Forever Now (Forever - Book 1) (23 page)

“I what?” There was a rumbling low in his chest that got louder until he was laughing.

“Shh! You’ll wake her up,” I said.

“Sorry but that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Really? I didn’t think it was funny at all.”

“You didn’t?” he asked. “I’m fooling around with your mother? That doesn’t sound like a
Saturday Night Live
sketch to you?”

It sounded more like tragedy than comedy, but I was glad he found it funny. Glad that I was right about my mom being a liar.

“I would never ever—I can’t even say it—with your mother. Never.”

His laughter died down, and he held me tighter. I felt warm and safe in his arms.

“I never thought I would see you again,” he choked. A tear rolled down his cheek, and I wiped it off with my hand.

“Me neither. Sometimes I lay in bed and thought I heard your car.”

“I drove by almost every day.”

“Oh.”

I thought back to the times I heard his car clacking down the street. If only I had run outside sooner, I wouldn’t have had to go through months without him.

“You got fired?” I asked.

He nodded. “I was upset. I might have said some things to my boss that I shouldn’t have.”

“You think?” I snickered. And then I accidentally snorted, humiliating myself completely. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean to do that. It just sort of slipped out,” I said like an idiot.

But he wasn’t listening, or he was good at pretending he wasn’t listening. In any case, he was probably too busy kissing me to listen.

He took me by surprise, capturing my mouth, pressing his lips firmly against mine. I melted into him, my mouth opening, his tongue slipping inside. The world spun around. I didn’t know up from down. I was disoriented. Lost. My senses were on overload. His smell, the feel of his hard body under my touch, the taste of him. I was overwhelmed by Cruz but didn’t want it to stop.

His hands traveled down my back and cupped my butt, lifting me slightly and pulling me against him. He moaned and deepened the kiss. It lasted forever. Hours or days or months passed. I had no idea. Lost in his embrace, I also lost all notion of time.

We shared a hunger that couldn’t be sated, an itch that couldn’t be scratched. We kissed and kissed and kissed until my lips were chapped and I was gasping for breath.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” he said. He was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. His eyes were big, brown and went on forever. Deep. Fathomless. His face was flushed from the kiss. His jaw was chiseled, all angles and planes of perfect proportion. I trailed my fingertips along the stubble on his chin and the area above his lips. He shivered, and I shivered in response.

“I never want to lose you again,” I said.

“Good. We’ll write each other when you’re in Paris and then after—“ His voice trailed off, not explaining what he wanted us to do after Paris. He pursed his lips, as if he was trying to get the words out but he forgot how to speak English.

“I don’t think we need to worry about Paris,” I said. “My mom put the kibosh on that experiment.”

“What?”

“She tore up the papers and said there was no way she would sign anything to help me go to France. No visa means no Paris, Cruz.”

I shrugged like it was no big deal not to go to the Sorbonne and become a writer in Paris as I had dreamed of since I started dreaming. But it was a big deal, and I surprised myself with the hitch in my voice and the tears that rolled down my face.

“We’ll find another way,” Cruz said. “You’re going to the Sorbonne. You’re going to become a great writer. I know you will.”

His confidence in me was absolute and unwavering. Cruz believed in me, believed that I was special.

“Maybe someday I’ll go,” I said. The reality that my dream had been thwarted hit me like a ton of bricks. Suddenly and hard without mercy. “I can still write in my notebooks here while you go to--.”

I couldn’t get the last word out because I was too choked up with emotion. I wasn’t going to Paris. Cruz was going to Japan. I was stuck with my mother, who hated me even more than before.

“I’m probably not good enough to become a writer, anyway,” I said. “Everyone wants to write a book, but there aren’t a lot of good writers. I’m probably just fooling myself.”

Cruz’s eyebrows knit together, and he frowned. “Shut up,” he said. “You’re going all the way. Do you hear me? All the way. Straight to the top. Awards. Bestseller list. Do you understand? Never doubt yourself again. Never.”

I nodded. I had been holding my breath, and I inhaled sharply. It was intoxicating to have someone believe in my dreams, to believe in me. It was my first experience of another having faith in me.

And it was Cruz. Cruz believed in me.

“I love you,” I said. The words were heavy on my lips. I had never said them before, not to Cruz or anyone else. They were difficult to say. Scary. But they were the truest thing I had ever said.

He caressed my cheek. “Do you?”

“More than anything.”

“No, don’t love me more than anything. I don’t deserve that.”

I was about to tell him he was crazy. He deserved that and so much more. He deserved everything. But he put his finger to my lips and shh’d me. “It’s late. I’ll walk you in,” he said.

“You’re right. I have to get up early,” I said. “I have to wake up my mother in the morning.”

“You’re still bringing her coffee in the morning, even with all this going on?”

“I have a heightened survival instinct.”

“Me, too. May I stay with you for the night? I promise to leave before she wakes up. I just want to be with you.”

“You have to ask?”

We were deathly quiet entering the house and climbing the stairs to my bedroom. We closed the door and slipped under my covers, lying like spoons against each other. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight.

“If your mother would get out of your way, there would be no stopping you,” he said. “You’re practically an adult anyway. You could become an emancipated minor.”

I had wanted to become an emancipated minor since I was ten. I had plotted out every strategy to get away from my mother.

“Wouldn’t work,” I said. “She would have to sign those papers, too, and there’s no way she would, just to make me suffer. She wants me to be miserable like her. She told me so.”

“There must be a way.”

Cruz was an optimist, but I had known my mother way longer. I knew she was going to block me from going to Paris no matter what.

I wiggled against him. It was so comfortable lying in his arms. I was suddenly taken by sleep and yawned.

“I wish it could be like this forever,” I mumbled, half asleep already.

“It will be. No matter where we are we’ll be together. Forever is composed of nows.”

***

I woke up thirty minutes late. Cruz was gone, as he promised. I hadn’t even heard him leave. I bolted out of bed and slipped into my clothes. I could still make it to school on time if I rushed.

The world looked a lot more beautiful after being reunited with Cruz, despite my mother’s refusal to allow me to go Paris. I was happy, even.

Being loved by someone made problems seem less terrible. In fact, I was feeling pretty good. It had to be the spooning afterglow. Why would anyone choose to sleep any other way? I figured that if spooning and kissing the most beautiful boy in the world was possible, maybe everything was possible. Maybe not only could I figure out a way to go to Paris, but maybe I could also bend forks with my mind and turn lead into gold.

What a wonderful world!

I whistled while I walked downstairs. I popped two Pop Tarts into the toaster and turned the coffee maker on. There was a little coffee left in the pot, and I dumped it out, pouring clean water in. When the Pop Tarts were done, I took a big bite and poured myself a glass of milk. I poured my mother’s coffee in a mug and topped it with a little milk from my glass. I did a little dance in the kitchen and took the coffee up to her.

I had about five minutes before I had to leave, which was plenty of time. I opened her door slowly. Her room was bright for a change because the curtains were open. She must have forgotten to close them last night, I figured.

“Wakey, wakey,” I sing-songed, still in a really good mood. “Here’s your coffee.”

I went to put her coffee on her nightstand, but there was already a cup there, half-filled.

“Did you already have your coffee?” I asked her. “Did you make it yourself?”

She didn’t answer me and didn’t bother to move, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. She wasn’t what you’d call a morning person.

“Time to wake up,” I whispered. “We’re running late this morning.”

I stepped back toward the door out of her range. She was ornery when she didn’t want to wake up, but if I didn’t make sure she was up before I left, she would make my life even more of a misery.

“Really, it's time to wake up!” I announced loudly.

Nothing.

No response. No movement. Not even the rise and fall of her chest from under the covers. Dead still.

“Mom?”

I watched her for a moment, waiting for any movement.

But there was no sign of life.

My eyes flicked to her nightstand with the bottles of pills and the half-empty coffee mug. A cold, icy dread rolled down my spine.

“Mom?”

I closed my eyes and listened. The room was quiet. There wasn’t even a sound from the street. I willed her to shout at me, to say something nasty and threaten my happiness, just like normal.

But there was nothing.

I took a few steps forward and took hold of her foot through the covers, giving it a shake. Her head flopped to the side, but she didn’t wake up. I stepped closer and leaned down over her face. She didn’t stir and no air passed through her nose or mouth. Placing a finger on the side of her neck, I waited to feel a pulse.

Nothing.

“Tell the truth, but tell it slant.”

--Emily Dickinson

I ran out of the room into the hallway. I stood with my back to the wall and shut my eyes, but I couldn’t shake the image of my mother’s lifeless form. She was changed, altered, her body abandoned by her soul or whatever that made her who she was.

I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed before that she was gone. But looking at her it was obvious she had gone to heaven or hell or wherever dead people go, and all that was left was her empty shell of a body.

Dead.

My mother was dead.

“This can’t be happening,” I said to the empty hallway. “This isn’t real.” Mom had been in good shape. She never got sick. She wasn’t old at all. How could she have died?

Crazy.

No way could it be happening.

It was so crazy that I began to doubt what I had seen. Could I have been mistaken? Maybe she was fine. Maybe she was just drunk or took too many pills. Maybe I had felt for a pulse on the wrong place on her neck. I took a deep breath and peeked back into the room.

She was still lying in the same position. She hadn’t moved.

Dead still.

“Mom?” I whispered, even though I knew she wouldn’t answer.

***

The house was full of people, a hive of activity, everyone wearing uniforms and very focused on their jobs. A police officer told me to sit on the couch, and that’s what I had been doing for an hour while they went upstairs to see Mom and do whatever to her and the house. From my seat, I could see a lot of picture taking and measuring going on.

“Would you like a glass of water?” a woman asked me. She was wearing a gray pantsuit and a gun holstered to her waistband.

I nodded. She filled up a glass in the kitchen and handed it to me back on the couch. She took a seat next to me.

“Aren’t you going to drink it?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“The water.”

I looked at the glass in my hand, unsure how it got there. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Okay, let me take that.” She put it down on the coffee table and took a small pad of paper out of her pocket. “Give me your full name.”

“Tess Parker.”

“No middle name?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“And you live here with your mother?”

“I—“ I didn’t know how to answer her question. Did I live there with my mother? What would happen now that she was dead? Where was I going to go?

“Nobody else lives here?”

“No.”

“No boyfriends?”

I really looked at her for the first time. She was about my mother’s age, around thirty-four years old. She had longish brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail like mine. She didn’t wear jewelry except for a watch, and she didn’t have any makeup on. She could have been me in seventeen years.

She stared at me as if she was trying to read my mind, and maybe she was. I didn’t trust her. She was smiling, but she was definitely not my friend.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Fair question. I’m Detective Stevenson.”

“What’s happening?”

“Tess, your mother has passed away,” she said.

“I know that. I woke her up this morning. I mean, I tried to. That’s how I found out.”

“I was going to ask you about that. Why were you trying to wake her up?”

The image of her lying in bed flashed through my mind. I hugged myself and shut my eyes against the picture of her cold and unmoving. I had never seen death before. It wasn’t like in the movies. It was final. It was the end. One minute the person you knew your whole life was there, and the next minute, they were gone forever.

“Tess?”

I opened my eyes. A middle-aged woman with a large purse and briefcase was leaning over, only inches from my face.

“I’m Diane. I’m a social worker with Family Services,” she said.

“My mother’s dead,” I said and broke down in loud sobs.

“Oh, honey,” she said and hugged me. She smelled good, doused in heavy, expensive perfume. She didn’t let go until I stopped blubbering. She sat on the other side of me, making a law enforcement sandwich: the police on one side and Family Services on the other.

I was in a cloud, seeing the action around me through a fuzzy filter. I was ready for someone to tell me it was a mistake, that my mother was fine and that they were going to leave and let me get on with my life.