Free Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) by G.B. Brulte, Greg Brulte, Gregory Brulte Page B

aroma with life, and love.
     

    Then, we kissed… long and passionately, in our private world high above the world.

Chapter 23
     
    Melody woke up with a start. Samantha looked around with wide eyes and then stretched as cats are prone to do after a period of sleep.
     
    “Sorry, honey… didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “What a dream!”
     
    She shook her tousled hair and ran her fingers through it. Melody swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. I watched as the beautiful young woman made her way into the living room. The cat was torn between staying with me on the bed, or, following her owner.
     
    When I got up to go after Melody, Samantha beat me to it… so I ended up behind the cat. We both came up behind Melody; she was stooped down, flipping through a stack of canvases leaned against the wall. In a few seconds, she found the one she wanted and put it on the easel by the window. I instantly recognized our table… it was the painting she had been working on the very first time that Giddeon and I had stolen into her condo. Melody got out her brushes and paints and turned her attention to my partially finished image.
     

    I kissed her on the cheek, petted the cat, and silently made my exit.

Chapter 24
     
    Living between worlds has its advantages. Money isn’t a problem. There is no hunger. Pain is only momentary. In addition, the golf course is never crowded and the weather outside is however you want it to be. Apparently, Giddeon simply sampled realities until he found one that fit our wishes at the time… and, there, we would be.
     
    You know that country song, ‘ It’s Five O’clock, Somewhere ’? Over in the realm of inter-dimensional tourists, it was more along the lines of ‘ It’s Right-O’clock, Somewhere ’.
     
    At first, I was only mildly curious about the alternate realities to which we seemed to have access. To be honest, I figured if I was in a coma then it really was just a dream like Giddeon first described it… none of it was ‘real’.
     
    As time went on and I became more and more accustomed to my new existence, it was almost like I didn’t want to jinx it all by trying too hard to understand.
     
    For some reason I was afraid that if I dug too deeply, or asked too many questions, Giddeon would go away and I would end up in darkness… all alone in a hospital room. The nearest thing I can relate my reluctance about trying to understand anything about the how and why of it all to, was… superstition. Like a player that was winning on the ball court, I was hesitant to change things. Pete Maravich (a basketball player from the sixties and seventies) had had his floppy grey socks that he wore during every game, and I had my acceptance of everything otherworldly.
     
    That’s why, for months, I just went along with my existence as it was.
     
    Finally, though, I realized that I wasn’t ‘winning’. That even though I was in a coma, it wasn’t just a long and complicated dream that was unfolding around me.
     
    I began to understand that most likely I, with the help of Giddeon, was actually sampling different realities. That all of those different planes of existence did, in truth, exist and reflect off of each other into infinity like a hall of mirrors… or, like the never-ending facets of a diamond. Each similar, and yet, different, from the rest.
     
    Real, but at the same time, not so real.
     
    At least, not real enough.
     
    The reality that I wanted most of all was my old reality.
     
    The one where I held Melody’s hand and it fit perfectly into mine. Where she knew I was there. Where we could kiss, if we wanted to. Where we could talk and laugh and hear each other’s words. Where we could maybe go to a club, hold each other on the dance floor and sway to the music… sway to the music and feel intimate heat from our bodies pressed so closely together.
     
    After dozens of rounds of golf, a ridiculous number of restaurant meals, hours and hours