The Alpha of my dreams

CHAPTER 1: PREGNANT?

Savannah’s POV

(One month later…)

Grief is a strange thing. It can sneak up on you when you are expecting it the least. One moment you are fine, minding your business, thinking you have finally gotten over the grief. And the next, it hits you like a freight train, leaving you in tears or worse, ugly wracking sobs. Well, it was happening to me right now, and I didn’t know how to get out of the vortex of depression…

One month… It had been one month since I stopped having dreams of my mysterious green eyed man. One month of fitful sleep without the soothing presence of my dream man.

At first, when I didn’t see him in my dream, I thought I would just see him the next day. But days passed by with no dreams of him, and finally, I had to accept the sad reality that he was never coming back. I guess I should have known that it wasn’t healthy to have vivid dreams that felt more real than reality. I should have been relieved that I finally stopped having them because it meant I was not going insane. But I was anything but relieved when I realised I wasn’t going to dream about him again. 

I tried telling myself that it was just a figment of my imagination, to ease my s****l frustrations. But then, I knew it wasn’t. It never was. Because it was not just the s*x that I was missing, though it was great. I loved everything about my dream man. Even though I had seen him only for a month, it felt like I had known him forever. I missed his dimpled smile; I missed his green eyes that gazed at me as if I was the most beautiful woman in the world, and I missed being in his arms, fitting perfectly as if I was made for him… God, I loved him so much!

I would prefer insanity any day over this crushing sense of loss that I am facing. I would gladly sleep and stay in the dream world all my life if I get to meet him again. Because I just couldn’t live without him…

“Savannah! Are you daydreaming again?”

I was snapped out of my pity fest as I heard my best friend Tia call out to me. Hastily, I wiped out my tears before turning to her. Then I pasted a smile on my face, which must have looked more like a grimace than a smile because Tia actually flinched seeing my face. I gave up on keeping the smile on my face and sighed, knowing that I was not fooling her with my peppy act.

“You were crying again, weren’t you? Just spill already! Are you missing that asshole or is it something else? If you say you miss that dimwit, we are going to have a problem, girlfriend!” Tia snarled as she sat on my couch. I didn’t even notice when she had come. She must have used the spare keys that she still had with her...

My spitfire of a best friend was only five feet two inches tall, but her attitude made up for her lack of height. Combined with her fiery red hair that refused to be tamed and her sparkling green eyes that were now narrowed at me maliciously, she looked cute as a button. But I would never tell that to her face because if I did that, she would turn into a fire breathing demon the next moment...

Then I wondered what she was talking about. Asshole? I looked at her with confusion until I realized she was talking about my ex-boyfriend George. I was dating him for almost three years when I caught him cheating on me with his colleague. I had broken up with him on the same night I saw my mystery guy for the first time. Other than feeling angry at his audacity to cheat and his bullshit explanation that he was a guy and he had needs, I had no feelings left for the scumbag. Apparently it was my fault for not satisfying those ‘needs’. I couldn’t have been happier that I never gave my virginity to that asshole!

I shook my head at Tia as a genuine smile formed on my face.

“I don’t miss that i***t anymore than I miss getting my teeth pulled out,” I said, and rolled my eyes.

“Good! Now tell me what the hell is wrong with you! At first you used to smile all day dreamily for no reason whatsoever. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that you were getting laid daily. But I know better.”

I flinched at the reminder of how I used to act those days when my dream man visited me daily. How I missed those days…

“And then, one day, you stopped smiling and began acting all moody. And we are not talking about making cute sad faces here, but full blown crying now and then. And it is not a pretty sight when you do, because you are an ugly crier, woman!”

I didn’t know if I should be offended or not at the accusation.

“I am not an ugly crier!” I responded, because that felt like an appropriate reply.

Tia rolled her eyes again. I wonder if her eyes will get stuck like that sometime…

“That’s not important! Just tell me, what happened to shake you like this? You didn’t even shed a tear when you broke up with ‘he who shall not be named’. I was afraid that the grief caught up with you later, but it doesn’t seem the case. Then what happened to you that you didn’t deem to share with me? Your best friend?” she asked dramatically.

Her silly antics would have normally gotten a laugh or at least a smile, but now, all I could manage was to shake my head at her.

Tia sighed, and the smile vanished from her face. 

“Just what happened to you, Anna?” she asked. 

Tears filled my eyes as I stared at my best friend who was more like a sister to me. The only one I had growing up in the orphanage. Even after we left the orphanage, we stuck together and stayed in the same apartment until she moved out a few months ago to the quarters given by her office. I was grateful to God for letting me have her in my life; the one and only being who truly cared about me…

As I stared at her face, I couldn’t keep it from her anymore. It may sound stupid, but I knew she would listen to me and she wouldn’t judge. Maybe she would reason out all the details why it was a good thing that I stopped having those dreams and maybe then, I would finally get over him? I doubted it, but a girl could hope…

Once I started speaking, it was as if a dam had broken, and I talked without stopping. I told her about him from the day I met him first, how he visited my dreams regularly, how we made love the first time, how much I loved him despite knowing he isn’t real, then how he stopped visiting and how lost I was without him in my life. I knew it all sounded lame when I put it like that; having an imaginary lover and missing him… But Tia looked at me with such a tender expression, with no trace of judgement that I felt a wave of relief after confiding in her. It was as if a heavy weight was lifted off my chest. 

I stared at her expectantly, waiting for her to give me advice to come out of my depression. But she just sat there with a thoughtful look on her face.

“Are you sure it was just a dream?” she asked suddenly, and I stared at her with surprise.

“Of course it was! Why would you ask?” 

“Well, it seemed too detailed for a dream. However vivid the dreams are, we forget most of the details after waking up. And even if some dreams may repeat, we won’t have the same dreams two days in a row, let alone a month. Something is definitely wrong with your story.”

“I… I told you, right? I was reading that book and his picture was there. I imagined I didn’t have a loser like George as a boyfriend and hoped I would find someone like the guy in the book…”

“Still…”

“The room was closed from inside and so were the windows. And I never got any pain after our first time, other than a stinging sensation during the act. I remember you waddling like a duck straight for three days after you lost your virginity to Tom!”

She turned red at the reminder of her losing her virginity to Tom, the quarterback in our high school. And she gave it to him in a quickie in the backseat of his car… I felt guilty for throwing it at her face like this, but what she was saying was impossible and I wanted to prove her wrong...

“But-“

“It was just a dream, Tia!”

“If you say so,” she said doubtfully.

I sighed and rubbed my forehead.

“I am sorry for snapping at you. It has been like this for a few days. I either get sad all of a sudden or get pissed off for no reason…” I apologised.

I looked up to see her looking at me with a strange expression.

“What?”

“Nothing. I brought your favourite cheeseburger. Let’s have it and gossip about something else to take your mind off this topic.”

She took out the burger and as its smell wafted towards my nose; I felt a wave of nausea rise in me. Eww! It smelled disgusting! Was the burger spoiled?

I covered my mouth and nose, trying to keep the smell from reaching my nose. I looked up to see Tia devouring the burger, and the sight made my stomach revolt. How could she eat that thing?!

I stood up and ran towards my bathroom. I threw up everything I ate the entire day and then dry heaved for good measure.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth before walking out of the bathroom. I found Tia waiting for me with an anxious expression.

“Why would you eat that s**t?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“The burger! It stank!”

“What happened to you, Savannah? There was nothing wrong with the burger!”

“But-“

I sighed and shook my head.

“I guess I have got the stomach flu then. I was disgusted at the smell. It must be just me then…”

“When was your periods?”

Huh? Where did periods come in this? We were talking about stomach flu, right? 

“Periods?” I asked.

“Yes, periods… menstruation… monthlies…”

“Yes, yes. I got it!”

Then I thought of it before speaking.

“Come to think of it, it was due two weeks ago. I forgot all about it in my sadness. Two weeks’ delay doesn’t matter, I would get it any day now,” I said even though my periods had never been late since the first time I had it at the age of twelve…

“Well, I think you should take a pregnancy test,” Tia said, startling me.

“Woah! Wait! Pregnancy test? What for? I am a virgin, for God’s sake!”

“The mood swings, the nausea and vomiting, late periods… you have got all the symptoms of pregnancy-“

“But it all happens while having a stomach bug too, right?” I asked, interrupting her. Well, not the delay in periods and mood swings, but pregnancy? No way!

“Just take one for my sake, would you?” she asked, giving me the puppy eyes that I could never resist. Even when she asked something ridiculous like taking a pregnancy test when I had never even had s*x. Well, having s*x in dreams doesn’t count!

I nodded at her hesitantly.

“Fine!”

Twenty minutes later, we both stood in my bathroom, staring at the two pregnancy tests laid on the counter, waiting for the results. Well, Tia was waiting while I was standing there bored, wanting to get it over with. 

A line formed on the first test, and I smiled triumphantly. One line meant not pregnant!

But the smile slid off my face when a second line appeared on the test. What? The test must be wrong. We still had one more and it will show negative!

And my eyes widened when a plus sign appeared on the second test. I stared at it with my mouth open wide with disbelief. Pregnant? Me? Then I promptly fainted for the first time in my life…