Free Rebecca's Lost Journals, Volume 1: The Seduction by Lisa Renee Jones Page B

It was flying downward, faster and faster, and I was screaming, my heart in my throat. The trolley jumped the tracks and I clung to the pole, watching the water get closer and closer. Frantically, I searched for my mother, but she was just . . . gone. I was alone as the trolley slammed into the water.
    The next thing I knew I was sitting up in bed, screaming bloody murder, my hand clutching my neck. I’m not sure how long it took me to calm down, but when I finally realized I was in my bed, in my apartment, I could smell my mother’s vanilla and honey perfume, suffocating me, filling my nostrils and the entire bedroom. I swear, I felt my mother in my room.
    She made me have that hellish nightmare. I’m aware that that sounds crazy and I’m not one who believes in ghost stories, but I know she did this. I just don’t understand what it means. I thought she loved me—but then, I learned so much about her in her final days; things I sometimes wish I didn’t know, but others I’m glad I do. It is only because of what I know now that I am willing to see what this nightmare might be telling me. Maybe I was always alone. Maybe that’s why my mind placed my mother in my dream state and ripped her away.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010
    J osh, the good-looking banker I went out with a couple times last month, came into the bar tonight asking why I hadn’t returned his calls. How do you tell a guy that you dated him and had sex with him because you were lonely, and the net effect was still lonely? It wasn’t that the sex was bad; it wasn’t. I enjoyed it. I had an orgasm. I mean, that should account for something, because face it, how many first-time sexual encounters equal orgasm?
    Well, maybe they do for some people, but not me. I tend to think too much the first time with a man. Not that I’ve had a lot of men in my bed. In fact, Josh is only the third. But I can just give myself an orgasm and it’s much less complicated.
    He’s really a perfect guy—or he would be in my mother’s book. Good-looking, self-made, loves his parents, and all that good stuff. He has money and appreciates everything he has, because he earned it himself. I just don’t have it in me to play the relationship game right now. And maybe I can’t appreciate or deserve someone like him until I know who I am.
    I ended up telling him I was working crazy hours and I’d call him next week. I shouldn’t have told him that. Why did I give him hope? I know how much hope can hurt.

Friday, December 10, 2010
    I can’t get the man from the gallery out of my mind, but I thought at least the nightmares had ended. Then I had the same hellish one last night, on the same trolley with my mother. I spent the morning and afternoon haunted by it, and for once I was thankful that Friday nights are so chaotic. That meant I’d be too busy to think about it or him.
    But it’s nearly ten o’clock, and I’ve barely had a break. I’ve been slammed with customers, yet that sick, horrible feeling when I’m plunging toward the water still suffocates me. It’s frustrating and upsetting that I cannot get this nightmare out of my mind. It’s affecting my job, and the tips I make to pay the bills.
    I can’t get rid of this sense that something is wrong, something bad is going to happen. I haven’t felt like this since the week before my mother died. It’s driving me crazy, and all I want to do is make this feeling go away. But I can’t.

Monday, December 13, 2010
    I dreamed of the man from the gallery, but remarkably I can’t remember the details. I know it was dark and delicious, the way a man like that is meant to be dreamed about. Why can I remember the nightmare of being plunged into the bay by way of trolley car and my dead mother, yet the dream about a sexy, powerful man just plain escapes me? Truly, I don’t know what is going on inside me right now, but I feel as if I am spinning out of control. It was enough to push me over the edge today, and I did