Darlene
I practically ran upstairs to my studio, and shut the door hard, as if I could barricade my feelings and aching want on the other side.
I’d massaged male clients—handsome ones, even— at Serenity, and it was nothing to me. Part of the job. I’d never felt like this.
I leaned with my back to the door and looked down at my hands. They were warm and I could still feel Sawyer’s hard muscle under them; the impossible softness of his hair; the warmth of his skin through his undershirt. I’d wanted to pull that shirt off of him, touch his skin with mine, and then…
“No, no, no, you do this every time,” I hissed.
I let physical attraction pull me under and the next thing I knew, I wouldn’t be working on me; I’d be losing myself in the touch of a man, the pleasure, the attention that came from feeling wanted.
And with Sawyer, it felt a hundred times more dangerous, because he wasn’t like any other guy I usually associated with. He was a law student with a real career ahead of him, and a little girl.
I shut my eyes. This is bad. So bad.
Except it didn’t feel bad.
“It will, if he finds out where you go three nights a week,” I said aloud, and my words were like a cold bucket of water, dousing the pleasant warmth and washing away the memory of his skin under my hands.
Tears stung my eyes but I blinked them away.
For the next two weeks, my days became a sameness of work at the spa, NA meetings, and rehearsal. The dance troupe paired me up with a guy named Ryan Denning who, I could only guess, made the cut because he looked ridiculously hot in guy’s dance shorts and no shirt. Hot, but a total klutz; I spent most of every rehearsal sidestepping his crushing feet, and subtly correcting for his bad positions and holds.
“Sorry about that,” Ryan said one day, after he mistimed his cue and we smacked heads on a close turn. “Paula’s my cousin, so here I am. I’m not a professional, that’s for sure.”
You’ve got that right.
I rubbed my head where a lump was forming and forced a smile. “No problem. The show must go on, right?”
Ryan wasn’t the only one. The whole troupe was barely professional—I felt like I’d joined an after-school club in high school doing black-box theatre. Greg, the director, was overly pompous about his ‘vision’, and aside from flyers on lampposts, there was no marketing of any kind.
But I showed up to every rehearsal and gave it my all, even though the other dancers—especially the other three women—hardly spoke to me. The lead, Anne-Marie, wouldn’t even look my way, unless giving me the stink-eye counted. When rehearsal was over they hustled out to drinks without me.
“Darlene,” I once heard her whisper. “Sounds like a truck-stop waitress.”
I fled the tiny theater with their tittering laughter chasing me.
Saturday morning, and I woke up with the dawn. My work schedule had drilled it into me and now I couldn’t sleep in. An uncommon heat wave made my third-floor studio feel stifling. I lay on my loveseat in my underwear and watched the sun fill the sky with white, gauzy light as it rose. A mug of coffee cooled on the table beside me as I wondered just what in the hell was supposed to come next.
I hadn’t missed a single NA meeting. Granted, I wasn’t talking as much or as deeply as Max wanted me too. But talking felt like giving a eulogy, over and over again, for someone who had died a long time ago. I didn’t want to resurrect that addict-self. That girl was gone and I wanted her to stay gone.
I was working hard—my arms and back ached after every day of work, only to be worked harder at rehearsal.
I was doing everything right.
And still, the other ache was there. The emptiness.
I watched the sun rise from my loveseat, and remembered my favorite poem by Sylvia Plath, “Mad Girl’s Love Song.” I wasn’t much of a book-reader; the long blocks of text couldn’t hold my attention. I loved songs. Lyrics. Poems. Where a writer has the entirety of the English language to choose from and she picks only a handful of words.
I was the Mad Girl. Lying on my couch that morning, I closed my eyes and made the world vanish.
I haven’t seen Sawyer in two weeks.
“I think I made you up inside my head,” I murmured.
My hands tried to remember his skin, and crept down my thighs, brushing the edges of my underwear. A tingle of electricity shot through me, and I bolted off the couch.
“No, that’s cheating.”
I balled my hands into fists and sucked in several deep breaths. I couldn’t cool my heated blood, I always ran hot. My only cure was to set fire to the passion, to feed it until it burnt out. But I still had hours until rehearsal where I could channel my restless want into dance.
I threw on jogging shorts—green with white stripes along the edges—a white T, and my running shoes, socks pulled to my knees. I grabbed my phone, ear buds, water bottle, and headed out.
Two blocks north of the Victorian was a park with large expanses of green grass, surrounded by more beautiful old houses. A path ran around the perimeter and I set out to do laps.
At only nine in the morning, it was already warm. From all I’d heard of San Francisco, this heat wave wasn’t just rare, it was unheard of. The city dwellers were taking advantage. There were already couples and families gathered, enjoying the sun. Some people were alone, stretched out on the grass, an open book acting as a sun shield while they read.
I did a loop around the perimeter of the park, Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” playing in my ears. On my second pass, I saw Sawyer.
He stood about twenty yards away from the jogging path in jeans, a dark blue t-shirt and a Giants baseball cap on backwards. Olivia’s stroller was beside him; I could just see her little feet kicking to get out.
I slowed to watch Sawyer lay out a blanket, then extricate his daughter from her stroller. She immediately started to toddle away. My heart felt too big for my chest as Sawyer laughingly scooped her up and planted her on the blanket, then gave her a snack to keep her occupied while he finished setting up. A zwieback biscuit.
My feet wanted to turn in their direction, as if my inner compass was pulling to Sawyer’s magnetic north. I kept on the path, running faster.
On my next loop, Sawyer was playing catch with Olivia as best as one could play catch with a one-year-old. Olivia, dressed in pink overalls, held her biscuit in one hand and spastically chucked a small yellow ball in Sawyer’s general vicinity. He laughed and bent to retrieve it, then rolled it across the grass toward her.
My head was craning to keep watching, and I turned my attention forward before I crashed headfirst into someone. I felt like a stalker, spying on them, and had to remind myself I was there first, taking a jog and minding my own business.
Working on me.
On my third lap, two young women were with Sawyer. One was laughing way too hard at something he said, while the other was kneeling at eye-level with Olivia, smiling and talking to her. A crazed urge to run straight at the women and tackle them both to the grass came over me.
I wrenched my gaze away just as a stitch in my side stopped me short and bent me double. I wheezed for breath, hands on my knees. I hadn’t realized how fast I’d been running but my face was covered with sweat and the pain in my side was like a little knife stabbing me.
When I was able to stand straight I sucked in deep breaths, and glanced over at Sawyer. My breath stuck all over again.
Sawyer was looking right at me, his expression unreadable from this distance, though I thought I caught a glimpse of a small smile on his lips.
I watched, rooted to the spot, as he picked up Olivia and headed toward me without so much as a word to the two women. They watched him walk away, twin expressions of confusion and disappointment morphing to disdain on their faces before they gave up.
“Are you being chased?” Sawyer asked with a small smile. On his hip, Olivia beamed and bounced to see me.
“Ha ha, no,” I huffed. God, I must’ve looked like a mess. My face felt red and puffy from running so hard and sweat made my shirt stick to my skin. “I got confused for a second and thought I was Usain Bolt.”
Olivia reached her little hand out to me.
“Hi, sweet pea,” I said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “Are you being good?”
“Always,” Sawyer said with that smile he reserved just for her. He plucked a blade of grass off her overalls, not looking at me. “So, haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yeah, I’ve been busy. Job, rehearsals.” I dug my toe into the dirt. I’d caught my breath but my heart was still pounding loudly. “How are your finals going?”
“Good. Finished two. Two more to go.”
“And then the bar exam?”
“Yeah, in Sacramento in a few weeks. Three days of motel living.” He made a face. “Can’t wait.”
“Three days? Will Elena be watching Olivia?” I asked. “Because I can help. If you need it.”
“Maybe,” Sawyer said. His dark brown eyes were soft as they met mine. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
A silence fell and then Olivia squirmed. “Down. Down.”
“Well, we’d better get back before someone steals our wheels.” Sawyer nodded his chin at the bulky, second-hand stroller. “It’s such a beaut.”
I smiled and tried to think of something witty to say but my brain was addled by the V of Sawyer’s tanned chest revealed by his shirt, and the flexing muscles in his arms as he set Olivia down.
“Yeah, I’d better get back…to…more running.”
More running? Seriously?
I felt a tug on my hand. “Ball, Dar-een?” Olivia pulled me toward their blanket. “Ball?”
A joyful laugh burst out of me, erasing my nerves. “Oh my God, she just said my name.” I knelt down beside her. “Did you just say Darlene?”
“Dar-een,” Olivia said, and pointed toward her yellow ball sitting on the green grass. “Play?”
“Well, if it’s okay with your daddy?”
I looked up to see Sawyer watching his daughter.
“I didn’t know she knew your name,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t either,” I said. I got to my feet. “I’ll play with her if you want. Or if you’d rather I not…”
“No, that’d be great. If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
I joined Sawyer and Olivia on their patch of grass and played three-way catch—Sawyer threw to me, I rolled the ball to Olivia, and she threw it to Sawyer who inevitably had to go chasing it down or pick it up when she torpedoed it straight into the grass.
Olivia’s thirteen-month-old attention span wore out five minutes later, and she dropped the ball, game over.
“Snag? Snag, Daddy.”
He scooped Olivia up. “Do you want a snack? What about a swing first?”
“Swing!”
Sawyer swung her down and then tossed her up in the air in the way that guys did that made babies squeal with laughter, and made every human with ovaries in a twenty-yard radius inwardly panic.
“Oh jeez,” I whispered.
I peeked at them through my fingers, but Sawyer caught his little girl smoothly and planted her on his hip.
“Okay, snack time.” He looked to me and laughed. “It’s safe to come out now. Do you want to join us?”
“I don’t want to interrupt your private time…”
“Nah, we do this every Saturday,” Sawyer said. He set Olivia down on the blanket—where she found her half-chewed biscuit—and rummaged in the stroller. He held up two pieces of fruit. “Apple or banana?”
“Apple,” I said.
He tossed it to me and I caught it and sat with them on the blanket. We ate and talked, and Olivia helped to give us something to focus on when the air between us seemed to thicken. It had been too long since Sawyer and I had been in the same space. Since his skin had been under my hands. My face felt perpetually hot, and I turned my eyes to Olivia whenever I found myself staring at Sawyer for too long. Twice I thought I caught him staring at me before doing the same.
An elderly couple, strolling arm in arm, veered our way.
“We just had to tell you, that you are such a beautiful young family,” the woman said. “Just beautiful.”
I glanced at Sawyer. “Oh, um...we’re not…”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thanks very much.”
The couple beamed and moved on.
“It’s easier than explaining,” Sawyer told me.
“Oh. It’s happened to you before?” I asked lightly.
“Yeah, with my friend, Jackson,” he said. “He joined us one Saturday and an entire bachelorette party surrounded us, thinking that we were a couple and that Olivia was our adopted daughter.”
I took a long pull from my water bottle. “That’s too cute.”
“I didn’t bother to tell them the truth, though Jax hitting on the Maid of Honor the entire time must’ve been confusing.”
Sawyer was good at making me laugh, and I vowed to relax and enjoy the day, instead of crowding it with silly, impossible thoughts. I leaned back on my hands, let the sunshine spill over me.
“Jackson’s a lawyer, too? I think you mentioned that.”
“Yeah, practicing. So he’s an attorney,” Sawyer said with a grin. He smiled fondly at Olivia who was eating bits of strawberry, alternating with bites of biscuit. “He does tax law at a big firm in the Financial District.”
“Tax law. God, I’m getting sleepy just thinking about it.” I started to take a bite of apple, then froze. “Oh shit. I just realized I never asked you what kind of law you’re studying.”
“Tax law,” Sawyer deadpanned, but the glint in his eye gave him away.
“Liar,” I laughed, and crunched my apple. “What is it, for real?”
“Criminal justice. I want to be a federal prosecutor.”
“Oh,” I said, and it seemed as if a cloud had crossed the path of the sun. My skin broke out in gooseflesh and I swallowed my lump of apple like it was a rock. “That’s the kind of attorney who works to put people in jail, isn’t it?”
I knew perfectly well that’s what it was, because I’d had one standing across from me in a courthouse three years ago. He helped get me sentenced to three months in jail for misdemeanor drug possession.
“There’s more to it than that,” Sawyer said. “A federal prosecutor represents the state or federal government in criminal cases, argues before grand juries…”
“But is that why you want to be a lawyer? To punish those who have broken the law?”
He frowned as if the question didn’t make any sense. “It’s not only about punishment, it’s about justice.” A smile softened his face. “It’s not like the Pirate Code. The laws aren’t there to serve as guidelines. They’re meant to be followed.”
I nodded faintly. “Yeah, they are.”
A short silence descended. Livvie was turning the heavy cardboard pages of a book about a hungry caterpillar. The sunlight made her brown hair gold at the edges.
I cleared my throat, determined to keep my spirits up. “What made you decide to practice?”
He gave me a smile but it faded as he spoke. “I like the law. I like how black and white it can be. Words on paper that last and have power.” He plucked a few blades of grass, tearing them from their roots. “I want that power to protect people from what happened to my family.”
“What happened?”
Sawyer seemed to be struggling to find the words, or whether to speak them at all.
“No, you don’t have to tell me,” I said gently. “I do that. I pry.”
“You’re not prying,” Sawyer said. “You’re making conversation. Something I’m not very good at lately.”
I smiled. “You’re doing fine.”
He smiled back but it was flimsy and faded quickly. “I don’t talk about this very much. Or ever, actually.”
I itched to touch him. “You don’t have to.”
“No, I should, I guess. For her sake. My mom died in a car accident when I was a kid,” he said all at once, then swallowed. “She was killed by a drunk driver.”
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 the 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.