I lay in bed, wanting to awaken fully, but I was distracted by the sensation that my eyelids were evidentially fused onto the eyes themselves. 

            I felt terribly stiff, as though I had been a part of a very rough night that I seemed to have no recollection of.  Even with my eyes closed and lying motionless, I still had the sense that I wasn't where I would have assumed.  The bed felt a bit too firm, the sheets slightly softer than I was prepared for, and yet it was all very familiar.

            Why I thought going to a party was the right thing to do at that moment is a mystery.  It felt rebellious.  As though I was a teenager who had just been grounded by her parents, and instead sneaks out to hit up the towns hottest rager.

            Except, I am not a teenager.  I am a grown woman who was in the middle of some very questionable decision making. 

             "You're sure you don't mind?" Callie asked for the seven hundredth time.

            "I really, really don't," I assured her.

            She was referring to the fact that as of that afternoon, she had become my roommate for an uncertain amount of time.  The air conditioning had never managed to be repaired, and apparently, while they were in the process of trying to fix that issue, it was discovered that the hot water had gone out yet again.  The final straw was when they attempted to make that right, they ended up knocking out water to the complex altogether.  Because of these rapidly growing issues, the state was giving the landlord a week to bring the place up to code, but during that time, the tenants weren't able to stay.

              I wanted to run away.  Maybe I should have.

             The dream shook me hard.  I had spent the weekend at Ben's, reveling in the new facets of our relationship, a considerable amount of time being in either pre- or post-coital bliss.  It was incredible.  It was so far beyond anything I had ever imagined with Ben, or any other man I had ever known, that I had to keep pinching myself to make sure I hadn't fallen into some sort of coma, or slipped into the world’s most enjoyable hallucination.  Even if I had, I can't say that I would have been a real hurry to snap back into reality. 

            I knew I was dreaming, but that did nothing to make it feel any less real.  It was one of those dreams in which all of the sensations are so heightened, everything in full Technicolor, surround sound, with smells and your skin can somehow feel every hallucinatory touch.   So while your brain is telling you that it isn't real, to not get caught up inside it all, your senses are telling you otherwise.

              I needed my Grams.

            There was just too much happening in my life, and I needed the one person who would understand, the one person who could walk me through it the way I so desperately required.  Of course, it would seem selfish of me to not consider the fact that Grams might have had a rougher deal than I at that moment, what with being deceased and all, but nevertheless, I was left wanting.

            The following Friday, Ben and I had made plans to spend a quiet evening at Gra--- I mean, my house, eat pizza, and as he put it, "Break in that amazing DVD player of yours."  In typical date fashion, I expected there to be a conflict in movie selection once he suggested a trip to the video store.  I can't remember ever once agreeing on what to rent when I was with Eric.  Eventually we became the couple that would forgo the couch cuddling movie nights.  If there were a movie the other wanted to see, that person would end up watching it by themselves.  At the time I chalked it up to a mere difference in tastes, but the more I looked back upon our years together, I became more and more frustrated for waiting for the ax fall without dropping it myself.

            However, Ben's perfection stemmed into the world of film selection and compromise.  The deal was that one of us would be the sole selector of the movie, while the other would have complete control over pizza toppings.  It was a tough choice, but my love for peppers and pineapple on pizza was too strong to relinquish.  Also, I figured that if he picked something particularly hideous for our viewing pleasure, I could always retaliate with something in the anchovy family.  Of course I knew that whatever he picked would miraculously be the most wonderful film ever watched, his talents knowing no bounds.

             I knew I was somewhere different.  Before I even opened my eyes the next morning, even with my brain as fuzzy as it was, I was missing the familiarity of the purple room.  As my brain puttered along, trying to form rational thoughts, I tried to piece together the events of the night before.  I remembered the brain melting drive, the quest to unload with Callie, the need of a knight in shining armor, and the conclusion of my entirely too long day, a complete and total breakdown in the arms of one Ben Stevens. 

            Things were going well.  That should have been my first clue.

            My inexplicable Biddleton euphoria had me blinded to from the reality of recent occurrences.  Why I seemed to be under the misapprehension that none of these things would ever come back to taunt me was beyond me. 

            I had been on dates before. Many actually in my college years, and not once in all of the preparations for any of those dates had I ever been as nervous as I was preparing for my date with Ben. Not with Eric, or anyone else. I was overcome by a giddy, almost manic burst of energy that had my flying about the house all day in a state of perpetual coiffing. I was thankful to a spectacular degree that I had to reserve my afternoon for the presence of the cable guy, coming to bring me five hundred channels and more importantly, internet. I tried to stay out of his way, this poor man named Bart who had thought he was coming to do a routine install, and was instead privy to having a Mackenzie shaped hummingbird flitting around behind him, monitoring his every move.