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  And there was Johnny in the middle of it, holding my hand. Kissing me casually. Capturing my hair at the base of my neck and lifting it off my skin to give the air a chance to reach it. Letting me drink from his bottle of beer, eat from his fork, taking my head into his lap and tracing every line of my face as we lay in the grass of the backyard and looked up at the blue summer sky.

  “Wish you’d stay over,” Johnny said to me as he drew deep on a joint and passed it to me.

  I declined; he shook his head and tucked it back in his mouth. “Can’t. You know that.”

  “I know you say it,” Johnny said.

  I was content, just now, the dream sugar-sweet. I laughed, just because it felt good to laugh. I shifted in the green grass, looked at blue sky. Looked at the face of the man I loved.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just…happy.”

  He leaned to kiss me, breath fragrant with pot but not gross. “I’m glad you’re happy, Emm.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  He put on an exaggerated frown. “Sometimes.”

  I sat up, playing along. “Awww. Poor Johnny. What’s wrong?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, wish you’d stay.”

  “Oh…you wouldn’t like it half as much if I did,” I told him, giddy with my own sense of joy and with the freedom of dreams.

  “Yeah, I would.”

  “No. You’d get tired of me like you get tired of all your women.”

  Johnny laughed. “I never get tired of women, baby. I love them all too much. That’s my problem.”

  “See? I don’t want to be just another woman!”

  He shook his head slowly, looking into my eyes. “You’re not, Emm. Not even close.”

  I settled back onto his lap, feeling his bare flesh against my cheek. He wore truly horrible red short shorts lined with white piping, further proof this was a dream. My Johnny would never be caught dead in something so yuck—well, not now. Back in 1978 they were probably superhot.

  “Trust me, you should be glad I don’t hang around all the time,” I said.

  “Well, I ain’t.” He put the joint away and rested his hands behind him in the grass to look up at the sky.

  I sobered a little. “We’d have a fight.”

  “About what?” he asked, like he didn’t at all care.

  “Something. I don’t know. People always have fights eventually. I mean…I’m a raging bitch sometimes.”

  He laughed at that. “You think I can’t handle that?”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have to, that’s all.” Not here. Not in a dream.

  “Maybe I want to,” Johnny said in the same nonchalant tone I didn’t believe for a second. “Didja ever think of that?”

  Everything was topsy-turvy, all switched up. I could remember the fugues, our conversations, the lovemaking, but where they fit into this time, this dream, I couldn’t quite figure out. Everything had gotten chopped up into pieces.

  I sat up and looked at him. “I love you, you know.”

  He looked pleased. “Yeah?”

  I poked his bare chest—short shorts aside, he was naked. “You’re supposed to say it back, you ass.”

  Johnny leaned in to kiss me. “I love you, Emm.”

  From the pool in front of us came a giant splash, and Ed surfaced, blowing out a spray of water. The others weren’t around. We’d been alone until now. I wished we still were.

  “Even if I am a bitch,” I said, “it doesn’t last long.”

  “No?” He kissed me again, and his hand found the spot on the back of my neck he liked so well to cradle.

  “No,” I said against his mouth.

  “Good to know,” Johnny said.

  Someone called his name. He looked toward the house with a frown. Bellina stood at the back door, holding the phone stretched tight on its long, curly cord. She said a name.

  “My agent,” Johnny explained, and looked apologetic. “Gotta take that, babe.”

  “You go.” I stretched in the sun, lazy and sated.

  He got up, looking down at me, silhouetted by the sun. “Will you be here when you get back?”

  “I hope so.”

  But I wasn’t.

  Another night I was back again. Same place. Slightly different time. Johnny walked out of the kitchen and found me standing in the front hallway. He looked me up and down.

  “Hey. That was Freddy. Says he got a gig for me set up in Italy. Horror flick.” He took me in his arms. “Wanna go to Italy with me?”

  Why not? “Sure.”

  He grinned. Kissed me. Then a little harder. “Wanna go upstairs with me?”

  “Sure to that, too,” I said with both my hands on his ass and squeezed.

  A clatter of something in the hall made us both turn. It was Ed. Annoyed, I frowned. Was he following us, or what?

  “Sorry,” Ed muttered, weaving a little. “I thought…you’d gone, Emm. You were there and then I thought you… Never mind.”

  “I’m right here,” I said, annoyed.

  Johnny laughed. “Go sleep it off, man. That guy,” he said when Ed stumbled into the living room and collapsed on the couch, “should cut back on the booze.”

  Upstairs in Johnny’s bedroom, he stripped out of those godawful shorts and stood naked, his erection already thick and gorgeous, begging for me to get down in front of it and take it in my mouth. Which I did, gladly, the hem of my lightweight nightgown crushing under my knees. His fingers ran along the spaghetti straps, pushing them off my shoulders so my breasts pushed up and out of the material.

  I stroked my hand down his cock and took the head in my mouth. I sucked. He moaned. He thrust. I licked and nibbled gently, and Johnny tugged on my hair until I looked up.

  “Stand up,” he said. “Turn around.”

  I did. I put my hands on his dresser, my fingers flat on the polished wood. Behind me, he slipped up my gown, found me bare beneath. His fingers toyed with the crack of my ass, then slid between my legs to stroke my clit. I shivered, head bent, legs spread. I was already wet.

  “You always go without panties?” he murmured, not like he expected an answer. Appreciative.

  I slept in this gown without panties, yes, and would never have gone out in public this way if it hadn’t been a dream. But that was too long an explanation. “Just for you.”

  He grunted. His fingers slid into me, then out. He used his thumb and forefinger to tug gently at my clit, and a low noise eased from my throat.

  “You want me to fuck you, Emm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like this?”

  “Definitely,” I answered.

  Above Johnny’s dresser was a mirror. When he pushed inside me, he also gathered my hair at the back of my neck and pulled until I looked up. I gazed at both of us, captured there in glass, a frame around us like a painting. Making us art.

  His face looked grim as he moved inside me. Concentrating. His brow furrowed, mouth thinned. My gaze blurred as pleasure built, but his hand in my hair kept me from looking away. Our eyes met in the mirror.

  His other hand moved against my clit, stroking in time to every thrust. My fingers curled and bent on top of the dresser, sliding and unable to grip. We moved together. The dresser shifted, squeaking on the floor, nudging the wall. The mirror shook, and we shook inside it.

  Everything shook.

  I was coming, fast and hard. Johnny closed his eyes, head back, his hand still gripped so tight in my hair I couldn’t move without pulling. I watched ecstasy wash over his face and wanted to look away from my own twisted features. Then, over Johnny’s shoulder, in the doorway, I saw him.

  Ed. Watching us. This was worse, somehow, than having Sandy walk in on us, because it could be said that even in a dream I wanted to prove to her she’d lost Johnny and I had him. But this voyeurism didn’t feel sexy to me.

  I gasped, orgasm ripping through me. Johnny let out a low cry. I said his name, urgently, and he opened his eyes. He blinked, gaze