Page 33 of Jack Frost
My dreams are fitful that night, and in one of them I'm naked and twisted up with my ex, Sam, while Jack watches from the shadows, his eyes shards of blue ice. I reach for him, trying to crawl out of the bed, but he's freezing over, fast and faster, and I can't touch him before he's entirely encased in thick ice. I breathe on the ice, knock on it until my knuckles bleed, drag my nails along it and scream, but Jack recedes farther and farther away, endless layers of ice separating us.
"It's all right," says my ex, but he has Minnick's face now. "You're with me."
I wake with a cry, jolted out of the nightmare by the chiming of my phone alarm.
It wasn't real.
I didn't have sex with Sam again. And I'm not stuck with Minnick.
Jack is not buried in ice.
But my throat is raw. I think I was screaming for real.
Still trembling, I swing my legs out of bed and hurry to the shower, eager to wash away the clinging mental scum of the nightmare.
As the hot water floods my face and hair, I breathe deeply. My shoulders relax, tension easing from my spine.
"Did you sleep well?" The all-too-familiar voice comes from the other side of the shower curtain. "Any hot dreams of Newt Minnick?"
I yelp and cover my breasts with my arms, even though the curtain is opaque and Jack can't see me. "What the hell, pervert? You're spiraling into mybathroomnow?"
"I could have appeared right in the shower with you, but I did not, because I havestandards."
"Whatever. You're afraid of the hot water."
Silence. I grin in spite of myself.
"Fine," Jack growls. "I hate hot water. But I also respect you as a woman."
"If you respected me as a woman, you would respect my request for you to quit popping up everywhere. You crossed a line this time, and I'm sick of you messing with me, getting into my head, bothering me constantly—you need to get out of my apartment and leave me alone."
"You want me to leave you alone for good? Permanently?"
"Yes," I say before thinking—and then my heart seizes up with a kind of senseless panic.
No reply.
"Jack?"
Nothing.
I drag aside the shower curtain, folding my body behind its edge and scanning the bathroom. He's nowhere in sight.
He'll reappear any minute.
Quickly I finish my shower and dress. Add a little makeup. Brush my teeth. I hurry into the kitchen, expecting him to be perched on the counter, or busying himself at the stove.
But he isn't. And he doesn't appear while I'm inhaling a microwaved breakfast burrito, or when I snatch my purse and keys and leave the apartment. As I lock the door, I feel a puff of chilly air on my neck and I spin around, my heart tripping—but it's only a neighbor letting in a draft from the stairway door.
"Good morning." I wave, smiling absently, while my lungs tighten.
Jack's not invisible to me. If he were here, I would see him.
He really left.
Good. Great. That's what I wanted.
I march to the stairway and descend to the first floor, my jaw set and my eyes burning—because I'mhappyhe's gone, because I'm relieved to no longer have a supernatural stalker.
