189. Sweet Dreams Are Made of Thee

From: XXXXXXwp@gmail.com (Whitney)
To: XXXX911@hotmail.com (Cayden)
Date: Sat, April 16, 2011 at 1:30 AM
Subject: I wish you were awake

I want to tell you how much I love you. I'm soooo sick of coming home alone. I hate it. Joyce is with Joey. Terry is with Randy. Rae is with Chaz. And Nate took Rose out tonight and they hit it off and had a blast. And I'm alone. I hate this. But I love you.

I had just gotten home that Friday night after drinking wine and watching movies with Rae and Chaz. Luckily, Rick was there (our friend, and Rae's roommate), so I didn't feel completely third wheel. I'd recently enlisted my former coworker, Nate, to be my spare wheel in group outings now that all of my girlfriends were in serious or budding relationships. I was tired of being the odd man out, the solo one at the table, the one everyone had to tip toe around so they didn't make me feel awkward.

Nate and I had hit it off on my first day at my new job. From day one, I could tell we were going to be BFFs. He was half Cuban as well, so he felt like a long-lost brother in some way. He was such a great guy that I immediately started looking around for girls to set him up with. Then he met Rose. I'd lost my spare wheel.

I just wanted to call Cayden and bawl my eyes out, blubbering about how much I missed him, but it was 7:30 there. I couldn't justify waking him up that early on a Saturday morning just to bother him with a problem that couldn't be fixed.

For some reason, the closer it got to the day Cayden would visit, the harder it got for me to be without him. Every day that passed felt so close, yet not close enough.

I punched my pillow out of frustration and then buried my face underneath it, crying into my sheets. Somewhere beyond the feathers and the cotton pillow case, I heard my phone ring. I shot my head up, launching my pillow across my bed, and reached for my phone. Cayden's face popped up on my screen.

"Hello?" I said, wiping my nose and trying to hide the fact that I was crying.

"Oh, baby, don't cry," Cayden said. He knew my crying voice too well.

"I'm sorry. I don't know when I turned into such a girl! Such an emotional wreck. I can't stand it," I said, trying to laugh it off.

"I'll be there in one week. I miss you so much. I'm so sorry I can't be there for you when you're feeling like this," he said.

"Well, I wouldn't be feeling like this if you were here, so I guess we won't have to worry about that. What are you doing awake before 8 on a Saturday anyway?"

"Well, you know, I'm such an old man these days, I think I was in bed before 11," he said. I could tell he was shaking his head and laughing.

Just hearing his quiet laugh, thousands of miles away, put a smile on my face. Two minutes into the phone call, my tears were dry and the only evidence of my emotional breakdown was the damp circle on the bedsheet the shape and size of my face.

Cayden talked to me until my eyes were heavy and my words were few and far between. I drifted off into a deep sleep where I dreamt about Cayden. In my dream I could hold his hand, kiss his lips, taste his mouth. I never wanted to wake up from that dream.

*