by Emma Scott
Jackson will shit his pants.
I laughed at myself, and called Elena. After asking about Olivia, I tried my best to sound casual as fuck. “Has Darlene come home by any chance?”
“She did,” Elena said. “She dropped off more chocolate chip cookies for the kids on her way out. Such a sweet girl.”
“Do you know where she was going?”
“No, but she looked dressed to practice her dance.”
“Right. Okay, thanks, Elena. I’ll be home on time tonight.”
“No rush, querido. No rush at all.”
Quickly, I recalled Darlene and my conversation at the park. She’d said she rehearsed at the American Dance Academy. I looked up the address on my phone for directions and headed to the Muni.
There was no one manning the front desk at the Academy, but a layout of the building on the wall guided me to the practice rooms. I headed down the pristine white hallway, passing open doors of ballet dancers at a barre, a jazz class for older couples. I expected to find Darlene with her dance troupe.
She was alone.
My breath caught. My heart stopped. Every part of me froze as I watched her from the doorway. She was wearing that damn black top with the crisscrossing straps along her back that made it hard for me to think. Her long legs were bare but for tight spandex short-shorts. Her dark hair spilled out of a high ponytail. A New Age-sounding instrumental played over the sound system, and Darlene folded and unfolded herself across the wooden floor in a series of flowing movements.
I was mesmerized, my eyes tracking her and when she stopped short, I flinched.
She tossed her head from side to side, as if her neck was stiff and rubbed one hand, then shook out her arms. She listened to some internal count in the music for a moment, then continued the dance.
Twenty seconds later, she stopped again, and she shook her arms, frustrated, and crossed to a small sound system against one wall. The music went quiet, and that was my cue; I’d lurked long enough.
“Hey,” I said, stepping into the room.
She turned around and the surprised smile that flitted across her face was like a gift.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I needed to talk to you,” I said, “but I got side tracked watching you. Sorry, I don’t mean to come off like a creepy stalker. You’re really good, Darlene. Incredible, actually.”
She shook her head, her cheeks turning pink as she walked to meet me in the center of the room. “It’s not a good show,” she said. “Or maybe it could be but…” She sighed and rubbed her fingers.
“What’s going on here?” I asked, indicating her hands.
“God, it’s my job at the spa,” she said. “My supervisor told me turnover was high when I first started working there. Now I know why. My hands hurt all the time.”
“You need a massage for yourself,” I said. “Don’t they give employees a discount?”
“They do, but I don’t like being there,” Darlene said. “No one is friendly. It’s not my scene. And all of the employees are stressed out and sore. The last thing we want to do is give a discount massage to one of our own.”
I reached out and took her hand in both of mine before I could talk myself out of it. Her hand was soft skin and delicate bone, and I gently rubbed circles into her palm with my thumbs.
“How is your show going?” I asked. “Has your partner learned to watch himself?”
“No,” she said, with a small laugh. “He’s a menace, as always, but I think I’ve learned to dance around him. Some added choreography. That’s why I’m here, rehearsing alone. Safer that way.” She glanced down at her hand in mine, then back to me. “That feels nice,” she said softly.
I nodded, and let go of her hand to take the other one, gently massaging and squeezing the tension out.
“I had a really good time the other night,” she said.
“You were an incredible dancer then, too,” I said. “With Jackson.”
“I wanted to dance with you.”
“I’m no good.”
“I’ll bet that’s not true.”
I smiled, concentrating on her hand. If I looked up at her beautiful face this close to mine, I wouldn’t do what I came here to do. “I’m pretty sure the only move I could pull off is the dip.”
“A dip is easy,” Darlene said. “All you have to do is be there for the woman. Hold her. Make sure she doesn’t fall.”
Slowly, I raised my eyes to meet hers. “I want to try.”
Our gazes held for a moment, the air thick between us. Darlene moved close into my space, and my senses were overwhelmed by the heat of her body and the perfume of her skin; daisies tinged with the salt of her sweat.
Her mouth was inches from mine, as she ringed her arms around my neck. Her breasts pressed against my chest.
“Hold your right arm out at an angle,” she said. Her breath was sweet against my cheek.
I did as she said and, effortlessly, she hooked her leg over so that my arm held her under the crook of her knee.
“Make a right angle out of your other arm,” she said.
I did, creating a stiff-armed frame around her.
“You got me?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, daring a glance at her eyes. “I got you.”
A smile spread over her lips, and slowly, with precise yet fluid movements, she bent herself back over my arm, her hands reaching for the floor, while her leg, hooked on my other arm, anchored her. I watched her bend, watched her breasts strain against the black material of her shirt as she flowed backward like water. She stretched her other leg behind her in a split, and her reaching fingertips grazed her foot.
Instinctively, I bent my knee to dip her lower, keeping my arms stiff like scaffolding while she flowed and ebbed around me.
I held her securely for a long moment, then slowly straightened. She came up with me, graceful in my arms, our gazes locked. Her leg came down but her arms were still around my neck. Mine slipped around her waist.
“How was that?” I whispered my mouth inches from hers.
“Perfect,” she said.
I watched her form the word. Her teeth grazed her lower lip over the ‘f’ and then I had to have her. Without thought or hesitation, I laid my mouth to hers.
She gave a little gasp and her lips parted for me. I deepened the kiss, while wondering how I’d lived twenty-four years without having kissed her before.
Kissing Darlene was kissing all of her. I tasted the sweetness of her, the energy she put into her art. Her breath suffused my mouth and I inhaled her.
This is life.
My tongue slid against hers, and the taste of her went straight to my head like a shot of whiskey. She moaned—not quietly—and I swallowed that, too.
Our gentle kissing turned harder and needier. I wanted to devour her, every breath, every touch…my hands skimmed down her back, to her ass, to fill my hands with her. Her fingers slid down my chest, then back up around my neck and into my hair, to pull me closer. Her leg hooked around my waist this time, and cinched tight, pressing herself against the erection that strained against my jeans. In every electric inch of her body, I felt how badly she wanted me too.
I kissed her until I was nearly biting her, and my fevered imagination wanted to know what it would be like to have her—this woman—in my bed, under me and naked. I wanted all of her skin on mine, and the soft little moans she was making now would turn to screams under my hands, my mouth, every part of me touching all of her.
“God, Darlene,” I ground out between kisses. My hands tangled in her hair, to angle her head, to kiss her more. “I want you, right now.”
She nodded against my lips. “Yes, me too. So much,” she breathed.
Voices sounded in the hallway outside the open door, prying the moment apart. With effort, I broke from her but stayed close, feeling her breath on my lips that were wet with her kiss.
“We should stop,” I said, striving to catch my breath. “This is not wh
y I’m here. To hook up. I don’t want to just hook up with you. I want you. Fucking hell, I’ve never wanted anyone more. But I want to take you out. A real date. It sounds insane, but I’ve never done that.”
Her eyes were glassy and bright with desire. “Neither have I. Not at first, I mean. It always starts with this. But Sawyer—”
“I want you to have more,” I said. I pulled away, and sucked in a breath. “Will you have dinner with me? Tonight, if you can. Or tomorrow?”
“I can’t tomorrow,” she said, and the brilliant light in her eyes sparked with something like fear. “But tonight is short notice. What about Olivia?”
“I’ll take care of her,” I said.
The urge to touch her again was like a hunger in my entire body. But if I did, we wouldn’t make it out of this room.
“I’ll make reservations,” I said. “Someplace nice.”
“Not too nice,” she said quickly. “I don’t want you to spend a lot of money on me.”
“I do. I want to take you to a place nice enough where you can wear another dress like the one you wore on Saturday,” I said. “Something that will make every man in the room seethe with jealousy.”
Darlene’s smile was tremulous. She opened her mouth to speak and I dared to take her face and kiss her again.
“Tonight. Seven o’clock? A real date. Okay?”
She nodded, and with supreme effort, I pulled myself away and went home, toward something more.
Darlene
On the way home from the Dance Academy, I opened the contacts in my phone a hundred times to call Max. Each time, my thumb hovered over the call button, and each time I chickened out.
You know what he’ll tell you to do. He’ll say you have to tell Sawyer the truth.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the Muni train rumbled and swayed beneath me.
With every passing block, my resolve waxed and waned. Yes, Sawyer deserved the truth, and I started to call Max for moral support in that endeavor. The next instant, the thought that Sawyer would hate me filtered in, and I shoved the phone away.
Instead, I let my fingers touch my lips, where I could still feel Sawyer’s kiss. Our first kiss. My heart crashed against my chest at the sense memory.
Sawyer’s mouth on mine was exactly as I had imagined it and nothing I had ever prepared for. Soft and hard. Sweet and masculine. Demanding and generous at the same time. I wanted more of his kisses, his body holding mine tightly to him. I thought of how he looked at me…
He won’t look at me the same way if I tell him.
By the time I’d arrived at the Victorian, my stomach was a knot of nerves, worry mixed with butterflies of excitement. I dashed up the two flights of stairs to my place, hoping the exertion would burn off the anxiety and I’d know what to do.
“Why do I have to tell him at all?” I asked my empty studio. “There’s no reason! It’s in the past and that’s where it should stay.”
I took a hot shower, scrubbing my skin with a loofah, as if I could scrub out the whispers of memory imbedded there; of nights spent on a jail cell cot, or on a hospital bed with an IV drip in my arm to flush out the heroin…
Even though the drugs were long gone, the shame they left behind hurt in so many ways.
I stepped out on a cloud of steam, wrapped myself in a towel, and grabbed the phone. Before I could stop myself, I jabbed Max’s number.
“Hello, Max speaking.”
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Hey, Me. What’s up?”
“Sawyer kissed me,” I blurted. “And we have a date tonight. I just thought…as my sponsor, you should know that.”
A silence.
“Are you there?”
“I’m here,” he said slowly. “Processing. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“Nope. That’s it.” I wrapped a lock of dripping hair around my finger. “He’s taking me out to dinner. Oh, and we went dancing on Saturday night too. It was fun. No big deal.”
See how well I’m handling this? I wanted to shout.
“Okay.”
Max hadn’t been able to get out of a shift on Monday night and had missed the NA meeting with me. I’d considered that lucky at the time, but now I wished he’d been there. I wished I’d talked.
I wish I could talk.
A small sob tore out of me, and the pretend bravado gusted out with it. I sank onto my little loveseat. “Fucking hell, Max, this sucks.”
“I know,” he said. “Tell me.”
“I want to. I want to be honest. I do. That’s why my stomach is in knots, isn’t it? Sawyer isn’t like any other man I’ve ever been with. I’m not just attracted to him, Max. I like him. A lot. In a different way than I’ve ever… liked a man. And his little girl…” Tears sprang to my eyes. “I like her, too. So much. And I want…”
“What, Dar?” Max asked gently. “What do you want?”
Everything.
“I don’t know,” I said. I wiped my eyes irritably. “I hate that no matter what I do, I’ll always be that girl. The girl who was weak and sad. Who had this big yawning hole of want in her, and filled it up with terrible shit. And you know what? The drugs are gone but the want is still there, and the good things I want to fill it with are right in front of me but I’m scared to grab for them.” My voice turned small and watery. “I’m scared, Max, that he’ll hate me.”
“If he’s any kind of a good guy, he won’t hate you, Dar. But you have to tell him. Not just so he lives with your truth, but so that you do too. That’s fair to him and it’s fair to you. You deserved to be loved as you are, Darlene. Not in bits and pieces.”
I sniffed. “How come you’re not telling me to cancel the date? To forget about all of this and stick to my year-long men boycott?”
“Unreasonable expectations…” he said gently. “Besides, telling you not to love is like depriving a flower of sunlight. You aren’t meant to be contained, Darlene. It would be a crime against humanity. Just do it honestly, okay? And then tell me all about it. Then tell the group all about it at tomorrow night’s meeting.”
I nodded against the phone, my tears burning hotly down my cheek. “God, this is so hard.” I huffed a sigh. “Can’t I sleep with him first?”
Max laughed. “You’re going to be fine, I promise. Okay?”
“Okay. I should go. I have to get ready for this dinner. What does one wear to tell a future criminal prosecutor that you’re a former criminal?”
“Something with bold patterns. Maybe ruffles…”
I sniffed a laugh.
“Call me later, Dar.”
“I will.”
I hung up and stared at the phone. Then I got dressed for my first—and probably last—date with Sawyer Haas.
I chose ruffles after all. I put on a soft, prairie style blouse-dress in light beige with tiny pink and green flowers. It had puffy sleeves and a high collar, but barely skimmed the tops of my thighs. I paired it with white ankle boots, and piled my hair on my head in a loose, messy bun with tendrils falling down, to frame my face and show off my lucky gold hoop earrings.
I glanced at myself a final time in the mirror as the clock read seven.
“You can do this,” I told my reflection and heaved a sigh. I plastered on a wide smile. “Hi, Sawyer! Guess what? I spent three months in jail for misdemeanor drug possession. I just wanted to do the responsible thing, and tell you that before you let me babysit your daughter again.”
I covered my eyes with my hand.
“He’s going to hate me.”
The doorbell rang.
“Oh, God.”
I sucked in deep breaths and smoothed my dress.
“Okay, here we go.”
I mustered a pitiful amount of mental fortitude, and it all fled the exact second I opened the door.
Sweet Jesus, no fair. No fair at all.
I forgot how to breathe and my heart sent rushes of heated blood throughout my entire body. Sawyer was dressed up as he had been on Saturday nigh
t, only this time he was dressed up just for me. He wore a black jacket, white dress shirt—unbuttoned at the top—black slacks and a stylish leather belt with a sleek silver buckle around his slender waist. He looked casually elegant—like a Best Man at a wedding after the ceremony was over; where every bridesmaid was ready to drop her panties for a stolen moment with him in a closet during the reception.
“I…oh my God,” I stammered, my eyes drinking him in. “You are…so hot.”
I cringed at my clumsy words but Sawyer didn’t seem to have heard.
“Darlene…” he said. “You’re...” His words tapered to nothing as his gaze swept over me unabashedly.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” I joked weakly.
“Oh, I did,” he said, and gave his head a little shake. He withdrew a bouquet of three white roses from behind his back. “It’s the best I could do on short notice.”
“They’re beautiful,” I said.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “You’re stunningly beautiful, Darlene.”
“Thank you, Sawyer,” I said, and my cheeks warmed at the lovely compliment even as my anxiety deepened into a deep blue of sadness for how I was going to ruin the perfection of this night. “I’ll just put them in some water.”
He waited by the door as I scrounged for a vase. A tall drinking glass was all I could find. I put the flowers in it with shaking hands, and grabbed my black coat. Sawyer helped me into it.
“Where are we going?” I asked in a small voice, as we headed down the stairs.
“A restaurant called Nopa,” he said, his own voice sounding thick. “Jackson said it’s a good one.”
At the bottom of the stairs, in the entry of the house, Sawyer’s hand snaked out to grab mine. He pulled me close, and his hands slipped around my waist. I melted against him as he hauled me in for a deep kiss. His tongue slid against mine, then swept through my mouth. I clung to him, the clean taste of him, the scent of his masculine cologne, the softness of his lips, the intense want that coiled in his muscles under my hands…they all bombarded my senses and threatened to melt me into a puddle at his feet.
