Promise Me (The Me Novellas)

by Gates, Shelby

  I scrolled through the content on the home page and my mouth dropped open. I thought back to our quick conversation on campus and his interest in my trip to Mexico. He’d casually mentioned helping out in a town, working on building a school. What he’d failed to mention was that his organization—the organization he was apparently the director of—had organized the entire project.

  I hesitated for only a minute before clicking to the number pad on my phone.

  He answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Dex.” I hesitated. “This is Emma.” When he didn’t respond right away, I said, “Um, from Mesa. We talked the other day…”

  He cut me off. “I remember you. Hey. How are you?”

  “I’m good.” He didn’t need to know about my job situation or boyfriend situation or anything else, really. In fact, I wasn’t even sure why I was calling.

  “I’m glad you called.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “I just…” I stood up and began to pace. “I found your business card.”

  “Found it?”

  I felt my cheeks redden. “In my purse. It’s sort of a black hole in there.”

  He laughed. “Gotcha.”

  “Anyway, I found it and saw what you do and stuff and…I don’t know, I just thought I’d call. Since you wanted to know about my time in Mexico and everything.” I wasn’t sure I could have sounded more incompetent than I did at that moment. I said a silent thank you that I wasn’t bumbling through a conversation with the human resources manager at the hotel. Or trying to confront my boyfriend. Or arguing with my best friend.

  “I do,” he said. “I didn’t want to go into a long explanation or pitch my organization, you know?”

  “Well, I’d like to hear about it,” I told him. And I did. I wanted to hear about all of the things he did. Why he started the organization. Everything.

  “Yeah?” he asked. “Cool. Were you thinking you wanted to get together for a cup of coffee or something?”

  I nodded. “Sure. That would be great.”

  “Are you free today?”

  I hesitated. Was I free that day? I had a million things I should be doing. Re-filing a job application and finding out what happened to the original one. Prepping for classes. Hunting for a job. Figuring out how I was going to ask my boyfriend about the missing job ap. Avoiding my best friend.

  But I didn’t want to do any of those things.

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. “I am.”

  “Awesome. I’m in Mission Beach. Does Zanzibar work for you? Say, in half an hour?”

  I glanced at the clock. “Perfect,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  ELEVEN

  I tried not to care about what I wore to meet Dex. It wasn’t a date. I had a boyfriend. But those facts didn’t prevent me from quickly blow-drying my hair, putting on a little make-up and slipping in to my new pair of denim shorts and a white tank top that perfectly showcased my tanned arms.

  Dex was already there when I walked through the double doors. He wore a pair of navy-blue board shorts and a vintage G&S t-shirt. His hair was wet and pushed off his face, as if he’d just taken a shower. Or just gotten out of the water. It could have been either, I realized.

  “Hey,” he said, grinning. “Good to see you.”

  I slipped into the empty chair at the table. He’d already ordered a coffee—straight black—and had a half-eaten blueberry muffin on a plate in front of him.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” he said, motioning to the plate in front of him. “I was starving.”

  “Of course not,” I said. I’d looped my purse over the back of the chair and I reached for it. “Give me just a minute while I order?”

  He stood up. “What would you like?”

  “I–”

  But he cut me off. “My treat. I invited you here.” I started to protest but he held up his hand. “Don’t argue. Just tell me what you want.”

  I stared at him for a moment but he didn’t back down, just held my gaze, his mouth turned up in an infectious smile.

  I sighed. “Fine. Iced coffee. With cream.”

  He nodded and headed toward the counter.

  I watched him while he placed the order. The cashier, a girl about my age with spiky blond hair and thick, dark eyeliner, joked with him and laughed while she rang him up. They kept talking while she fixed my drink. I wondered if they were friends or if he just struck up conversations easily. He certainly had with me.

  A minute later, he was back at the table. He set the drink in front of me. “Here you go.”

  I ripped the paper wrapper off the straw and inserted it into the plastic lid. “Thanks.”

  He slid back into the chair across from me and grabbed his own cup of coffee. He took a sip. “So.”

  “So.”

  He grinned. “You had a chance to check out my website?”

  I sipped at my own drink and nodded. “Yeah. Mostly just the home page.”

  He tore off a piece of muffin. “What did you think?”

  “It looks awesome,” I said. “Both the site itself and what you do.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  He smiled and ate another torn-off bite. “I have no clue what I’m doing, so that’s nice to hear.”

  “No clue about what?”

  Dex shrugged. “Web design. How to build and grow a non-profit. Basically, everything.”

  I was surprised by the news. I wasn’t an expert in web design either but, from what I’d seen, it looked clean and easy to read. Good graphics and visuals, clear text. Identifiable links. I told him as much.

  He polished off his muffin. “Thanks. I spent a lot of time checking out other sites. And then I just found a web hosting service with all of the coding mostly done.”

  “Well, it looks good.”

  He nodded. “Good.”

  “How did you get started?” I asked. “With the organization, I mean.”

  He toyed with the muffin wrapper, folding it in half. “It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

  “Oh?” I set my elbows on the table and propped my chin in my hands. “How’s that?”

  “Well, I told you about taking time off after high school, right?” I nodded and he continued. “So me and my buddies, we spent some time down in Mexico. Cheap place to live. Epic waves. Nice locals. We had a blast.”

  I could picture him living that life. Traveling from town to town, probably in a beat up Volkswagen van or pick-up truck, camping on the beaches, staying as long as the waves stuck around before heading out to the next locale.

  “And it was fun, you know?” He grinned. “Nothing wrong with spending your days in the water and your nights around a bonfire, drinking beer with your buddies.”

  “Right.”

  “But…” he said, the grin shrinking just a little. “I guess I got kinda bored with it. No direction is fine for a little while, you know? But, after a while, I realized I didn’t want my life to be a permanent vacation.”

  I nodded. I’d had plenty of friends who’d opted out of college, who’d decided to find a job that would pay just enough to cover the bills and still allow them time to hit the beach or the clubs. Sage was one of them.

  He played with his coffee mug, running his fingertip along the rim. “So I started spending less time surfing and more time exploring.”

  “The villages?”

  He looked up at me and smiled. “Not at first. I started out in the cities. Cabo. Puerto Vallarta. Just getting a feel for the local culture. It’s amazing how quickly you can learn Spanish when you’re living completely immersed in it.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. I’d struggled through the bare minimum of foreign language required in high school and had learned my colors, my numbers and how to ask for a pencil. After three months living with Rosa, I was practically fluent.

  “Anyway, I was in Cabo.” His eyes glazed over just a bit and I knew he was back there, reliving t
he memory. “I’d grabbed a tamale from a street vendor and was sitting down to eat it. These guys were working in a lot near by. Throwing up walls. They looked like they could use an extra hand. I finished my food and wandered over. Not intending to really help,” he clarified. “I mean, I was gonna help hold the wall up while they pounded a few nails.”

  I smiled. “Right.”

  “Started talking to them, you know, just asking what they were building. And found out it was a school. First one that part of town had seen in close to a year. The old one had burned down and hadn’t been rebuilt. So all these kids just weren’t going to school, you know?”

  I knew but it was still hard to imagine. If a school burned down in San Diego, the kids would barely miss a day. They’d be rerouted, absorbed by other schools. The kids in Cabo? They just didn’t go.

  “Ended up spending the day there.” Dex grinned. “Talked to the organizers. The group you traveled with. PHP.”

  “Your website said your organization built a school,” I said. “Or at least, I thought it did.”

  “No, you’re right.” He leaned back in his chair. “I worked on that project with them. I did other schools later. Anyway, after that, I went back to the room I was staying in—some crappy little studio down by the docks—and thought long and hard about just what the hell I was doing with my life. I’d just spent half an afternoon doing something good. Really good. And it hadn’t been hard at all.”

  I felt the excitement stir inside of me. Here was someone who spoke my language, who could probably understand the exact reason why I’d upped and left for Mexico. He’d gone through the same thing. The wandering. The wondering. He’d played and put off life, sort of the same way I’d been doing in the two years after high school, and suddenly found purpose.

  “So you just started up your organization?” I had a million questions. Had it really been that simple, that easy? How did he finance it? How did he rally support? How did he connect with local authorities to figure out what was needed?

  “Pretty much. I packed up my stuff and headed back to the beach.”

  “To recruit all your friends?”

  “Nah.” He shook his head. “To think. To formulate a plan.” He thumped his chest. “Still a surfer at heart. The ocean is where I do my best thinking.”

  I wished I could relate. I didn’t have anything like that in my life, any one thing that centered me, that helped me focus. I’d played volleyball in high school but not because I had a passion for it. Sage had liked it and I wanted to do something with my best friend. I was good but I wasn’t great. And I’d never thought of it as anything more than a hobby, something to fill my afternoons with after school.

  “OK,” I said. “You planned it out. Your organization. And then you asked your friends to help.”

  “No. I told them they were going to help.” He laughed, his eyes twinkling.“Sometimes, you have to be a hard ass.”

  I laughed, too. “Wow. That’s really cool.”

  And it was. It was insanely cool. I wanted to talk to him all day. I wanted to spill everything I was thinking, tell him about every minute I’d spent in Mexico and pick his brain on what I could do to find direction like he’d done.

  But I didn’t.

  Because someone said my name. “Em?”

  I froze. I knew that voice.

  I looked over my shoulder. Grant stood a few feet away, right near the door of the coffee shop. He was dressed in his hotel polo and dress pants. His gaze flitted from me to Dex, a mixture of surprise and hurt in his eyes.

  And that was definitely not cool at all.

  TWELVE

  I turned twenty shades of red, which just made the situation worse. I had nothing to be embarrassed about, nothing to hide. I was having coffee with a friend.

  “Hey,” I said. I thought about standing up but my legs felt a little shaky. “Grant, this is Dex. Dex, this is Grant.”

  Grant nodded cooly. “Hey.”

  Dex picked up on the tension immediately. He stood up and reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. He handed it to Grant. “Hey. Dex Portlock. I run an organization that helps people in Mexico.”

  Grant took the card and studied it. The stiffness in his features lessened a little. “Oh.”

  “Emma and I ran into each other at Mesa,” Dex continued. “Waiting in line at the bookstore. You know how long the lines can be.” He offered a smile. “Anyway, Emma mentioned she’d just come back from Mexico and I asked if I could talk to her about it. An interview, I guess you’d called it.”

  It wasn’t the total truth but it would work. Or maybe it was, I thought. Maybe that was exactly what he was doing. I felt a little surge of disappointment and I didn’t know why. That’s why I was there, wasn’t it? To find out about his organization and to share my experiences?

  “Oh,” Grant repeated. His eyes locked on mine, as if waiting for me to confirm.

  “I thought you had to work,” I blurted out instead.

  “I do.” He glanced at his watch. “But Juan needed to switch shifts. I’m heading in now.”

  My gaze flew to the clock mounted on the wall. Dex and I had been there for an hour. Talking. And I hadn’t thought about Grant or the missing application or anything at all, really, except for what he’d been saying.

  “OK,” I said.

  “I’m seeing you tonight, right?” he asked. “Or will you still be doing your interview?” He tripped over the word a little bit, sarcasm flavoring his voice.

  I frowned. “I’ll be done,” I told him.

  “Alright.” He hesitated for a minute and I wondered if he wanted to kiss me. Touch me. Somehow mark me physically, a gesture to emphasize to Dex just who he was. But he didn’t. He nodded and headed to the counter and ordered his drink.

  “Do you need to talk to him?” Dex asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  I’d gotten over any misplaced guilt I’d felt about being caught talking to Dex. It was exactly how he’d described it to Grant. We were chatting about our experiences in Mexico. Nothing more, nothing less. If anyone should have been uncomfortable, it should have been Grant. Wondering when I’d find out about the job application he’d decided not to turn in and wondering when I’d finally ask him about it.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry. I…I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.” I thought I heard a pang of regret in his voice. But as quickly as I thought it, I dismissed it. What would a hot surfer guy with his own organization find attractive about someone like me?

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Alright,” he said. “I won’t.”

  I toyed with the straw in my drink. “Tell me more. About your company.”

  He grinned. “I’m the one who’s done all the talking.”

  He had. But I wanted to listen to him.

  “I want to hear about you,” he said, pointing his finger at me. “I want to hear your story.”

  And there it was. My chance. My opportunity. Not to answer questions and try to explain to people who didn’t get it, but to tell someone who’d been where I was. Someone who’d come to that crossroads, wondering what to do, and had not only made a decision but carved out an entirely new path.

  I turned to look at the counter. Grant was waiting for his drink, checking his phone. He must have felt my eyes on him because he glanced up, a flicker of surprise crossing his features when he realized I was staring at him. I looked away. Not once had he asked, truly asked, about why I’d made the decision to go. Not once had he tried to stop me. And being back, he hadn’t really asked questions, tried to pry out answers. But this stranger sitting next to me? He wanted to know everything.

  “I saw a poster,” I said, twisting around to face Dex.

  He waited.

  I told him. About my degree, the degree I was completely ambivalent about. About not being sure what I wanted to do, where I was headed. And how I’d seen the poster and just…reacted.

&nbs
p; “Makes sense,” he said, nodding.

  I was surprised. “It does?” I wasn’t even sure that it made sense to me and I was the one who’d done it.

  “Sure.” He shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable in the wooden chair. My back had started to ache much earlier but I’d decided to suffer through it. I wasn’t done talking to him.

  “How?”

  “Well, clearly you were bored with what you were doing.” He paused. “Not bored,” he amended. “Ambivalent is probably a better word. You didn’t care. And then you see this poster—and I’ve seen PHP’s work, I know their stuff is designed to pull at your heartstrings a little—and you can’t help but have a response. And there you were, trying to figure out just what the hell you’re doing and there’s this poster, this opportunity, staring you in the face. You did what a lot of people want to do but don’t have the guts to do.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Guts?” I was the least brave person I knew.

  “Absolutely,” he said firmly. “You wanna know how many people see that kind of stuff and wish they could help, wish they could find the balls to just up and go? Hundreds. Maybe thousands. You wanna know how many people actually find the courage to do it? A handful. If that.”

  I knew he was right. I was the only one from Mesa who’d signed up for the trip. There were other people at the airport with me, people who were going to different homes around Puerto Vallarta through PHP. Three. One was an older couple, close to my parents age, baby boomers who’d found themselves with an empty nest and wanted to start doing some charity work. And another was a guy from Colombia. He’d been studying on a student visa at SDSU and had never been to Mexico. We’d all chatted on the flight down to Puerto Vallarta and then gone our separate ways. No lasting connection, no hooking up while in Mexico, and no comparing stories after our visits were complete.