Promise Me (The Me Novellas)

by Gates, Shelby

  I cocked my head. One of the voices sounded familiar. I inched forward just a bit, curious.

  “–understand how you could do this to me,” a girl said. Her voice was ragged, choked with tears.

  “I didn’t do anything to you.”

  Grant.

  I froze.

  “How can you even say that?” the girl cried.

  “Look, I told you what happened. It was a mistake.”

  “Which time?” she hissed. “The time at Stacy’s birthday party or the time you came to my apartment? Or maybe–”

  He cut her off. “Everything. It was all a mistake. And I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” She hiccuped on her tears. “I tell you I love you and you’re sorry.”

  I blinked back tears. My heart tripped like a jackhammer and I leaned up against the wall, trying to steady myself. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was just someone who sounded like my boyfriend.

  “Jamie, wait.”

  “No.” Her voice rose an octave. “I’m done waiting. You’re an asshole, Grant.”

  Before I could move, before I could process that no, it was actually my boyfriend this girl was talking to, she flew out of the room. A small, dark-haired girl my age wearing the same style hotel polo as Grant, her bangs trimmed close, her brown-eyes reddened with tears. She glared at me.

  “Eavesdrop much?” she snarled.

  I backed up, flattening myself against the wall. And said nothing.

  A few seconds later, Grant appeared, his mouth open as if to say something. His eyes focused on Jamie before his gaze darted at me. And it was his turn to freeze.

  “Em.”

  Jamie whirled on him. “This is your girlfriend?”

  “Shit,” Grant muttered, raking his hand through his hair.

  I pushed off from the wall. “No,” I said slowly. “I was his girlfriend.”

  SIXTEEN

  “I’m not going to say I was right.”

  I sniffled. “Gee, that’s big of you.”

  Sage put her arm around me. We were at Fashion Valley, the same bench I’d sat on when I’d called her about the job. But this time, she was with me. And I was telling her about what I’d just witnessed at the hotel.

  She patted my shoulder. “Unless you want me to…”

  I shook my head vehemently. A fresh surge of tears filled my eyes and I let them spill onto my cheeks.

  “He’s not worth your tears,” she said softly. “He’s an asshole.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m just pissed.”

  It was true. After the initial shock had worn off, I realized I was more angry than hurt. I’d sat in my car for a minute, my chest heaving, my nerves on fire. But there were no tears, no aching hole in my heart. I was just…angry. Livid, actually.

  All the pieces fell into place at that moment in the hallway. He didn’t have to tell me but I knew. His cool response the first time I’d stopped by. The reason he didn’t want me working there. The reason he didn’t turn in my application. Even his hesitancy in having me stop by that afternoon.

  “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you,” she said. She’d set her shopping bags down by her feet and one fell over. She leaned down and righted it. “I mean, it sucks that he cheated and everything. No doubt. But then to hide it? To just not say anything and hope it just went away?”

  I ran my finger under my eye, wiping at the tears. “I know.”

  “And then that bullshit-show yesterday,” Sage continued, her eyes blazing. “Acting like the jealous boyfriend. Where the hell does he get off acting like that? Huh?”

  I could feel Sage’s anger mounting. As upset as I was about the situation, she was ready to boil over. All of her aggression toward Grant, her genuine dislike for him, swirled together as she spoke. “To get all pissy about your meeting with the Mexican dude?”

  “Dex isn’t Hispanic.”

  She waved her hand in the air. “You know what I mean. You had a meeting with him, for Christ’s sake. Not like you were doing him in the back room on the job.”

  I winced a little and she was immediately contrite. “Sorry.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll stop.”

  I wiped the other eye and took a deep, steadying breath of my own.

  “I’ll just be the friend with the shoulder today,” Sage said, smiling. “I can go into Terminator-mode tomorrow. Or whenever you’re ready.”

  I smiled at her through my tears. She was absolutely the best friend on the planet. And I had no doubt she’d rip Grant a new one the minute I gave her the go ahead.

  “Alright,” she said. She checked her watch. “We need some comedy. Stat. Let’s head back to my place. We can drink some Dirty Shirleys—I won’t make yours strong, I promise—and we can get drunk and watch movies on Netflix. Only funny ones.”

  I was tempted. “I don’t know if I’ll be very good company,” I told her.

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be good enough company for the both of us.” She fished her phone out of her pocket. “I just need to tell Mitch.”

  “Do you guys have plans?” I asked.

  She started typing. “Nothing that can’t be changed.”

  My phone dinged and I reached for my purse.

  “Wait,” I said to Sage as I read the text on my screen.

  She glanced up.

  “Don’t change your plans,” I said slowly, lifting my eyes from my phone to her puzzled face.

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because it looks like I have something else I need to do tonight.”

  SEVENTEEN

  I stood at the edge of the pier and wiped my hands down the front of my dress. I hadn’t changed, just headed straight from Fashion Valley back to Pacific Beach. I’d found a spot to park right on the corner of Garnet and Bayard and walked the couple short blocks to Crystal Pier.

  And waited. It was late afternoon, almost dinnertime, and people were packing up from their day at the beach. Tourists with peeling noses and towels thrown over their shoulders, enjoying their last week at the beach before heading back to Arizona or the Inland Empire. A few locals, too. Kids whizzing past on skateboards and bikes, surfers with their boards tucked under their arms, their spring suits peeled down. The water in San Diego was never very warm and most guys, even my brother, preferred wearing wetsuits if they were going to be out in the water for any length of time.

  I parked myself by the pier and tried to look like I knew what I was doing.

  But I didn’t.

  Because I’d read the text that had popped up on my phone and I didn’t think, just reacted.

  “Emma.”

  I turned around.

  Dex smiled at me. “Hey.”

  I smiled back. “Hey.”

  He wore khaki shorts and a black t-shirt with a tiny logo on it. I looked closer and saw it was the same surfboard logo from his business card and website. His organization.

  “Thanks for coming down here,” he said. “Especially on such short notice.”

  “Well, I was free.” I folded my arms across my chest. “And I wasn’t finished talking to you.”

  He smiled. “Me, either.”

  We stood there for a minute, looking at each other. “There’s a bench down there,” he said, pointing south toward the grassy park-area that hugged the cliffs. “Want to sit down and talk here? Or grab something to eat, maybe? My treat.”

  My stomach was still knotted up from the events earlier that day. “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “OK.” He started walking and I followed him.

  A faint breeze blew in from the ocean, just enough to tease my hair, tangle it up a little. I tucked loose strands behind my ears but the wind found them again, working its way through them. I wished for an elastic but knew I didn’t have one in my purse.

  We found an empty bench and Dex sat down. He draped his arm across the back of the bench and turned so he was facing me.

  “I felt bad about having to leave so quickly yesterday mornin
g,” he said.

  “It was fine,” I said. “You had a meeting.”

  “I know,” he said, nodding. “But all I did was talk about me. And that’s not what I’d intended to do. I wanted to hear about your time in Mexico. The exchange part of it. The details. The everything.”

  “I know. That’s why I came tonight.”

  The wind was wreaking havoc with his hair, too, and he brushed at it with his hand. “And this is cool? Meeting?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  He grinned. “No, I mean with your boyfriend. He’s not too bent out of shape.”

  I didn’t mean to tell him. Maybe I did. Or maybe I just didn’t think before I blurted it out.

  “He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

  Dex raised his eyebrows. “Oh. Uh, I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with the coffee shop.” He took a deep breath. “If it does, I’m really sorry. Shit.”

  I shook my head. “No, no. Not at all.”

  “No?”

  “Nope. Something else entirely.”

  He waited for me, giving me a chance to elaborate. When I didn’t, he said, “OK then. Well, I guess we should talk. I mean, you should talk. I’ll listen.”

  I folded my hands in my lap. “What do you want to know?”

  He smiled and I noticed once again how green his eyes were. “Don’t you remember? I want to know everything.”

  So I told him. We sat on the bench and I recounted my three months in Mexico. The blue of the sky ebbed away, morphing into pinks and purples as the sun put itself to bed on the horizon. The crowds thinned until it was just the two of us sitting alone in the park. The waves crashed behind us, a steady rhythm along with the hum of traffic from the strip. And I talked. For hours, it seemed.

  “It sounds like your time there made an impression,” he said after I’d finished.

  My throat ached a little from talking so I just nodded. I’d only scratched the surface, really, with what I could have shared. I’d given him an overview, not the minutiae of my time spent there.

  “What if…?” he started, but then paused.

  “What if what?”

  He grinned. “What if I said I was hungry? And that I wanted to buy you dinner?”

  I realized that I hadn’t eaten in hours. And, with my time in Mexico more on my mind than the events of the afternoon, food actually didn’t sound disgusting.

  “I’d say OK.”

  He laughed. “Perfect.” He named a restaurant not far from my dad’s and we started walking in that direction, past the cabin-filled pier and past the fire station positioned right on the boardwalk of the beach.

  We stopped at Beach Burgers, a tiny restaurant sandwiched between two apartment buildings. The outdoor seating adjacent to the boardwalk was full, tables filled with locals. I recognized a few people, mostly customers from my dad’s restaurant. People in PB seemed to have a steady rotation of restaurants they frequented and Beach Burgers was a local favorite. I’d eaten there several times over the years and I knew what was waiting for me: one of the best burgers in San Diego.

  “Dex.” The hostess greeted him with a smile. “Good to see you.”

  “You, too, Meg.” He glanced at me. “This is my friend Emma.”

  Meg smiled in greeting. She was tall, almost as tall as Dex, with the same sandy-colored hair.

  “This is my cousin,” he said to me. “Megan.”

  She led us to a table that looked out on the boardwalk. The ocean was barely visible, the white caps lit by the half-moon visible behind the streaks of thin clouds. I heard my phone ding in my purse—it had been too loud in the park to hear much of anything. I grabbed it out of my purse and looked at it. It was a text from Grant. The sixth one. I slipped my phone back into my purse without reading them. I didn’t want to lose my appetite and I didn’t want to think about him. Not then. Maybe not ever.

  “This good?” she asked.

  “Perfect.” Dex grinned. “Any chance you could score us a couple of drinks?”

  Meg narrowed her eyes but she was smiling. “Declan.”

  He just smiled. “Please?”

  I realized then that I didn’t know how old he was. He’d said he’d taken time off to travel but he’d never said for how long. Looking at him and talking to him, he’d seemed more mature than any of the guys I knew.

  “You’re not twenty-one?” I asked.

  He turned his attention back to me. “No, I am,” he said. “But you’re not.” He said this with authority.

  I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling.

  He looked at me, his eyes assessing. “And from the minute I saw you tonight, you’ve looked like you could use a drink.”

  His cousin looked me over. “You really need one, huh?”

  Dex didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Yes. She does. We both do.”

  Meg just pursed her lips and disappeared. She returned a minute later, menus tucked under her arm, two large tumblers full of soda in her hands. She set them down in front of us.

  “Here you go.” She set them down and left.

  My throat was raw from talking and I grabbed the drink, taking a big gulp. My eyes widened and I choked just a little. It might have looked like a glass of soda but she’d filled it halfway with rum.

  Dex sipped his. “Whoa.”

  Whoa was right. I nursed my drink, taking tiny sips.

  “Guess she believed me,” he said.

  “I guess.”

  Dex scanned the menu. “Anything sound good?”

  “A burger,” I said without hesitation. “With bacon. And cheese.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “One or two?”

  “What?”

  “Burgers.” He flashed a grin. “Or maybe we could just have the whole cow brought in.”

  Our waiter came and took our order. Dex ordered for both of us, identical meals. The waiter left and Dex leaned back in his chair, his drink in his hand.

  “How’s your drink?” he asked.

  “Good.” It was. I’d drank enough of it to relax and I felt the tension lessen in my shoulders, noticed my pulse slow just a little.

  He nodded. “Good. Like I said, you looked like you could use one.”

  “Guess I’m pretty easy to read,” I said.

  “Maybe.” He looked at me. “Or maybe I’m just perceptive.”

  I swallowed a mouthful of rum and Coke. “Maybe.”

  “Do you want to talk about it now?” he asked quietly.

  I knew what he was asking. But still, I said, “About what?”

  “About whatever happened today that has you single.”

  I sighed. “Not really.”

  “That bad, huh?” His voice was sympathetic.

  “He messed around when I was gone.”

  Dex nodded, his eyebrows drawn together. “OK.”

  I picked up the plastic stirrer in my drink and twirled it between my fingers. “He didn’t tell me.”

  “So how did you find out?”

  “I stopped by to see him at work. Overheard him talking to someone. Her.”

  Dex made a face. “Ugh.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It pretty much sucked.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “Were you guys serious?”

  I dropped the stir stick back into my drink and picked up the glass. It was half-empty now. “I don’t know what we were,” I said honestly.

  “Right,” he said, and it sounded like he understood perfectly. “It still sucks, though. To trust someone and then have them break that trust.”

  “It’s funny,” I said. The waiter arrived with our food and I waited until he set down our plates and left before I continued. “I wasn’t really hurt by it.”

  “No?” He sounded surprised.

  I grabbed the bottle of ketchup and lifted the top bun off the burger. “No.” I squirted ketchup on the inside of the bun. “I was just mad. Mad that he didn’t tell me, not mad that it happened.”<
br />
  “Hmm.”

  He held out his hand and I handed him the ketchup. He squirted a huge dollop on his bun and then smashed it back on top of his burger. He picked up the sandwich and bit into it and I realized not once did a bottle of hand sanitizer make an appearance at our dinner table. I started to laugh.

  “What?” he asked after he swallowed his mouthful of burger.

  “Nothing.”

  “Not nothing,” he said. “Tell me.”

  “I was just thinking that it feels good to be here. Eating dinner. With you. So thank you.”

  He cocked his head and smiled. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”

  I smiled.

  He smiled back. “You know, I might know a way that we could eat a lot more dinners together.”

  EIGHTEEN

  I dropped my burger. “What?”

  Dex wiped at his mouth with his napkin. “The meeting I went to the other day.”

  Clearly, there had been more alcohol in my drink than I’d realized. Because he wasn’t making an ounce of sense. “What?” I repeated.

  He swirled a french fry in the pool of ketchup he’d poured onto his plate and ate it. “The meeting I had yesterday was with a local company. Wave Apparel. Heard of them?”

  I shook my head.

  “They make suits. Swim suits. Wet suits. That kind of stuff.”

  I was pretty sure he was speaking in riddles. “OK.”

  “I’ve been trying to find sponsors. Investors. Whatever you want to call it.” He sipped his drink. “I’ve got people lined up to help on the front line, you know? But funding has been an issue.”

  “For your projects, you mean?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been talking to these guys for a while. Laid out a proposal, pitched it a couple of months ago but hadn’t heard anything.” He grabbed another fry. “I wasn’t sure anything was going to come of it so I went ahead and enrolled in some business classes. Figured if I was going to be running my own organization, I’d better figure out what the hell I was doing on the business end of things.”