Read In Five Years: A Novel for Free Online Page A

A fatal drunk driving accident fifteen years ago that had the police show up at our house at 1:37 in the morning. He wasn’t the one at the wheel. He was in the passenger seat. What I heard first were my mother’s screams.
    My therapist had me talk about him, our relationship, and then draw what I thought the accident might have looked like, which seemed condescending for a twelve year old. I went for a month, maybe more. I don’t remember much, except that afterward my mom and I would stop for ice cream, like I was seven and not nearly thirteen. I often didn’t want any, but I always got two scoops of mint chocolate chip. It felt important to play along then, and for a long time after.
    “I had a strange dream,” I said. “I mean, something strange happened to me.”
    She nodded. Some of the silk slipped. “Would you like to tell me about it?”
    I did. I expressed to her that David and I had gotten engaged, that I’d had too much champagne, that I’d fallen asleep, and that I’d woken up in 2025 in a strange apartment with a man I’d never met before. I left out that I slept with him.
    She looked at me for a long time once I stopped talking. It made me uncomfortable.
    “Tell me more about your fiancé.”
    I was immediately relieved. I knew where she was headed with this. I was unsure about David, and therefore my subconscious was projecting a kind of alternative reality where I was not subject to the burdens of what I had just committed to in getting engaged.
    “He’s great,” I said. “We’ve been together for over two years. He’s very driven and kind. He’s a good match.”
    She smiled then, Dr. Christine. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “What do you think he’d say about this experience you’re ­describing?”
    I didn’t tell David. I couldn’t, obviously. What would I possibly say? He’d think I was crazy, and he’d be right.
    “He’d probably say it was a dream and that I’m stressed out about work?”
    “Would that be true?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
    “It seems to me,” she said. “That you’re unwilling to say this was just a dream, but you’re not sure what it would mean if it wasn’t.”
    “What else could it possibly be?” I genuinely wanted to know where she was going with this.
    She sat back in her chair. “A premonition, maybe. A psychosomatic trip.”
    “Those are just other words for dreams.”
    She laughed. She had a nice one. The silk slipped again. “Sometimes unexplainable things happen.”
    “Like what?”
    She looked at me. Our time was up.
    After our session, I felt strangely better. Like in going in there I could see the whole thing for what it was: crazy. I could give the whole weird dream to her. It was her problem now. Not mine. She could file it with all her divorces, sexual incompatibilities, and mother issues. And for four and a half years, I left it there.

Chapter Six
    It’s a Saturday in June, and I’m going to meet Bella for brunch. We haven’t seen each other in almost two months, which is the longest we’ve ever gone, including her London sojourn of 2015, when she “moved” to Notting Hill for six weeks to paint. I’ve been buried in work. The job is great, and impossible. Not hard, impossible. There is a week’s worth of work in every day. I’m always behind. I see David for five minutes, maybe, every day when one of us wakes up sleepily to great the other. At least we’re on the same schedule. We’re both working toward a life we want, and will have. Thank god we understand each other.
    Today it’s raining. It’s been a wet spring, this one of 2025, so this is not out of the ordinary, but I ordered some new dresses and I was hoping to wear one. Bella is always calling my style “conservative,” because ninety percent of the time I’m in a suit, and I thought I’d surprise her with something unexpected today. No luck. Instead, I tug on jeans, a white Madewell T-shirt, and my Burberry