Dream a Little Dream Read online

  “Okay.” He didn’t look convinced, but he leaned to kiss her again.

  “Try, Butler,” Mariella said, and then she was sitting straight up in her bed, the sheets tangled around her ankles and her eyes squinting against the overhead light, which had come on the way it did after a power failure. “Dammit!”

  They should’ve had plenty of time left in their dreams, but her neighborhood had all overhead power lines and at any sign of bad weather they’d go down. Whatever had happened had been brief. Her clock blinked and the light had come on, but nothing flickered with a sign that it was about to go off again. Still, she knew better than to hope she could find him again, even if she could get back to sleep in the hour before her alarm went off. She might as well get up.

  She paused as she swung her legs out over the edge of the bed. Her arms had been painted with threaded red marks that were rapidly fading but still prominent. Blinking, Mariella touched them. The pattern of red on her skin branched like the roots of a flower.

  “Oh, my God.”

  As she watched, the marks faded, leaving nothing behind, not even a tingle, to remind her they’d been there. But she could never forget them. She’d never taken anything out of the Ephemeros before. Stroking a fingertip along the now clear skin, Mariella shivered, her nipples peaking.

  “Who are you, Butler Meadows?”

  * * *

  Long day at work, followed by a run. A beer in front of the TV. Takeout Chinese that would be better cold for breakfast, which wasn’t saying much. In other words, Butler thought as he settled in front of his laptop at the kitchen table with a second beer, boring. Dull. Lame. And, he admitted, a little lonely.

  There was a remedy for that, and it wasn’t team building in a sports bar after work with a bunch of people he barely liked, but it was only a little more appealing. Still, it was his only option at the moment, so he navigated to the dating site where he’d had an account for the past year and a half. Some people joined a gym every New Year’s and paid all year for the privilege of never exercising. For Butler, it was FindADate, where he paid for the privilege of not dating.

  He’d had a few dates over the past eighteen months. Nice women, for the most part. Soccer mom divorcées with midlife makeovers—he seemed to attract them a lot. He’d gone out for coffee, to the movies and dinner, once to a cigar bar on a date that had seemed promising until the woman had launched into a political debate that was the complete opposite of everything Butler had ever believed in. That had ended on a sour note, and though she’d texted him frequently for a while, he’d stopped replying.

  Still, though he hadn’t been on a real date in months, he did check his messages every week or so to see if anyone interesting had come along. Tonight he scanned the new profiles and looked at his inbox to find a few old winks that he hadn’t responded to. Sometimes he opened the site with a hopeful lift in his heart, but other times, like tonight, it was only depressing.

  All he could think about was the dream.

  Tapping his fingers on the table, Butler sat back in his seat to scan the pictures and information in front of him. Lots of pretty faces, a few interesting profiles, maybe even a couple women he’d have messaged even a week ago. Stupid, he told himself. Letting an imaginary fling affect his real life.

  But it had felt real. Butler had heard of lucid dreaming, but had never experienced it. There’d been only a few dreams where he’d realized he was asleep. But twice in the past month he’d done it, and both times the woman had been there. And the second time...Butler let out a low groan at the memory of her taste. The feeling of her body underneath his. His cock stirred.

  FindADate had the option to log in to an instant message system. He rarely used it, preferring the ability to answer messages and texts at his convenience, though real-time conversation had been useful a few times. He’d connected once or twice with a woman whose wit and sense of humor had matched his, chatting for hours online before they’d agreed to meet. As it had turned out, she’d taken one look at him in person and smiled regretfully, saying she didn’t date short guys. Since his profile had been meticulously truthful about everything including his height, Butler could only shrug.

  He eyed the instant message box now, considering logging on. It could lead to something exciting. Fantastic, even. He let the cursor hover over the go online button. Bed would be better, he thought. But dreams weren’t real.

  He clicked.

  * * *

  For those poor suckers who couldn’t shape their dreams, only experience and then forget them, the internet was almost as magical as the Ephemeros. You could represent yourself however you liked, anything from being a vampire to using Photoshop to make bigger boobs and a flatter stomach in your profile picture. You could visit exotic places. Meet new people.

  And, if you knew how to search just right, you could find out almost anything about anyone who’d ever gone online.

  Mariella was searching now. Butler Meadows. If that was his real name, and if he’d ever opened a Connex profile or posted in any forums, he should be easy enough to find. Easier than a John Smith would’ve been, anyway. So far she’d found a housing development in Indiana, a bunch of people with hyphenated last names of Butler-Meadows and then...

  “Bingo.”

  Butler Meadows had a Connex account set to private, a publicly viewable Pixstream account without any photos in it and according to the White Pages, he lived in a town forty minutes away from her. A few minutes deeper digging pulled up a match with his Connex profile email and one on FindADate.com. Mariella looked at the results and chewed her lower lip for a moment. This was getting into stalker territory.

  She held her hands out in front of her to look at her bare arms. Unblemished now, but the memory of those branching marks had stayed with her for the past few days. Just as she’d never brought anything out of the Ephemeros with her, neither had she ever tried to find anyone in the waking world that she’d met inside the dream one. Yet she’d been unable to stop thinking about him.

  It had hit her like a fever, this desire to discover if there was a real Butler Meadows out there in the world. And if so, if he was anything like the man in her dreams. The chances of that were so small as to be infinitesimal...but she had to try.

  She could friend him on Connex, but that would be weird. FindADate required a free signup in order to view anything beyond the initial search page, and though Mariella knew free was just an introduction into what promised to be a monthly financial commitment, she filled in all her information anyway. Her real name. Real photo. Real location. Her fingers flew over the keys, typing before she could wimp out and make up a bunch of stuff the way she would’ve done in the Ephemeros. She hit Save. Then her extremely specific search criteria, though she couldn’t be entirely positive of his age, height or anything else and had to guess and hope that how he’d represented was indeed how he really looked. She hit enter.

  And there he was.

  Butler Meadows, thirty-seven, five foot nine. Brown hair, hazel eyes. He’d listed his body type as athletic, and she could attest to that, all right. He liked horror and action movies, no surprise there. He also liked sports, travel, working out. Mariella gave herself a rueful once-over. She went to the gym, but wasn’t exactly a gym bunny. She kept scrolling.

  He had a sense of humor, evidenced in his self-deprecating but charming profile description. They liked the same kind of music, too. And the photos he’d uploaded made butterflies begin to dance in her belly.

  But should she contact him? The wink button tempted her, but something stopped her. Sudden self-doubt. What if he didn’t respond? He’d been on this dating site for close to two years. What did that mean? That he was a serial dater? A player? He didn’t look like one, but even if he’d been representing his lovemaking skills as far greater than what was accurate, it proved he had the imagination, anyway. Or maybe he’d s