This I Promise You

by Tressa Messenger

  And oddly, I did.

  Five

  As the weeks went by, Jeremy and I grew closer and closer. We were together from the time I went out in the morning until I was forced to go home at night. He had become my best friend. Not that I had forgotten about Candy back home, but this was different. We spent the hot sunny days frolicking in the ocean or going to the old dollar theater to watch out-of-date movies. Jeremy proudly showed me his beach. Together we explored everything there was to see on Atlantic Beach. We walked around the massive historic Fort Macon, which I learned was built in the early 1800s and saw a lot of activity during the Civil War. It was still a fixed structure on the beach for tourists to enjoy. I’m sure when they built it all those years ago they didn’t intend for people to play hide and go seek in it or make out in the tunnels, but it was fun nonetheless. We also went to the Aquarium to watch all the colorful fish. Most were native to the area, which I thought was really cool. We also went to the Jungleland mini-golf course. Oddly enough, it was my first golf experience and I quickly fell in love with it. On particularly social days we would hang out at the Shack with his friends, who quickly became mine as well. Sometimes Dawn would even join us. To my surprise, there was always something to see and do in this small remote area. However, my favorite was when we spent time alone walking the beach at night or watching the night around us, huddled in each other’s arms under the pier. We would talk about our futures and dream big dreams of how we each wanted the future to go. It’s something we did most nights when the world around us was peaceful and at rest. This night was no different.

  I sat on the sand and pulled my legs up to my chest and Jeremy knelt down and sat behind me and wrapped his arms around me. With his cheek pressed against the side of my head, his breathing was so close to my ear that I could feel his warm breath as he breathed in and out, which caused tingly butterflies to flutter throughout my body.

  “Do you ever think about getting married?” he asked me.

  I rolled my eyes and smiled as I turned to look at him through the corner of my eye. “Of course I do. Who doesn’t? Don’t you?”

  “Actually, yeah, I do. Strange, I’ve never thought about it before now though,” he said, leaning his head up against mine again.

  I looked down and swallowed hard. “Do you ever think we’ll get married, you know, to each other?” I asked him and held my breath as I waited for him to answer.

  “Oh, I know we will,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I jerked my head around to look at him. “Seriously?”

  He didn’t answer right away, but instead he untangled his arms from around me and shifted to the side and then dug into his pocket. I silently watched him through the corner of my eye, wondering what he was doing, but he settled back down in the sand and wrapped his arms back around me. I leaned back into him and we sat silently staring out at the dark ocean ahead of us.

  “What do you think the future is going to look like?” I asked, breaking the silence.

  “I don’t know,” he said, then smiled as an image played through his mind. “I see you and me living somewhere on the beach.”

  “Oh yeah, like right on the sand, maybe in a tent?” I asked him playfully.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. Why the beach?”

  He laughed. “Look around. The question should be, why not the beach?”

  I rolled my eyes. “All right, I’ll give you that. Which beach?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t really care which one as long as it’s beautiful and exotic and we can sit on the beach like this all the time.”

  “Florida is nothing but beach, so maybe there.”

  “Florida it is.”

  “I’d like that, too,” I said, clearly picturing it in my head. “What about jobs?”

  “We could do anything we want. So just decide what you want to do and do it.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “That’s because it is,” he said simply. “So, how about you? How do you see the future?”

  “Hmm…I want to go to college, of course, somewhere cultural and fun.”

  “And what would you study in this college?” he asked me, a note of sarcasm in his voice.

  “I don’t really know. Maybe marine biology, since we’re going to be living by the water. I guess I’ll figure it out as I go. How about you? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  He laughed softly and his hot breath stirred my hair and played on my ear, causing those ever so present goose bumps to flare on my skin. “Really?

  “Yes, really.”

  “I don’t really know. Happy, I guess,” he said solemnly.

  I turned my head around to look at him and my playful smile faded as I looked at him, his eyes distant, seeming far away as he stared out at the darkness in front of us.

  “Aren’t you happy now?” I asked sadly.

  He looked down at me. His expression changed and his eyes softened again. He hugged me tighter and kissed the side of my head. “Of course I am. I’m always happy when I’m with you.”

  I continued to silently stare at him through the corner of my eye, watching him as he continued to stare out into the dark water, his eyes seemed distant again.

  “I have something for you,” he whispered to me.

  “Oh yeah?” I whispered back, feeling a ping of sadness and excitement all at once.

  He opened a hand in front of me that was secretly concealing a small black velvet box. I tilted my head to the side and looked at it.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He nudged it toward me. “Just look.”

  I took the box out of his hand and held it with both hands as if it was mysterious and delicate. With shaky fingers I lifted the lid and stared at what was inside. I just stared at it, unable to think. Jeremy took the small golden band out of the box and held it up to me, the little marquis diamond on top shone in the moonlight. I pried my eyes off the ring and turned my head to look at him with wide, shocked eyes.

  “You asked if I was serious. I think I am,” he whispered to me.

  “But Jeremy, we’re so young. I’m only thirteen and you’re fourteen. How on earth could we possibly get married?” I asked him, panicked.

  “I know that,” he said softly. “Don’t think of this as an engagement ring. Think of it as a promise.”

  “A promise?” I asked, still stunned and confused.

  “Yep, a promise that one day I will buy you a real one. Will you accept it?”

  I swallowed hard. “Of-of course, I will,” I stuttered, holding my shaky hand out for him as he slid the gold ring on my finger and sealed it with a kiss on the small diamond.

  As I lay in my bed later that night, I stared at my hand, remembering the words he told me until my eyes wouldn’t stay open any longer.

  ***

  The following morning I breezed into the kitchen to find my parents huddled close together at the kitchen table talking quietly. I stopped and smiled at them curiously.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  My parents looked up quickly at the sound of my voice.

  “Oh honey, come have a seat,” my Mom said to me.

  “Surrrre…” I drawled out nervously and sat down across from the. “What’s going on?”

  “Nicole, we couldn’t help but to notice that you’ve been spending a lot of time with that boy,” my dad said.

  I quickly put my ringed hand under the table so they wouldn’t see it. “His name is Jeremy and so what?” I said defensively.

  “Honey, we just think that maybe you’re too young to be spending so much time with him,” my mom said gently.

  “Or any boy for that matter,” my dad added.

  “But I like him and he likes me,” I said, feeling frantic.

  “You do realize that we aren’t staying here, don’t you?” my dad said. “When the summer is over we’re going back to Raleigh.”

  “I know that, Dad,” I said, my bott
om lip beginning to quake.

  “Good. Keep that in mind,” he said sternly.

  My mom looked from my dad back to me. “We just want you to be careful is all. We don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “He would never hurt me!” I yelled, near tears. “We’ll be back next summer. He’ll wait for me. He promised!”

  My parents looked back and forth between each other before turning back to me. “Have you even met his family yet?” my dad asked me, finally breaking the awkward silence.

  “No,” I said quietly and looked down at the table.

  “We want to meet him,” Dad said sternly.

  “And his parents, too,” Mom added. “It’s the Fourth of July weekend, so what better time than a friendly cookout before watching the fireworks?”

  “Really?” I asked, jerking my head up and wiping my tears.

  “Yes, really. I think it’s about time we finally find out who this boy is that has captured our little girl’s attention,” Mom said, patting my hand and giving me a reassuring smile.

  ***

  That evening, my parents and I sat opposite Jeremy and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, around our small dining room table. I’m sure they had first names, but it never occurred to me to actually use them. Dawn, Robert, and Jeremy’s little sister, Mary, sat at the breakfast bar. Thankfully the dining room and kitchen areas were small enough so that everyone could feel included regardless of the seating arrangements.

  “Jeremy, it’s very nice to finally meet you,” my mom told him when we’d finished eating.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said shyly.

  “I agree. We’ve heard so much about Nicole and were wondering when he would bring her around,” Jeremy’s mom, whose name was apparently Kate, said.

  I gave her a weak smile.

  “Ya’ll have to admit that this is a somewhat difficult situation, don’t you think?,” my dad said to everyone at the table.

  “Carl!” my mom hissed.

  “What? It is,” he said before turning to Jeremy. “No offense to you, son. You seem to be a great kid, but we don’t live here and I don’t know if you and Nicole are taking that into account.”

  “Dad!” I yelled.

  With that, Dawn and Robert exchanged looks. They got up and ushered Mary out of the house through the back door where they could be far enough away from the tension that was sure to ensue.

  “I have to agree with you,” Jeremy’s dad, Don, said, which made me slouch back in my chair with my arms tightly locked across my chest and my mouth clamped shut in a pouty scowl.

  “How much longer will ya’ll be here?” Kate asked.

  “For about three more weeks,” my mom told her. “We intend to go back home before the first of August to get re-acclimated to our lives and so the kids can get ready to start school.”

  “Oh, so only a few more weeks then?” Kate said, looking at Jeremy sympathetically, which in turn made Jeremy look at me with a kind of sad look on his face. I grabbed his hand under the table and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

  “We’ll be back next summer, though,” I said to them, but meant it for Jeremy.

  “You know how kids are,” Don said to my dad. “A year is a long time at their age. They change their minds like the shifting of the tide.”

  “No, we won’t,” Jeremy finally said, speaking up.

  “Please, son, you’re only fourteen. You don’t know what you want yet,” Don said back.

  “Who knows, maybe we’ll feel differently later. Maybe the distance will prove too hard. But for now, this is how we both feel and what we both want, and that’s good enough for me,” he said to both sets of parents, then turned to me. “How about you? Is that enough for you?”

  I stared at him, stunned for a minute, having never spoken back to my own parents like that before. I blinked away the shock and looked around the table, all eyes were on me.

  I turned back to him and smiled. “This is what I want. Forever,” I whispered to him.

  He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “You want to go for a walk?”

  Without looking at my parents, or asking for permission to leave the table, I nodded my head. We both stood up and walked out the back door, where we found Dawn, Robert, and Mary quietly staring at us with wide eyes. Jeremy quietly pulled my hand down the steps and onto the sandy beach, where we walked silently for a few minutes.

  “I’m sorry about that back there,” he finally told me.

  I shrugged my shoulders, looking at the sand. “It wasn’t your fault. They don’t know how we feel.”

  “I know,” he said, looking down as well. He stopped walking and looked out at the dark ocean. “You don’t think they’re right, do you?”

  Offended, I jerked my head to look up at him. “Of course not,” I said.

  He nodded his head, draped his arm around my shoulder, and continued to look out at the water, as if searching for something that he just couldn’t quite see as the fireworks began to explode up above.

  Six

  After the dinner from hell, the following weeks went by slightly different from the happy, carefree weeks prior. Jeremy seemed kind of distant and reserved. I would catch him staring off at the water at nothing in particular. I asked him a few times why he did that, but he just ignored the question. Then his expression would change and he’d become the Jeremy I knew once again. As the distractions grew, so did my worries. I didn’t know what was wrong and he wouldn’t tell me. Instead he would smile and pretend everything was okay, but I wasn’t convinced. I would lie in my bed at night staring at my little ring, feeling sad and wondering why things were changing.

  I sat in a booth across from his sister at the Shack while Jeremy and Brandon happily played endless rounds of pool. I smiled while watching them, remembering the first time I ever saw him doing that very thing the first day I came here. I was so happy to see the smile back on his lips again and the twinkle in his eyes.

  “Hey, Nicky, can we talk?”

  I pried my eyes off Jeremy to look at Mary, her brown eyes seeming so serious. “Sure. What’s up?”

  She scanned the room, then looked back at me. “No, not in here. Can we go outside or something?”

  I tilted my head to the side as I stared at her curiously. “Sure, I guess so.”

  “Hey, Jer, me and Nicky are going outside to do some girl talk. We’ll be back in a minute,” Mary called to him.

  Jeremy stared at us just as curiously as I felt. I gave him a nervous smile and shrugged my shoulders before she pulled me out of the booth, through the arcade, and out of the restaurant.

  Once we were outside, far away enough from listening ears, she dropped my hand and relaxed some. “You want to walk?” she asked me.

  I nodded.

  We walked quietly through the cool sand for a few minutes in the opposite direction of my house before she began to speak. “Nicky, I know you really like my brother and I know he really likes you, but I need you to do something for me.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling as if the sand under my feet was actually in my throat.

  “I need you to be careful with him.”

  I stopped walking and stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  She stopped as well and turned around to face me, pushing her wind-blown golden white blonde hair out of her face, exposing troubled eyes. “Jeremy has always been the sensitive type. He wears his heart on his sleeve and it tends to get him hurt. You have brought the old Jeremy back to life and I thank you so much for it, but he’s in a very fragile place right now. I’ve noticed him being sad again lately and it bothers me.”

  I looked down at my feet, unable to look at her anymore. “I know. I’ve noticed it, too.” I looked back up at her, tears threatening to fall. “I swear, I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know what the problem is.”

  “I know you don’t and I know it’s not your fault.” Mary turned away from me to stare out at the dark water, her eyes looking exactly like Jeremy’s, dark and d
istant. “It all happened right here.”

  “What did?” I whispered.

  “It was about two summers ago. Me, Jeremy, Brandon, and our older sister, Tonya, were playing on the beach right here behind our house.”

  I looked at her, stunned. “Ya’ll have an older sister?”

  She turned to look at me. “We did. She was about four years older than me,” she said, then looked back out at the water. “Jeremy, always being the risk taker, went a little too far out in the water, much farther than any of us would dare to go. We didn’t know to be afraid of undertows back then.” She turned to me again with a sad smile and tears in her eyes. “Tonya was the first one who saw him go under. She was an excellent swimmer, so she went out to help him. By the time she got to him, though, she was spent and so was he. She managed to drag him out of the undertow and threw him forward, but she was so weak that she couldn’t fight any more, not for herself, anyway. When Jeremy got to the shore, Brandon and I rushed up to him and then quickly turned around to look for her but when we looked back, we saw her go under. We assumed she would come back up because she was such a good swimmer, but she never did. Jeremy and Brandon went back into the water to help her while I ran home, frantically screaming and crying to get my parents. By the time we got out there, there was nothing anyone could do. My parents jumped in the water and drug Brandon and Jeremy out before they jumped back in to find her. They searched for her for about an hour, although it felt much longer, as the three of us huddled together watching helplessly in horror. Tonya was gone. Her body was never recovered. Jeremy was so riddled with guilt. My parents even sent him to a shrink for a while, but he refused to talk about it, not to him or anyone else. He never uttered her name again. He was never himself after that, not until he met you anyway, and even then, he wasn’t the same Jeremy I had always known.”

  I put my hands over my mouth to stifle a gasp as the horrific scene played itself out in my head. “Oh, my God, Mary! I’m so sorry!”

  Mary couldn’t speak anymore. She could only stare out at the water with tears flowing down her cheeks. I walked up to her and wrapped my arms around her and held her tight.