Read Online Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story by Sarah M. Glover - Free Book Online

his mouth would cover her mouth, and he would kiss her with a word, always the same word.
    “Wait.”

    Emily sat bolt upright in her bed. The dream rushed past her eyes like the snap of an old film being ripped from a projector. She fought to grasp hold of a frame, to snatch an image before it receded into oblivion. But she failed. In its place stood the stark backdrop of her room, dark, spare, and jammed with stacks of books and moving boxes, all too silent and real.
    “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said and lowered her face into her hands, her words creating a perfect descant to her pounding heart. “Oh God.” Despite the chill in the air, sweat covered her. “It was just a dream, just a dream,” she repeated to herself. That’s all it was—a dream.
    They had studied dreams in her psychology class. Dr. Vandin had spent half a semester on them alone. This one would be, oh, what would it be? An illustration of some deep-seated fear, or a failure to cope with the past, triggered by some conflict in the present. Undoubtedly, Vandin would know and would lecture her about some urgent message brewing in her subconscious that was demanding to be understood and would plague her until she dealt with it. Yes, that was what he would say, and then berate her for not knowing the fact to begin with. Yet if it was a dream, why could she still feel the pressure of her lover’s hips and the heat of his fingertips as he played her? Why could she remember every detail of his face?
    The same face as that of her guitar player. Her guitar player who wasn’t homeless or destitute or drug-addled after all. Who was the lead guitarist of a band, but not just any band, a band that “stunned crowds whenever they performed.” A “heartrending” band to be sure, if the women around her last night were any indication, screaming like their tongues were on fire.
    Seeking refuge in the bathroom, she was thankful only cold water rushed from the faucets, as the apartment was too old to produce anything warmer. She splashed her face, then bracing her hands on the basin, stared at herself in the mirror.
    “But I found him first.”
    That was her first reaction upon seeing him surrounded by those other women last night. A reaction that was as instinctual as it was selfish, one she hadn’t felt since she was a child, one that should be accompanied by a stamp of the foot or a slam of a door. She had found Andrew first.
    Andrew Hayes. That was his name. The man who haunted her dreams and so many of her waking moments; the man she knew nothing about, who knew nothing about her. How had she let herself fall into such a hopeless obsession?
    Oh God, oh God, oh God.
    She wasn’t proud of this fact; the whole episode, no matter how one tried to explain it, made her feel desperate and not the least bit sane. In fact, it made her feel ridiculous and ashamed. Fantasizing about him like some crazed groupie— God . His face. His body. His hands. As though once they met, some fantasy would explode to life. But above everything else, this fascination scared her. She had no idea how it had taken such a hold of her or how, for the first time in her life, she could not control any of her thoughts or feelings when it came to a man. How had she become so consumed by an illusion? And because of this, she had made the decision not to let her roommates know anything about the whole sordid mess. If nothing else, she had her pride; it had taken her far too long to stand on her own two feet. Dream or no, she wasn’t the type of woman to drop everything for a man—her mother had drilled that into her head from the time she could nod back in agreement.
    It was all for naught, anyway, she told herself; he’d soon be long gone. He was a in a band. Bands toured. They also engaged in clawing, disease-ridden sex with women like the ones at the Skellar, but that was when they weren’t busy destroying their hotel rooms or crashing their Maseratis off cliffs. She had watched