He dreamed about her the night before she disappeared from his life.

It happened like this.

He heard the rustling of leaves outside of his window, and by the time he sat up on his bed, she had pulled open his window and was sitting on his window sill. She was wearing the dress shirt he had lent her ages ago. He couldn't see what kind of bottoms she was wearing at first because the shirt covered her body up to her thighs, but as she pulled off her shirt, he saw that she was wearing ripped jean shorts.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she quickly whispered, "Sshh," and worked her way under his covers. She pushed him down and started kissing him.

He did not protest.

And as he was grasping her hipbone with one hand and dancing his way across her soft skin with his other hand, she whispered something he could not hear. He leaned down to hear her better, but her voice was carried away as she gasped and arched into him. He moved with her in rhythm to the night, and afterwards, he fell asleep with her in his arms.

When he woke up, she was gone. And he had to change his pants.

-

He always liked even numbers better than odd numbers. It was one of his many idiosyncrasies. When teachers assigned the class readings, he always read the even numbered pages before reluctantly going back and reading the odd numbered pages. This made for an unusual learning experience.

He liked the symmetry of even numbers. The fact they were divisible by two and could be halved into pairs. He thought, how beautiful it was that each factor had another number to belong with. Odd numbers always had remainders of one when divided by two, there was always someone left out. He tried to explain his reasoning to his friends, but his friends just looked at him as if he was crazy. Maybe he was, he thought. But he wasn't the only one. His girlfriend was too. They were crazy together.

Of course, his girlfriend disappeared on an odd numbered day. And left him the odd number of one instead of the even number they were together.

When she didn't show up to class for the next couple of days, not answering his calls, texts, and facebook messages, and no one knew where she was, he didn't panic though. Because this had happened before.

She had left him before, in the middle of the night, when they were vacationing together in Hawaii. He had to watch her pack while sitting on the bed, looking on while knowing there was nothing he could to stop her when she was like this. And she had left, bags in hand, without a good bye. But she was there waiting for him, her usual self, when he went back home.

What was this condition called, he wondered. Maybe it was an infliction that was caused by inhaling too much fairy dust as a child. Her parents really shouldn't have left her with the fairies then.

So he just continued living life, without her, knowing she'll eventually come back to him. And they'll resume life as it had been before she left, never talking about why she left and what happened when she was gone. He could only wait for her to show up on his door step or climb up into his room again in the middle of the night, as if nothing was wrong.

But she never came back.

-

One of the few things that his girlfriend told him about herself during the time they were together was that she used to be in a gang. It wasn't a joke, she told him, as he choked and laughed like there was not tomorrow. She actually used to be in a gang, a motorcycle gang. And she had dated the head gangster.

He had looked at her incredulously, and she looked back at him solemnly.

He just brushed it off as one of the many lies she liked to tell, farfetched stories that she liked to spin from thin air just because she was tired of the mundane.

He wished now that he had believed her.

-

One of the fondest memories he had of her was that time in Hawaii when they were at the beach during the sunset. Hawaii was humid and hot, but at dusk, the temperature was temperate and cool. He had given her his jacket to wear because she was only wearing a thin summer dress.

He remembered how she looked with the dying rays of sunlight in her fair hair, his jacket on her shoulders, and ankles deep in the waves of the sea. The sky was aglow with the farewell of the last sun, and he thought, how beautiful this moment was, and how he hoped to always have that memory of her, of her smiling in front of him as the shadows of the night began to claim her from his sight.

-

They found her body washed up against the rocks of a beach. The autopsy showed no signs of a struggle and that it was mostly likely a suicide.

She was also pregnant.

He wondered who the father of the unborn child was.

That night they came to him with the news, he drove up to the lighthouse they used to frequently visit. She told him once she loved the color of red sky at sunset, but even better was after the sun had set, and the lighthouse would set its light out to ocean, signaling the ships to come home.

He wondered if he signaled with the light, she would somehow come back to him.

-

Years later, he remembered what she had said to him that night.

You can hear secrets if you listen really hard.

He wished he had listened harder and was able to hear her secrets. The secrets she was trying to tell him all along.