speak. He looks different today. Otherworldly in a way that makes me fight not to avert my gaze. His eyes glow amber, like they had in the music room in Edison Mansion so many weeks ago, and his bronze skin seems burnished gold, a demigod stepping foot on Mount Olympus and becoming divine. He tilts his head as he regards me, and I get the distinct feeling that I’m trapped, a fawn caught in a bear trap.
“Whose fault is that?” In this space, I don’t bother to hide my irritation. “You’re the one who ghosted me.”
Julian tilts his head. He looks pleased, and that annoys me even more.
“Does that mean you’ve missed me too?” he asks. His gaze drops to my chest, lingering on the nipples that peek through the thin whitefabric of my robe. This is a dream, I have no reason to be shy, but I still cross my arms to hide them from view. Julian smirks. “Certainly seems like it.”
“Asshole,” I whisper.
Julian laughs. The sound echoes off unseen walls.
“Asshole, am I?” he says. “I’ve simply stopped performing, just as you suggested.”
I scoff, turning away. The motion makes my head swim, and I realize, with some horror, that this is the first time that my symptoms haven’t dissipated in my dreams.
The canopy over my head shudders, and suddenly my back is flat against plush pillows and Julian is crouching over me, his knees squeezing my hips between them, arms trapping me in a cage. I’m very sure he’d been wearing a shirt a few seconds ago, but it’s gone now, leaving just a gleaming chest that I ball my fists into the sheets to keep from reaching out to touch. As if he can hear my thoughts, he snatches my hand, places it on his abs, and tenses. The muscles ripple under my palm, and the space between my legs throbs like he’s touched me there.
“I can make you all better, you know,” Julian promises. His voice is a low, sultry whisper. “Either here and now, or later, out there. Anywhere you want. Any way you want too. You just have to ask.”
“I…” I squeeze my eyes shut. “I don’t want that from you right now.”
Julian quirks an eyebrow, then lowers his hips into me, presses close until I can feel every inch of him against me, every ridge. I suck in a breath to keep from crying out and squeeze my eyes shut, enduring.
“Are you sure?” he teases.
The heat emanating from Julian’s body is both oppressive andsoothing, like sitting too close to a hearth, and it turns my mind liquid. The truth is that I’mnotsure. Why shouldn’t I let Julian have his way with me here, insulated from reality? It would be harmless, I think. And by the way it already feels now, even with thin layers of clothing still separating us, transcendent. My hips rise to meet his, and he presses me closer, flattening me against him and dragging a sigh out of my throat. I feel his groan at the nape of my neck, throaty with triumph.
“That’s right,” he says. “Give yourself to me.”
His voice is resonant, like there are five of him in the room, all speaking in haunting unison. The words themselves are less seduction, more command, but I don’t have time to consider the strangeness of them, because suddenly his hands are everywhere. Gripping my chin to open my mouth to him, tugging open my robe to roll my nipples between eager fingers. He sucks at the skin at the base of my neck, draws the flesh into his mouth, bites down. The pinch of his teeth makes me gasp, and desire drips down my body like slow-poured honey.