Last night I had a dream. The thirty-odd nights before that: blackness. I never dream. Just doesn't happen for me.  

 

 I don't remember much. I remember critiquing someone, or someone-s and, for whatever reason, they were either socially or physically close to Brianna. Brianna Cooper. You have no idea why the name "Brianna Cooper" is so special and why it's so ironic. I'd explain it—and I want to, because even when the audience is just me, I want to talk about it—but I won't.

 

 Anyway, Brianna Cooper is an entity in the dream that I'm talking about. At some point, I end up in some hallway or stairwell and we cross each other—which is crazy because we haven't seen each other in more than if not about a year now, so the idea that we would just cross each other like we weren't some major factor in each other's lives is ridiculous.

 

 I wish I could talk to her again. 

 

 So: we cross each other in this stairwell. She reaches a hand out and stops me and pushes me back and starts asking me why I said such and such about so and so and I'm super confused and guilty, thinking how did she know I said any of that stuff and why does she even care she's never been an angry, confrontational person. Before I can think to say or ask anything clarificatory, I just start trying to explain myself—that, obviously, that's just how I feel about so and so and as much as maybe I shouldn't have been so mean that's how it goes. 

 

 And as I say that, I'm thinking to myself: man, Brianna is being really mean right now. I've never seen her in that color so it's all really odd. It's always odd. Always. Beyond seeing someone you used to know and wish you could fall asleep with—it's odd to see someone you used to know in a new emotion, like angry. Who are you? Why are you wearing that feeling? What changed? Is this you now? Is this what my absence did to you? Is this you? 

 

 So I explain myself and she's still angry and honestly the argument keeps getting worse. I don't know how, it just does. I know that it's believable because when I pore through the half-remembered, fully-jumbled dialogue, it felt like a very reasonable progression of anger. I'd like to think that whatever part of my brain that writes the dialogue for my dreams has got it down, you know? Yeah. 

 

 God, I get carried away. 

 

 Anyway, we're arguing, and it's so believable. And what's especially believable is that I'm here, staring this dream of a woman I used to dream about in the dream-face, loving her all the same I used to, angry at her, in love with her, wishing she was real, yet not at all understanding that she's not. That's how believable she is. She's so believable that when there's a pause in the argument that I can't remember, I scream,

 

 "I used to really like you!" 

 

 And when I think about that now, I'm like, that's vague. That's so vague it doesn't even mean anything. It sounds like an angry, "You used to be cool!" as opposed to, "You were the first girl I ever loved and one night I cried in my car while driving aimlessly because when I found myself somewhere new and you weren't there I realized you were the one part of me I forgot to take with me!"

 

Which is more what I was trying to communicate. 

 Thankfully, the second meaning is clearly what was communicated. I could tell because everyone in the hallway, or stairwell, or whatever, looked around like, "Holy shit, I can't believe he just said that," and, personally, I'm on cloud nine because I finally said the thing that I never said to her over the course of a year and a half of loving her more fully than I had ever loved. 

 

 And she, in her dreamlike way, said... something that I can't remember. 

 I just remember that the argument kept going for a little and then I, in my anxious, needing, bleeding, dream-loving way, asked her a question. 

 

I asked, sort of angry, sort of cracking, sort of in-love with her still: "For the sake of my insecurity and mostly because I need some sort of edification, but did you like me too? You liked me too, didn't you?" 

 

 All of it comes out really quickly and I can see that she barely flinches because she's still angry—and, again, I don't remember everything that she said, but I do remember one word out of the jumble. 

 

 "Probably!" 

 Divinity. A pellet of anger. 

 

 It's in this moment of treacherous, perfect hindsight that I see the obvious. This is my mind telling me the reasonable assumption. Did she like me? Did she cry after I left forever? Did she realize that I forgot to take her—did she sit, waiting by the door, like a dog waiting for her best friend to come back? Did she realize that, because I loved her, that was precisely why I couldn't come back? Did she stay up and wish that I'd kissed her on that night that I held her, singing all dramatic-like; holding each other in our dream-like way? 

 

 Probably. 

 

 Maybe. But again, maybe not. Maybe she didn't. Maybe all our friendship, settled on the borders of friends and lovers, predicated almost entirely on the soil of maybe; maybe it was just that: friendship. 

 

 Maybe I made up all the romance. All of it happened in my head. 
 I dreamed it all. 

 

Maybe when she fell asleep in my bed and I cradled her by the small of her back and the back of her head, saying nothing because that's all I felt I had to say to tell her everything—"everything" got lost in translation. Maybe when we were sitting on the beach, next to her two best friends (who coincidentally, happened to be in love, themselves), and I laid my head in her lap and looked up at her and couldn't help myself—couldn't keep myself from smiling, I misinterpreted what it meant when she did the same. Was she in love with me then? Probably. But that's the only answer I get. 

 

 She was just as dizzy in love with me as I was with her.  

 

 Probably. 

 

 Anyway, like I said, I get carried away. 

 I'm dreaming, and we're arguing, and in response to me asking her if she liked me the way I liked her, she yells, "Probably!" and my worthless, never-dreaming brain only remembers that one word. 

 

 I like to imagine that there's some combination of words that I can throw around the "Probably!" that'll click and make me go oh yeah! That's totally what she said! Like, "Did I like you? Yeah! I probably liked you from the moment we met! From the moment you, so unsubtly, tried to be much cooler than you were at the time, because you saw just how relaxed I was! That's probably when it happened! I probably fell for you when you looked in the rear-view mirror in your car at me, sitting between two friends whose names we've forgotten, and you saw me take off my mask for the first time, and you so clearly, with your eyes, told me that regardless of what was under the mask, you were going to fall for me. That's probably when I fell for you." 

 

That's why she had that angry, unflinching look on her face. Because when I asked her if she liked me too, it was such a stupid question that it made no sense at all—because of course she liked me. Of course. 

 That's probably what it was. 

 Probably.