A/N: I'm a big fan of the Mediator series, and this idea wouldn't stop bugging me until I wrote it. This chapter is a little slow since it's the first one. Please read and review!

Disclaimer: I don't own the Mediator series or anything associated.

This Is Now, For Now

Chapter One

"Susannah."

Jesse's voice rang over my shoulder. I told myself I wouldn't turn around to see the expression on his face. I told myself that he wouldn't be gone for long. I told myself that it wouldn't be too hard to sit around in Carmel, California while he was off at medical school across the country.

Yeah, right.

"Please don't be mad, Susannah." I could feel his velvety tone working at my thick walls. "It won't be long. Just…"

"Eight years." My voice was cold, harsh, and unforgiving. Why was I speaking to my one true love like this? "Eight long, lonely years."

"It's my dream." He choked on these words. Only, if Jesse ever showed true emotion, he would have. It would have been harder to fall for him that way. "I need to go. You must know that I want to be with you more, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime."

I scowled. Those words couldn't be truthful. "Jesse… just stop. Go to college, become a doctor, hang out with college girls." My mouth tripped on those last words.

"Querida." His strong, tan arms encircled my waist from behind, cutting off whatever sarcastic jab coming next. "You know that you're the only one for me."

I tried to suppress the smile forming at the corners of my mouth by staring out into the setting sun off of the sparkling ocean in front of me. And succeeded. "But… what should I do? Finish up my senior year at high school, and then what? My grades or SATs won't nearly be as good enough as yours to get into Cornell, let alone a decent college. I'll be lucky enough to get into clown school."

I felt a breath of laughter reverberate from his chest behind me. "You're not that dumb, Susannah."

My scowl deepened. "Jesse, stop. Just go pack. Semester starts next week." I sucked up the tears welling in my eyes and twisted my face around to see his expression. It was sad, the saddest I've ever seen it. Maybe he really did care about leaving me. Or was that just my imagination running wild again?

Seeing my close-to-tears expression, he held me closer and whispered in my ear, his warm breath tickling my cheek, "Never, Susannah, will I ever stop loving you. That can't and won't change. I swear it on my life."

I smiled half-heartedly. "You didn't have a life to swear on a couple of months ago."

He returned it. "True. But knowing that I do now makes this all more important."

And he leaned down and kissed me. Nothing in the world was like Jesse de Silva's sweet kisses, and how much I would miss them in the next eight years to come. Surviving without Jesse was like saltwater without its salt, trees bearing no green, life but not living. It wasn't right, wasn't good, was too cruel.

But I savored the last few moments I had with him, making them last as he would pack up his luggage and head over to college in a mere twenty-four hours.

I had no doubt that he would still be my love.

But that was then. This is now.

I stood in front of the fireplace in my graduation gown, a deep red. Maroon, they called it. I didn't know who would have had the nerve to buy maroon graduation gowns – possibly Father Dominic – but they were putrid and ugly. Not the exact color you'd want to be seen in for years to come.

"Okay, Brad, you get in there, too," my mom chimed after clicking her camera a couple more times.

"Why?" he grumbled, crossing his huge gorilla-like arms over his chest. "Can we just leave already?"

"You wish," I mumbled under my breath as he came to stand beside me. It was one of the rare moments when my least favorite stepbrother and I shared a moment of bonding over – what else? – my mom's apparent disability to handle a digital camera. "Can't wait to make out with Kelly Prescott?"

Brad blushed as deep as his gown. I had hit his weak spot: his girlfriend of three months.

"Shut up," he muttered back harshly as the camera snapped a few more blinding shots. "At least I have a girlfriend."

My blood froze in my veins and terror seized my gut.

"What's up, Susie?" My mom knew me better than anyone else in the Ackerman household, especially when something was wrong. "Is the flash too harsh? Oh, honey, I could always turn it down, you know that's not a problem – "

"No, Mom. I'm fine." Although I was far from it for, oh, the past year or so. Especially today. Had the graduation invite even reached him? Did he bother to read it, or just throw it in the shredder like all the other junk mail I sent?

"Come on, let's just go," my stepfather, Andy, said, creaking down the stairs of our house in a tuxedo. He gave me and Brad a goofy smile before opening the door and urging my youngest stepbrother, David, out of it.

The rest of the night passed in such a blur, I wasn't even sure it had happened. All I remembered was sitting in a cold metal chair, gazing across the audience, hoping that I'd catch his curly black hair or liquid dark eyes. But he wasn't there. And, as much as I wanted to tell myself, I didn't believe he would be either.

A few ghosts were in the audience. Some clapping for theirs sons, daughters, brothers, or sisters, others not knowing how they got there. I tried to avert my gaze from them, trying not to attract the company of the supernatural world for just one night. Then Paul Slater, sitting next to me in alphabetical order, nudged my knee with his.

"Taking bets on which one will scream the loudest when their loved one is called?" he muttered, making me smile slightly. I often forgot that Paul could see the dead these days; he acted so normal in school. But, as it turned out, I was forgetting a lot of things.

"I say the old one in the purple dress on the right," I mumbled, jerking my head in the direction. Sure enough, a ghost of a grandmother, no doubt, looking so filled with emotion that she would simply burst from it.

Paul chuckled, adjusting the maroon cap on the top of his head. "We'll see."

It was that ghost. When one of my fellow classmates was called, she cheered and hollered and would have stamped her feet if she could. And as I heard my name called to get my diploma – "Susannah Simon" barely registering in my mind – I faintly heard my family's cheers.

For my mind was elsewhere.

I didn't really know what caused our falling out.

At first, after Jesse went away for college at the end of my junior year, we talked on the phone everyday. We talked to each other until the moonlight grew faint through my window. Talking about everything, anything that still proved we could stay together forever, despite the distance and time.

"Promise you'll be back soon?" I whispered into the phone one dreadfully tiring night, hoping I wouldn't wake up Spike, who was staying with me in temporary custody.

Jesse laughed lightly. "Yes, of course. Now, good night."

"Wait!" I cried.

"What, querida?"

"Spike says hi."

I could imagine the smile playing at the corner of his lips. "Oh, really?"

"Yes. He misses you a lot. But not more than me."

Jesse sighed again. "I miss you too. Look, I've got to go study. Good night, Susannah."

Most of our early conversations went like that. Me finding pointless topics to discuss, while Jesse ended them with excuses of homework. And then, suddenly, as soon as I would call, it would be homework, yet again, keeping him away from talking.

"Jesse!" I sighed at hearing his voice after one terrible day at school. Calculus was some kind of hell.

"Oh, Susannah." He sounded distant, hollow, as if something was keeping him from talking to me. " Can't exactly talk right now. Big exam tomorrow. Talk to you later, querida."

"But…" Before I could even finish my sentence, the phone went dead. He had hung up on me.

After a couple weeks of trying and getting hung up on, I didn't bother to call. Most times he just let it ring. I tried writing letters instead – hoping he would find the time, somehow, to answer those. When he didn't, I couldn't stop. Just last week I had sent another, only to not get a reply, like usual.

Dear Jesse,

I'm graduating this week. We have maroon gowns. Maroon. I know, it's pretty stupid. We look like huge tablecloths instead of eighteen year olds. But I guess it's something we can't help.

I can't believe it's only been a year since you've left. It seems like so much longer. Especially since you haven't cared to reply to any of these letters. I think I'm mostly writing them for myself these days. To numb the pain.

I still don't understand why you're so distant. But, you know, I can't let go. Only one true love for the rest of my life, remember? That's you, Jesse. You. In case you change your mind, you can always come to my graduation. It's this Friday at the Mission, staring at six.

Hope you can come.

Love, Susannah.

I'm not crazy, or anything. I know perfectly well he wants nothing to do with me for the rest of my life now. It still hurts. I stay up late at night crying about it. But I had maybe hoped this letter would be different. He'd respond, and his personality would come through his words, shining as bright as the stars outside.

But I'd given up almost all hope now.

I pulled open the door to the house, only feeling half crestfallen since my expectations hadn't been high to begin with. Behind me, I heard the engine of Jake's car starting.

"Suze!"

I whipped around, turning to face Jake and Brad sitting in the front seats of the Camaro. They still had on their tuxedos.

"Coming?" Jake asked, his arm hanging out of the window.

"Where?" I hollowly replied, twisting my graduation cap in my hands.

"Kelly's pool party!" Brad called. "Now hurry up, Jake's holding me up until I get an answer!"

Of course. Brad never did any unselfish act unless if it was for his personal gain.

"Umm… I guess not." How had I missed that invite? Where I had been?

"Are you sure?" As much as I hated to admit it, Jake had actually been concerned about me since Jesse went away. I had no idea why; maybe it had to do with the whole heart-grows-fond-with-time thing. But, needless to say, he was looking out for me.

"Yeah. It's a big change, graduation. I think I'll just hang out tonight." I gave them a reassuring smile and headed back inside. I heard tires squeal on asphalt and the crunching of gravel underneath. They were gone.

Once I reached my room, I collapsed on my bed and sobbed. Really, that's the only word to describe it. I was completely and utterly disappointed. He should have been there tonight. It was what he should have done.

But he wasn't. And it broke my heart into a million more pieces.

I stepped into a nice hot, long bath and soaked in the water for a while, letting all my sorrows flow out. Next fall, I'd be starting at the local university, the same place Jake went. So many changes had taken place in the last year; it was unbelievable. Last year, Jesse had become alive again and danced with me under the moonlight at the prom. If only he was here right now…

"Susie!" my mom called up the stairs. "Come on down here! Someone's here to see you!"

I stepped out of the tub, wrapping a towel around myself. To be honest? I didn't feel like seeing anyone in this state. This was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, yet it felt like the worst. Who would want to see me now?

Not caring that my hair was in a million sopping knots, only a purple bathrobe thrown around my body, I stepped down the stairs quickly, hoping I could just simply dismiss this visitor as easy as anyone else. My mom was standing at the bottom, her lips in a thin line.

"You might have wanted to make yourself at least a little more presentable," she whispered to me as I rounded the corner and came face to face with the person of my dreams, back from college to break my heart some more.

Jesse de Silva.