by Emma Scott
“Holy crap,” Darlene murmured. “Your knots have knots. I have never, in all my weeks of professional massage, had anyone as tense as you.”
I murmured something intelligible. My words were turning to mush in my brain. Darlene’s hands were merciless and my eyes fell shut. Tight fists of muscle unclenched in me, and sleepy warmth flooded in.
“You’re going to knock me out,” I said.
“You should be lying down,” she said. “I can work much better that way.”
“If I fall out of the chair, does that count?”
She murmured a small laugh, and then her fingers sunk into my hair, grazing my scalp, and sending gentle currents down my back. I felt drunk.
“Darlene,” I said, my chin sinking to my chest. “You’re really good at this.”
“Thank you.”
Her small hands were stronger than I expected, and she slid them down over my shoulders, to press into my solar plexus. Stiff knots loosened, and as the relief flooded me, the dormant physical needs I’d been denying myself began to wake up under her hands. Blood flowed and as muscles loosened, my own hands clenched to keep from reaching up to touch her.
The air between us felt thick and charged, and I knew Darlene felt it too. Her hands stilled. I felt her stiffen behind me.
“Darlene,” I said, my voice gruff and thick.
“I should go,” she said, her own voice hardly more than a whisper. She gave my shoulders a final, stiff little pat, and moved to the door.
I moved sluggishly, like an animal coming out of warm hibernation into cold, harsh light, to open the door for her, but she was already there.
“You should get some sleep,” she said. “I have to be up super early for the spa, then rehearsal. Thank you for listening to my news. You’re a good neighbor, Sawyer. Good night.”
And then the tornado that was her, swept out of my place just as fast as she’d swept in, and I was alone.
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 u
p. 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 o
f 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.”