In my dreams, Fathom and I are together. He is healthy and alive. We are wildly in love. It is like the worst YA novel of all time, and it is absolutely delicious. Tonight, we’re lying on a beach, not the gross Coney Island beach littered with cigarette butts and hypodermic needles, but a tropical island. It’s warm and bright, and the tide massages our toes. My cheek rides the rise and fall of his chest, and he clings to me like a drowning man holds a life preserver. Together we bake in the afterglow. Or, at least what I think the afterglow must be like. I am still technically beforeglow, at least in the waking world. In my dreams, Fathom and I have been glowing almost every night—it’s all hands and fingers and lips and arms and legs and then the fade to black. The nocturne gives me what the real world will not. Fathom watches me with his hurricane eyes. His fingers rake through my hair, and I lean into his hand, craving the tickles it conjures. He says something, but it’s gibberish, as if this dream has spent all its creative energy and is slowly unraveling.
