The Promise

by Melody Grace

  Like I was infinite, and the world had only just begun.

  The next time I woke, sunlight was bright and insistent outside my windows and the bed was empty beside me. I could hear the shower running in the next room, and when I rolled over and checked my phone, I saw to my shock that it was already past noon. I felt a lurch of panic, thinking of the lines of customers at the café, then I remembered: Mika had ordered me to stay home. As if a day in bed with hot soup and the TV would cure me, have me back good as new come Monday morning.

  But then, at least, I was glad for the stolen moments away from coffee orders and cleanup duty. The shower turned off, and a moment later Theo was framed in my doorway, a threadbare towel barely wrapped around his golden torso, hair wet from the shower, dripping sunshine to the honeyed floors. I inhaled in a shiver, seeing the light dance off those taut, muscular planes.

  “Morning, sleepy.” He smiled, slow-boned and lazy.

  “It’s late.”

  “You were knocked out like the dead.”

  I sat up and pulled a blanket around me, suddenly self-conscious. “I didn’t snore, did I?”

  “Only a little.” Theo grinned. I covered my face, flushing. “Aw, don’t worry. It was cute.”

  “Because honking like a freight train is really adorable.”

  “On you? Yes, it is.” Theo took three casual steps to where his clothes were discarded on the floor, then let his towel drop as he reached to pull his pants back on. “Breakfast?” Theo turned, and caught me staring. He smirked at me, so familiar and at ease, it took my breath away. He suddenly launched himself onto the bed, tackling me with a full-body, half-naked hug until our laughter echoed through the empty apartment.

  “Hey,” he whispered, inches from my face.

  “Hey,” I echoed, because real words were still beyond me, and that simple syllable was all I had.

  He kissed me quickly, then got up again. “I’ll make us some food.” I made moves to pull myself upright, but he stopped me. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to get up.”

  “Says who?”

  “But—”

  “It’s the weekend.” Theo grinned. “I don’t have classes, and you don’t have work. We can stay in bed the whole day, if we want. In fact, you’re going to. Doctor’s orders.”

  I paused, those two small words rushing me back to fluorescent lights and that cold, narrow bed. “He didn’t say—”

  “That you needed to take it easy? He didn’t have to.” Theo’s face softened, and I saw for a moment the worry still lurking behind that golden smile. “You’re staying in that bed even if I have to tie you down myself.”

  “Promises, promises.” I joked to cover the guilt, wide awake now and slicing at me in a dozen small paper-cuts.

  Theo lifted one eyebrow and gave me a look that curled my stomach. “See? It has its perks, I promise. Now relax, that’s an order.”

  I flopped back into the mismatched pillows, hating myself for the joyful song that sang in my bloodstream. I shouldn’t be happy, lying through my clenched teeth like this, but I couldn’t help it.

  This was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? What had propelled me onto that east-bound bus, not even imagining what lay ahead. To know this joy, this desire that hummed so vivid in my weary veins. It was the Hail Mary pass Hope had wanted for me, a last shot at a life I’d hidden from, but now that I had it, now that I knew exactly what I’d been missing, I was faced with the cruelest irony of all.

  How long could I keep it? How long until this blissful moment shattered in my palm?

  We spent the day in a lazy cocoon of each other, talking our way softly through the slow glide of afternoon sun outside the windows. I made Theo sit for me, properly this time, and committed his face to the page with a hundred careful strokes. He watched me from the chair I’d stationed in front of the window, examining me as carefully as I studied him, with the look of someone committing a sight to memory, safe in the treasure chest of our minds.

  “Let me see.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not done yet.”

  “But you’re too far away over there.” Theo drummed his restless fingertips on the ledge. “I haven’t kissed you in, oh, ten minutes, at least.”

  My smile split my face apart. “Patience.”

  “Is not a virtue of mine.”

  “All things come to those who wait,” I teased, smudging the line shadowing his jaw.

  “You said it yourself last night, we’ve waited long enough.”

  “You just want to make sure I’m not drawing you with horns, or three heads.”

  “I don’t know.” He grinned. “I think I’d look pretty good with horns.”

  I laughed and gave a final shade to the page. “OK, you can look now.” Theo moved over towards the couch, and I felt another pause of nerves as I slowly turned my sketchpad to face him. “See? No horns.”

  He took it in silently, then turned his gaze to me. “Can I keep it?”

  “Sure.” I ripped the page out, and he winced at the sound. “It’s just a sketch,” I reassured him, but he placed the page on the table like it was solid gold.

  “One day, they’ll display all these sketches in a gallery,” he said, bending to kiss me softly. “Claire Fortune, the early works. People will offer me millions for my original.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Or you can use it for scrap paper.”

  I turned away to tidy my pencils, but Theo caught my hand. “Don’t do that. Pretend you’re less than you are.”

  I looked up, seeing nothing but fevered truth in his eyes.

  “Trust me, people will know your name, one day.”

  One day . . .

  I ignored the terrible lie of his words. “And you’ll be a famous writer,” I said brightly, changing the subject. “With a bestselling volume of poetry to your name.”

  Theo laughed, loud and true. “Because there’s nothing that gets fame and riches like poetry.”

  “Just you wait.” I grinned. “You’ll see.”

  He shrugged. “I’d be happy teaching, to be honest.”

  “Really?” I intertwined our fingers, still marveling at the easiness of our touch.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s one path to go,” he said, but I could see, he wasn’t convinced. “I like teaching the seminars well enough, but . . .”

  “But?” I echoed, prompting him.

  “Academia isn’t such a safe option anymore. There’s so much competition for good gigs, even professors find it hard to make tenure. They have to travel all over, take jobs wherever they can find the positions free.”

  “That’s not so bad, you’d get to see the country.”

  “Still, it’s tough to live like that, uprooting every few years. Hard to build a life with anyone.” Theo’s gaze skipped up to meet mine, and then away. I didn’t have time to weigh the meaning of that comment—if there was any meaning to be had—before he pulled me into his lap. “Enough about the future,” he said, when my head was resting against his chest, my body curled safe in his arms. “It can wait.”

  “A thousand years,” I agreed, feeling his heartbeat, faint inside his chest.

  “Besides,” he added, voice rumbling. “We could all be abducted by aliens next week.”

  I smiled. “What would aliens want with us?” Theo chuckled. I lifted my head. “I mean it, they’re an advanced species, travelling millions of miles with technology we can only dream about, and they look around, and think, ‘Sure, these are the ones we want’?”

  “They must have seen you.”

  It was so cheesy I groaned. Theo smiled at me. “Too much?”

  “Way too much.”

  “Get used to it.” He dropped a light kiss on my forehead. “From now on, you’re getting at least one lavish compliment a day.”

  “The price of dating a poet,” I laughed.

  “Just be glad I’m not composing you sonnets.” Theo settled back into the couch cushions, and I lay ag
ainst him a moment, feeling the world slow its rotation, and the sun sink lower, over the horizon. We were suspended in our own private world, so sweet, time seemed to pause for us, leaving us alone in the hallowed space of our own steady breathing, stretching those moments into a golden infinity.

  At last, Theo stretched and yawned, his fingertips circling vague soft circles on my back. “I’m hungry.”

  I laughed. “We just ate.”

  “That was hours ago,” he protested. “Besides, you need to keep your strength up.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that.” Theo kissed me, hard and hot, until I saw the glittering night rush behind my eyelids, bright with stars. When he finally pulled away, I couldn’t have argued with him if I’d tried. “I’ll order takeout,” he said, unfolding his long limbs. “What do you feel like? Mexican? Italian?” I moved to get up too, but he shook his head. “No, you stay there.”

  I sighed. “I’m not an invalid. Come on, let’s go out.”

  Theo paused. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” I ignored the head-rush that swooped through me as I got to my feet. “I’ve been taking it easy all day. Let’s go do something fun.”

  We stalked the Thai food truck across the city and found it almost hidden in an alleyway by a movie theatre across town. They were showing Die Hard movies, booming through the old brick walls, and we spirited our food in like contraband, hidden under sweaters in my purse; sneaking triumphant past the bored ticket clerk to set up camp in the back row of those dusty velvet seats: cross-legged in the half-empty theatre, gorging ourselves on the food and each other as the fiery explosions burned in the corners of our eyes. We emerged, giddy and breathless after the final credits rolled, his arm slung tight around my shoulders, and every step full of a gleeful freedom. The streets disappeared beneath our eager feet, darkness cut through with the shimmering neon of the city as the hours sped past, magic, and wholly our own.

  We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, spinning with the pent-up longing that had fuelled me so many lonely nights. Now, Theo kissed me a dozen times over, in doorways, and shadowed hollows, secret as the city sped past; his hands anchored me to the earth, and his lips made me his own. If I could have made myself liquid, I would have: dissolved into air and slipped into his lungs, trickled soft through his bloodstream, made ourselves one, but this was a fine consolation. We laughed and teased, raced breathless through the dark, and when at last we tangled back in my bed, peeling shadows from each other with every touch, there was a new fervor in his eyes, a new fierce freedom to every slow thrust. I cried out for him without shame, spiraling deeper into the glittering rush, so that when the world shattered around us, his was the only heartbeat I could use to mark the time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Do you blame me?

  I often wonder now, thinking back to those first reckless nights, if what I did was unforgiveable. To take that man’s heart, the most precious thing of all, and lose myself in him knowing full well the price. Because it wasn’t just mine to pay, not then. Once I’d felt his body move inside me, seen the depths of those blue eyes filled with wonder and brief, biting panic, I was ruining the both of us, and it was only a matter of time.

  But still, he was all I wanted.

  They don’t warn you how lonely cancer becomes. That part, I never saw coming. The fight is a team sport: your family, specialists, church, and friends, all united to cheer you on from the sidelines and push you through chemo and treatment and hard, backbreaking work to that cancer-free finish line. But dying . . .?

  Dying you do alone.

  Hope understood. Maybe that’s what brought us together, bonded more tightly than sisters ever could be. She knew how it felt to see the world with a slow, dreadful countdown ticking in the back of your mind, to be consumed with jealousy and rage for every person you ever knew, waltzing oblivious through their precious days as your bitter mantra demanded the truth. Why me? Why not them? Why, why, why? It’s a chasm that opens between you and everyone else, and no matter how much they love you or how hard they try, they’re still trapped, suspended safely on their side of the canyon, while the ground beneath your feet keeps crumbling, closer to the brink.

  From the day of my diagnosis, until the day I met Hope, I was alone. Every moment, every breath, I felt it in my bones. Some days, I thought the loneliness would kill me long before my tumor ever did, that’s how deep it sliced through me, the steel-hot sadness that felt like a cancer all of its own. I was apart from the world, facing down demons they could never dream. Until her.

  Until Theo.

  That night, I crawled out of bed and sat curled in the window, wrapped in the smell of his sweater, watching the lights of the city wind their way through a million strangers’ lives; a hundred thousand restless, dozing couples, five hundred figures at the window, just like mine. I felt it then more than ever before: how vast the world was, and how small and insignificant my own frail heart.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  The tears stung wet on my cheeks, and I had to clench my fists, digging half-moon nail-prints into my palm to keep from weeping out loud.

  This was supposed to be the beginning.

  Girl meets boy, girl dreams and hopes, relentless, to bring their bond to life. They overcome all obstacles and find each other. Happily ever after. Everyone knows how the story is supposed to go; sitting old and grey on a porch swing somewhere, watching the sunset they earned with every slow-passing day. Except that sunset was beyond me now, my ever was dwindling by the hour: a cruel countdown speeding ever closer to impact.

  All I had was this. Every second, every last breath of present tense. It was all I would ever have of him. God, looking back now, I can feel the slicing ache all over again, fresh as those tears staining my silent cheeks. It had started with such small, measured desire: a last few months alone in the world, a chance to taste the life that would soon be out of reach. No chemo drips, no hospital rooms, no parents hovering anxiously in the back of every hallway. I would lose myself in the world, witness everything Hope would never get to see, everything I hadn’t realized I was missing until she dragged me, laughing, into the sun.

  It wasn’t asking much; that’s what I told myself, at least. Surely the world owed me a few months of freedom after my years tethered to those IV tubes. But even so, would it have been easier to face the end without Theo, or would I still have felt that same futile rage claw desperately behind my ribcage? The café, Kelsey, cycling those leafy streets alone; that much was something to lose, something to mourn. And now I had so much more. That man’s heart, sound asleep in my bed, and my own resting beside him, open and bruised and reveling in every last measure of love.

  Don’t scare me like that again.

  I watched the night bleed into daylight, and felt the time slip away. Then, like now, I was helpless to stop it coming. And then, like now, I would have moved mountains to get it back.

  One more night with him. One more laughing, reckless day. An hour tumbling into his steady stare, one more minute of his mouth on mine.

  All I could do was vow to make the moments count.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After such a miraculous weekend, I felt as if nothing should ever be the same, but come Monday morning, there I was: behind the register at Wired again, serving up too-sweet coffees and flakey croissants that showered the countertop with buttery crumbs, as light as the snow falling once more outside the windows.

  “You look better,” Mika noted, as I settled into my swift ballet of order and pour, feeling so weightless I was just about ready to turn pirouettes there on the scratched and polished floors.

  “Much.” I beamed. “You were right, I needed the break.”

  “Good.” Mika was already distracted, flipping through delivery forms. “They’re still dropping like flies from this flu thing. The last thing we need is to infect every customer that comes through the door.”

  “You make it sound like a pand
emic,” JJ teased as he passed by, arms laden with a teetering tower of paper cups.

  “Influenza’s killed over fifty million people,” he answered grimly.

  “Yes, in 1918.” JJ grinned. “Before they had a little something called antibiotics, and bleach.”

  “You can never be too careful.”

  JJ winked at me, brushing his hand across Mika’s back as he passed, a tiny gesture that rang truer for me now that I knew exactly what it was to feel that magnetic draw, wanting to reach out and touch any chance I got. Theo was in classes all morning, but my heart still swooped at every ring through the front doors, a heady drum of expectation. By the time midday rolled around, spilling another wave of patrons wrapped snugly in their thick parkas and scarves, I felt the caffeine withdrawal written on their faces, craving just another fix.

  And then there he was, stepping over the threshold with his navy duffel coat dusted in a powdered sugar snow. It felt like the first time, that bright September day when just a glimpse of him had thrown my whole world off kilter.

  “Coffee, please, ma’am. Black.” Theo sauntered up and leaned his elbows on the countertop with an irrepressible grin on his face.

  “Like your heart?”

  He laughed, and leaned even further, to drop a kiss on my waiting lips. “Don’t you know it?”

  I poured him one fresh, and slipped a pastry onto a plate, too, my blood singing with every step. “How was your morning?”

  He shrugged, still smiling. “I can’t remember. I spent it missing you.”

  There was a snort behind me. I turned and found Kelsey rolling her eyes so hard she could have blinded herself. “Spare us the schmaltz,” she sighed, her new haircut slicing sharp across her jaw. “I mean, not that you two aren’t poster children for young love, but some of us need to make it through the day without losing our lunch.”