Page 4 of Courtroom Drama
Jury (n.)
body of people (typically twelve in number) sworn to give a verdict in a legal case on the basis of evidence submitted to them in court
allies or adversaries, TBD
“Damon,” I say flatly.
I stare, with no attempt at hiding it, still working to take in this new version of him. He’s as different as he is the same. His masculine, outdoorsy smell reminds me of Sagawa Horse Camp. He used to smell of lemongrass soap and that tobacco-y deodorant he’d started wearing at twelve. Still tall and broad, but far more expansive now. More muscular. His arms are veinier, hairier. I almost laugh at this observation, unsure what else to do with it. His shirtsleeves are rolled to just under the elbow, and I eye the length of tattoos on both forearms, wondering if they go all the way up to his shoulders, down his torso. He didn’t have a single one the last time I saw him. For the briefest of moments, I mourn the loss of his bare teenage skin.
My eyes dart around the hallway, suddenly very aware that my first interaction with Damon Bradburn in ten years has an audience. Luckily, no one is paying much attention. On the surface, we must look like two jurors making indistinct introductions.
If they only knew.
I wanted to be on this trial for a reprieve from my years of grinding at work and to feed the gnawing, mounting desire for something different. But this is not what I signed up for. It occurs to me that I never saw him during jury selection. I probably came across most of the other final jurors at some point during the process, but he must have been chosen from a separate pool, or perhaps he was a last-minute addition. There’s a slew of possibilities for why I haven’t seen him before, though none particularly matter now.
The instructions explicitly stated not to speak to anyone. I was fully prepared to do that, assuming, as one would, that everyone I came across as part of this trial would be a stranger.
I cannot get kicked off this case. Not before being feet away fromtheMargot Kitsch in this uber-prominent trial. Not before I help save her from what feels like a witch hunt in the press. And certainly not because of Damon Bradburn.
“Hi,” he says, his voice gruffer but possessing the same hypnotic, echoey quality I used to find soothing. Maybe I imagine it, but I can almost hear a sadness or perhaps reminiscence in his tone. His voice—his whole presence, even—is somehow less full than before. Like a pumpkin scooped hollow. It’s quite remarkable how much I hear, real or imagined, in that one word. Resentfully, I hear the good parts of my early teen years. I hear laughter. I hear warmth. But I also hear the change in him. The formality of his goodbye.
A juror squeezes by him, and he moves closer, his arm grazing mine. I recoil at his touch.
“The rules specifically state not to speak to anyone. For all I know, you could be an undercover reporter or a brute hired to intimidate the jury,” I say. I tuck my hair behind my ear, which is hot to the touch, likely crimson. I hope he doesn’t notice. I don’t want him to know the reaction he’s causing in me.
Indifference.
I must display indifference.
He gives me an indiscernible look. His bright blue-green eyes appear more green than blue, contrasting against his blue shirt. Like a mood ring, they always did seem to adapt to his temperament.
His dark brown hair is neatly coiffed—a clean-cut fade—and hehas a dimple at the base of his chin that looks like a little black hole that could lead anywhere, including another dimension. It seems even more profound than it did back then.
He’s wearing a dress shirt—navy blue with thin white (or perhaps light blue) vertical stripes—and dark jeans. I can see the outline of his biceps, snug inside the sleeves. He’s long and wide and could most certainly serve as a brute. A well-dressed, well-groomed, particularly handsome brute, but still—potential brute.
He scrunches his eyes, and I answer his unspoken question. “I haven’t seen you in ten years. I don’t know what you’ve gotten into since then. You could very well have taken up a life of crime.”
I look down at his exposed forearms to see if any of his tattoos might be used to back up my theory. Perhaps there’s a severed head or body bag tat. My eyes catch on a pair of angel wings on his right forearm and then an intricate owl extending up the other, its head disappearing under his rolled sleeve.
His eyebrows twitch together briefly, the remainder of his face unchanged. “Do people actually say ‘brute’?”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
“What if I was one? A hired brute, that is,” he returns, narrowing his eyes at me.
I sigh at the absurdity ofthisbeing my first line of discussion with Damon Bradburn in ten years, yes, but also at the overwhelm of how many varied possibilities there are for how his life has turned out.
He continues, “What if, after everything that happened when we were kids, I turned to a life of brute-dom to avoid my pain?”
I lean more firmly into the hallway wall, shoved into it by the cavalier way he mentions our past. Damon is a reminder of both the best and worst times of my life—a reminder I don’t want or need.
“Relax. I’m a juror. Same as you,” he says at my continued silence. He clenches his jaw, and somehow, the movement expands the dimple in his chin. Then he hangs his head, shakes it gently. “Sydney Parks,” he muses, as if he still can’t believe it.
Neither can I,I think as I stare at his profile.
I glance down at myself, wondering what reconciliations he mightbe making about this new version ofme. I’m about fifteen pounds heavier than in high school, all of which went to my hips. The scar he knew me to have along the upper right corner of my forehead from being thrown from one of the horses at Sagawa has evolved into a slight circular indent the diameter of a pencil eraser. I’m certain he’s never seen me in a blazer. I don’t typically wear much makeup but wore none back then, and today in particular I added what I consider a full face—foundation, mascara, a swipe of coral-colored lip gloss that gives the impression of an even deeper bronze to my already tanned skin. Overall, I’m far more put together than when he knew me. I wonder what he makes of these details, if he’s noticed them, then curse myself for even slightly caring what he might think of me.
After all the times I’ve fantasized about running into him again—an actual run-in on the street or a glance over in a restaurant to see him seated at a table beside me where I could lay into him about how shitty he was—I never pictured it being with a group of strangers under the jury equivalent of a gag order, where I can’t immediately say any of the things I’ve wanted to over the years.
