Her First Time

“Honey, no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

That’s the answer I’ve gotten for the last three months! I’d become obsessed with Daniella, my wife, telling me about her first lover. The only answer she’d give me has been, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I’ve asked her if it was painful? Was it bad? Good? Exciting? Dull? And I get, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

And she’d cut me off, then change the subject to something else. Hell, we’ve been married twenty-eight years. It was a long time ago and I don’t understand why she wouldn’t even begin a discussion. All I know is that Dani wasn’t a virgin the first time we made love. I was. I hadn’t ever been with a woman before her. I’d been on dates, even had a girlfriend for a bit in college. We kissed, but that was the extent of my sexual baseball, a single, first base only.

I even tried to let it drop and then dreamed about what might have been. The next morning, I told her about my dream. She giggled a little and said it wasn’t like that at all. That was the extent of her hints.

ooOoo

Dani was a cheerleader and the star point guard on our 3rd place state finalist basketball team. She was the smallest on the cheer team and was the one doing the gymnastic leaps off the other girls’ hands.

And she was the homecoming queen during football her senior year. I was gone that year, my first year of college. I’ve seen the picture of Dani and her boyfriend, a black guy football jock; the only black guy I’ve ever seen in our school. He was new at our school that year. I never knew him and she’d never even told me his name. But I wasn’t surprised that he’d be her boyfriend. I’ve learned over the last twenty-eight years that there’s not a prejudiced bone in Dani’s body. Besides, in the picture, he was a darn good-looking kid.

Why did it suddenly become an obsession with me? It stemmed from an evening that we were going through some old albums and I saw that picture of my beautiful wife in her gown that night of homecoming, her boyfriend kissing her on the cheek the night she was announced as the homecoming queen.

I saw the look in her eyes when we turned the album’s page and that 8×10 picture was on the next, kind of a ‘longing’ look. Or maybe not. I wondered if I was just imagining things and just blurted out, “Was he your first?”

She smiled at me and said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You won’t tell me anything about him?” I asked her.

She giggled a little, “He was a senior, a little older than me, first year in Kennewick, receiver and defensive back.” That enough?

No! I wanted to scream. Not that it would have done me any good. The question I wanted her to answer, ‘was he the one?’

That was when it began. Dani was so beautiful and sexy in that picture being kissed by probably the best- looking guy in school, chocolate-brown complexion. Besides, I’d heard the rumors, you know about black guys.

After that, my obsession with knowing just grew, that picture in my brain. But she wouldn’t tell me anything; was she was dating the guy or was that just a ‘homecoming’ kiss?

ooOoo

Now, back to the beginning of the story, about three months after I’d first seen that picture. It was a normal Friday in October. We still lived in our home town. Dani had gone out that evening to visit a couple girlfriends she’s had since school and I stayed home alone. We had three kids; two in college and one married, working at the local RV manufacturing plant.

We were proud of them all, our oldest was the youngest person the plant had ever promoted to a manager. The other two, too; our daughter was going to college to be a teacher, to follow in her mom’s footsteps (pretty sure Dani’s been the subject of many high school boys’ wet dreams), and our other son was a math whiz, majoring in mathematics.

None of that had anything to do with the strange happenings of that evening, though, except that it explains why I was home alone. After Dani left, I was pondering that little mystery of my wife and even had gotten the album out again with the picture of Dani and her ‘boyfriend’ to look at again. She had the little queen’s crown on her head and the kid was holding her hand and politely kissing her on the cheek.

Dani was wearing a pale blue dress with a beautiful corsage over her left breast. The dress was long, flowing with a slit up one side, bare shoulders with a deep ‘V’ showing her cleavage. Her auburn hair was curled under, just above her shoulders. She looked like a sweet, sexy, high school girl, her face beaming with the honor of being voted homecoming queen.

I sat, just staring at the picture, almost to the point of the picture putting me in a trance, wondering about later that night, the homecoming dance… and after.

I hadn’t had dinner and decided to go buy myself a Pizza Hut dinner. I stepped outside, taking about four steps and stopping to gaze at my surroundings. I was thoroughly confused, my 2015 Accord was gone and my parents’ old black ’63 Ford Fairlane was in the street where the Accord was supposed to be. That was the car I’d driven my first year of college, before they’d sold it the following summer and I bought a little pickup.

How the hell was it sitting in our street? In front of our house! I checked the keys in my pocket and there they were… the keys for the Ford. Now, I was really confused. I knew damn good and well that I’d just picked up the keys for the Accord from the key rack beside the door.

I turned around to go back in and see if they were still there… and my eyes widened… there was no house! I was staring at the empty lot that Dani and I had bought six years ago. What the hell? I looked down at my feet and I was standing on bare dirt, not our concrete sidewalk. When I turned back around again, the old Fairlane wasn’t on a street, just the dirt road that was there before the subdivision was put in.

The first thing that went through my mind was the old TV show, ‘The Twilight Zone’. I half expected to hear that mystical music and Rod Serling’s voice, “This is the dimension of Imagination…” But no, it couldn’t be… the only logical explanation was that I’d gone to sleep, probably while looking at the picture, and this was nothing but a dream, so I pinched the back of my hand to wake myself up.

It didn’t work, so I pinched harder, so that it actually hurt. The empty lot didn’t go away. The Ford was still parked on the dirt road. I didn’t know whether to be afraid or just go with the damned dream. I glanced down at my Fitbit. It showed October 25, 1987. I did just a bit of mental gymnastics, in my sleep obviously, and deduced that was the year Dani had been a senior in high school. I’d graduated in May of ’87.

But this was the most unbelievably real dream I’d ever had! It was a chilly evening and I was cold. Wouldn’t that normally wake a guy up? Then I remembered that that day had been unseasonably warm, in the sixties and when Dani left to go with her friends, it was still almost sixty outside. So, why was it so damned cold? Thankfully, at least, I was wearing a reasonably warm shirt, but still shivering.

Up and down the ‘street’, there was nothing but an empty field with one, lonely, dirt road through the bare field toward the highway where a few minutes earlier it had been a housing development; streets, houses, trees, landscaping.

I got in the old Ford and started it up. It was running on seven cylinders, just like it had been when I was a freshman in college. And messy inside, just like I’d always kept it. And, there in the back seat, was my old red plaid wool jacket, the one I loved before it shrunk to about an eight-year-old size when I accidentally washed it in hot water. I’d given it to the Salvation Army long before Dani and I married then never saw it again.

When I put it on, it fit me the same as it did when my brother gave it to me for Christmas. Maybe a little tight because I’d gained a few pounds. But it did fit. I had to laugh, the ‘bullet hole’ was still there. It was a drop of battery acid that had burned a little hole in it right at my chest and I’d affectionately called it my bullet hole. I was one tough cookie to survive that one.

It was only about a half-mile into town and everything was like I remembered from back in the eighties: cars and pickups, eighties and earlier; the old service station that had been torn down for a new one was there; town was exactly like it had been when I graduated high school.

I had a thought… my cell phone. I got it out to call Dani to see if she was having the same experience as I was. When I looked at it, no service. Duhh!

This dream was completely out of hand!

I drove up past the high school. In the early nineties, the outside had been remodeled, adding a roof and enclosed access between the junior high and high school buildings. Naturally, the remodel wasn’t there. It was still set up so that there was a driveway between the two buildings.

One thing I saw from ‘High School Hill’ was that the lights were on at the football field, down at the elementary school.

If this was a dream, it was more real life than anything I’d ever experienced before! I thought again about The Twilight Zone. That was more like what this seemed, like I’d stepped through a worm-hole, back in time. I know when I had been looking at Dani’s picture, it was October 25th, 2019. I looked at my watch again; it still showed Oct 25, 1987.

I drove through town again to the football field. But, before I did, I looked in the rear-view mirror, at myself. I wondered, if I’d gone back in time, had my age changed? No, I was still the same fifty-year-old Robert.

At the football field, I parked and walked to the bleachers overlooking the field. It was like I wasn’t even there, no one seemed to notice me at all.

There, on the side of the field, in front of the bleachers, was my Dani, in her short cheerleader skirt and top. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, she looked so young and pretty, like the high school senior she would have been that year.

I glanced at the scoreboard on the end of the field, two minutes-fourteen seconds left in the first quarter. Score: home-fourteen, visitor-eight.

My eyes went back to my ‘wife’, the eighteen-year-old Daniella, jumping and yelling into the mouthpiece of her cone-shaped cheer phone. Occasionally, the girls would do a little acrobatic routine, with Dani always one of the two doing the flips.

At the end of the first quarter, she disappeared, going to the lockers. It came to me, was this the homecoming game? My heart rate doubled, thinking about the possibilities.

It was so weird, sitting there, with no one even acknowledging me, almost like I was invisible. Either that or just that I was a stranger that no one knew. I recognized several of the ‘kids’ that I had gone to school with so long ago. Some of the parents, too. Dani’s parents were there, even younger than my Dani had been when she’d left the house earlier that evening. And her little brother. Her parents are in their seventies, but that night, closer to forty, which they would have been in 1987.

The second quarter of the game dragged by, seemingly taking forever to get to halftime. Our team lost their lead, giving up two touchdowns. Not that I was too worried about the score of the game.

After the halftime horn blared, I was anxiously waiting, nervous about what was going to happen. It was only half a minute later when the brand new-looking Mustang convertible began the drive onto the track around the field, carrying three girls sitting up on the back of the back seat. They drove all the way around the track, then parked in front of the home grandstands.

Three guys were waiting, two in suits and one in his football uniform – the black kid, to accompany the girls in front of the bleachers. I’d seen this play out at the homecoming games when I was in school, but watching now, knowing that my ‘high school’ Dani was one of the girls, was doing a number to the swarm of butterflies in my tummy.

And then it hit me. I knew damned good and well that I’d wake up right before…

But I didn’t wake up. At least not yet.

The three guys escorted the three girls, the football player offering Dani his hand to help her out of the car. Dani was wearing the blue dress in the picture and looked even better than in the picture. A lot better. The slit in her dress was there in the picture, but when she walked, it swished open and closed, offering those glimpses of her pretty leg, nearly up to her thigh.

When they announced the name of ‘Princess’ Ann, then ‘Princess’ Jenny, the one remaining girl, Dani, covered her mouth with her hand, realizing that the other two girls were princesses, leaving one last girl as queen, herself. When her name was announced as ‘Queen’ Daniella, the look of excitement on her face was palpable. Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes wide and then her grin… that grin that I’d seen so many times. I remember it the first time we’d been told that she was pregnant.

And then her ‘jock’, standing behind her, placed the queen’s crown on her head, and I saw a flash from a camera. Then he moved to her side and kissed her on the cheek, another flash going off. The picture, the one in her album!

Then one that isn’t in the album, that I didn’t know existed; Dani turned her head and the next kiss was on the lips. Short, but most definitely meaningful, with another flash. Where is that picture?

The three girls were escorted back to the Mustang and made another round before disappearing at the far end of the field. Pretty sure they were a bit anxious to get into warmth after wearing those gowns out in the cold.

It was halfway through the third quarter before Dani, the cheerleader, made her appearance back in front of the bleachers. This time, not thinking ahead to halftime, I paid a little more attention to how she looked in her cheer costume.

I’d noticed before how short it was, but not how gorgeous her legs were with the tight leggings she wore underneath her skirt.

ooOoo

I thought back to our first time. Dani was nervous and I was scared and excited. I had barely entered her. It felt so good and was my first time. I’d pushed all the way inside her and felt the orgasm rising almost instantly. We hadn’t had a condom and I knew she didn’t want to get pregnant so I pulled out of her and exploded all over her pubic hairs. There was no way I could control myself. I’d masturbated before, but this was so different, her body was so hot and slippery inside her.

I was embarrassed, felt like I’d let her down, but she wrapped her arms around me and told me it had been wonderful for her, too. I actually believed her at the time, and the one thing I never thought of until years later was that there was no hymen blocking her. I obviously didn’t know what to expect, but I’d read about sex with a virgin. It just didn’t occur to me until so much later.

Our next time and the times after that were much better, and, well, she did marry me.

It never bothered me, because we’d been married for several years by the time that I did realize she’d had a lover before because by then we were one with each other, madly in love and in a very happy marriage. It wasn’t until that night looking through her album and seeing the picture for the first time that I had really started to wonder about her first time… and, you already know, she wouldn’t talk to me about it.

ooOoo

A moment before the end of the game, during a home-team timeout, the game’s announcer made an announcement, “Dance afterward, students only, high school gym. Visitors, you’re invited.”

The homecoming court would most certainly be at the dance. I looked around, wondering. It was like I wasn’t even there, not a word had been spoken to me, not a head had turned my way, like I was invisible. Students only. Could I?

And when was I going to wake up? I’d accepted that this was all a dream, there wasn’t any other explanation. I didn’t understand why I was seeing things I hadn’t known; like that second kiss, or the final score – we lost by a single point. I don’t ever remember knowing the outcome of that game. I guess I just assumed that, since everything else was so accurate, that the final score was real, too.

I found out a quarter-hour later if I could do it. I parked in the high school’s lot and walked into the gym totally unnoticed. There were a few people around, making last-minute decorations and testing the music, but no one acted like they’d seen me walk in.

I found a chair and sat down, waiting. It was another half-hour before kids started wandering in. When I was in high school, I never went to the dances, too shy, so didn’t really know what to expect. Kids meandered around, talking, drinking punch, holding hands, acting a little disappointed in the game, but ready to have some fun, anyway. When the music finally started, a few couples ventured out on the dance floor, but most were still around the outside watching.

The only couple I was interested in was Dani and her ‘boyfriend’. They showed up together about twenty minutes after the dancing had started, probably because they both had to change. Dani was wearing her blue homecoming dress and God, she looked gorgeous. I wished to hell that I remembered her more from high school, but like I said, she was a year younger. That had seemed like an eternity when I was in school. Besides, I didn’t go out with girls in high school, not until those few dates in college.

The two of them had their fingers interlocked when they came in, laughing about something. God, watching the eighteen-year-old Dani walking in that dress did a number on my cock, even in my sleep. I hoped when I woke up from this dream, hopefully, next to Dani, that I’d still be as hard. Just my luck that I wouldn’t remember any part of this dream.

And had any of this actually happened? Or was it just a figment of my dream-land? I know that at least some of it was real, because of Dani’s picture, but was that just because I’d seen the picture that it was in my dream? This whole thing was so weird! It still was seeming like it was all actually happening in front of me, like I really was there.

The music they were playing was mostly fast and there wasn’t much physical contact between partners. When Dani and boyfriend, (I wish I knew his name – I’ll make one up – Tim) stepped out on the floor, it was the same. They gyrated, hardly able to tell who they were dancing with.

But Dani’s dress, that slit up the side, I don’t think she’s worn anything quite like that the whole time we’ve been married. As that first dance went on, she became more and more risqué, waving her arms high above her head, and intentionally flexing that leg out of her dress for maximum exposure.

Dani’s family is conservative and so is she. This seemed so out of character to me, but so sexy! I only wished I KNEW if it was real… or only a figment of my wishful dream-world. And hoped I’d remember when I woke up.

There were a couple more dances like that, with sitting at a table with friends in between dancing. Whenever Dani and ‘Tim’ sat, they were holding hands and their arms and shoulders pressed tight together. She was obviously into the guy, big time.

Then, finally a slow dance. Dani dragged her date out on the floor and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek to his. There weren’t any mad, passionate kisses, probably because of the adult chaperones. But their bodies were sure pressed tight and grinding together.

I finally got up the courage to walk out on the dance floor. Still, no one paid me a bit of attention, like I wasn’t even there. When I got close enough to hear, I overheard Dani telling her date, “… parents left hunting after the game, deer season, so no one’s at my house,” then nibbled on his neck.

My eyes opened wide. Was she telling him what I thought she was?

The dance went on and ‘Tim’ didn’t respond, except a smile on his face. It was pretty damned obvious what he was thinking.

It was probably a half-hour later when Tim and Dani got up from their table and moved toward the door. I watched as they both got their coats from the classroom the school had used for a coat closet, then were out the front door.

I was right behind and watched as the two made their way to his pickup, and when they got in, that kiss finally came. I was still a little scared of being seen, so stood back, close enough to see, but not too obviously, while the two kissed. This was back when pickups had bench seats, so there wasn’t any obstacle in-between. I kept reminding myself that this girl kissing in the front seat of the pickup was my future wife.

When they broke their kiss and he started his pickup, Dani in the middle squeezed tight against him, I sprinted toward my car. I knew where she lived, her parents still lived there in 2019, so didn’t have to follow right behind. It was a good thing, too, because my old Ford was almost blocked and it took several minutes to maneuver it back and forth to get out. And sure enough, when I got to Dani’s house, there his pickup was in the driveway.

I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to be inside to watch whatever was going to happen. Was this ‘the’ night? I really suspected it likely was and it would be my only chance to finally know. I’d at least seemed to be invisible at the game and dance, but if it was me alone, would I be? Damn! I paced back and forth in front of her house for a minute or so and finally decided that I had to take the chance. I assumed that if I was caught, that the worst that would happen would be that I’d be awakened from this ‘dream’… If that’s what it was.

The front door was unlocked, probably because the couple inside had been a bit too excited to remember to lock it behind them. Anyway, I managed to quietly open it, sneak inside and close it again without any significant noise. I didn’t see anyone, but I knew where Dani’s bedroom was, from dating her several years after this.

I crept up the stairs, hoping that there wouldn’t be any creak and felt fortunate that everything was carpeted. Maybe they couldn’t see me, but I was sure they’d be able to hear a noise if the floor creaked.

Once I was at the top of the stairs, looking down the hall, I heard the noises coming from Dani’s bedroom, “Ahh,” “Mmm,” and other such noises. Her door was wide open, obviously because she knew she’d have total privacy with her parents and brother having gone deer hunting.

I crept down the hall and peered into the room. There was the eighteen-year-old Daniella, my future wife, with her dress pulled down and her boyfriend madly sucking one of her tits into his mouth.

I’d never even thought of Dani’s boobs as ‘tits’ before, but watching this, it seemed like the right term to use. His hand was on her hip, pushing that slit in her dress open so that her satin panties were in full view. Dani’s hands were on the back of Tim’s head, pulling his mouth tighter to her chest, little cooing noises coming from her lips.

I wondered, had they done this before? It sure seemed like he was familiar with her body. He hadn’t taken anything off yet, probably just too excited to suck those gorgeous tits. And they were gorgeous! I remembered the first time I saw them in all their glory, small but nice fat nipples, a little upturned. I’d encouraged her to wear thin, sheer bras, but she never would go braless.

Dani’s boobs had grown quite a bit after having the three kids, but, even at forty-nine, she had a beautiful body. Not quite like the eighteen-year-old version in front of me, though. ‘Tim’ had one tit inside his mouth, but the other was exposed, wide open, her dress pulled down and bra off, for my viewing pleasure.

And pleasure was the right word! This still was obviously a dream, but just as real as when I first stepped outside my door and didn’t understand what was happening when I saw the old Ford Fairlane on the street. I still didn’t understand how a dream could be this real.

And then I heard it, he’d switched to sucking on Dani’s other tit. The nipple on the one he abandoned was puffy and swollen and when his mouth descended on the left one, instead, that sultry voice I knew so well after twenty-eight years, “Oh, Alan, Ohhh, that feels so good!”

Alan! His name was Alan. God, I hoped I remembered when I woke up… remembered everything!

And then he abruptly stood, unbuttoning his shirt as quickly as he could, fumbling with his pants. At the same time, Dani was working on the zipper on the side of her dress and pushing it down off herself. Then her panties while Alan watched in awe. He only stopped a second from his own disrobing, pushing his undies down and off, freeing his cock to bounce up. And I realized the rumor was based on fact. This kid, anyway.

I’d already given up any pretense of worrying about being seen and stepped in the room where I could watch everything. Alan’s cock was big; long and thick, more so than I’d ever imagined. And Dani’s eyes got big when she first saw it. I think my question had been answered, and yes, from her reaction, it was their first time together.

“I want you, Alan, inside me,” that was Dani, my future wife, asking her boyfriend to fuck her. She pushed herself back on the bed and he climbed on top of her, both their naked bodies shaking from the sexual excitement, “I want you to be my first,” she said. I couldn’t even imagine that he could, how would that fit inside a petite, eighteen-year-old girl?

I was standing right beside the bed, obviously totally invisible. Dani spread her legs apart and Alan held himself up on his arms scooting up to her. She took his cock in her right hand and held it at her pussy, “Slow, you’re the first, so please go slow,” she asked him. There hadn’t been any mention of a condom.

My cock was about to burst in my pants when Alan pushed himself inside her. I didn’t know whether to watch his brown cock sliding into Dani or her face as he did. She’d closed her eyes and there was a grimace on her beautiful face. Her breathing deepened as his inches disappeared inside her, “Mfft,” strange noises began coming from her lips.

Alan’s face, too, was contorted and straining. He was inside her probably four or five inches when she screeched out a “Stop!” then took several deep breaths, gripped her hands around his back and said, “Now!” and at the same time, Dani lunged her hips upward toward him and he thrust, impaling his shaft all the way into her. I’d just witnessed the taking of my wife’s virginity.

Dani let out a short scream, her eyes opened wide, unseeing, staring off into space. “Stay… still… give me a minute,” she breathed out. It was nearly incoherent, but I’d understood. So did Alan, obviously. The two of them stayed, unmoving for probably a minute or two, it seemed like forever to me, until Dani, my future wife of twenty-eight years, began moving underneath him.

Dani’s puckered face had been replaced with a glowing smile and her legs spread a little wider, feet behind Alan’s back and she said as her hips were thrusting upward, “Now, Alan, make love to me, please.”

He pulled himself nearly all the way out of her and plunged back in, drawing a sharp, “Ahh” from Dani. She closed her eyes again, gritting her face and scratched her fingernails into his back as he continued his thrusting in and out of her.

Both were making strange noises when Dani’s eyes popped open again, her facial expression changed into one of total pleasure and her body began to shudder, “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” came rushing out of her mouth as Alan, at the same time, pressed himself hard inside her and began his own moaning, making short, hard thrusts into her.

Precum had started to leak from my own hard cock. I didn’t want to let myself come, but it was hard, so hard! I’d just actually witnessed what I had been literally begging my wife to tell me these last several months. And I still hadn’t awakened from what had turned out to be the dream of a lifetime.

I never took my eyes off of my wife, an eighteen-year-old girl who had just made love for the first time in her life. Alan had rolled off of her, his cock still engorged, wet with the mixture of her juices and his semen and a small amount of red, Dani’s blood?

My future wife rolled over to him and kissed him, running her hands over his hard body and I heard her whispered, “I love you,” coming from her mouth.

I was totally one-hundred-percent in shock. I didn’t know what to think, except to know that this young girl was, in a few short years from then, going to become my wife, bear us three beautiful babies and a life together that no king or the richest man could exceed.

The two of them had sex twice more that night and I watched every second. I had no idea how long I stood alongside that bed watching my wife react over and over again to their lovemaking. The last time, Dani’s legs were up on Alan’s shoulders and he pounded inside her, over and over again. By then his stamina, a horny high school senior, who had already come twice, allowed him to literally use and abuse my beautiful Dani’s body as he fucked her.

And she enjoyed every second, screaming in lust, urging him on harder, grunting with every one of his thrusts into her, all finally culminating in one last, violent orgasm.

I was shaking when I finally walked out the door. Now I knew why Dani hadn’t wanted to tell me. It had been too good for her, she had been afraid it would hurt me, how much better it had been than our first time together.

I stumbled out to my car, not noticing anything when I climbed in. Not until I realized that the engine was running smoothly in my Honda Accord.

My sanity had at least somewhat returned by the time I turned onto our street, past the row of houses and into our driveway.

When I walked into our bedroom, Dani was there, in one of her favorite nightgowns; satin, short, her breasts and nipples prominently and sexily displayed. “Honey, where have you been? I’ve been worried,” she asked me.

“Out… was hungry.” I couldn’t tell her where I’d been.

“Well, I’m glad you’re home,” and she opened her arms.

That night was probably the hardest ‘fuck’ of our lives together. Dani was every bit as receptive as I was excited. I replicated that last time between Alan and Dani, her legs pressed up over my shoulders, Dani literally screaming in enjoyment.

The next morning, I asked her, as we lay in bed together, me naked, Dani still with her sexy gown on, “Hon, do you have that second picture? The one of you kissing Alan on the lips?”

Her face turned white, she turned to me, asking, “How… how do you know? I’ve never mentioned his name… or that picture.”

“You made love with him three times that night, three pretty incredible times… October 25th, 1987, homecoming night.”

Her mouth was agape, face white, “How, how?” was all she could say.

I smiled at her, “Don’t worry, love, I love you, it’s okay,” and then, “it was a dream, I had a dream, that’s all.”

My mouth was dry, my heart racing, I got up to get a glass of ice water from the refrigerator to share with Dani. I walked down the hall, around the corner to the living room… and there… hanging on the coat rack by the front door… was a red plaid wool jacket… with a little ‘bullet hole’ in the chest.