Chapter 20.
20.
Jury Excursion (n., phrase)
a controlled and supervised event where jurors are temporarily allowed to engage in an activity outside the usual sequestration setting
not a date
I t’s Saturday, which means no court. And in a surprising gesture, the bailiffs notify the jurors that we get a day out in the world. You would think we’d been awarded a basket full of puppies for our court-appointed service with how overjoyed we are at learning we get to go cosmic bowling, then to Outback Steakhouse for dinner.
I dress in one of the only casual outfits I packed that is not sweats: a burgundy cable-knit sweater that hits at the high waistline of my wide-legged jeans and white platform sneakers. I chalk my own enthusiasm up to the fact that for five days we have seen nothing but the inside of the courtroom, the shuttles, and the hotel. But I know more than a little of the excitement tugging at me is that I get to be out in the world with Damon.
We passed notes back and forth last night for nearly three hours until, finally, I drifted off with his sheets of paper splayed about the bedspread around me. He told me about a few of his tattoos and their meanings, one of which is a lightning bolt up the right side of his rib cage that he inked after losing a motocross race and corresponding bet. That the angel wings on his forearm are for Kara. He told me that reading the sugar-free gummy bear reviews online is an admittedly odd but favorite pastime of his.
THERE AREN’T MANY THINGS THAT MAKE ME LAUGH, he had written. THOSE DO.
He told me he plays video games, though was sure to add only occasionally , as if it were a first date and he didn’t want to scare me into imagining him glued 24/7 to a controller. He told me his favorite game is Arsonist Betty ,where the player is a vigilante hero chasing an elderly arsonist around L.A. I must admit, based on his description, it sounds like something I’d enjoy playing.
He told me he likes to cook. That it’s a bonding activity between him and his mom, to chop and dice, roast and sear, in comfortable silence together in his parents’ kitchen. That a lot of what his family does now are activities in comfortable silence. He told me one of his favorite meals to make is curried lamb chops with sweet potato hash, and my mouth practically watered as I read.
I learned a lot through what he shared in those additional notes. I now know he and his mom are close again. There was a twinge of jealousy in learning he managed to find his way back. I thought of my relationship with my father and how it never recovered. Then again, recovery implies returning to a place of health, and I don’t know that we—my father and me—ever had that.
I shared more than I typically do, too. I told him about my parents’ ugly divorce. That, despite what happened with our families, it still took six more months and at least two more affairs. About how they don’t speak and haven’t been in the same room together in nearly nine years. How I doubt they will be again. EVEN FOR YOUR WEDDING ONE DAY? Damon asked back in one of his notes, and I affirmed, Probably not . Though in reality, even as I wrote the words, I had a hard time picturing a wedding at all, knowing I’ve never come remotely close.
I told him about Mel and our friendship, how important she is to me. About our near-daily nighttime ritual of white cheddar Popchips on our Los Feliz couch and the reality show of choice. He told me he has friends, but none like what I describe with her. His world is small, like mine. It gave me a pang of appreciation for Mel.
He ended the conversation around midnight with I’LL LET YOU GET SOME SLEEP and the last sentences that made my stomach free-fall— IT’S NICE THAT WE CAN TALK ABOUT OUR FAMILIES AND NOT HAVE IT BE SO RAW. THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE.
In those notes, we tested the waters, stretching a little further each time into the delicate pool of our history and the people held within it. And, to my immense relief, neither of us drowned.
The bowling alley is cleared out for us, and as we exit the shuttles, escorted by guards to our private venue, it’s like we’re celebrities rather than prisoners, as it sometimes feels.
I find Damon at the shoe rental counter. “Thirteens, please,” he says to the attendant as I step beside him. He’s also dressed down today in dark jeans and a worn red High West Distillery tee. I see the Park City, Utah, location advertised on the shirt and wonder if he’s visited. I wonder a lot about him.
I take in the tattoos above his elbows, all an endless stream of Damon trivia. I regard the intricate compass pointed due north along his right upper arm, which he told me last night in one of his notes is a matching tattoo with his dad, who is a fisherman and believes it to be a sign of good fortune. I’ve always held a soft spot for Mr. Bradburn.
Damon’s body is a map of his life and the people in it, a legend notating the important people and things and moments. Passion in this particular form, and on him, is undeniably sexy. It’s a new feeling to explore—outright sexual attraction to Damon Bradburn. I was attracted to him back then, sure. But it was more of an appreciation for him and exploration of what he meant to me, versus the escalating itch of craving I now find myself having to push down.
He takes his shoes and turns around, leaning against the counter. It’s a bit odd to see him now in person after a night of note passing. The list of material secrets between us keeps growing.
“You confident enough to take me on?” he asks.
“Definitely.”
He raises a chestnut eyebrow. “Great.”
Damon waits while I get my shoes and follows me to the bay of my choosing.
We end up sharing a lane with Cam and Tamra. The scoreboard reads: TAM , CAM , DAM , and SYD .
“When’s the last time you went bowling?” Damon asks as we wait for Tam and Cam to take their respective first turns. He sits beside me on the hard bench with the color and shine of cherry nail polish.
“I don’t know that I ever have,” I say, the realization hitting me. Another one of those things most people did for the first time in childhood that I somehow missed.
“Seriously?”
“You know how my parents were. We never did stuff like this.” I tuck my knee under my chin, watching his throat as he swallows.
He stretches his arm along the back of the bench, grazing my hair as it rests. I get a flash of the day he got his driver’s license, honking outside my house in his dad’s silver Tacoma truck. I was his first passenger. He stretched his right arm behind my seat as he backed out of my driveway, forearm pressing against my loose hair. My stomach fell through a trapdoor at the excitement of it all that day, at the notion that Damon and I could go places freely. Anywhere. Everywhere.
He doesn’t immediately speak, but his eyes offer an I’m sorry in their squint and quick release. Eventually, he says, “I guess part of me hoped they’d change after everything.”
I shake my head. “It meant I could go get into serious trouble without anyone caring, though. Sex. Drugs. Robbing banks. I did it all after your family left.”
He huffs. “You didn’t do any of those things.”
“No. I read. Watched TV. Got good grades. Tried to be invisible but worthy of their attention at the same time.”
His eyes flash with something like guilt. A week ago, I would have gladly welcomed guilt from him. Now, I don’t want him to carry any of it.
“Thus your love of reality TV and Margot Kitsch was born,” he says.
I’m dying to know what he thinks of Margot, of the case. I’ve been wondering since that first day. But I can’t ask him outright.
“What about you? When’s the last time you went bowling?”
“With my parents and Kara. After everything happened, they leaned into being the quality time types.”
“Oh?” My chest burns. I think about how his family dynamic changed. How mine didn’t. “What was that like?”
He considers for a moment. “It was okay. I think it was mostly for Kara, I guess, to have us all spending time together. I found it incredibly performative. Though we could definitely get a bit competitive. Don’t ever play Monopoly with us.”
“Deal.” I evaluate Damon, reality surging through me. I cannot imagine being particularly welcome at any Bradburn family game night.
I used to wonder if his parents stayed together all these years. My assumption was always that they would, that they would make it. Something inside me is pleased with the notion that they did. And this casual conversation about our families, well, a big part of me is astonished by it. Does this mean we’ve both gotten over it all? Or does it simply mean we’re ignoring it? Either way, I’m at least momentarily content.
“Damon, you’re up, man.” Cam points to the scoreboard, where Cam and Tamra are tied with eight points each.
I slide forward on the bench as Damon approaches the line with his ball. He bends, swoops the ball forward, and earns a strike. He strides back to me and takes the seat by my side, his arm returning to the back of the bench. I think of him in middle and high school, how I’d watch him play lacrosse. How he moved with such ease, innately athletic and staunchly capable.
“It’s really annoying how naturally good you are at everything.”
He turns to face me, though he doesn’t affirm or deny.
“Name one thing you’re bad at?” I press.
“Why?”
“Because I have to know something you suck at. It will make me feel better about you.”
He wrinkles his brow, seemingly at my choice of words. After a long pause, he says, “I suck at relationships.”
I work hard to avoid my expression giving anything away, neither intrigue nor disappointment. I can’t help but think it’s a warning. Or at minimum, a thing guys say to keep expectations low.
“Same,” I offer back.
“Sydney, c’mon! You’re holding us up,” Cam says from the bench across from us.
I grab my ten-pound ball with the purple swirl and line myself up, throwing it halfway down the lane, hitting three pins. I don’t particularly care about the game or my score. I do wonder what Margot is doing today. I try to picture her bowling in the lane beside us, and the vision is comical.
I throw the second ball of my turn, this time hitting four of the remaining pins. When I return, Damon grabs a napkin from the stack on the built-in side table and fiddles with it.
The cosmic lights swirl around us, and it suddenly feels like we’re at a nightclub. He’s silently tinkering with the napkin, and I take the opportunity to ask, “What did you mean when you said you’re bad at relationships?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“General curiosity about my courtroom seatmate,” I say, answering the question that eyebrow is asking.
He leans back and folds his arms across his chest. His jaw muscle flexes. “Why are you?”
I shake my head. “No. You can’t answer a question with a question.”
“So many rules,” he teases.
I knock his knee with mine.
“I’m not good at it,” he says finally, eyes still concentrating on the napkin.
“Not good at what?”
He straightens. “Dating. Relationships. Any of it.”
“Why?” I’m not egocentric enough to assume it’s because of me or what happened to us, but I do wonder if it’s made him gun-shy, as it has me. It has to have influenced him, changed him. Made him a little less trusting, or at least far less optimistic.
His head swivels to face me, and I force myself to hold his gaze. Love is a topic we’ve managed to elude up until this point.
“I had a girlfriend in college. Things didn’t work out. I haven’t really put myself out there since.”
“You haven’t dated anyone since college?” I try and fail to contain my surprise. He’s easily definable as desirable—a Billy on the Street poll would undoubtedly result in a staggering number of affirmations of this. I’ve watched eyes linger on him in the gallery of the courtroom. He certainly could date.
He shakes his head. “A date here and there, but nothing substantial. I guess... it’s just easier this way.”
“Easier than what?”
“You don’t let anything go, do you?” His right eyebrow twitches.
“It’s called a conversation.”
He huffs. “Yeah, okay.”
“So?” I press, leading him back to my question.
“Easier than being disappointed. Easier than disappointing .”
I don’t think he means to, but his words make me unsure of what to say next. He’s right, I think. I don’t particularly excel at being present with other people, either. He, like me, keeps people at arm’s length, his interactions prescribed and controlled.
“What about you?” he asks.
My cheeks flush. I don’t particularly want to tell him I’ve never had a serious relationship. That instead, I avoid dating situations altogether until I grow so lonely I open my Dater Baiter app and accept the first date I find and hook up just to feel the weight of a man on top of me.
“I don’t really date. Haven’t dated.”
“At all?”
I shake my head. “Not really, no.”
“Why? I can’t imagine it’s from a lack of interest from potential suitors.”
I raise an eyebrow. “ ‘Potential suitors’?”
“I was going to say ‘opposite sex,’ but I didn’t want to presume.”
“There is no abundance of potential male suitors,” I say. “Thus my qualification as bad with relationships, too.”
“We sound like the perfect pair.” He rises to take his next turn. But before he makes his way over to the lane, he turns and hands me the napkin he’s been fidgeting with. It’s neatly folded into the shape of an origami owl.
He rolls an easy strike and returns to the bench.
“First a crane and now an owl?” I ask.
He takes it gently from my hand, twirls it between his fingers in front of us. There’s something rousing about his sizable hand delicately pirouetting the fine paper. “Before Kara died, she took this origami class at the library and got really into it. For her eighth birthday, my parents got her this book of hundreds of different animals and flowers and things.” His eyes flicker a shade lighter when he talks about Kara. He looks down at the ground and smirks. “She got pretty good at it. The owl was her favorite. I think mostly because it was one of the first she mastered, but also, I think she appreciated the meaning of it. Wisdom. Good luck.”
He slowly lifts my arm at the wrist, curls his fingers around mine, guiding them backward, and opens my loose fist, dropping the owl softly into my palm.