And there he was—Eddie Morrow. Yet again.

Joe rolled his eyes, thinking, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

This time Eddie had no pretense of the charisma he’d found in his adult years—he was back into his high school shtick completely. His scraggly, unkempt hair hung in his eyes that shone with malice, and he wore his ratty old black trench coat, like he’d summoned it back up from whatever old closet it had gone to.

“This is such bullshit,” Joe grunted, feeling a raw anger brewing within him. The light bulbs in the restaurant faded and then brightened a few times as though there was a power surge.

“He’s not alone,” whispered Jennifer.

Joe looked again and saw Chrissy Adkins standing beside him, as she had before, like she’d materialized there. She was in full-on Goth mode, of course, with another black and lacy outfit, accompanied with her strange, sullen expression. It was an odd look from the former cheerleader. She’d once been outspoken, and frankly kind of a badass—not at all like the meek partner she appeared to be now. They stood, side-by-side, as though waiting for a table, waiting to be seated.

“God…” Joe whispered, studying Chrissy’s expression closely. She gave back a blank stare, while Eddie’s was similarly detached.

“They don’t seem right,” Jennifer whispered.

“Have they ever?” Joe grumbled, while glaring at them, hating that they were soaking up their attention, in this very limited window of time he and Jennifer had together. It was an obvious intrusion. Eddie and Chrissy—they were a virus. They could topple the whole thing down. He had to fix it—as he had before.

Jennifer kept quiet, but it was clear she too felt threatened.

“Don’t worry,” Joe said, summoning all the focus he had, speaking in a steady, confident tone. “This is my place, Jennifer. It’s my sanctuary. That’s why I chose it, see? I know it so well. From our time together. I’ve relived it a million times. With you, and you alone. And so they can’t come in here. They have no place here. They’ve got to go find their own place.”

As he said it, Salvatore himself came rushing over to the newcomers. He was an older fellow whose appearance and mannerisms were perhaps a bit too stereotypically Italian. Joe admittedly couldn’t recall him so well, and so he needed to fill in the gaps, perhaps poorly.

Salvatore spoke with Eddie and Chrissy. Joe couldn’t hear the conversation at all—and maybe there wasn’t one—but from Salvatore’s vigorous hand motions, he ascertained that he was explaining the situation to them. That the restaurant was full, and he was terribly sorry, but they couldn’t seat anyone else.

Joe watched Eddie and Chrissy acquiesce, as they backed slowly away until they were outside the restaurant, moving in a ghostlike way, without even turning, or moving their legs. They simply grew distant, fading away into the shadows outside the restaurant. Before the door closed and they were gone altogether, he saw both Eddie and Chrissy offer strange grins, and then their eyes actually glowed orange, like jungle cats in the dark of night.

The door finally closed, and the intrusion was over. Soft Tuscan music refilled the air and the candlelight grew warmer. Joe snapped his focus right back on Jennifer. Never mind the fact that Eddie and Chrissy kept popping up, a disturbing trend unto itself. They were gone now, they’d been extinguished, so it was their time once more.

“You did it again,” she said, smiling.

“Yeah… I guess so,” Joe muttered, relieved. “But let’s get back to our date, shall we?” A mere second later, wine appeared on the table, two full glasses, materializing from nothing.

It ignited fresh giggles from her. “Wow, that’s what I call service,” she said, taking her glass in hand.

Joe grinned, as they clinked the glasses together. “Jennifer, you’re fucking cool,” he said. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Joe,” she replied, with a sweet smile.

Seeing her then—a shining star amidst this nostalgic backdrop, gazing warmly into his eyes—it struck him. He realized what this might actually be, and what the dream might actually represent. It was his chance to make things right again. Jennifer was the one he’d loved, that he’d always loved, but in the end, she had rejected him. If he looked deep inside, Joe knew he’d never really recovered from it. All through high school, she’d been there, and she’d always liked him, almost inexplicably so. But Joe had just been too stupid, too lazy, and too complacent—about her, about their relationship, and about life in general. And so, eventually, she’d given up on him. She’d ran to someone else instead. Of course she had. Joe had never forgiven himself. So this was his chance to make it all right again. To do things the right way.

“Shit, maybe I’m the one who’s been lost this whole time,” Joe muttered.

She contemplated, and then spoke. “So that means I need to find you?”

Joe smiled, as he fiddled with a new concept in his mind. Maybe this dream could be their reality, and the other side—the side he didn’t much care for, where he was a lumbering, hungover disaster—that would be the dream. Well, more like a nightmare. But he could flip them. So that was how he’d find Jennifer—by joining her, in this fantastical place. His eyes widened again, realizing he had that power now, to make this wondrous, incredible switch. He was, after all, a dream weaver. And maybe a pretty damn good one.

“I want more than that, Jennifer,” he said, staring at her from across the table, watching the candlelight dance in her eyes as she sipped her wine. “I want to be here with you. I want to join you here.”

But then came another harsh interruption, when the cell phone of one of the other couples in the restaurant began buzzing awfully loud. It sat on the table and vibrated furiously. It was very bothersome, and most everyone in the restaurant gave its owner a dirty look as he fumbled with it, trying to turn it off. Joe stared too, with his jaw ajar, like he was watching a car crash.

Finally the guy was successful in switching off the ringer, and mercifully the buzzing stopped. The man gave a lame wave of his hand to the surrounding tables, as though a gesture of apology. The disruption signified something though, and Joe felt sudden dread. This was a sign, an indication that their time together was in jeopardy.

“Let’s get out of here,” Joe urged. He already knew where to go. He’d follow the script—after dinner on this night, he remembered they’d went to a party, at Johnny Nicholson’s house. Johnny was one of their old classmates, a fellow junior. His parents had been out of town, and it was a drunken, silly mess of a party, the kind of thing high school kids lived for. Normally Joe did too, but on that night, he and Jennifer had been inseparable, not just emotionally but physically too, and so they’d found themselves downstairs in the basement, detached from the crowd. They’d sought out the privacy, and down there they’d found it. It was a second family room, with a plush old couch, which they’d fallen onto immediately upon sight of it. They’d been in the young part of their relationship when they’d make out every chance they could get, it seemed, and on that couch they did so as though their lives depended on it. It seemed an obvious place to go to find privacy.

“Okay,” Jennifer said, after putting down her glass. Joe noticed the rosy hue in her cheeks. “Where are we going, Joe?”

“The party, where else?” Joe tried it, to see if she’d remember.

She grinned. “Johnny Nicholson’s?”

Joe loved it. Of course she remembered. “Yeah. I want to relive it with you. I want to relive it all night.”

“All night? That’s ambitious, mister premature…” She simply giggled away the last part.

“Hey, I’m a bit older now,” he protested jokingly, but her comment dizzied him anyway, and a second later, the customers and the restaurant around them began to vanish, like the brightness that cast them began to dim. In their stead came the dull, dim interior of Johnny Nicholson’s basement, as it had been on that night. He and Jennifer sat together on that old, plush couch, and before them was a beaten-up coffee table and a modest entertainment center that held a dusty old TV. Above their heads they heard the occasional drunken laughter and footfalls from the high school party that was in full swing.

She smiled, showing her approval of the new location. Joe felt relief, to be in a different sanctuary that immediately felt safer, and more private. It wasn’t though, and it was a crushing blow to hear the piercing call of a cell phone yet again. It came just as Jennifer was slowly sliding a pin out from her hair, and as Joe had been entranced by the sight of her fine blonde locks tumbling downward.

The cell phone rang and vibrated harshly, incredibly loud and intrusive.

This time it seemed to come from atop the coffee table that was just in front of them. Joe reached for it, but he couldn’t find it in the darkness, and so blindly he felt for it, praying his hand would fall upon it. He’d switch it off, or he’d just throw it across the room—anything to make it less of a distraction. But try as he might, his hand fell again and again upon the empty coffee table, and he just couldn’t locate the goddamn device.

The entire basement flickered cruelly, and the room grew hazy.

“Jennifer… I’m losing you,” he piped in frustration.

“That’s okay, Joe,” she replied, with a sudden detachment in her voice that he didn’t like. She removed another pin from her hair and more of it came cascading down in a lovely tumble. But she seemed to be going about that process in a dutiful manner, and not at all in the playful way he’d expect. “You can’t join me anyway,” she added.

He felt like he’d been socked in the stomach. “Why not?” Joe asked, wincing.

“Because I fell into the ebb,” she remarked, with a casual finality in her voice.

He heard another dark bell toll, right there in the dream. She had a resigned look on her face, a defeated expression that was very unlike her. Joe suddenly realized how stupid it was that he’d brought her to these places, to the restaurant, and then to the silly party where they’d made out as teenagers. She was merely obliging him throughout all of this. The stakes were far, far greater, but… Joe was blind to them.

The cell phone screamed again, with renewed intensity, and in that moment Joe hated devices and technology more so than he’d ever hated anything else in the world. He wished dearly that he’d lived hundreds of years ago so the interruption wouldn’t—couldn’t—have happened. While teetering on the fine line between dreaming and wakefulness, his world became a shiny, gleaming veil, but it was his own tears filling into his eyes. Then came yet another ruthless scream from the cell phone, and it overcome anything else, with an awful inevitability, like a radio station finally succumbing to static.

Jennifer was gone. Her downcast expression framed by voluminous blonde curls was the last image he saw of her.