Keep This Promise

by Willow Winters

  She’s a good girl, but she needs this. The sweets will knock her out and give her the rest she so desperately needs. I would know.

  “You’re a bad liar,” she says, and the irony doesn’t escape me.

  “I’ll put a few drops in your tea,” I tell her as I walk past her, brushing my arm against hers and feeling that familiar combination of heat and want seep into my blood. Her quick intake of air is all I need to keep moving forward, walking to her kitchen before I hear her take even a single step.

  I go right to where I know she keeps her mugs and tea as I hear her walking toward the kitchen.

  “I don’t drink tea at night,” she tells me, and I know she’s lying again. Glancing at the box in my hands, I show her the label then pull out what I know is her favorite mug. She picked it up at a used bookstore last year. If she’s not working or home, she’s always at that bookstore.

  “Decaffeinated tea then?” She only crosses her arms aggressively again and leans against the small table in the kitchen. “I’m getting tired of you lying to me tonight,” I add with my back to her as I fill the mug with water and put it into the microwave.

  When I turn to her, the hum of the microwave filling the room along with the tension between us, she meets my gaze with a hardened expression.

  “How many years will go by this time? You know, before you barge into my life, then pretend I don’t exist the next day?” She sounds bitter, but I know it’s fake.

  I cluck my tongue, keeping my eyes on her face instead of her chest. But with her arms crossed like that, she’s not helping me. “Would you really want me to make this a habit?” I ask her, not realizing how much I actually care what her answer is until silence is all I’m given.

  I already know the answer; I shouldn’t have asked the question.

  “What do you want from me, Sebastian? It wasn’t to ask if I’d heard about some asshole getting mugged.”

  “It was.” I wouldn’t have come to see her if I didn’t think I really had to be here. I don’t like what she does to me. How she takes over every sense of reason and consumes my thoughts long after we’ve parted ways.

  “The cops are going to question you about his death. I need you to tell them you don’t want to talk about it. Because otherwise, you’ll look guilty.” The microwave goes off and I go back to making her tea when she starts to answer me.

  “I didn’t do it. I--”

  “I know you didn’t. But you look like you’re lying when anyone brings up anything that has to do with your mother. Which is why it could be pinned on you.”

  With the bag of tea steeping, I stiffen at my own words. A sick feeling stirs in the pit of my stomach. I know what it’s like when someone brings up shit you don’t want to hear. How all of a sudden, you feel a coldness and pain all over like it’s taken over everything inside of you.

  I reach for the sugar on the counter and stir some into her tea. She doesn’t object or ask how I knew she would want it. The spoon clinks gently against the ceramic and Chloe still hasn’t responded, but when I turn to her, her eyes are glossy with unshed tears. I feel like a prick.

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with that,” she says, although she barely gets out the words.

  “That’s not what the police think. Two bodies were found right after they caught the guy who killed your mom. You don’t need to watch the news to know what the cops are thinking.”

  She starts to object, but I stop her and say, “Just tell me you won’t talk to them.” Grabbing the vial, I put three drops in her tea, making sure she’s watching me, then set it next to the sugar.

  “What could I possibly tell them?” Her tone is as tired as she looks, and she doesn’t hide the pain that lingers beneath her words. “I don’t know anything.”

  “They’re looking for someone to blame. I don’t want you to give them a reason to think that someone could be you.” I know they tossed her name around as a possible suspect. She has motive, and emotions are raw for her. They want the case closed, and she’s an easy target.

  My throat feels tight although the words come out steady as I tell her, “If they come around, I need you to tell them you don’t know anything, and you don’t want to talk to them. That’s it.”

  I hand her the mug I’ve prepared for her, my palm hot as I rotate it so she can grab it by the handle. “It doesn’t matter how they’ll push you for more or what they say. They want you to talk, and you’re not going to. All you’re going to tell them is that you don’t know anything, and you don’t have anything to say, right?” I ask her, and she nods obediently and with an understanding that supplants the sadness. The cops here are crooked and covering for whoever lines their pockets. Anyone can take the fall, and they’d be perfectly all right with that.

  She takes the mug with both hands, letting her fingers brush against mine. The small bit of contact sends electric waves up my arms and shoulders, igniting every nerve ending and putting me on edge. So much so, that my body begs me to either step away or grab her wrist. But I do what I’ve always done. I resist. I let myself feel the discomfort of not having her but being so close that I could easily have her if I just gave in.

  She’s closer now, taking a half step toward me, her head at my chest and her gaze on the floor as she blows across the top of the hot cup of tea.

  “I understand,” she tells me, her lips close to the edge of the mug, but she doesn’t drink it yet.

  I reach over, one hand on either side of her head, and brush back her hair. She stares up at me with a longing I remember so well. A longing I’ve dreamed of for so many nights. The air is pulled from my lungs as I stare into her eyes. “Drink your tea and go to bed, Chloe.” My words are rough, and it’s hard to swallow. The moment her baby blues close with her nod, I get the fuck out of there before I do anything stupid. Anything that would put her in even more danger.

  Chloe

  I’ll never forget her screams.

  The second I hear the front door open as Sebastian leaves, it’s all I can think about.

  As I set down my tea on the kitchen table, not even Sebastian’s lingering heat and scent can provide an adequate distraction. No, the moment he brought up my mother, I knew the memories would come back and they wouldn’t leave.

  Sebastian never stays for long. Never. No matter how much I wish he would.

  Closing my eyes and gripping the edge of the chair, I take in a deep breath. I know I need to lock the door, but I’m desperately trying to calm and steady myself.

  At war with the memories of that night my mother died are the thoughts of Sebastian having been in my house just now.

  He was here for business. But whatever the reason, he doesn’t want me to say anything, and so I won’t. I don’t have anything to say to the cops regardless, but I am emotional, and I could see myself spewing all sorts of hate for the dead man whose murder could easily be pinned on me.

  Whatever Sebastian is involved with, and whatever his intention is behind telling me to keep my mouth shut, I’m grateful for it.

  This addition to my tea, however, I don’t know what to think about that. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t believe him when he said it’s something I could get at the drugstore. I may be attracted to him for some unknown reason, but I’m not fucking stupid. The thought resonates with me as I turn the locks on the front door.

  It was the nightmares that led him to me the first time. Or my reaction to the nightmares really. The constant crying.

  It was five years ago when I was in ninth grade and he was in tenth. I turn around as a chill flows up my arm, traveling to the back of my neck and causing every hair in its path to stand on end. I’d sag against the hard door if my body wasn’t frozen at the memories.

  Her scream. Screams. The shrill sound still wakes me up at night, tears streaming down my face as I try to keep my heart from leaping out of my chest.

  When it happened, I was cross-legged on the floor of our townhouse one block down from where I am now, and my
friend Andrea was on the sofa.

  Justice Street. Ironic isn’t the right word for the name of the street I grew up on. It’s pathetic and riddled with agony that the word is allowed to exist in this city. I know now that she was nearly two blocks away, in the alley right across from both the park and the bars she had frequented.

  The fact her screams carried that far, is evidence enough of how desperate she was for someone to help her.

  The first scream came at 11:14 p.m. I remember how the red lines of the digital display shone brightly on the microwave’s clock.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Andrea asked me with wide, disbelieving eyes as she slapped the phone from my hand. It fucking hurt. The memory brings the sting back, making my left hand move on top of my right. Absently I rub soothing circles over it, staring straight ahead although I don’t see the hall to my uncle’s home. Technically, it’s mine now, but I don’t want to feel any sense of ownership for a damn thing in this city.

  She coughed on the hit she took from her blunt and I remember the sound so clearly.

  All I see is Andrea’s angry expression, but fear was also evident as she locked her eyes with mine. My heart beat faster back then, knowing I needed to call someone to help whoever it was that was screaming. But now it beats slow at the memory as if my body wishes I could stop time. As if it’s doing everything it can to try to make that happen, to go back.

  I heard another faint cry for help and Andrea followed my gaze to the open window. The smoke billowed toward it. I sat there numbly as she quickly ran to the window and closed it.

  “We have to call--” I tried to plead with her, knowing deep in the marrow of my bones that whoever was screaming was in agonizing pain.

  “No, we don’t,” Andrea pushed back, waving the smoke from her face. “The cops can’t come here,” she argued with me. “Someone else will call… if whoever that was even needs help,” she told me, but both of our eyes strayed back to the window at the muffled sound of another shrill scream.

  I didn’t move to my phone.

  Instead, I took a shower. Of all the things I could have done, I stepped into a stream of hot water, listening to the white noise of the shower, praying for the water to wash the feelings away. The guilt, the disgust, all of it.

  But that’s not something water can do.

  When I stepped out of the shower, I swear I heard it again, but it sounded exactly the same. Andrea said I was crazy and that it was all in my head. That it was only the one time anyone had screamed at all, which she corrected to two when I stared back at her.

  The last faint cry I heard was well after midnight. Andrea convinced me it was just a couple fighting; the Ruhills were good for that on the weekends as they were both angry drunks who spent their paychecks at the bar, but now I know that’s not true.

  Over an hour had passed. And no one went to help her. Not me, not a single person in this city.

  It was nearly 9 a.m. when the police banged on the door and I answered. I thought my mother had lost her keys and locked herself out. It wouldn’t have been the first time. When I opened the door, it still hadn’t dawned on me that the screams had belonged to her.

  She was the one I didn’t help save.

  No one did.

  Not a single person for blocks around helped her.

  Andrea wasn’t the only one to close the window and tell the cops that’s all they’d done. Screams in this place are a constant. Cries for help come often. And everyone assumed someone else would call the cops or offer street justice. But it didn’t happen that way.

  That fucker, Barry, the one who turned up dead in the news today, I’ll never forget how he laughed at the bar as he bragged to anyone who would listen about how he’d turned up his television because she wouldn’t stop screaming. He’d shut the window and turned up the volume until he couldn’t hear her cries anymore. He’d heard her, he’d known she was begging for help, and yet he did nothing and dared to be arrogant about it.

  It was easier to hate him than it was to hate myself for knowing I could have helped her. I could have tried to help her. I could have done something, anything—rather than listen to Andrea.

  I never spoke to her again. Not that she cared much. With my mother gone, there’d be no one to fill my medicine cabinet with what Andrea referred to as the good shit.

  The terrors that came with my mother’s death are justified. I deserve so much worse. I would do anything to go back. Anything.

  My numb body finally moves to prevent what’s coming next. The memories of who my mother truly was, an abusive alcoholic who never wanted me. They’re joined by the fears I had back when I was a kid, that she was coming to punish me. That I deserved so badly to be punished.

  “She’s long gone,” I whisper as two kids yelling up the street remind me that I’m here, in my uncle’s house, only a block away from my childhood home. And even farther away from where my mother was raped and murdered. More importantly, it’s years later.

  As my tired eyes yearn for sleep, I walk slowly down the hall back to the kitchen. The chill of the memories follows me. It took all this time to find her killer, a fifty-year-old man who’d once been a high school teacher. They found him dead in his house three cities over. They only know it was him because he was being prosecuted for the rape of some other young woman and the DNA matched. He killed himself rather than being taken in last Saturday.

  That wasn’t even a week ago, and then Amber Talbott died a few days later. She saw and heard everything, yet she did nothing but record part of the attack and send it to her friend. It wasn’t enough to solve my mother’s murder.

  Shot from behind, it only captured the back of the man who’d done it as he viciously punched my mother, shoving her deeper into the alley. Amber had claimed she sent it to her friend because she was scared, but the texts between them implied otherwise. I know the video; I can see it clearly now. It’s only half a minute long and was taken from Amber’s window across the street.

  My mother saw her in those final moments, or at the very least she saw the phone. Up until the moment I saw the video, I thought the worst thing you could see before being murdered would have to be your killer’s eyes. But that’s wrong. It has to be. Because how horrible would it be if the last thing you ever saw was someone hearing your cries, knowing you were in pain, but choosing to do nothing? Or simply walking away, shutting their window, or worse, filming it for their own amusement.

  Amber said she thought the guy had just mugged my mother and then moved along. She told me to my face that she was sorry, and she wished she could have done something else. I didn’t believe her.

  She could have done something if she’d really wanted to. She was older than me. She was closer, too. She could have sent that video to the cops. Five years later, just days ago, someone mugged her and left her for dead in an alley next to the hair salon where she worked.

  No one did anything to help her, either.

  And now Barry’s dead. Two people who I hated so much for so long, both killed within days of each other and after my mother’s killer was found dead.

  Barry was an old man who couldn’t be bothered unless you wanted to talk about the winning lottery numbers or placing bets. Horses and the tracks were his favorite. I used to like him because he’d show me pictures of the races. But when I heard how cavalier he was when it came to my mother’s murder, I couldn’t stand the sound of his name, let alone the sight of his face.

  I’m glad he’s dead. And if I’m being honest, I’m glad Amber’s dead too, but it doesn’t change the root of my pain.

  Nothing can change the past. Nothing can take away the guilt.

  I feel empty and hollowed out as I walk back to the kitchen table. The chills refuse to leave me.

  Just as the nightmares don’t. But I had those even before my mother died. They were my constant companion, just like the bruises back then.

  The night terrors got worse after she was gone, but the bruises eventually faded.
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  Staring at the cup of tea, I reflect on Sebastian. I remember how being around him, being kissed by him, took so much of the pain away. Even just thinking about him helped.

  But I’ll never be okay. It’s only a pipe dream. Sebastian may pull me away, pull me closer to him and into his world, but it’s only temporary. He’s proven that too many times for me to put much faith in him at all.

  I grab the cup and dump it in the sink, watching as the dark liquid swirls down the drain.

  I don’t want to sleep. My mother waits for me there.

  Sebastian

  I can still feel her fingers against mine. Her touch hasn’t left me since last night. My mind wanders to what she would have said if I’d told her I wanted to stay.

  The rumble from the engine turns to white noise as I think about all the ways I could take the pain away from her. I imagine lying in bed beside her and taking her how I’ve dreamed of for as long as I can remember. My grip tightens on the steering wheel and the breeze from the rolled-down window pauses as I slow to a stop at a red light.

  The radio station being changed to something else grabs my attention and I have to clear my throat and adjust in my seat to play off what was going through my mind. Carter changes the station again, but he’s not going to find what he needs by picking a different song. There’s nothing in this world that’s going to help take his mind off of the pain.

  “You staying with me tonight?” I ask him. His dad kicked him out of the house again. Not that the kid did a damn thing wrong. He’s sixteen and involved with the wrong crowd, namely me, but he never does anything wrong. Not since his mom got sick last year.

  He flicks the radio off, choosing silence over the commercial on the last station.

  “I don’t know,” he tells me solemnly and then falls back against the passenger seat, staring listlessly out the window. Chewing on his thumbnail, he avoids looking back at me.