Promise Me Forever

by Scarlett Adams

  Everything in my world felt lopsided. It felt like I was tipping back and forth, back and forth, and I could never get too far away from the negative before tipping the scales. Baking had always been my out, the way that I gave myself therapeutic stress relief. But now I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t bake, my cat was being held hostage by a disgusting piece of man meat, and I had these crazy conflicting feelings for the man that was standing right in front of me. One minute I was afraid of him, and the next minute all I wanted to do was be with him. I couldn’t sleep without talking to him, and then when he responded I clammed up and ran away. There was that crazy again, rearing its ugly head, and I couldn’t even blame it all on Christian. I was pretty sure I was headed in that direction before he even got to town, but there was something about him that just let it overflow from me without even thinking.

  “Where’s your bag?” I asked him, realizing he didn’t have anything with him. “Did you come all the way over here just for a cookie?”

  He chuckled, running his hand through his hair and sticking it back in his pocket. “Actually, I came here because I was kind of hoping that I could find a guide. I really need a break from writing, or not writing, and I figured I could have somebody show me around the local area. I want to see the things that make this area special. You know, the quirky little things that only the people that live here know about.”

  I couldn’t help but be a little bit excited about that. The idea of spending another day with him was very appealing and I knew it would pull me out of my funk. At the same time though, when the day was over, I was pretty sure it would send me spiraling straight back into it. I leaned forward and whispered to him. “If I show you the secrets of this town, you’ll either have to stay here forever, trapped in this small-town life, or I’ll have to kill you.”

  He licked his lips, his eyes shifting back and forth. “So, what you’re saying is you’ve killed people too.”

  My nose wrinkled, and I laughed. It felt so good to laugh. Several of the women sitting at the tables behind us, including my favorite gang from the old folks’ home, lifted their hands in the air. “We’ll be your guide.”

  “Do you like to skinny dip?” Hilda yelled out. “If so, I know a real good place. Used to go over there in my younger days. I’m pretty sure if you get me moving, I could do a flip on the tire swing like I used to.”

  “Hilda,” Tish yelled coming out of the kitchen. “Down girl. What have I told you about hitting on the young men? Don’t make me call your handler.”

  Hilda stuck her tongue out at Tish and I laughed. Leaning into us, she put out her hand. “I would suggest you give me the key and get this guy out of here before we have a full-on senior citizen riot. They may look docile and sweet to you, but they are hungry for a young man. And let me just tell you, the last time Hilda brought her photo album, it was full of pictures with her doing flips off a tire swing. And I’m not talking about pictures from when she was a young girl either.”

  Chris and I both wrinkled our faces before slowly turning around to see Hilda behind him, waving sweetly with her fingers. I dropped the keys in the Tish’s hand and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you.”

  Christian leaned over and kissed her on the other cheek. “Seriously, thank you. While I like to experience small town life, I think that’s a bit too much for me.”

  Tish nodded seriously at him. “Grannies gone wild. Don’t look it up, you’ll never sleep again, and you’ll never look at those ladies in the same light either.”

  Christian chuckled, and I walked around the showcase putting my hand out for him. He hurried forward and we jogged out of the store, laughing all the way down the block. It was crazy to me how one second I could feel as bad as I did that morning and the next, with just a joke from Tish and Christian’s smile suddenly I was back to my old self again. I was fighting it, that was my problem. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be happy, or that I didn’t want to be happy, it was that fear drove me to pick apart every single thing. I wanted to find what was wrong with Christian because if I knew what was wrong with him, no matter what choice I made I wouldn’t be allowed to be surprised. My hurt could only go so deep. But even thinking that, I knew that wasn’t true. I had known the bad about every guy I’d ever dated, but every single time when they did something terrible, suddenly I was shocked.

  But on that day, in that specific situation, with the freedom to do whatever I wanted, and a man that made me laugh at my side, I decided to let it go, even if it was only for a couple of hours. I needed to let myself feel again, and only then would I know whether I had it in me to love again or not.

  Chapter 10

  Christian

  “So, where we going?” I said, happy to see the smile back on her face.

  Rory stopped on the sidewalk and put her arms out, breathing in deeply. As she exhaled her breath could be seen in the cold air around her. “Well, you want to see all the little special things about our town, besides me of course.”

  I nodded. “Of course, besides you.”

  With a chuckle she waved her hand and continued walking down the street. I followed along quickly behind her. She turned around and walked backward. “It’s been a long time since I’ve taken this much time off of work. I’m going to drive you somewhere so I gotta grab my car.”

  I snapped my fingers. “And to think, I thought you were taking me home.”

  She shook her finger at me. “Don’t get too frisky or I’ll drop you back off with the ladies at the bakery.”

  I snapped upright and put my hands in the air. “Whoa, don’t get all crazy on me. That’s a real threat. I promise to behave myself.”

  Of course, somewhere in my mind I had crossed my mental fingers, hoping to at least slip in a handhold or maybe even a kiss. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself though, I knew that things could change pretty quickly. I didn’t look down on her for that, it was just confusing and somehow made me even more curious about her.

  When we got to her house, she pulled her keys from her purse and unlocked the SUV. I climbed into the passenger seat and looked around. “I’m not used to being a passenger in a car. I’m used to always driving everywhere.”

  As she started the engine, she clicked her tongue. “I would’ve thought a big Hollywood boy like you would have been chauffeured everywhere.”

  I snorted shaking my head as we backed out of the driveway. “Come on now. I’m just the writer. I’m just the one that created the entire world that people are so obsessed with. I definitely get C-level status celebrity treatment. Most of the time, nobody even knows who I am.”

  She gave me a look of disbelief. “Everyone here knows who you are. Your face is all over the magazines and there’s a big giant face on the back of your book.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “But you didn’t notice what it was like at the beginning. Before anybody realized what was going on, before my face was on the back of the book, only a select group of people knew what I looked like. The publisher didn’t put my face on the book because people didn’t buy the book to look at my face. During the premiere of the show, when I walked across the red carpet, someone asked me if I knew how to get to a certain section in the theater. They thought I worked there. And another guy thought I was security. Apparently, he didn’t even know his own security well enough to know that I wasn’t his.”

  She laughed loudly shaking her head. “Well, at least you weren’t mistaken for like, the concession guy.”

  “Only because the concession kids were like 16 with pimples,” I scoffed. “And that guy with the bodyguards… I ran into him at the after party and met his actual bodyguards. They were like six foot seven and at least three of me in width. I have no idea how he mistook me for one of them. I’m not a tiny guy but I’m definitely not a towering muscular black man.”

  As the car sped down the road, our laughter and joy filled every crevice. I didn’t think about the book looming over my head, or the confusion at where I should be or how I should feel.
I was in the moment, and I was loving every minute of it. Looking back, it was very easy to see where my realization had come from. Hollywood had killed a part of me, and there was something about that smile, the beauty that was behind Rory that made me feel that she could quite possibly breathe life right back into it.

  She drove me all around her town and beyond, telling me about the different places she went as a kid, the spots where she hid out and skipped school with Tish when she was a teenager, and even the first place she had her first kiss. I knew she was hurting from her last relationship, and the fact that she wanted her cat back so badly, but her life was like a movie. That sweet small-town girl kissing her first boyfriend under the willow tree in the middle of summer. Building snowmen with her friends when she was a teenager. Playing outside as a kid, swinging on rope swings, getting dirty, and just laughing.

  There was a sadness in it too though, a sadness knowing that I couldn’t stay long. A disappointment lingered there, fully aware that whatever this turned into might just be a fling, and not something that lasted forever. But I knew one thing, that woman sitting next to me in the SUV had the ability to make me a better man. I needed to be a better man. I had tried to make good choices all along, but in the end, I didn’t think that I cared enough for myself or the people in my life to really think about what I did before I did it.

  Rory gave me back that tangle of creativity. She made me never want to leave her side but at the same time lock myself away and write the next Great American novel. I felt life flowing back through me, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. When I first was picked up as an author, my book series being chosen to be made into a television show, I thought it was the best thing that could ever happen to me. Looking around the beautiful landscape of the small town, hearing Rory tell stories, and knowing how much I was missing out on, and knowing how much Hollywood life had changed me and taken from me, I was starting to think it was the worst choice I could’ve made.

  I didn’t know what would come from all of it. I didn’t know if after I left that small-town, I would ever speak to Rory again. But I did know that she was giving me back something that was priceless. In that car ride I truly felt as if I could finish my last book and be proud of it. I could go to my publisher and deliver it to them knowing that I was giving them the best of myself in that manuscript. It was a feeling I hadn’t felt since I dropped off the second or third book in the series. That wondrous feeling of being a new author, having people love your work. She didn’t know how much she affected me, and I didn’t think I could tell her, but I hoped that in some small way I did the same for her.

  Chapter 11

  Rory

  Turning the wheel, I pressed slowly on the brakes coming to a rest in the dusty lot. I put the car in park and looked over at Christian, smiling at him. He glanced around, and back at me with a wrinkled brow. “Is this where you kill me and leave my body?”

  I opened the car door with a laugh. “No silly, that comes later.”

  He got out of the SUV as well. “Oh, good. Please let me know so I don’t miss it.”

  I waited for him to make his way around the truck and pointed out in the distance. “We’re going to walk out there, but I promise it’s not as far as it looks.”

  He rubbed his hands together, holding them to his mouth and breathing hot air against his fingers. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

  Even with my hands in my pockets I felt the urge to reach out and touch him. I held back though, no matter what type of enjoyment I was getting out of being with him, I still wanted to make sure that I was being careful with myself. We walked through the field, and up a large steep hill. He huffed and puffed and I laughed, shaking my head. “For such a big guy, in such good shape, you have zero cardiovascular health.”

  He stopped just a foot before the head of the hill and put his hands on his knees. “I don’t do this a lot.”

  I reached out my hand for his. “You should. It’s good for the mind and the soul.”

  He took my hand and I pulled them up the hill looking out with a smile. He followed my gaze and I could hear a small gasp. “Where are we?”

  Walking toward the cliffs, I could feel the cold wind whip against me. “People rarely realize that we’re on an upward incline starting about an hour and a half outside of the city and then all the way through to this side. These are called the Clara Cliffs. You can see six counties standing here and looking out.”

  He took it all in just as I was. “Why are they called Clara Cliffs?”

  I loved telling that story. “The legend says that hundreds of years ago a woman named Clara came here, mourning the loss of her dear husband. He had gone off to war, and never returned. The heartbreak ravished her. She longed for him day and night. The only place she felt as if she were close to him was right here on the cliffs. According to the legend, she lived until she was 89 years old, coming to the cliffs every single day. They said that her children, grown, woke one morning with a strange feeling. When they pulled up at the cliffs, they saw her fall over the edge. They came running toward her, devastated that after all those years she would kill herself. But when they got to the top they looked over, she wasn’t there. She had disappeared.”

  Christian shivered, tucking his head into the upturned collar of his jacket. “That’s creepy.”

  Looking out over the cliffs I shook my head. “They say, if you come here when the air is warm, and the skies are clear that you can hear Clara whispering to her husband in the wind. She didn’t come here because of the view, she came here because she felt that the higher up, she got the closer she was to heaven. And she knew, her husband was such a good man that he was reaching down toward her at the same time. Her heart was so enormously broken that she spent 60 something years, with two children on her own, mourning him until the day she died. I think it’s beautiful.”

  Glancing over at him, I could see the realization cross through his head. A slow smile moved his lips. “A love that’s lasted forever. That is beautiful. And what do people hear her say?”

  Turning to him, I leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “You’ve come back for me. Is it time to go home?”

  It was my favorite story, and always sent chills up my spine but not because it was scary, because it was this love that was manifested through the stories, compounded by every person that told it. And though Clara may never have actually been a real person, just from the different whispers of the story by different people, that love became something that could possibly be real. Ever since I was a little girl, I had hoped for it. Even though Christian didn’t know, I had never taken a man there, not until him.

  Christian reached out and took my hand, and I gripped to the warmth of him. I knew that we had grown close that day, possibly even closer than I had ever been with a man, no matter how long we were in a relationship together. I knew that if I wanted to, I could go back with him to his bed-and-breakfast and have some romantic dinner, make love, and lay together pretending like we never had to be apart again. But I knew that was stupid. I knew that I needed to guard my heart because I wasn’t sure that I could be the fling he wanted without absolutely and unequivocally falling in love with him.

  So, as the sun set and day turned to night, I took him back to the B&B and dropped him off. No matter how romantic I wanted to be, with the emotion I was feeling, I knew that if I let myself go, I may never recover.

  Chapter 12

  Rory

  Tish fell back on my bed, throwing her hand up to her forehead groaning in agony. “I can’t believe you. You leave here, take him all over this romantic journey through our town, tell him everything about your childhood and growing up, tell him the story of Clara, and then you don’t sleep with him. Do you hear that story like I do? Last night you could’ve been making sweet, sweet love to an extremely hot famous author. But instead, you came back here, mourned your freaking cat for a while, and went to bed by yourself.”

  I chuckled as I folded clothes, shaking my
head. “You are so dramatic. You should write romance novels. Seriously. Yes, it was very bonding, and very romantic, but is one night in a bed-and-breakfast worth the heartbreak that comes after it when he tells me he’s leaving and never coming back?”

  Tish sat up quickly, her hair flying everywhere. “Yes. I would have to say yes without a thought.”

  I sighed and smoothed the wrinkles out of one of my shirts. “No. The answer is no. So imagine I had said that I did sleep with him, and we had this romantic night in his bed and then tomorrow you have to be the one to come over and nurse me back to health again, right after you just did it, because he too breaks my heart.”

  She leaned over on her side, holding her head up with her hand. “Honestly? For this guy, I would totally nurse you back to health for as long as it took. I would get to live vicariously through you enjoying every millisecond of your amazing romance story. You would become Clara.”

  Scrunching my brow and shaking my head, I put my hands out to the sides. “No, I wouldn’t. Clara was married, her husband left for war which he could not get out of, and then died. That is nowhere near the same thing as me consciously choosing to fall for a guy, sleep with him, and then say goodbye knowing he was leaving. That is nowhere near the same thing. On top of that, I do not want to be Clara. I do not want to live my entire life completely heartbroken and then throw myself off of a cliff just so people, 200 years later could say they heard me whispering in the wind when it’s a bunch of bull crap.”

  Tish’s mouth fell open and she gasped. “Oh no, you’ve already fallen in love with him.”