Promise Me (32 page)

I lean my back against the door when I ask softly, "Why did you come?"

"I needed to see you."

"Why? Hurting me from over a thousand miles away wasn't good enough? You had to do it to me in person too?"

He takes a couple of steps towards me and I push off from the door and past him to sit at the foot of my bed.

"I didn't come here to hurt you. Sabrina, I'm..."

"You're what? You're sorry?"

He inches closer to me, his large frame making me feel so small in my own room, that I want to fall back into my bed and disappear. Once he is standing right in front of me, he crouches down to his knees so that our faces are almost eye level.

"Yes, I'm sorry, but that's not why I came." His hands carefully reach out to touch me and I flinch so he lowers them on either side of me, face down onto the mattress.

"Every time I hear or see you cry it kills me just a little bit more because I know it's me who's to blame for it. I know I'll never be good enough for you... I knew it back then, and I fucking know it for sure now. I know I don't have any right to ask, but if you give me another chance, I swear I will spend the rest of my life trying to put that beautiful smile back on your face. Because what I came here to tell you is that I need you... I need you like I need the fucking air to breathe."

Tyler drops his head to rest on my lap and his arms encircle me. I can't say anything back to him. My vocal chords temporarily robbed by the emotions I'm feeling. The pain in the pit of my stomach appeased only slightly by his words that I want to believe so badly. I pull my arms out of his embrace and put them just over his dampened hair. They hover there while I struggle with wanting to soothe him and wanting to hurt him. In the end, they fall to my sides, careful not to touch the bare skin of his arms.

"Please just go."

He lifts his head slowly and brings his lips to my forehead to press a soft kiss there. I close my eyes at the contact, not wanting to look into his when he backs away and goes to stand up. Hearing his feet walk the few steps to my door, I keep my head down and my eyes tightly shut so I won't even be tempted to stop him.

I can tell he's opened the door and is about to walk out when he faintly says, "Whether you want to believe it or not, I do love you, Sabrina."

The heartache of wanting to hear those words for so long from him brings a new wave of tears and I go to bury my face in my hands, but not before I manage to say one last thing to him before he leaves.

"I love you too... but right now, it's just not enough."

I wake up to the sound of rain outside my bedroom window. So much for a day at the beach. It's just as well. I couldn't lift a limb if I tried. All my energy is drained and I'm so uncomfortable from falling asleep in my clothes. I roll onto my back and stare blankly at the ceiling hoping to find some answers there to the questions in my mind.

I never made it out of my room even after Tyler left last night. I heard some murmuring, which I assumed to be Julia and Alex for a few minutes, but didn't want to face either of them after what happened. I locked my door and just buried myself in a cocoon in my bed and cried myself to sleep.

The sound of footsteps approaching and stopping outside my bedroom door makes me abandon the staring contest I'm having with my ceiling. I look over to the clock on my nightstand to see that it's past ten in the morning and know that Julia must be busting at the seams to talk.

I sigh and push my hair out of my face before I find my voice and say, "You can come in."

She immediately goes to open the door but it's still locked which forces me to throw the covers aside and unlock it for her. I crawl back into bed as she opens it and stays in the doorframe with her arms wrapped around herself assessing the damage.

"I'm sorry, sweetie," she says sympathetically. "Can I get you anything?"

I shake my head no when she starts to take a few steps closer until she's sitting on the side of the bed and smiles weakly at me.

"Did he say anything to you when he left?"

She tilts her head thinking of something then says, "No, not really."

"So he said something to you. Tell me."

"I don't know if that's a good idea, Sabrina."

I sit up in the bed intrigued by whatever information she's choosing not to share and wish that I didn't want to know so badly, but at the same time needing to hear it.

"Fine," she says giving in to my request. "He apologized to me and said that I was an amazing best friend for looking out for you and that if you changed your mind that he'd be staying at the..."

"Stop! Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

"I hate to admit this, but I kind of felt sorry for the guy when he came sulking out of here looking like his dog died. He deserves it and all, but seriously he looked pitiful. What did you tell him?"

Thinking back to the moment he wrapped me in his arms and I was so close to giving in but couldn't, my eyes water. Ugh! Jesus Christ! This constant crying at the drop of a hat is even annoying me. I groan out loud, utterly frustrated with the knowledge that my heart is in complete control of me right now and has been since the second he stepped onto that gazebo a month ago.

Julia sounds confused when she asks, "What? What does that groan mean?"

"I'm so tired of all of this, Julia. I'm tired of feeling like a wet mop all the goddamn time. I'm tired of crying all day and night. I'm tired of trying to pretend that I'm okay when I'm not. I'm tired of not wanting to admit to myself that I should have seen this coming. But most of all, I'm so fucking tired of loving him with everything that I am when I know I shouldn't after what he did."

"This is the last time we'll talk about this, so whatever you choose to do, I'll support you regardless, okay," she says.

"Last time ever or just today?" I ask sarcastically.

She grins and I know she's dying to say something equally biting, if not worse, in return but she keeps it in check.

"You have every right to feel everything you are feeling right now. Because what he did... no bullshit... I'd want to go Lorena Bobbitt on him too. But..."

"But what?" I ask while propping myself up on my elbows.

"But, it took a lot of balls to come here. I've never felt like that for someone that deeply where you fly across the country and..."

"It isn't across the country," I say quickly correcting her.

"Fine," and she rolls her eyes at me before she continues. "Fly across the eastern seaboard and want to apologize to them in person."

"He already had the airline ticket."

"True, he did, but he could have easily kept his unwanted ass at home too. But he chose to come here and fight for you. That says a lot."

"This coming from the person who wanted to kill him last night when he showed up here," I say reminding her of the scene last night.

She lets out a dry laugh then says, "Well, as the best friend, that
is
part of
my job description. Don't get me wrong, he's still on my shit list. But maybe, just maybe, he fell to the number two slot."

I fall back onto the bed which such force that the pillows give a big "poof" sound and I put my arm across my eyes. As soon as I do, I see Ava and Tyler wrapped in each other's arms like pretzels. His mouth kissing and nipping at her neck as her head falls back in ecstasy while her hands grip onto his hair roughly.

"Every time I close my eyes, Julia, I see them together. It's like it's on constant rewind and I can't make it stop long enough to listen to what he has to say."

"I'm sorry, sweetie. I don't know how to fix that."

And that's it in a nutshell. Nobody can fix it.

I tear my arm off my face and let out a big breath. "I don't want to talk about it anymore if you don't mind."

She turns the imaginary lock closed over her lips, trying to get me to smile, and it works for a half a second before I notice my crumpled clothes.

"I need to get out of these and shower."

Julia goes to stand and starts to walk out of my room. "I'll have some coffee ready for you when you get out."

"Julia?"

Her hand on the doorframe stops her progress and she turns her head around to look over at me.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you, for everything."

She winks and says, "What kind of best friend would I be if I don't take care of you?"

Her long blonde hair goes flying behind her when she leaves my room and heads down the hall towards the kitchen to make that cup of joe. I kick the blanket off of me and make my way to the shower, staying under the hot stream of water until I realize my fingers look like prunes. Throwing on a pair of yoga pants and a tank top, I pull my wet hair into a messy bun on the top of my head and stalk to the kitchen to join Julia. Waiting for me is my already filled
X-Files
coffee mug with steam flowing from the top as promised.

I hop up to sit on the kitchen island and Julia goes to grab a refill when something occurs to me. "Oh my God! Alex!"

With her back to me, Julia snickers then says, "Yeah, I was wondering when you'd ask about that."

"I can't believe he saw all that drama." I put my hand to my head in disbelief and embarrassment. "What did he say when he left?"

"Nothing much," she says with a little grin. "He hung around for a few minutes after Tyler left then went home to his batcave or wherever the hell he lives. I think I freaked him out a bit, to be honest."

"You kind of freaked me out too. I thought you were going to slice and dice Tyler right in our living room and I was going to have to start collecting bail money for you."

As she breezes past me and starts walking down the hall she says, "Well, bros before hos and all that jazz."

I yell out to her, "I think you mean sistahs before mistahs."

"Semantics," she yells back.

I finish my coffee while thinking of things to do to occupy myself today. When my bare feet hit the hardwood floor after sliding off the counter, I decide to take on a huge undertaking that I've been putting off forever. With renewed vigor, I set off down the hall to tackle the task of cleaning out my closet. This ought to keep me busy for a while. It's packed so tightly that it's busting at the seams and screaming for a good reorganizing.

Several hours later I'm staring at an empty closet and piles of clothes, shoes, and handbags scattered all over my room. I've somehow managed to move the mess from a contained mess to a nuclear bomb mess. What the hell was I thinking? I'm never going to get this crap straightened up and in semi-decent order then back into a tiny closet to boot. I see myself sleeping on a pile of clothes later tonight because this has got to be the stupidest idea I've ever had.

The sun already set, I've made a minor dent in just the shoes when Julia pops her head in and lets out a long whistle.

"Holy crap, girlie," she says chuckling, "Bored much?"

"At least I've got some of the shoes organized," I say a little happy at my progress. "You should have seen it when I started hours ago."

"I'll take your word for it. I was going to heat up some leftover pasta, do you want some?"

"No thanks, I'm really making some headway here and it's helping to keep me mind off of..."

She cuts me off, keeping me from breaking my own rule while turning on her heel and walking down the hall. "La la la la la. Sabrina is talking but I'm not listening to Sabrina."

I laugh and walk over to sit down on the one bare spot on the floor, but before my ass touches the ground, I curse myself for not thinking of something sooner. I grab my iPhone off the nightstand, which has no messages, thankfully, and dock it into the alarm clock to listen to some music.

Those seven dwarfs were onto something with that whole "whistle while you work" thing, because the music helps to motivate me to get even more floor spaced cleared in a matter of hours.

Now all that's left is a small pile of handbags that I've transferred from the floor to my bed. I grab a couple of them and go to put them on the top shelf in my closet when that goddamn box of "old stuff" from high school gets in the way. I look up to the ceiling hoping that some divine intervention will happen that will keep me from having to touch it, but no such thing. As if it had the cooties, I pull the corner of the box to the edge and take it down without glancing inside of it, bringing it to the furthest corner of my bedroom instead. Out of sight, out of mind.