A Broken Promise

by Meg Brenner

  “Then don’t,” I answered. My voice was just barely a whisper. I wanted to tell him that I was pregnant. I wanted to scream it at the top of my lungs. Yet, watching him sit defenseless in that chair made me quiver. How was this ever going to work between us?

  “But, yes, I still love you,” he finally blurted out. My heart beat faster, but I couldn’t give in. I had been giving in to him since January. Graduation was right around the corner. I had spent my last semester as a senior trying to figure him out. Now, if he wanted me, he had to come after me.

  “Then you’ll be missing me too,” I said before closing his bedroom door behind me. Pretty much running to the door, I heard my name called from the kitchen. Indigo was pulling out a tray of cookies when our eyes met.

  “Hey, Jenna,” Indigo said happily. She took off her ovenmits and gave me a hug. “I’ve heard that you’ve been feeling sick. Are you okay?” She asked, placing her hand on my forehead. Little did anyone know I was only having morning sickness. Yet, I allowed her to check my temperature with the back of her hand.

  “I’m feeling much better,” I smiled. “Thank you.”

  She gave my hand a squeeze. “Did you try to talk some sense into Keiffer?” She laughed as she placed the cookies on a decorative plate. “We just started his medication a week ago. He’s having some side effects, but I’m sure he’ll start feeling better soon.”

  I shrugged my shoulders as I sat down in one of the dining room chairs. “I just don’t know what to do anymore. Indigo, Keiffer became my best friend…” I shuttered to think about my obsession that I had with him.

  “I know,” she admitted. “He talks about you every day.”

  “He does?” I asked.

  She nodded her head. “Have faith in him, sweetie. He’ll come around.” Switching subjects, she turned to look at me. Studying my appearance, or lack of one, she suddenly became serious. “Isn’t prom this weekend?”

  “Yes,” I said drearily. “It is.”

  “Why say it like that?” She laughed. “Isn’t senior prom supposed to be exciting? When I was a senior, and still with Keiffer’s dad, we planned it out almost as much as we planned our wedding!” She exclaimed. “Besides, whether you go with your boyfriend, or Keiffer, it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re surrounded by people you love then it doesn’t matter who you go with.”

  “Well, considering the fact that I don’t even have a dress, I may not even go,” I chimed in. I hated being so negative, but lately things had not been going the way that she should.

  Indigo looked up at me slyly. I tried to read her face, but she was grinning so nervously at me that I adjusted my matted hair slightly. “What if I said that I had a dress you could wear?”

  “Indigo!” I laughed. That was the last thing I had expected.

  “No, for real. I got the dress for my senior prom and couldn’t go…”She held onto my hands, a big smile on her face. I noticed that she had that same dimple like what Keiffer had. Keiffer…just the thought of him made my stomach jump. His smile flashed through my mind and I longed to just see him again.

  “Why didn’t you go?” I asked as she led me up the stairs to her bedroom. “I thought you went with your husband.”

  She shook her head. “No, we were planning on going. And then…well, then I had Marigold and ended up missing it.”

  “You were pregnant?” I exclaimed as I sat down on the chair that she had cleared off for me. After spending time with Indigo, I always found out about how much in common. She never judged me unlike my own parents. Indigo was nice, sweet, caring, and she made the perfect mother. I longed to have a mother like her. I longed to have a mother in general.

  “Nine months exactly that night,” she called from her closet. “I only wore this dress once,” she said as she stepped into the room again. She had the dress in a nice bag that had a hanger sticking out at the top. She handed it to me as though she were handing me a baby.

  “This was my wedding dress,” she smiled. “When we realized that I was pregnant, it was much too late to wear this,” she laughed. “I was too big by the time prom came around so we decided to use it as my wedding dress. It’s white…but it’s not a poofy wedding dress.”

  “Thanks,” I responded numbly. She nodded pleasantly as she looked down at me. “No, I really mean it, Indigo. You’re so nice to me. You don’t have a reason to be –“

  “Do I need a reason?” She sat down on her bed. Our knees touched slightly as she grabbed my hands again. “Jenna, I don’t think that you’ve been treated like a real person in your household. Your parents love you, but there’s so much going on behind your eyes. I can see it. And how they can’t, I just don’t understand. And, honestly, I know some of that came from Keiffer.”

  I adjusted myself slightly at the sound on his name. His name always triggered something within me. I loved it. I loved hearing his name because it made me think about all the wonderful times that we had. Yes, we argued, but there was no doubt about our feelings. Soul mates? Yes.

  “And I know he hurt you.” She pushed my hair from in front of my face. “He hurts me too,” she said as her voiced cracked. “But that doesn’t change my feelings for him. I know his heart, Jenna.”

  “What if I knew something about him that he didn’t want me to tell anyone?” I asked quietly. I needed to tell her about his suicide promise. That was the one thing that was dragging him down. If he could just get over it then he would be better. I just knew it.

  “Then don’t tell me,” she breathed out, releasing my hands. “He told you it in confidence. That means something. He trusted you enough to let you in. And sometimes, he doesn’t even let me in. All I can ask from you is to just love him. Unconditionally.”

  “I already do,” I answered. “I’ve never stopped loving him.” Telling Indigo that wasn’t awkward at all. It was like she already knew how I was feeling. I never told her that he and I used to date, but she just knew it. She just knew that I loved him.

  The next day came around and I hardly wanted to move. I knew it was morning sickness, so I tried to sleep through it. Luckily, it worked and I didn’t get up until well past eleven. Dad was already up by the time I made my way down the stairs. Pouring myself a bowl of cereal, I decided to switch out the milk for orange juice. Something about orange juice and cereal just sounded good.

  “What are you doing?” Dad asked as he stepped into the kitchen. He watched me pour the orange juice into the cereal.

  “Good morning to you too,” I answered, placing the jug back into the refrigerator.

  “You know you just poured orange juice on your cereal, right?” He asked, still struck by how weird that was. I laughed at his stupidity. Little did he know I still had nine more months of these weird food cravings and combinations.

  “Yes, dad.” I took a bite of the cereal. Not too bad if you asked me.

  “Brad called about thirteen times,” he handed me the house phone. “Call him back before I kill him,” he laughed…though I knew he was serious. I dialed Brad’s number and waited patiently for him to pick up.

  “Hello?” Brad’s voice rang through the phone. I hadn’t spoken to him in a week so it felt weird to hear his voice. It surprised me that I had spoken, and seen, Keiffer more than I had seen my own boyfriend.

  “Hey,” I answered. There was a pause before I spoke up again. “I heard you called.”

  “About twenty times,” he responded. There was a heat in his voice… what a way to start out senior prom. My date was already mad at me.

  “I heard,” I said quietly.

  “So are we still on for tonight or not?”

  “Of course,” I said quickly. “I thought Lacey was going to tell you. She stopped by yesterday and we discussed it.”

  “Well, I would have thought that my own girlfriend would have told me. I didn’t think I needed to go through her best friend to find out.”

  “Don’t be mad,” I finally said. Honestly, every word that I got out to him was hard. He
was so in love with me, yet, here I was pregnant! I touched my stomach lightly as he talked. I was going to be a mom. Taking a deep breath, I tried to chime back into the conversation.

  “Just be here at five, okay?”

  “Wait!” Brad almost yelled into the phone. “You were supposed to go dress shopping this week so I knew what kind of a corsage to get you. Did you go or not?”

  “Um…I went,” I lied. “It’s white.”

  “White? White? Like a wedding dress? Jenna, no one wears white to a prom!” He was now yelling in frustration at me. Really, I would be yelling at myself also if I was in his position. However, my heart just wasn’t into it anymore. I didn’t have any interest in dressing up and going to a stupid school dance. It wasn’t like I was going to be with Brad for the rest of my life. In fact, I had to break up with him as soon as possible.

  “It’s not a wedding dress,” I answered. But then I remembered Indigo telling me about how she had worn it for her wedding. Maybe it was a wedding dress after all.

  “No one wears fucking white!”

  “Hey!” I now was yelling. “Don’t swear at me, Brad. And I’m going to wear it whether you like it or not. It was my mom’s!”

  “Since when did you start liking your mom enough to wear a dress of hers?” He asked, obviously still upset over my choice. I didn’t care how he felt. It meant a lot of Indigo, which meant it meant a lot to me also.

  “Since I got a new one!” I yelled back. I felt my chest rise and fall at the amount of speed that I was breathing. Did I just say that Indigo was my mom? In the heat of the moment, I honestly did feel as though Indigo was closer to me as a mom than what my own mom was. And in that instant, I knew that I never wanted to say goodbye to her. She meant way too much to me.

  “Listen, I’m sorry for getting mad,” Brad admitted. “I’m just stressed. I’m off to get a haircut and I’ll pick up a corsage then. In the meantime, get ready and I’ll meet you at your house at five. Lacey and Alex said that they would just meet us there too.”

  “Sounds fine.” I crossed my arms across my chest.

  “Fine. See you then.” He hung up the phone before I even had a chance to say my own goodbyes. I slammed the phone down on the counter as soon as my dad walked in.

  “Brad and you break up?” He asked while filling up his glass with water.

  “I could only be so lucky,” I said while sitting down at the counter. My life was so screwed up. I was pregnant. My boyfriend and I were about to break up. And the baby daddy was in a dark depression and on the verge of committing suicide. Nothing was going right.

  “Heard anything from Yale?” Dad asked, sipping from his glass.

  “Um, me? No,” I answered nervously.

  “No need to get jumpy,” dad laughed. “I was just asking. I’ll call the college tomorrow and see what’s going on. Maybe they already sent it.”

  “Um, maybe.” I quickly scrambled to my feet and headed upstairs to my room. I couldn’t tell him that I wasn’t going. In fact, what was I going to tell him at all?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Doing my hair and makeup used to be a synch. In fact, it was almost an art form for me. But now, as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, I could hardly remember which way to twirl the curling iron. I practically stabbed myself three times in the eye with the mascara brush. And to top it all off, I sneezed when putting on my lipstick so I had a long, semi-red streak going across my cheek. Only months ago I was in the competition for Best Hair of Class 2011. However, seeing how beautiful this semester turned out, I would be lucky if I even had my name read aloud as one of the nominees.

  Dad came in at just the right time. I had just poked myself in the eye (again) and was about to give up until he came sweeping in to save the day. He sat down in my room, which was attached to the bathroom. He stared at me as I curled my hair.

  “My little baby is all grown up,” he smiled.

  “Dad,” I said sweetly. Little did he know that his little baby was going to have a little baby. Never again was he going to look at me as the same innocent daughter as he was doing now.

  “You look all grown up,” he smiled mostly to himself. “You look a lot like your mother at that age. You have her dark brown hair. It’s gorgeous.”

  I stared at myself in the mirror. For the first time in months I tried to see something beautiful behind my brown eyes. My reflection stared back at me. Slowly, very slowly, the sadness that my face normally burned with began to grow beautiful. I started to notice my features and notice how my eye color matched my dad’s perfectly. Behind the pain was the Jenna that I had once known. Taking in a long breath, I promised myself that each day needed to be a new day. I couldn’t become like Keiffer. I needed to pick myself back up and be the person that I always knew I could be.

  Except for the fact that I was pregnant.

  “Dad,” I began to say. I turned to face him, guilt written all over my face. I held my stomach nervously, knowing that he had no idea what I was about to tell him. “What if I told you something…something that was going to make you really, really, really mad?”

  “What is it?” Dad asked.

  “I mean, it’s going to make you really mad,” I didn’t want to cry. Not with the makeup on. But I could feel the tears coming. I tried to keep them down as best as I could. Luckily, nothing spilled over onto my cheeks.

  “Did you not get accepted into Yale?” Dad asked, rising to his feet. “Honey, if that’s the problem, I’ll just call the Dean on Monday and get it all worked out.” He gave me a hug and I rested my forehead against his shoulder. How was I going to tell him?

  “Thanks,” I finally squeaked out.

  “Listen, it’s already almost five. Put on the dress and I’ll wait for your friends downstairs. Okay?” Dad kissed my forehead before leaving. Right before he shut my door, he said four words that made me grow even more anxious than this baby. “Your mom is coming.”

  There, the dress was on, makeup done, and hair curled. Just an hour before I felt like the ugliest thing to ever walk the planet. But now, in Indigo’s dress, I felt like the most beautiful girl in the world. The dress was white like she had said. But it wasn’t anything like I was expecting. Her calling it a wedding dress was definitely an understatement. This dress…well, let’s just say it was strapless, and was so short that getting into a car would probably be harder to deal with than childbirth. Though, I looked hot! The dress showed off all my curves, and it would drive my mother crazy!

  “Hey, I’m here!” Lacey exclaimed as she burst through my bedroom door. I turned to look at her, waiting for her answer. I kind of felt like a cheap whore in the dress, but it was so pretty with the ruffles and sheer covering that gave it a slight sparkle.

  “Holy crap!” Lacey exclaimed. “Where’d my best friend go? You look amazing!” She ran her fingers over the dress. “Let’s switch!”

  “No way!” I laughed. “Do you think I look okay?”

  “Look okay? You look like a freaking Playboy model! You’re hot!” Lacey couldn’t keep her eyes from my body. “And look at your legs. Damn, you’re legs are one of a kind.”

  “I think it’s the heels,” I noted as I twirled around so she could see my four inch heels. This was the tallest I had ever been. I bought the heels years ago when I first met brad. I wanted to look sexy for him. But soon I realized that I couldn’t walk in them and hid them in the back of my closet.

  “I think it’s your badass self. Girl, you are beautiful!” She nudged me playfully in the arm. “And you know who else will think it’s hot?”

  “Who?” My mind first flashed to Keiffer, but then to Brad. Brad was the one I was going to prom with, not Keiffer.

  “Brad, duh!” Lacey laughed. “And if you don’t hurry, Brad’s going to leave.” She grabbed my hand and raced towards the door. She was down the stairs before I even had a chance to get out of my room.

  Standing at the top of the stairs, I took a deep breath. I could hear Brad’s voice comi
ng from down below. He was talking to my dad. I started to step down, not wanting to fall. Still self-conscious about the dress I tried to walk as carefully as possible. But once I was far enough down the stairs to see everyone’s faces they were all just staring at me. Brad’s mouth was hanging open just slightly.

  “Hi,” I said nervously. No one said anything back and I took each stair one at a time. Brad, finally kicking into action, stepped forward and took my hand once I reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Wow, Jenna…you look…” Brad started.

  “Hot,” Alex finished for him. I laughed at Alex’s comment. Lacey didn’t even scold him for it. It was obvious that she agreed with him.

  “Thanks, boys.” I let Brad slip the corsage around my wrist. He kissed my cheek lightly as we stood there. Still, even after five minutes, no one took their eyes off of me. Finally, as though she knew she needed to kill the moment, my mom stepped into the room. Her voice was just as annoying as I had remembered.

  “Why is no one coming outside? I’ve been waiting out there for a good ten minutes and no one is coming out. Where the hell – Oh, Jenna!” She finally noticed my presence. “Oh, don’t you look –“ She stopped talking once she noticed my outfit. “Well, come’on. Let’s get some pictures!” She shuffled back outside, grabbing both Lacey’s and Alex’s hand. Brad stayed behind in the house with me so we could talk.

  “I’m sorry about my comment that I made earlier. I was really wrong.”

  “It’s fine.” I placed my hand gently on his cheek. “Let’s go take some pictures.” He followed me outside into the front yard by the rose bushes. Those used to be my mom’s winning roses. Well, until she moved away. Then they just became roses.