Dreaming of You: M/M Gay Romance Read online

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  More Books By Marina Lander

  Exclusive Excerpt From Marina’s Book

  Jacob is going to make partner and then his life will be better.

  Phil’s academic advisor, Dr. Peter Miller, is the dean of the psychology department at the University of Massachusetts and the smartest person Phil knows. He’s older than dirt, but his mind is still sharp and he’s one of the most prestigious academics at the university. He’s been on Nova and The Rachel Maddow Show and Phil will pretty much do whatever he says, so when he suggests, at the beginning of Phil’s senior year, that he register for a graduate level seminar called The Psychology of Dreaming, Phil listens.

  The description in the course catalogue is overly long and uses words like “sharing” and “discovering”, red flags for hippie bullshit and Phil certainly isn’t in college to share or discover anything, but he’s willing to give the whole thing a shot. Dr. Miller hasn’t led him astray since the whole Holistic Healing Arts debacle of his freshman year, and that was a long time ago, before they understood each other. Anyway, he’s kind of flattered that Dr. Miller thinks he should be studying at a graduate level, so he doesn’t go into the class with a bad attitude. Honestly.

  The professor’s name is Dr. Eames. Based on that course description Phil expects him to be some crumpled up relic from the 1960s, but on the first day he is surprised to find that Dr. Eames is fairly young. He looks about 35 at most, though he’s certainly dressed like a relic in a poorly fitting tweed jacket and alarmingly pleated pants. Perhaps even more alarming is that in spite of the thrift store fashion sense, Dr. Eames is probably the hottest professor Phil has ever seen. He’s built like a brick shithouse, broad shoulders and thick muscular thighs that even those baggy, awful pants can’t disguise, and his face... well. His face is partially obscured by some clunky old reading glasses and two or three days’ worth of stubble, but there’s no denying that it’s a beautiful face. The lips alone would be something to write home about, if Phil ever bothered to write home.

  Phil’s been in school long enough to have known a lot of people who’ve fallen in love with their teachers and he’s always regarded such people with a mixture of pity and disgust. It’s such a wretched, pathetic thing to do. The feelings are rarely reciprocated, and when they are, well, that’s even worse isn’t it? What sort of creepy teacher is going to start sleeping with a student? How is that ever going to end well? It’s a waste of energy and a distraction from what’s important- scholastic achievement.

  One of the most annoying things about Dr. Eames- and there are many annoying things about Dr. Eames, Phil can tell that much right away- is the fact that everyone in the class seems to be in love with him. About seventy-five percent of the students are female, and the remaining twenty-five percent are, as far as Phil can tell, one hundred percent gay. He’s pretty sure he’s seem most of the guys around at Divas or the LGBT center where he gets his free condoms and he’s almost certain he had sex with one of them in a drunken delirium after finals last year. Every single person in the room is staring at Dr. Eames with a glazed over, lust-filled expression. When he starts talking, it gets even worse. Phil has to wonder if anyone is actually here to learn about psychology, or if they’ve all come to ogle the teacher.

  Dr. Eames tells them to drop the doctor and call him “Eames”, which in Phil’s opinion is even more ridiculous than those professors who demand to be called by their first names in some misguided attempt to seem young and hip. He goes around the conference table, forcing everyone to introduce themselves and share a dream with the class and Phil is forced to listen and pretend to care about such riveting topics as the time Zachary dreamed he went to gym class naked and Pamela’s recurring tooth loss nightmare. When it’s Phil’s turn and he insists, truthfully, that he doesn’t remember his dreams, Dr. Eames makes a face like he‘s smelled some foul odor in the classroom.

  “What, never?” he asks, like Phil is some kind of weird space alien or an Amish person who’s never danced or had a can of Pepsi.

  “Never,” Phil says, which is a bit of an exaggeration. It's not like he can't remember a single one he's had in his whole life, but he says it forcefully enough that it puts an end to the inquiry.

  Dr. Eames doesn’t use PowerPoint like a normal person; he scribbles an outline of his syllabus on an ancient chalkboard that he must‘ve had wheeled in here for the express purpose of being an anachronistic weirdo. His handwriting is almost unintelligible, but nobody seems to care. The chalk dust sprays all over the cuff of the offensive jacket and nobody seems to care about that either. He tells them they’re going to have to keep a dream journal, that it’s going to be part of their grade and Phil has never dropped a class before, not even Holistic Healing Arts, but by the end of the first torturous 90 minute session he is seriously considering it.

  “This class is for morons,” he complains to Dr. Miller later that week. He may respect the man, but there are limits. “It’s like, Psychology for Dummies. How can you grade a journal? Does he even have a doctorate?” and so on.

  Dr. Miller taps on his pipe thoughtfully, and Phil wonders, not for the first time, how he gets away with smoking that thing in a campus building. Maybe nobody complains because he’s so famous.

  “Give it a little time, Phil. Patience is a trait you should be cultivating,” he says. “And if it’s so simplistic it should be an easy A for you, shouldn’t it?” And Phil can’t really argue with that logic.

  But he can argue with Dr. Eames, and he does, through most of the next session.

  It’s one of those fall days that is unexpectedly about a hundred degrees and there’s no air conditioning in the psych building. The windows in the classroom are glued shut (probably to keep students from jumping to their deaths in a desperate attempt to escape Dr. Eames' bullshit) and it feels like the inside of an incinerator. Some of the girls have taken the opportunity to come to class in cut-off sweat shorts with stupid phrases written across the ass. One of the boys, the one that Phil maybe probably slept with, is wearing a lifeguard tank top and flip flops.

  Dr. Eames is jacketless. He’s wearing a button-down with rolled up sleeves and unbuttoned buttons and Phil can see a bit of the hair on his chest, the outline of his biceps.

  Phil is melting in his chair in a sweater vest and tie, wishing he’d gone just a little more casual. Not that he’d ever show up in beachwear like some of his classmates- are these people seriously graduate students? But something that isn’t made of wool might’ve been a good idea.

  The topic on the syllabus is The Early History of Dream Interpretation, which seems to Phil like a topic better suited to a workshop at Barnes and Noble than a graduate level course in the cognitive sciences. Dr. Eames starts talking about ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, actually drawing them on the creaky, decrepit blackboard, telling the class how they were used to depict dream symbolism and the priests or shamans or whoever-the-hell would interpret them and Phil just... can’t.

  “Isn’t this just random speculation?” he blurts out, while Dr. Eames is scribbling away at something that looks like an eagle with one foot. “I mean, how do we know what the ancient Egyptians were thinking when they drew these things?”
r />   Dr. Eames turns to him with a puzzled expression, one hand on his hip and the other pointing a piece of chalk in a vaguely accusatory manner.

  “Phil, isn’t it?” he asks, and Phil nods. “Haven’t you done the reading? These hieroglyphics have been studied extensively by translators and art historians.”

  Phil has not, in fact, done the reading, but that’s barely relevant.

  “Yeah, but, okay, even if it were possible for us to know exactly what they were thinking- who really cares? How is this relevant to psychology in the 21st Century?”

  Phil is not usually like this in class, in fact he usually hates people who are like this in class, argumentative and disruptive just for the sake of it, but his classes are not usually this ridiculous. Dr. Eames looks kind of appalled and Phil is kind of glad.

  “History is always relevant, Phil. The theories of the present are built on the foundation of what’s come before.”

  He turns back to the chalkboard to finish his doodle, as though that were the final word on the matter, but Phil’s not finished.

  “Frankly, I don’t really understand why modern, educated psychologists are still trying to interpret dreams in the first place,” he says. “I mean, we haven’t come much further than the ancients, have we? It’s all just guessing.”

  Dr. Eames freezes, takes a deep breath, and Phil can tell without even seeing his face, can tell just by the set of his shoulders that he’s getting annoyed, trying not to show it.

  “It’s more than guessing, as you’ll soon discover,” he says, and glances back at Phil with what’s probably supposed to be a smile but looks more like a grimace.

  “I just think-” Phil starts, and Dr, Eames turns all the way around again, crosses his arms over his chest and waits. “I think dreams are probably just the random firings of a brain that’s not conscious. They probably don’t mean anything at all, and we might be misleading people if we tell them there’s some important psychological significance to them.”

  The other students are starting to get a little uncomfortable now. People are shifting in their seats. Phil notices lifeguard boy out of the corner of his eye, scowling at him, probably hoping his disapproval will earn brownie points with Dr. Eames. Probably hoping it’ll get him laid somehow.

  “Phil, do you honestly believe there’s no psychological significance to what’s happening in your mind for approximately one third of your life?” Dr. Eames asks. “You see no therapeutic value in discussing it?”

  “I just don’t see where there’s any empirical evidence for any of this,” he says. “You can’t even know if someone’s actually telling the truth about their dreams, or if they’re even remembering them correctly. They could just be making it up.”

  “Making it...” Dr. Eames trails off disbelievingly, shaking his head. “Right then, so I s’pose therapists should demand empirical evidence for everything their patients tell them. What if they’re not really sad? They could be making it up!”

  This gets a few giggles from some of the other students, meant to be a joke obviously, but sometimes Phil wonders if it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Sometimes Phil thinks that therapists take their patients’ word on too much, that too much trust can lead to misdiagnosis. God knows he’s seen it happen, saw it with his own mother, but he’s not about to bring that up here. It doesn’t matter anyway; it’s still a stupid comparison.

  “That’s different,” Phil says. “Sadness is a feeling you experience in your conscious waking life. You can’t compare it to something that happens when you’re basically paralyzed.”

  “But your brain’s not paralyzed,” Dr. Eames insists. “In REM sleep your brain activity is actually very close to what it’s like in wakefulness. The difference is the absence of distracting external stimuli and the logical restraints that impede us during our waking lives. It’s the greatest opportunity we’ve got to study the raw workings of the mind.” He’s getting increasingly animated as he talks and Phil realizes, suddenly, that Dr. Eames really cares about this stuff. He’s actually passionate about it. “Don’t you find that incredibly interesting?” he asks, and he looks genuinely confused- almost hurt by the possibility of Phil’s indifference.

  “Um.” Phil says.

  “I do,” some random suck-up interjects, and it seems to remind Dr. Eames that he’s supposed to be teaching, not arguing with Phil. He claps his hands together and nods.

  “Right-o” he says, and gets back to the Egyptian crap. Phil doesn’t interrupt him again, but he can tell everyone‘s half expecting him to. The group discussion portion doesn’t go very well; nobody wants to talk and Phil knows it’s his fault.

  When class is over, Dr. Eames asks him to stay behind for a minute. Once they’re alone, Phil is strangely nervous. He doesn’t regret challenging Dr. Eames, but he’s not sure what to expect. Professors usually love Phil. He usually makes sure of that.

  “You seem a bit hostile,” Dr. Eames says. He’s half leaning, half sitting on the conference table, hands folded across his thigh, attempting to look casual and non-threatening.

  “I’m not hostile,” Phil says, clutching the strap of his satchel.

  “You know this class is an elective. The description in the course catalogue was very clear...”

  The unspoken question hangs in the air- What the hell are you doing here? Phil’s not about to tell him he’s taking the class because Dr. Miller said he should, because he’ll do whatever the old codger tells him to.

  He watches a pearl of sweat sliding down the side of Dr. Eames’ throat and feels himself flushing a little.

  “It’s fine,” Phil says. “I mean, it’s cool. Whatever.”

  “Well your attitude’s not very cool, Phil.”

  Phil bristles at the guidance counselor tone and hopes Dr. Eames hasn’t mistaken him for some clueless freshman. It wouldn’t be the first time. He knows he can look like a kid, and he’s not doing himself any favors talking like one. It‘s so fucking hot in the classroom, he can‘t think straight anymore. All he wants to do is go home, take off his stupid goddamn sweater vest and blast some cool air from the window AC into his face.

  “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just that most of my classes have been more, um... scientifically based. I didn‘t mean to be rude.”

  “I see.” Dr. Eames says with a nod, then he picks up a notepad from the table and scribbles something on it. He hands it to Phil.

  The Biology of Sleep and Dreaming it says.

  “It’s a book I think you‘ll rather enjoy. Right up your street.” Dr. Eames tells him. “I’d like you to get it from the library and lead a discussion on the topic next week.”

  “I thought leading discussions was optional,” Phil says.

  “Not this time,” Dr. Eames says, clapping him lightly on the shoulder with a smile. Well, damn.

  Chapter 1

  Phil lives alone in a one bedroom apartment above an antique shop in Northampton. He talked his father into renting the place for him last year after a series of unfortunate incidents involving three consecutively and increasingly awful roommates: the slob, the hipster dufus and the homophobic basketball player. It’s possible that Phil is just not what you might call a “people person”.

  At any rate, living alone has its advantages. For instance there is no one to complain when Phil’s up all night, four nights in a row, lights and stereo on while he reads the longest book ever created in existence, also known as The Biology of Sleep and Dreaming.

  Dr. Eames gave him the assignment on Thursday and their next class is on Tuesday. There’s no possible way he could be expecting Phil to have read the entire book by then- the thing probably weighs more than Phil’s television- but he’s damn well going to try. That’s why somebody or other invented coffee.

  He takes breaks between chapters, making time for food, catnaps and a shower or two. At around 2 a.m. Saturday morning he spends one of his breaks on his laptop, googling Dr. Eames. The first link he finds is not for a publication in a scholas
tic journal, or even to a listing in the university’s online directory; it’s a Facebook page. The thought of Dr. Eames using Facebook seems somehow completely bizarre and incongruous, but Phil figures maybe the whole world is on there at this point. Hell, Phil got friended by his Nana a couple of months ago. When he clicks the link though, he finds his instinct was correct. It’s not Dr. Eames’ personal page. It’s a fucking fan club. He’s seen them before for famous actors and musicians, but this is a first. A goddamn professor with a goddamn Facebook fan site.

  The whole thing is locked down, as private as a Facebook page can get, but Phil can still see the members. There’s about fifty of them and he recognizes at least three from his seminar including, of course, lifeguard boy. Phil cannot believe this is reality.

  Disgusted, but curious, he sets up a dummy account under a pseudonym and applies for membership. He’s approved by Saturday afternoon.

  There’s a picture of Dr. Eames on the info page, the one from the UMass website, and a schedule of the classes he’s teaching this semester. There’s a link to an article he wrote about theories of consciousness, published in the Journal of Behavior and Philosophy, which Phil bookmarks for later. His office hours are also listed and at the bottom there’s a link that says Sleep With Doctor Eames! Phil clicks on it, expecting something obscene and horrifying, but it’s just a link to the site for the sleep lab at the university which Dr. Eames apparently runs. There’s a form you can fill out to volunteer as a subject for sleep studies, under Dr. Eames’ supervision.

  Phil goes back to the Facebook page and checks out the wall, which turns out to be, essentially, a profile in demented stalkerish behavior. Most of the posts are tidbits of gossip ranging from the idiotically inconsequential (saw him eating sunflower seeds during the class break tonight! SO HOT!) to the potentially slanderous (rampant speculation about which of his students he might be sleeping with).

  There's a post from lifeguard boy about Phil's debate with Dr. Eames. Some little twit created a ruckus in class this week, he writes. Eames handled it beautifully *dreamy sigh*. Gross.