Forever Right Now

by Emma Scott

  My hand flew to my throat. “Oh my God, Sawyer. I’m so sorry. How old were you?”

  “Eight,” he said. “My little brother, Emmett, was four. Worst fucking day of our lives.”

  My eyes stung with tears at the sudden image of two little boys learning they no longer had a mother. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged, as if he could minimize the whole thing, but I could see the pain behind his deep brown eyes. A muscle in his jaw ticked.

  “Anyway, the guy who killed her had been arrested twice before,” he said, his voice hardening. “And both times he pled before a judge he wouldn’t do it again, that he’d cleaned up his act. The prosecutor was weak. He didn’t push hard enough. Three weeks after his latest release from jail for DUI, the guy drove his truck—on a suspended license—into my mom’s car as she was coming home from work.”

  I shook my head. “That’s so awful.”

  “I don’t like talking about it, and I don’t want to write it about it, either, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Judge Miller has asked us to write a brief about a personal incident in our lives and how we’d handle it as prosecutors.”

  “Judge Miller, this is the guy you’re trying to have a clerkship with?”

  Sawyer nodded. “And I plan to write about my mother, but it makes me so fucking angry and…”

  “Hurt?” I offered gently.

  Sawyer shrugged. “I don’t have time to hurt. Maybe that’s my problem. Miller told me I lack feeling.” He scoffed. “I have no idea what that means. Law doesn’t have feelings. It has direction. It tells you where to go and what comes next.”

  “But that’s not how life is,” I said.

  Sawyer’s head shot up. “What did you say?”

  “Life has no guide map. Things happen and people react, and no two people will do the same thing.” Now I plucked at the grass at the edge of the blanket. “Some people are beyond saving, like that asshole who…killed your mom. But not everyone is like that.”

  “He was given plenty of chances,” Sawyer said darkly. “He threw them away.”

  “So you don’t believe in second chances anymore?” I asked, my voice sounding high and tight in my own ears.

  Sawyer watched me for a minute, his dark eyes full of thoughts. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. It shouldn’t be about what I believe. It should be about what I can do. The law failed my mom. I’m going to make sure it doesn’t fail anyone else.”

  “He sounds nice, this Judge Miller,” I said after a moment. I plucked another blade of grass.

  Sawyer nodded. “He is. Sometimes I wonder why I’m in the running for a clerkship with him in the first place.”

  “Because you have plenty of feelings,” I said, shocked at my old boldness but it was too late now. The words had come flying out and there was no taking them back. “And he probably sees it.”

  Sawyer looked at me from across the blanket. Between us, Olivia dozed. He covered her eyes with a little sunhat. “I do believe in second chances. For her, I do. For criminals like the guy who killed my mom?” He shook his head. “Once a person crosses over the line, it’s too easy do it again and again.”

  “What line?”

  “Breaking the law,” Sawyer said. “Falling back into drugs and alcohol, or stealing or murder or…any criminal act.”

  I nodded and looked away, into the gulf of sadness that opened between us. The idea of telling him about my past felt even more impossible.

  He won’t see me anymore, only my record. A criminal.

  I cleared my throat. “Tell me about your brother, Emmett. Where is he now?”

  “Good question. Last I heard he was heading toward Tibet. He travels all over. Doesn’t have a permanent address. After our mom died, he ran away a lot. He always came back but when he got older, he stayed away longer. Dropped out of school, even though he has a genius IQ. Or maybe because of it.”

  A quiet, proud smile touched Sawyer’s lips. Then it faded.

  “I’ve always felt like the world can’t contain Emmett. Or he’s too smart to deal with it. Like he can see all of its moving parts, and it’s too much for him. He has to keep going. To outrun it, maybe.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Yeah, I do. I don’t have much family left. Dad remarried and now they live in Idaho. Patty—his wife—has her family there, so I never see my dad. Birthday cards and the occasional phone call.”

  He glanced at me, took in my darkened expression. “Hey, sorry for dumping all that about my mom on you. I don’t normally talk about my shit. Not to anyone.”

  “I’m glad you told me,” I said, smiling faintly. “I’m glad you feel like you can.”

  “It’s not a pretty story.”

  “Not many people’s are, I think.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “I don’t mean you have to tell me your not-so-pretty story, if you have one. I meant, you mentioned you had a sister?”

  “One sister, back in Queens,” I said. “She’s older. And married. Perfect husband, perfect house, perfect everything.”

  “And you didn’t get the perfect gene?” Sawyer asked lightly.

  “Oh no, I’m the fuck-up,” I said.

  Sawyer frowned. “You don’t seem like a fuck-up to me.”

  If you only knew.

  “My sister went to college, I didn’t. She pursued a ‘real career’ in interior design. I didn’t. I wanted to be a dancer, which everyone knows is no way to make a living. So speaketh my parents, away.”

  “Is that why you moved out here? To do your own thing?”

  “Yes,” I said. “A fresh start.”

  He nodded. Smiled. “Fresh starts are good. Emmett makes one every day,” he said. “Once I get this clerkship, if I get this clerkship, I’ll have one too.”

  “You will get it,” I said. “You’ll pass the bar. Your brother isn’t the only one with the genius IQ.”

  Sawyer waved a hand. “Nah. He’s the real deal.”

  “But you have a photographic memory, right?” I blew air out my cheeks with a laugh. “I can hardly remember what I wore yesterday.”

  “You wore jean shorts over ripped black tights, and a black, satiny-type blouse with gold flowers and skulls on it,” Sawyer said. “And combat boots.”

  I stared, a blush creeping up my cheeks. “How do you know that?”

  “I was getting off the Muni last night when you were getting on. You didn’t see me.”

  “I was on my way to rehearsal,” I said automatically.

  And an NA meeting after that.

  But that part I kept to myself. I wanted to put as much distance between myself and the kind of person he imagined an addict could be. I cleared my throat.

  “Okay, Mega-mind, what did I wear when I babysat for Olivia on the fly?”

  “You wore black leggings, a long white shirt. And combat boots.”

  “What was I wearing the day we met?”

  “A beige skirt—linen, maybe—with a men’s jean button down shirt, and maroon socks pulled up to your knees.” He grinned. “And combat boots.”

  “God, hearing it like that, I sound like a slob.”

  “You don’t look like a slob,” he said quickly, his gaze intent. “You look like you. I’ve never met anyone who looks and acts and dresses one hundred percent like themselves.”

  My blush deepened. “Thanks.”

  The moment caught and held, and the entire city went silent. I could hardly blink, I wanted to hold on to every second of that moment. The way the sun glinted off the burnished gold of his hair, and how his dark brown eyes were looking at me.

  Olivia stirred in her sleep.

  “She got up super early this morning,” Sawyer said, “which means I got up super early this morning. I should get back.”

  “Yeah, me too. I have rehearsal.”

  We packed up the mini-picnic, and Sawyer gently laid his daughter in t
he stroller. We walked back to the Victorian in silence, and for once I wasn’t tempted to fill it with talk. I didn’t know what to say anyway. Half of me felt devastated by Sawyer’s ideas about addicts being beyond redemption, and the other half was floating over the rest of the morning, and how he looked at me in that one, perfect moment in the sun.

  “So this rehearsal,” Sawyer said as we entered the Victorian. “It’s for the dance show you auditioned for?”

  He unlatched Olivia from her stroller and lifted her gently in his arms. I folded the stroller and followed him up the stairs as if we’d been doing it like this for ages.

  “Yeah, at the American Dance Academy, until five.”

  He unlocked the door to his place and I followed him in, and left the stroller by the door. He went to put Olivia down in her bed, and came back with his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans.

  The silence that fell was different now. Olivia wasn’t here to act as a buffer between us. It was just Sawyer and me. I didn’t know what to say, so I blurted the first thing that came to mind.

  “Is it hard having a memory that doesn’t let you forget anything?”

  “Sometimes,” he said, and the word felt loaded.

  “I’d think it would be annoying, remembering things that have no meaning. Like what your neighbor wears every time you see her.”

  His gaze held mine. “It’s not all bad.” He glanced away for a moment. “I remember what you were wearing the night you came over to tell me about your audition.”

  “What was I wearing?” I asked softly.

  “A dress. You were wearing a pink-ish, orange dress that looked like a slip.” He glanced at me and there was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “And nothing else.”

  “You remember that?”

  “I remember everything about that night, Darlene.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed hard. “That’s nice.”

  That’s nice?

  I winced. “Well, okay, I should go.”

  “Let me get the door.”

  He moved to me, leaned over me to reach for the handle, but somehow we ended up face to face, my back to the door. My heart clanged madly and my eyes felt fixated on his, unable to tear away.

  Sawyer’s expression was anguished, unsure. “Darlene…”

  “Yes?”

  Oh my God, he’s going to kiss me.

  The need tore me in half again; to run away before we did something we couldn’t undo, and to let him kiss me until I could hardly remember my own name.

  Sawyer’s gaze moved from my eyes, to my lips, to my forehead, and for a crazy second, I thought he looked straight into my mind where all my secrets were laid bare. His brows furrowed.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He frowned and his hand came up to brush a wisp of hair from my temple. “You have a bruise there.” His eyes dropped to mine. His fingertips were still resting on my cheek.

  “Oh, that,” I said, with a nervous, whispery laugh. My heart was now pounding so loud I could hardly hear myself. “My dance partner in the show? He clobbered me.”

  Sawyer’s expression hardened. “What does that mean?”

  “Oh, no, it was an accident,” I said. “We bonked heads. He’s kind of a klutz.”

  Sawyer lifted his chin, and took a step back. “Tell him he’d better be more careful.”

  I nodded. “I will. Okay…bye.”

  I reached behind me for the door and slipped out, into the empty hallway where the only sounds were my shallow breaths and the blood rushing in my ears.

  Sawyer

  “Holy shit, I almost kissed her.”

  My discipline had nearly gotten away from me, but Darlene was so beautiful and full of light and life, who the hell could blame me? Her tornado-like ability to sweep people up was so potent, it drew me in so that I wanted to kiss her and touch her and tell her everything.

  I told her about my mother.

  It had been years. And while I hated to see the story cloud Darlene’s light, I felt better for sharing it with her. My mother was gone, but instead of turning that horrible memory over and over in my mind, like a bad song stuck on repeat, she’d become a real person again with Darlene.

  I wanted to kiss Darlene for that, too. When she was at my doorway with her chin tilted up, it was almost impossible not to. Until I saw the bruise on her forehead. Anger that some careless asshole hurt her—accident or not—surged through me with a different kind of heat. I was glad that my anger had pulled me out of the moment because it reminded me that I couldn’t start something with her. Not now.

  I was so close to the end. A few more weeks and I would be done with law school and the bar exam.

  Maybe then?

  I had a purely selfish moment where I felt as if maybe, if I kept my head down and worked my ass off, I’d have this beautiful, vibrant woman waiting for me on the other side.

  I went to my bathroom and took a very long, cold shower.

  I spent the rest of the day without my studies, focusing only on Olivia as I did every Saturday. We read books and ate lunch and I let her watch Sesame Street. As usual, when it was over, she asked for more.

  “Elmo?”

  “You want more Elmo?” I asked, and tickled her until she was squealing. I was paranoid about too much TV, but it was hard to resist her baby voice and wide blue eyes. She was smart and I loved watching her blow past the milestones like a champ.

  A month and a half left to go to the biggest milestone.

  I’d had Jackson, acting as my attorney, draw up the petition for a Voluntary Declaration of Paternity. As soon as it had been a year since Molly left us, I could petition to have my name put on Olivia’s birth certificate.

  “She should have done that before she gave her to me,” I muttered, watching my daughter watch her show. But instead of the thought irritating me, the tension I perpetually carried around with me on my shoulders relaxed a little bit and I was almost surprised to find I was in a really good mood. It was easy to do around Olivia but now that I had Darlene my life too…

  “Settle down, Haas. Go take another cold shower.”

  Around six, I was putting Olivia’s and my dinner dishes in the sink when there came a knock at the door. My heart stuttered to think it might be Darlene, maybe this time with a chicken pot pie, or some other concoction she wanted to share.

  I opened the door to Jackson and his mother, Henrietta.

  “Sawyer, my man,” Jackson said. He was dressed to go out in a dark blazer, white button down, and black pants. We clasped hands and he pulled me in for a half-hug. “Are you ready?”

  “For what?” I moved to hug his mom. “Hi, Henrietta. Are you dropping him off? Because I don’t want him either.”

  Henrietta Smith looked like a younger version of Toni Morrison; heavyset with graying dreads down to her shoulders. She always dressed in billowy, silky clothes and large jewelry that Olivia loved to play with whenever she babysat.

  She chuckled and took my face in her hands to kiss my cheek. “Hey, baby boy. How’ve you been? You look tired.”

  “I’m well,” I said, pulling away from her embrace with a small ache in my chest. With my own mother gone, my brother trekking around God-knew-where, and my dad in Idaho with his wife’s family, Henrietta and Jackson were the closest I had to family.

  “What are you guys doing here?” I asked, shutting the door behind them.

  Olivia bounced and squawked from her highchair, her arms reaching. Henrietta freed her from the highchair and gave her a squeeze. Olivia hugged her back and immediately reached for the bulky necklace around Henrietta’s neck.

  “This,” Jackson said, “is an intervention. Get dressed, you’re going out.” He held his arms out and did a Michael Jackson-esque turn in my living room. “Dancing.”

  “Say again?”

  Jackson pointed one finger to the ceiling. “Is the lovely Darlene home?”

  “I have no idea. I think she had rehearsal until five so yeah,
she should be…hey, where are you going?”

  Jackson had made an about-face, and strode out the door.

  I looked to Henrietta who laughed heartily, Olivia secure in her arms, and I chased Jackson upstairs.

  I caught up to him just as he knocked on Darlene’s door. He jerked his jacket down to straighten it and smoothed his short hair that didn’t need smoothing.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “I told you,” Jackson said. “It’s an intervention. You’re off your game and what kind of wingman would I be if I—why, hellooo,” he said smoothly as the door opened.

  A cloud of clean scents, daisies, soap and warmth, billowed out with Darlene. She was fresh from the shower and wrapped in a silky robe. Her hair fell around her shoulders in damp, dark waves. Her brilliant blue eyes took in Jackson and me and lit up from within. She crossed her arms, a laughing smile on her lips, and leaned against the doorframe.

  “If you’re here to sell me a set of encyclopedias, you’re too late.”

  Jackson threw his head back and bellowed a laugh.

  I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, about him, but—”

  “You must be the lovely Darlene,” my friend cut me off, holding his hand out. “Jackson Smith, Esquire.”

  Darlene’s grin widened and she gave me a raised-eyebrow-look as she shook Jackson’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Jackson. Sawyer has told me so much about you.”

  “Has he? What a coincidence. Sawyer has told me quite a lot about you, as well.”

  I shot my friend a death glare, which he completely ignored.

  “One of the many things Mr. Haas has told me about you, Darlene, is that you are dancer. Therefore, I am here to extend an invitation for you to come dancing.”

  Darlene’s arms dropped. “Really? Oh my God, yes, please. I just moved here a few weeks ago and I don’t know anyone. I’m dying to go out.”

  Jackson shot me a dirty look and whacked me in the chest. “Are you hearing this? This beautiful woman—who lives right above you—is new to the city and you haven’t even taken her out to show her the town?”

  The blood rushed to my face on a heated current of embarrassment that left me tongue-tied. “I don’t…I...”

  “There’s a bunch of us going to Café du Nord on Market Street. Have you been?”