Fragments of Hope by Charlee Chandler, Earl Grey.

Today was the day.

Jeremiah had been waiting on that day for weeks. He was all wrung out about it.

It was all he could think about as he sat out on the balcony of his apartment. It was well after three in the morning, but sleep hadn’t come easy to him.

It never had.

He doesn’t think he’d ever had a full night’s sleep in his twenty-five years of life.

He was usually restless because of the dreams that plagued his mind while he was asleep, but that night he was awake for a whole different reason. Anticipation.

It was the hope that was keeping him awake.

Jeremiah had never been one to hope. He thought it bread eternal misery. But that night, it filled his very being.

He’d never been hopeful. Always restless.

The feeling of restlessness had always followed him everywhere. He never felt settled. He had always felt like his life was missing something, like he was missing something.

He had known what he was missing, or at least he’d felt like he knew.

He was sure the reason he felt so lost all the time was because of his dreams.

Ever since he was a young boy, he had weird dreams.

It was almost as if he had an entirely different life when he went to sleep. He was a different person. He’d had a different name. A different girlfriend.

They weren’t just dreams. They couldn’t have been just dreams. The love that he felt for her usually woke him from his sleep.

Some nights he sobbed from the weight of a love he would never know. It sat heavy on his chest.

He’d assumed it had to be a past life because everything was too vivid, too real. It was the only explanation he could come up with.

He used to tell people about his dreams when he was a kid. He’d always wanted answers. He’d always wanted to know why, but no one could help him. No one had tried. They’d all just written him off. Some would go on to call him crazy, and some days he surely felt it.

He couldn’t make sense of it, so he stopped trying for a while.

He tried to live his life to the best of his ability. He tried not to let the ever-present despair seep into him too deeply.

He found a job that he loved. He was a firefighter. Saving lives, putting out fires, it was the only time in his life that the void he carried with him had been filled with a purpose unlike any other.

Then he met Shan, his girlfriend of three years and thought maybe she had been what he was missing.

He doesn’t like to admit that the longing he’d always felt had gotten stronger since being with her.

He loved Shan, but she didn’t get him. He wasn’t sure anyone did.

Ultimately, that’s what led him to that sleepless night on the balcony.

Anticipation.

He had a meeting with a woman that promised him that she had answers. He didn’t know her. They’d only spent a week talking, and he knew it was stupid to meet up with a stranger, but he could take care of himself.

And, if I can’t, well, it just must be my time.

He laughed at his thoughts and twisted his fingers through his blond curls. He was usually a head taller than most people and he was in great physical shape. If some strange woman happened to take him out, he figured his number was just up.

It might have been stupid to trust someone he met online of all places, but he trusted the woman he only knew as “L.” They’d talked on the phone, and she had listened to him.

He’s sure she was the only person that had done that. So, when she promised him answers, he believed her.

They set up a time and place to meet. Mel’s Diner. Eight o’clock. He didn’t think he’d ever felt that hopeful in his life.

Weeks earlier, he’d went searching for answers for only the second time in his life. At first, he’d gotten nowhere, but after hours of searching online, he thought he’d found something.

It had been an online forum about reincarnation that he posted on about his dreams. He went into vivid detail about how real everything was to him.

Sometimes he woke up and the scent of his past lover still clung to his nose. Honeysuckle and lavender. He wasn’t making that up.

He wanted nothing more than for someone, anyone, to believe him. It felt like he was constantly screaming into a vacuum.

But late one night a few days after his post, he’d gotten a message on the platform. It was L. That was the name that she had given him. She said she would give him more when they met.

The day of the meeting was finally there.

He spent the rest of that morning out on the balcony.

He’d had a decent day. He kept himself busy, did some work around the house. He had been running on less than four hours of sleep, but he was used to the bone deep ache being tired brought.

He was looking forward to his meeting with L.

He just hadn’t been expecting another fight with Shan about it.

He let her into his apartment at seven in the evening. He was on his way out. He’d had his keys in his hand. Her arrival had been unexpected but based on the amount of pushback he’d received from her since he told her about it a week prior, he should have been expecting her to turn up.

He’d sighed, closed the door behind her and waited.

She hadn’t disappointed, either.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea, Jeremiah,” Shan said.

Oh, for the love of God. Not now, Shan.

His hands twitched at his sides. He had a bad habit of biting his nails when he was antsy, and she hated that, so he had fidgeted with his keys instead.

He organized his thoughts. He always had a lot going on in his head and he was always told he didn’t say things very politely. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but she had been saying the same thing for the past week, and he was tired of hearing it.

“Why would it not be a good idea?”

It was just a meeting at a diner, after all. A meeting he deemed necessary for his peace of mind, but he wasn’t too sure that his peace of mind mattered to anyone.

“You met this person online. They’re feeding into your delusions. Be realistic, Jeremiah. There’s no way this is a good idea.”

“If I’m delusional, Shan, I can’t be realistic. That’s asking too much of me, isn’t it?”

He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but he was tired. I’m so tired of begging people I care about to believe me. He knew he wasn’t crazy, so why couldn’t she support him?

She was supposed to be his partner, and he couldn’t even truly open up to her because she wouldn’t even pretend to understand him.

She did nothing but carve into the emptiness he felt every day.

But he cared about her. He wouldn’t call it love. He wouldn’t call anything love until it matched what he felt for the woman he dreamed of every night.

“I have to go. I need this, Shan. This is important to me. Can you support me? You never support me.”

He hadn’t planned on guilt tripping her, but the way her face fell told him that it had worked. That was all that mattered.

He was going to go whether she thought it was a good idea or not. She’s not constantly suffering. I am.

That meeting meant more to him than she would ever have been able to comprehend. He was going to go. He’d deal with the consequences after he’d gotten his answers.

“I want what’s best for you,” she’d said.

How many times do I have to tell her?

“This is what’s best for me.”

He didn’t know how else to convince her, but that would have to be enough because he needed to go.

“I’ll wait here for you.”

He didn’t want to have company after his meeting, he knew he would need time alone, but he relented, and he left her standing in his living room.

Jeremiah’s drive to the diner had been quiet. He’d been relaxed. He would even say that he was excited.

But his nerves had started to creep up on him the closer he got to the diner. By the time he’d pulled his truck into the parking lot, he had been sure he was having a full-blown panic attack.

He had tried to distract himself. He focused on his surroundings.

The diner Jeremiah parked his truck in front of had seen better days.

There were only a few cars in the lot, and from where he peered out of his front window, the place looked empty.

Mel’s neon sign at the front of the building was missing bulbs in the ‘M’ and the ‘E’. The letters weren’t fully lit but blinking. The lights in the sign flickered quickly, in time with his racing pulse.

He blew out a deep breath and clutched the steering wheel with his shaky hands.

His heart shouldn’t have been in his throat, but it was. His hands shouldn’t have been shaking. He didn’t get scared. He’d spent all his adult life running towards danger, not away from it. This shouldn’t have been affecting him like it was. He fearlessly walked through burning buildings for a living, but the second he pulled into the parking lot of the diner, his heart seized in his chest.

He was going to meet with L at eight P.M., and he had thirty minutes until then.

He wasn’t sure what had made him so anxious. He had been fine until he pulled into the parking lot, and then the dread crept down his spine and settled in the pit of his stomach.

He kept staring at the diner, wishing the sinking feeling he felt in his stomach would calm down enough for him to think.

He glanced at the digital clock on his dashboard, and watched the minutes dwindle down. He only had twenty minutes, now.

He had thought of nothing except for this meeting for weeks. He wasn’t necessarily excited about it, but he had been anticipating it. He knew the meeting would change his life. He would get the answers he’d been wanting since he was a child.

He just couldn’t make himself get out of the truck. He couldn’t even put his hand on the door handle.

Just take the first step, Miah. Just touch the door.

He couldn’t.

His anxiety had been all consuming. The panic had swirled so heavily in his chest that he couldn’t catch his breath.

Should he have let his girlfriend talk him out of it?

No, no. I need this. It’s going to be fine. So, why couldn’t he get his limbs to work? Why was he frozen with fear in the driver’s seat of his car?

What did he have to fear, anyway? He wasn’t crazy, despite what everyone else thought. He knew that he wasn’t crazy.

Jeremiah knew people thought he was strange. He knew his girlfriend was at the top of that list, but he’d long stopped caring what other people thought.

His reality had always been different from others. It would always be different from others.

He was privy to a lot of things most people weren’t. He had just wanted to know why.

Why him? Why did he have to live with such a heavy ache in his chest? Why had it always felt like he was drowning within himself? Why was he cursed with that feeling? Why was he cursed to remember a life that had ended long ago? Why did he dream every night about the woman he loved, then? Why could nothing ever fix the hole he was sure was permanently carved into his chest?

Why, why, why?

He had so many questions. Questions L promised she had answers to.

He needed to go into the diner. He needed to speak with her.

“You need these answers, Miah.”

That vocal reminder had been enough to ease the pressure in his chest, if only slightly.

It was enough for him to finally get out of the truck.

His palms were sweaty, and his breath was still uneven, but at least he had gotten out of the truck.

He’d shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and trekked across the damp parking lot.

The bell at the top of the door had jingled as he entered, and the waitress behind the counter looked up.

“Sit anywhere you like, sugar. I’ll be with you in a second.”

His steps had stalled as soon as he took a step toward a booth, and his eyes landed on an older Black woman sitting at a booth at the back.

He knew it was L. He had a feeling that the woman in her late fifties knitting a scarf was her.

“L?”

She’d looked up from her knitting project, kind brown eyes peered at him from over her glasses. “Jeremiah.”

He’d nodded; his tongue felt like dead weight in his mouth.

“Sit down, honey, I’m Louise.”

Her voice was so warm and comforting that it had eased any remnants of anxiety.

“You said you had answers for me?” He asked.

She’d smiled a soft smile, and he had relaxed even further. He was in the right place.

Finally. For once in his life, he was in the right place.

About the author:

Charlee Chandler is an aspiring author, and current college student. She is using her education to hone her craft and develop her writing skills. In her free time, she focuses on writing her novel, aiming to bring her creative ideas to life and share them with the world.