Twenty-eight year old Parker Colborn has just been cheated on. They're trying - against what may be his better judgement - to make things work.
Enter Jannah Parson, his younger sister's best friend.
'Parker's jaw is slack, then it clenches, his ha...
Parker Colborn has dreams about sand sliding from his palm and through the gaps in his fingers.
It's a recurring dream – no, a nightmare – since his early teenage years.
He's meant to be stopping time entirely, perhaps to save someone, but the hourglass always breaks, and the sand tears through his fingertips unceremoniously.
He fails – over and over again, he fails, and he vows to never fail again upon waking, cheeks practically scorched with tears.
When he had been younger, he'd wander outside of hours after those dreams – a meager attempt to pull himself together.
He'd go sit with his horses, brush them relentlessly until their coats shined, his fingertips trembling something fierce.
He'd call himself ridiculous, dismiss the dream, and go eat breakfast with his mother and his sisters.
His mother never failed to talk some sense into him about the dreams, though he'd note the pain in her hazel eyes (the same shade as his).
As an early teenager, his mother thought that the dreams were about his father (who had left, then came back, then left again – he's always leaving, that man).
Parker always knew they were about something else – or rather, someone. A stranger to him.
There'd be flashes sometimes, of a long braid, the color purple, and a strange scent that reminded him of flowers, but the nightmares were more about the feeling than what was happening.
Sometimes there'd be a noise, like a thud (or maybe even horse hooves).
Inviting, warm – until the said person was ripped unceremoniously away from him.
But they're silly, the dreams. Some product of his father leaving, of a family loyalty (responsibility) that has seeped down into his very bones.
So he brushes them off.
Until the next dream comes, and he's rendered useless and spineless again, a puppet to the strings of time.
Come back, sometimes he'd mutter in his sleep, his pillow tear stained. Come back.
He doesn't know who he's calling to return. Only that he loves them desperately, and they need to stay, and he needs to do something in order to keep them here.
Even at seventeen, he would wake up all sweat ridden, teeth chattering from the adrenaline and the unbearable cold.
Even now at twenty-eight, with his fiancé curled up next to him, the chill has yet to lessen.
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In contrast, since childhood, Jannah Parson never dreams at all.
There are no nightmares, but no sweet dreams either, and it often makes her feel like she's nothing (or should be nothing).
And of course she should be nothing. She knows what she did.
She often wishes someone – anyone – would save her from the nothingness that inhabits her life.
At seventeen, she would avoid sleep like the plague.
Even now at twenty-one, stuffed into the cramped apartment with her alcoholic father, she still yearns for someone to come. A friend, a lover – a mother.
