Promise Me This

by Sarah Ashley Jones

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Playlist

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Fabulous Books

  For my mom.

  Without you, this book would still be a half-finished attempt at one of my crazy ideas. Thank you for believing in my dream and being by my side every step of the way.

  Deep breaths. Keep breathing. Keep moving. Deep breaths.

  That was looped on repeat in my mind for two weeks. I was a walking zombie for two weeks, just going through the motions of real life and numb to the world. I hadn’t even cried yet. I just kept moving forward. It was the only thing I knew how to do.

  As I stepped out of the car that my parents arranged for me at the airport, my stomach began to twist into a knot. Anxiety flew around in my throat. I tried to remember my mantra: Keep breathing. Keep moving. One foot in front of the other.

  “Uh, Miss? I think you’re forgetting something.” A deep voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

  My eyebrows knit together in confusion as I turned around to see what the commotion was. The car I had just exited from was still parked and running behind me. The driver, a silver haired, middle-aged man who reeked of cigars and bad decisions, draped his arm over the passenger seat, as he looked me up and down. His fingers tapped on the headrest impatiently.

  “I’m sorry. What?” He was still staring at me and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t place why. Did I suddenly grow a second head?

  “Forty-two dollars. That’s your total,” he spat out, obviously in much more of a hurry than I was. Which was probably true, since I didn’t really want to hurry up and face reality.

  “Sorry. I’m not myself today.” Or any day in the near future, I thought to myself, and handed him a fifty-dollar bill. “Keep the change.” He mumbled something under his breath, but didn’t care to keep the conversation going any further. I just shut the door, picked up my bags from the curb, and started to head up the stairs of the apartment in front of me. Those stairs shouldn’t have felt foreign, but they did. I had walked them only a few months ago, but everything was different then.

  “Race you, Charlie,” he yelled, and made a mad dash towards the stairs.

  “Not fair. You didn’t help me with my bags and I don’t even know my way around. I’m pretty much running blind here, Cameron!” I shouted after him, but I couldn’t help but laugh. It was always this way. Nothing was ever serious when it came to the two of us.

  “I am so sorry, my little damsel in distress. I just did not realize how frail and dainty you have become since I left!” he said, in what I could only assume was his best southern gentleman accent; but really, he sounded like a drunk southern belle. Within seconds he found me and scooped up my luggage - all five bags, since I wasn’t sure what to expect - and made his way back up the steps.

  I followed him up to his apartment and gave him a good once-over, noticing how much he changed since he left Tennessee. His blonde hair had grown out into shaggy golden locks that fell right above his eyebrows, and his skin was definitely kissed by the sun. I was envious, not because he looked different, but because it meant he escaped our small town.

  “Welcome to your new home away from home. Well, at least ‘til you either run back to Lame-ville, population fifty, or you finally move out here with me. And don’t think I’m not counting down the days waiting for that to happen. But for now, mi casa es su casa.”

  I sighed and walked through the tiny front door to apartment 7B. I couldn’t help but think about how that moment was so completely different from the one I was currently in. So many things changed in just a few short months. It was then, while throwing my bags down on the couch that it hit me - he hit me - or rather, it was everything that wasn’t him anymore. I could still smell him, and that’s all it took to open the floodgates. The tears came, and I saw no reason to stop them anymore. My back slammed against the closed door behind me as my knees betrayed me; giving in as my body folded in on itself with grief. My body shook with the sobs that refused to stop.

  “Deep breaths. You can do this, Charlie. You can do this.” Great. I was talking to myself. Might as well send me straight to the psych ward, I thought as I wiped my face with my jacket sleeve. Who was real lady-like now? Debutante school taught me so much.

  Pushing myself up off the floor, I decided that it was as good a time as any to call home. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called the house.

  “Hey Sweetie! You made it to California okay? Was your flight fine? Did they lose your bags?” My mom’s thick southern drawl began to hound me with questions.

  I simply shook my head. Cameron was gone, she sent me to do her dirty work, and she was worried about my bags being lost? “I’m fine, mom. Yes, I made it all right, and no - remember? I carried my bags on this time. I only had two when I left.”

  “Oh darling, you know me; always the forgetful one. How is the house?”

  “Apartment. And it’s the same as before, except there’s no Cameron.” My voice cracked. It shouldn’t be doing that. “Mom, I can’t believe he’s really gone. It’s like I can feel him here, but I know he’s never coming home.”

  I should have known better than to try and confide in my mother. There was a long, deep sigh on the other end of the phone. I always questioned if she had any real emotions coursing through her body. You would think that with her being Miss Prim and Proper, she would know exactly what to say to me in a situation like this...in a situation like ours. This couldn’t be good. “Baby, let me tell you something. Sometimes in life, you get thrown curve balls. Now, you just have to figure out if you’re going to swing and strike out, or hit the ball way out into the stands for a home run.”

  “Mom, nothing good can come out of this. Why am I here? Why couldn’t you just come and take care of it?” I was bitter, and the words came out like fire. But it was her response that burned me instead.

  “Because no one knew your brother like you did, Charlotte.”

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  I sat up straight, my head spinning from the sudden movement. I had fallen asleep on the couch, and was sharply reminded that the windows in the living room lacked any kind of curtains. As the light stung my eyes, I threw an arm up to shield my face; letting out an annoyed groan. I felt around blindly for my phone so I could check the time. From the glaring sun that streamed through the windows, I could tell that it must be morning, and a morning person I was not. Peeking out of one eye, I saw my phone lying on the floor beneath me. I leaned forward, trying my hardest to make my fingers grow just a few more inches.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  My heart jumped out of my chest and my body followed suit, rolling me off the couch with a loud thud. I shot an evil glare in the direction of the door. Seriously, who would be at the door this early in the morning and not use the doorbell? Finally reaching my phone,
I flicked the screen to show the time. Ten o’clock in the morning. Not exactly the butt crack of dawn, but ‘before noon’ was a time I didn’t see very often during the past few weeks.

  I smoothed out the shirt I’d slept in with the hopes that it wouldn’t be too noticeable and made my way to the door, rolling onto my tiptoes to peek through the peephole. A brown uniform and a big, goofy grin waited for me on the other side. Someone obviously already had their two cups of happy this morning.

  Opening the door, I stood in the doorframe with a hand on my hip. “How can I help you on this fine, beautiful mornin’?” My voice dripped with sarcasm, which caused my accent to show up front and center. This only seemed to happen when my emotions ran wild.

  The jolly brown giant smiled and shoved a clipboard into my hands. “Just sign right here and we’ll bring them on up.” The look on my face must have told him that I wasn’t following his train of thought. “The boxes? We have an order for a fifty pack of moving boxes and supplies.” My face remained blank. “Ma’am, are you Charlotte Jennings? It says here that this order was placed yesterday by a Rosalyn Jennings.”

  I saw red. My mom attempted to come to the rescue again. When did she even think to do this? Did she have no tact? Did she even think about how I would be handling this? Like I would really want to pack up Cameron’s whole life the first day I got there.

  “Ma’am? If you could just sign right –“ I scribbled my name on the paper and tossed the clipboard back at him with a smile that normally would have been accompanied with some not-so-nice words.

  “Just leave them in here.” I pointed toward the living room and then turned back down the hall, not even looking at the man with boxes of what mom had thought was rescue. There really wasn’t much to his apartment. There was a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and situated at the far end of the hall was his bedroom. I hadn’t made it any further than the bathroom last night, and that was only because I had to go in there. The apartment didn’t have many decorations, either. Only a few posters and picture frames. That was the way he liked it - after all, it was his bachelor pad. He tried to explain that to me the one time I insisted on buying curtains for the place. I guess when you come from a home where every nook and cranny was decorated with some kind of gaudy, expensive knick-knack, you tended to not win any awards for interior design once you moved out.

  “Miss Jennings? We’re all done now.” He yelled through the apartment again. He was still here? Why didn’t he just let himself out? I shook my head when I heard Cameron’s voice in my head. “Charlie, you’re not in Kansas anymore.” As I walked to shut the door behind the moving men, something on the fridge caught my eye that I didn’t noticed on my visit a few months ago. There were two pictures, side by side, held in place by none other than a Johnny Cash magnet; a token from home. Instantly I was drawn to the pictures. The door could wait. The boxes could wait. The pictures could not.

  I grabbed the smaller of the pictures first and brought it right up next to my face, recognizing it almost instantly. There were two little kids, no older than five, sitting on big, white front porch steps and eating popsicles. You could almost feel the heat of the humid Tennessee summer by the way the popsicles were all over them and not in their mouths, which showed matching semi-toothless grins. They were almost identical. In fact, if you weren’t paying attention to their clothes, you would have thought you were looking at two little boys. But what stood out the most were their piercing blue eyes. You couldn’t see the little girl’s well, because she was looking up at the slightly bigger boy, but you could feel the adoration in the sea of those sapphire eyes.

  “Thank God mom had some fashion sense back then and actually put me in those ridiculous dresses, or else people would have thought I was a boy.” Note to self: Stop talking to yourself. I slipped the picture back under the magnet and let my thoughts linger as I stood there smiling at the second photo on the fridge. It was us again, from the time when I visited before school started back up from winter break. A stranger had snapped it of us as soon as Cam had taught me how to ride my first wave down at the beach. Surfing was something he always dreamed of learning to do, and he assured me that I would be a natural just like him. It wasn’t shown in the picture, but the successful wave only came after attempting to catch it for three hours straight.

  But our faces didn’t tell that story. My long blonde hair curled slightly at the ends from the salt water, my freckles stuck out in the watercolor of red on my cheeks from the sun, and my wetsuit didn’t fit in all the right places…but Cameron looked like a movie star, as he always did. He seemed like he belonged in San Diego, holding up his hand in victory while I held onto my board like it was an Oscar, giving him the same goofy grin I had all those years ago. He always pushed me to try something new, even when I didn’t want to, because he believed I could do it.

  The hole in my heart where Cameron fit shot me a painful reminder to snap back into reality. I looked over the rest of the items on the fridge, most of them random and meaningless. A few concert tickets were stuck up in a fan arrangement. Social Distortion, Dropkick Murphys, Mumford and Sons, and some other bands I never knew he liked. Without thinking, I ripped them off the fridge, threw them into the drawer next to it and slammed it shut. I didn’t like feeling as if maybe I hadn’t really known my own brother as well as I thought. I stomped out of the kitchen; pitching a fit like a little kid.

  My foot caught on something as I made my way into the hall. Before I could process what happened, I fell backwards and was flat on my back, staring up at the obnoxious white popcorn ceiling. “Really? Is this your idea of a joke?” I shouted into the silence of the apartment. No one could hear me, but I thought, maybe he could. He used to be able to practically read my thoughts, anyway.

  I rolled over from my back and onto my knees. I was about to get up when a white paper napkin caught my eye. Or rather, it used to be white, before it was dragged through a dirty movie theater floor from the looks of it. Or maybe that was from the trip it had taken across the kitchen when I slipped on it? I started to toss it into the trashcan, but noticed that there was a note written across the back in gorgeous cursive handwriting.

  Had a great time tonight. Sorry I had to leave this note...girlfriend emergency. Catch you next Riot Night. Love, the girl you’ll dream about. Ginger

  I flipped the napkin over in my hands. The Pointe, San Diego was stamped on the back. This was a classy napkin. ‘The Pointe’ didn’t sound like a place that would host a Riot Night, and whoever this Ginger person was, she obviously wasn’t that important since her name didn’t ring a bell.

  “I hope you showed her a good time, Cam,” I told the note as I stuck it back onto the fridge. I couldn’t throw it out now that I knew that he actually kept something from a girl. He never found anyone he considered to be a keeper to take home to mom and dad. He always said that none of the girls could ‘tame the beast’. He wasn’t the hopeless romantic type, but I was, so maybe this girl was special. He did keep a crusty napkin, so who was I to judge?

  An unexpected shiver ran down my spine as a gust of wind crept through the house, and I remembered that the door was still wide open. I quickly closed the tiny gap between the door and I in a few steps and kicked it shut, the rumble from the slam causing the neat stack of boxes to sprawl across the floor. “I seriously can’t catch a break, can I?” I shouted into the air again.

  Picking up the tape Mr. Happy Moving Man brought me, I grabbed the first box to assemble it. Maybe mom was right. The faster I packed everything up, the faster I could go back home and return to normal.

  Normal was not here for me. ‘Normal’ was going to school at Vanderbilt University. I was a junior, in the honors society, and planned to get my Bachelors in Fine Arts. Running away, or as Cameron liked to call it, ‘exploring your options,’ just wasn’t in the cards for me. Cameron always tried to convince me to move to California with him. He talked about it since middle school when we flew to San Diego to watch Dad speak
at one of his motivational speaking conventions. I never thought he was motivational. He was just a good bullshitter. But people simply ate his words up and no one ever knew the difference.

  “You’re really going to move away? Wasn’t that just all talk from when we were little? I wanted to grow up and be on Sesame Street, but Cam, sometimes we just have to suck it up and deal with it. Life’s not fair, and we can’t always get what we want.” I tried to put on my most persuasive front, but I knew that he could see through it. He picked up another rock and tossed it into the pond with a splash, not even acknowledging my words. ”You’re ignoring me. Don’t shut me out, too.”

  Cameron turned to face me, crossing his feet underneath him on the dock. “Charlie, I know you still have dreams. You’ve always been a dreamer. But instead, you like to play it safe. It’s one of your only downfalls.” I chewed my lip, trying to think of a response, but none came. He was right and he knew it.

  It wasn’t quite summer yet, but it was warm enough for us to start spending our nights at the pond down the hill from our house. In a few weeks we would occupy the long, hot days and the even longer, humid nights around that place. It was a tradition for our friends for as long as I could remember.

  “What about college? You know mom and dad said they wouldn’t pay unless you go to school here. You can’t afford out-of-state tuition on your own. They’ve got your trust fund on lockdown and-“

  “They have us on lockdown, Charlie! Why do you think they don’t want us to spread our wings? To explore the world? They’ve had the reins on us pulled tight since we were able to walk. It’s always been their way, and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m not the money, the parties, the suit and tie, nor do I have the prestigious stick up my ass like everyone else around here!” He waved his hands in the air, clearly showing me the stick and where it was shoved, in case I missed that one.

  “Hey. I don’t care about those things, either. And I don’t have a stick up my ass. I’d rather just do it their way than fail on my own. I need to go to college, Cam. Four years is all I have to endure, and then I’ll join you wherever those crazy wings of yours take you. Just stay and do that with me. Please?” My eyes pleaded with him, but his blue eyes reflected just as much pain as mine. I knew that he couldn’t stay here. He was right; he wasn’t that life.