Page 19 of Make Me Yours
“Dream content?”
“Same reel,” I said. “Rooftops. Heat. We’re waiting, nothing moves, and the quiet turns into a countdown I can’t hear, but I know it’s there. Then I’m up and it’s just… sweat. Diesel. Like my own skin’s wrong.”
She wrote a single word and set the pen down. “How many nights this week?”
“Three,” I said. “Out of seven.”
Her eyes flicked back to the folder. “Medication adherence?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m taking it.”
“But?”
I rubbed my thumb over a fray in my jeans. “Feels like it’s dialing me down too far. Like the world’s happening behind glass. I go through the motions, but very little lands.” I exhaled, jaw tight. “Then at night… It’s like a switch flips. I get with—” I cut myself off, looked at a spot over her shoulder. “With her. And suddenly I can feel everything. Too much, maybe.”
Monique didn’t blink. “Say the line that’s in your head.”
“It’s like I’m flat most of the time,” I said quietly. “Nothing gets through… until I’m with her. Then it’s like a switch flips and I can’t get enough.”
“What do you call that?”
“Obsession.” The word tasted like rust. “And I’m not proud of it.”
She let the silence breathe for a beat. “Who’s ‘her’?”
I blew out a breath. “Lilly.”
“‘Just a friend’?” she asked, not mocking—confirming the story I’d told myself.
I nodded once. “Just a friend.”
Monique leaned back and laced her fingers over one knee. “You only see this friend at night. You leave before dawn. You report hyperarousal in that window and blunted affect the rest of the day. I’m hearing a pattern.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know the pattern. I built the damn thing.”
Her mouth ticked, not a smile so much as acknowledgment. “Walk me through how you learned it.”
I stared at my hands. I could’ve kept it surface-level—talk meds, talk sleep hygiene, talk breathing exercises that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Instead, the thing I’d never said out loud rose up fast, like a confession itching to be free.
“Mosul,” I said. “Commander’s aide. Valentina.”
Monique didn’t move. “Go on.”
“It started like anything does over there,” I said. “Short looks. A joke in a hallway. Paperwork that took an extra minute because we both wanted it to. Then one night, a dust storm rolled in, and everything was grit and static. I ducked into a storage room to breathe. She followed.”
I swallowed. The room tilted a degree, and I let it. “It was hot and urgent. Her hands were in my hair before I even thought about pulling away. We kissed like we could push the world back with our mouths. She bit my lip, and I pressed her against a steel shelf, boxes rattling. It was quick and messy and exactly what it needed to be—fire dropped into a cold place. After that… we stole minutes in the middle of the night where we could. Her mouth on my neck, my hands under her blouse, both of us trying not to make a sound while the base thumped around us.”
I shook my head, surprised at the words coming out. “It was good, yeah. But it wasn’t… it wasn’t what it is with Lilly.”
Monique sat with that for a moment. No judgment. No flinch. “What happened to Valentina?”
“The commander got wind,” I said. “She was reassigned overnight. No warning. No goodbye. I knew exactly why she was gone.” I let out a breath that felt years old. “I told myself it was love. That losing her proved something about me. About what I could still feel.”
“And now?” Monique asked.
“Now I know better,” I said. “Mostly.” I looked at the floor. “It was lust and survival in a war zone. We used each other to make it through the week. Not proud of breaking regs, but… those minutes kept us sane.”
“Seen her since?”
