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    "Wait, so you made out with which ex-boyfriend of mine?"

     I cringed.

     Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to call my best friend after all. God knows what lurked inside the soul of a late sleeper forced to wake up so early in the morning.

     But I couldn't not call her. Not after what I dreamt last night.

    "Well, technically, I didn't make out with anyone," I defended, adjusting the phone to my ear. "Except for that first guy in the party. Him I definitely remember kissing. As for the second one, we're just assuming something happened. The details are blurry, okay?" I shrugged. "Who knows, maybe Dream Sydney decided to just hold hands with one of your exes."

    "You're shitting me, right?"

    "It's possible!"

     Okay, it was hard to believe that Dream Sydney didn't do the dirty with at least one of the Dream Guys. Because the Sydney there knew she'd made out with that stranger at the party; the Sydney there felt guilty when holding best-friend's-boyfriend's hand. As for the last scenario...

    "You're doubting, aren't you?"

     That all-too-knowing fucker. "I am not."

    "So are. Just admit it—you're a hoe."

    "Wow, way to be pro-female."

    "I didn't mean it as an insult, Syd," a lingering halt, but I swore I could sense her grin creep in, "just that you were super horny."

     I groaned.

     It still didn't excuse the things Dream Sydney did, though. For starters, I just wasn't that type of person. There wasn't much in my tool belt except for a few innocent kisses and fondling here and there, and the only serious relationship I've ever had didn't let us get that far. Well, I hadn't let us get that far. Which is irrelevant. For now.

     Second, Dream Sydney felt like me but also didn't. Like she was an alternative version of me or some kind of alter-ego fuelled by sex and booze. Like she was a character I had stepped into for only a moment.

     It didn't pair up with any logic in my mind.

    "So who was it?" I could hear Jess popping her bubble gum. "Did you hook up with Ricky? Ethan?" She gasped. "Fucking hell, not Greg."

     I glared at the wall. "I took an unsanitary cut on my thumb for your blood oath to never mention his name again," I refuted, a distinct reminder of Jess's bad history of ex-boyfriends. "So no, not the G-word. And your blood oath privileges are repealed."

    "Bitch."

    "Rules are rules."

    "From you, don't I know it," Jess rolled her eyes, but it held no bad blood. "So, no face or anything? Specific features? A giant mole?" Another dramatic pause. "A concerning rash?"

    "Nada." I sighed. "The dream happened so quick, I forgot the faces as soon as I woke up. But I just know that the second guy was your ex for some reason."

     See, the thing was, I knew that dreams weren't supposed to make sense. Dreams itself dictated what you felt, what happened and what mood it was. So you literally had no say in anything except for what it gave you, no matter how bizarre they were, and you had to bear with it until your eyes opened. Until you woke up and came to reality.

     But what if mine never ended?

    "Okay, let's rewind for a sec. First, you were invited to a party and made out with a mystery stranger. Then, you sort of definitely had a secret love affair with one of my exes. And finally you woke up in another guy's bed in the end. All of these being three different people."

     My cheeks turned red. "Correct."

     Like fast-paced cuts of a movie that left me disoriented and my heart beating fast by the time I woke up.

     Three scenarios; three different guys; three scandalous events.

     Under one single night.

    "Sydney Jenkins, you dirty little slut."

    "You're not helping, Jess! I didn't call you to call me a slut like a hundred times—"

    "I was kidding, Syd, jeez!" She heard the distress in my tone; not at her name-calling, which wasn't what I was worried about, and she knew that. "Bitch, why the hell are you stressing? It's just a dream."

     (Oh, I wished it was.)

    "Check your DMs."

@wyattharrington

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one hour ago

Laney Burke proudly presents:

— BLACKLIST PARTY —

78 Hampton Avenue

Saturday night, 9 PM onwards

Get ready to be blacklisted.

Caption: See you there.

     There was a silence on the other end of the line. I could practically feel her shock as she read the Instagram post I had just sent her.

    "Wyatt, huh?" Jess said, acting nonchalant. "Haven't heard that name since—"

    "Did you read the post?"

    "Yeah." A tongue click. "He's having a party. So what?"

    "So, remember the very beginning of the dream? And all the things that came after that, where they were all essentially located?"

    "Mhmm..." then it dawned on her. "No way. No fucking way."

    "Yes fucking way."

     Jess shrieked so loud I winced and had to pull away the phone to keep my hearing intact. "You're saying your dream last night was at a party and you see this in your feed the next morning—"

    "Yeap."

    " —and you think this means that the party in the dream was Wyatt's party?!" 

    "I don't think," I said slowly. "I know." I paused, bracing for impact. "The party in my dream, it was Wyatt's party."

    "What the fuck—"

    "And there's something else." I licked my lips. "That last guy whose bed I woke up next to? That was also Wyatt." The image of his honey-coloured eyes and tousled hair was still so vividly clear. "Jess? You still here?" 

     Did she just hang up on me?

    "Oh my God." There she was. "You slept with Wyatt fucking Harrington."

    "Technically, Dream Sydney did."

    "Technically, Dream Sydney has more balls than Real Life Sydney."

     I couldn't even retort back because of how true it was.

     Two years of avoiding Wyatt Harrington wasn't something I could switch off. It became second nature at this point to run from any semblance of his name. It was easier as the years passed by, but that didn't mean the overbearing silence faded away by a fraction.

    "Fucking insane," she muttered. "So what does this all mean? Like the dream is coming true or something?" She noticed that I didn't say anything. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

     Well, it had to be a coincidence.

     Because if not...

     The press of skin against skin. The blaring bass; the room shaking. Multi-coloured vision. Neon signs. Bodies tangled together.

     He was there. This was his party.

    "C'mon, Syd!" Jess let out, making me blink into reality again. "You're supposed to be the skeptic one here! You remind me everyday that we're all going to die soon and whatever we do in our lives will be pretty much insignificant in this entire universe!"

    "I'm sorry! It's just—it's fucking weird, you know? And... and I can't get it out of my mind... and Wyatt... and—"

    "And we're obviously going to the party."

     I sat up from my bed. "What?" 

    "That is the real reason you called me for, right? To ask if it's a good idea?" My mouth opened but she didn't even waste a second. "Syd, you've been avoiding this guy since tenth grade. It's about time you women up and show him what he's missing out on."

    "It's not about revenge. It never was." I fumbled with a loose strand of my shirt. "Because it was mostly me who did the damage."

     Jess sighed. "Okay, whatever you want to do with him—to apologise or to beg at his feet—it's going to be fine. It's been years! You've both changed. You're not the same person anymore. And we're talking about Wyatt here. You don't want to miss this opportunity, don't you?"

    "To what?" I asked quietly.

    "To have some fucking closure."

     My lips tightened.

     Ending up in different high schools didn't seem to fill the hole he left behind. I always wounded my way back to him, whether it was checking his social media updates, accidentally attending the same cross-school event or just people asking me about him. Because we were that close.

     Maybe what bothered me was not even him specifically—just the note of finality after everything went down, lost in the air.

     Now it felt like it was finally landing.

    "This is so weird," I muttered, plopping down on my mattress. "I basically fantasised about him."

    "I won't blame you. Wyatt Harrington is fantasisable."

     I snorted. "And what about the rest of it?"

    "Oh, the other two Dream Guys?" Jess scoffed. "You really think you'll get Three Prince Charmings in one night? Forget about it. Save 'em for the rest of us, will ya?"

     And finally, for the first time in this call, I laughed.

     This whole situation was crazy. And the fact that some part of me believed that the dream could be coming true—the inner realist in my head was screaming. But perhaps that was because anything remotely related to Wyatt never failed to destroy all the common sense in me.

     Up until now I had never intended to walk back into his life again. All these years of not crossing direct paths helped me seal that fact. Like the name Wyatt Harrington was slowly fading from my mind.

     But I knew deep in my heart that he never could.

     Because Jess and I knew one thing.

    There was only one Prince Charming that night.

This actually happened to me, except I was too much of a pussy to go to that party knowing my childhood crush was there. Eep.