Page 4 of The Now in Forever

TEN YEARS AGO

Not today. Today will not be brought down with such heavy thoughts. Letting out a long, slow breath, I take a sip of my almond milk latte, still too hot to drink. I should’ve gotten an iced one. I check the time again. Twenty minutes—I can be twenty minutes early.

Taking my coffee, I go to unlock my bike.

I’m just digging the key out of my bag, deciding where to set my drink, when a blur of gray whooshes up and nearly slams into me.

It weaves at the last second, catching my arm and sending my delicious latte plummeting to the ground.

The cup opens up on impact. Coffee and almond milk splatter all over my sneakers and my cream thigh-high socks I bought from the boutique sock shop yesterday.

Dumbstruck, I stare at my legs—my special good luck, first day of my first job socks are now ruined .

The blur stops a little way past me, still close enough that I catch a whiff of a faint, sweet, smoky scent.

A mix of orange and clove. It’s a guy, his skateboard still under his foot.

The other that he used to stop looks like it’s rearing to go.

He’s in a Velvet Underground T-shirt with a dark suit jacket over it, pins on the lapels—one that says Feminist. His eyes, the color of dewy grass that has caught the summer sun, are staring intensely at me.

“You alright?” he asks. His hair is dark but shaved close to his head. It matches the stubble, making an outline of his square jaw.

I’m so startled by his eyes, his jaw, his smell: I shake my head, unable to speak.

“Wait right here.” He flips up his skateboard, picks up my cup off the sidewalk, and rushes into the coffee shop like it’s all one swift movement. The threads on his jeans are almost shredded into nothing, threatening to break with each maneuver.

My socks aren’t too bad. Nothing a Tide pen can’t fix, hopefully. As I unlock my bike, the smacking sound of the man's skateboard hitting the concrete startles me.

“Gotta go. I’m so late, but I really am sorry.”

He hands me a fresh cup then skates away, a dark blur once more.

I sip my coffee; it’s an almond milk latte just as I ordered before.

Just below the lid is a small heart drawn in black sharpie.

My lips curl up in a tiny smile. He was cute.

Maybe he drew it, or it’s entirely possible the barista drew it for him.

As I walk around the corner pushing my bike, a tricky feat with a now full cup of coffee, I wonder what he was late for.

Neighborhood Books opens at ten, and that’s when my shift starts.

Today is my first day of my first job—a summer position at the bookstore in Old Town.

Then I’ll head back to Montana and off to college in the fall.

My stomach drops into my all-white Adidas sneakers.

Why is it when I’m nervous about one thing, my brain decides to scroll through all the things that make my heart want to leap out of my chest and run down the street?

When I approach the door, the sign is turned to Closed and all the lights are off. I’m still eight minutes early. I don’t want to bother the opener while they’re busy, so I wait outside.

Eight minutes go by. The lights are still off. The sign still turned firmly to Closed. Five more minutes. Each second that ticks by increases the erratic thundering of my heart. Did I get the day wrong?

Kat strolls down the street, her holographic Birkenstocks glinting in the sunshine. She gathers a handful of her long dark hair and puts it in a messy top knot and then waves when she catches sight of me.

“Hey. You can go in; you don’t have to wait outside for me.” She joins me by the entrance, her glossy lips pursing as she takes in the sign and the dark store. She checks her phone and sighs. “I see.”

As she takes keys out of her Great Gatsby tote bag and unlocks the store, all the lights come on. She holds the door open for me, gesturing for me to go in first.

“Thanks.”

Once inside, I’m greeted with “The Reigning Champ of the Teething Crowd” by Say Hi, a song I’ve played on a loop since I discovered it in April. The familiar melody works to ease the tension in my chest. It’s not even new, and the fact that it’s playing now feels like a sign I’m in the right place.

A loud noise then the smack of someone’s sneakers on the hardwood floors echoes through the store.

Running from the back is the man who almost killed me with his skateboard.

Okay, killed is an exaggeration, but definitely the man who spilled my coffee, ruined my brand-new lucky first day socks, and possibly left a heart on my coffee cup.

“I’m here. We’re open!” he yells as he passes by me to the door—my hair blows away from my face in wisps from the wind of his momentum.

He flips the sign to Open, while Kat straightens some books on the table by the entryway. She doesn’t even look up as the Tasmanian ball of energy passes right by her.

“Sorry, Kat. The power went out, so my alarm didn’t go off.”

Now she looks at him, her dark-brown eyes shooting daggers. “The power went out? On D Street? ”

He runs a hand over his shaved head; I can practically feel the prickly hair on my palm.

“It didn’t go out so much as it got shut off. But I’m here now. Ready to work.”

“We’ll talk about it later at our meeting.”

His lips set in a tight line, and I notice his Adam’s apple bob with a large swallow.

“Come on over and meet Ed. Ed, this is our new employee, Hattie. You two should get along. You’re both writers. Can you show her the ropes today?”

Despite all my best efforts to be a professional, Ed’s lopsided smile melts my insides like butter on hot toast.

“Of course.”

Kat makes her way to her office in the back and says over her shoulder, “I’m going to be doing the books if you need me.”

Ed extends his hand to me, and I notice his knuckle tattoos spell out R-E-A-D. “Hattie. I was kicking myself for not asking your name earlier.”

I smile and take his hand in mine. It’s rough but warm. “Thanks for the fresh coffee.”

“I was running late. Otherwise I would’ve stayed to apologize.” His hand goes up to my hair and gives a strand a little tug, and my heart catches in my throat at his closeness. “I like the green.”

It absolutely wasn’t supposed to be green. My hair is a deep chestnut brown, and my eyes are blue. So, brown and blue are kind of my thing. I wanted a thick strand of turquoise in my hair to match my eyes, but it turned a weird, almost chartreuse color, and now it won’t wash out.

“Ah, thanks.” I push my hair behind my ear self-consciously.

“Come on. I'll show you how to count in.”

Ed shows me where I can put my stuff and how to count the till for the day. I want to ask him if he drew the little heart, but I don’t want to make things weird.

He asks, “So what do you write? ”

I shrug. “Oh, I just mess around. One day I’d like to write a mystery novel, something dark, like Gillian Flynn.”

He nods. “Cool.”

“What about you?”

“Literary fiction, I hope. I’m finishing up my first novel now, thinking about sending it to some people.”

Wow. I haven’t even finished a whole novel yet, and here this guy is, already trying to publish one. He can’t be that much older than me. “What’s it about?”

He pulls himself up to sit on the back counter.

“It’s about this guy who wakes up one morning.

He’s out of coffee and still half drunk.

He stubs his toe on his couch, and it really hurts, like the pain is so sharp the world stops for a nanosecond.

It throbs all day, but what can you do for a busted pinky toe?

Nothing, right? It starts a chain of events of minor inconveniences that leads to the apocalypse. ”

I laugh, more out of shock than the premise being all that funny. “Minor inconveniences?”

He smiles. “Yep. Turns out that’s all the apocalypse is.

It isn’t some great rapture. Instead, it’s just a buildup of annoyances, until everyone turns on each other.

A sweater that shrank in the wash just enough to make you question if it got smaller or you got bigger.

The store being out of the only cereal you like.

Your favorite sock getting a hole in the toe. ”

“Socks being ruined is something I know all about.” I resist the urge to cover my mouth. I can’t believe I actually said that.

“From the spilled coffee?”

My shoulders rise and fall sheepishly, still a little surprised by my boldness. He hops off the counter and squats. His face is inches from my leg, his head below my carefully chosen denim skirt. My heart is hammering in my chest so hard it must actually be visible.

“You can hardly see the spots.” He stands, his body close to mine. I catch the faint scent of oranges again.

A customer walks in, and he springs into action. “Welcome to the Neighborhood. Let me know if you need help finding anything. ”

Despite the fact that he’s across the room, the heat from Ed's breath lingers on my thigh, leaving me frozen in place as my pulse starts to return to a normal pace.