Forever Right Now

by Emma Scott

He whistled through his teeth. “What you have here is a unicorn eating four-leaf clovers while shitting rainbow turds in the shape of winning lottery numbers.”

“Dios trabaja de maneras misteriosas.”

“I was going to make tuna casserole. Mostly because it’s the only thing I know how to make.

“Come on. Looks like fish is this way.”

tuna casserole is made with canned tuna, not fresh fish.

A short silence fell, that lasted all of three seconds.

Yeah sh definitely talks a lot

I became mesmerized by her lean muscles that moved under her pale skin, the elegant line of her neck, and the sleek cut of her arms as she reached up on a high shelf for a pan.

“Unrealistic expectations are failures waiting to happen,”

“Bye-bye, Daddy,” Olivia said from where she was securely fastened to Darlene’s slender hip, both of them smiling at me and waving. My stupid perfect memory took a snapshot of that too.

“I’ve seen your type before. Full of piss and vinegar, as my father would’ve said. More concerned with being right than with being fair. You are not a coldhearted man. I can see that in you. But feelings, Mr. Haas, are what make us human. And humanity should be the beating heart of justice.” He leaned back in his seat and reached for some papers on his desk. “That is all.”

“Of course,” Max said. “But forgetting is the first step down the road toward relapse. You lull yourself into thinking the pain of addiction is asleep forever, then something wakes it up and you’re fucked.”

“Forgetting is pretending it never happened,” Max said. “You need to remember and remember and remember, until it has no power over you anymore. Someday, I’m going to walk up to that lamppost and all of the memories will still be there, but they’ll be a part of who I am. Instead of having a shitty day, I’ll smile and think of how it was a piece of my past, but not the sum of it.”

“Everyone is worthy of love,” Max said. “But it starts with loving yourself first. That sounds like cheesy, clichéd shit, but it’s true. You have to know you can be good for someone else. Not just to fill up that hole in yourself, but to give.”

“We’re all made up of strengths and weaknesses, every one of us. You have strengths. Plenty. Getting clean is a strength. Picking yourself back up again after you fall, that’s a strength.”

Henrietta once told me that it was hard for a person to imagine a better life than the one he had; to really know and feel that it was possible. It was the reason, she said, so many people worked so hard just to stay where they were. They never reached out for what they really wanted because they believed what they wanted was out of reach. But it wasn’t. Like words written on a mirror: Objects may be closer than they appear.

“Do you ever wish you could take a moment and keep it forever? Like right now…how you taste on my mouth, and your hands on me, and your eyes…God, Sawyer, the way you’re looking at me… If I could have just one moment, one feeling, and live in it forever, I would choose this one.”

My excuses about what I didn’t know about Darlene fell apart under the sheer weight of all that I did know about her. And what I felt about her.

I realized—too late—that being with the people who love you isn’t weak. It’s how you stay strong.

Reach out and hold on to those you need, because they need you too more than you think.

“You get back what you put in. Negative shit gets you negative shit. Positive energy begets positive energy. Whatever you put out there in the universe…it listens. And then it answers. So when I talk, I try to give it something it wants to hear and hope it answers with something I want to hear.”

I’d never been nervous before. I’d never waited this long to consummate an attraction.