A Yellow Apartment and the Wrong Wedding Ring

A Yellow Apartment and the Wrong Wedding Ring

I was riding the bus home from my current office, but when I stepped off at my usual stop, the street was subtly wrong. My apartment building had an extra floor, and the brick was yellow instead of red. I unlocked the front door with my real key, but inside, someone else's furniture was in the living room. Then my college ex walked out of the kitchen holding a bowl of soup, casually saying, 'Hey, you're late, did traffic on the bridge back up again?' In the dream, we had apparently been married for six years, and I was working as an architect instead of in marketing. I kept looking down at my hands and seeing a wedding ring that wasn't mine. I had this wave of deep, quiet panic because everything felt totally normal to her, and I had to pretend I belonged there so she wouldn't notice I had somehow slipped into the wrong life. I woke up right as I was trying to check my phone to see what year it was.