The Vow

by Jessica Martinez

  I shake my head. “It’s my idea. I’ve been obsessed with murals for a while. It just took a few years of begging for my mom to give in. I like the idea of making art that wraps around you. Or me, I guess.”

  “Amazing,” he whispers. “Why the ocean?”

  “I don’t know.” I fold my arms. The panic is gone, but I’m suddenly cold. “It’s endless, but hidden too. And something to hide in.”

  He’s staring at me, not moving, not talking, and I hear my words. I don’t talk this way to anyone but Mo.

  “What are you hiding from?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “You said something to hide in. I was just wondering . . . nothing,” he says. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I . . . I’m going to paint coral on the lower half of that wall behind you and the left side of this one.” I tap the wall beside me with my fingertips and pretend I’m not changing the subject. “And I’m still researching ocean life for the rest. It’s taking me too long to decide, but I’m paranoid about it looking cheesy.”

  “I can’t imagine you painting something cheesy,” he says. “Not overtop of this.”

  I can’t believe he’s in my room, beside my bed, leaning against my dresser like he belongs here.

  “Why are you standing way over there?” he asks. “Isn’t the idea that it surrounds you?”

  “Yeah,” I say, leaving the safety of the door frame. But once I’m close to him, I won’t be able to really see him anymore. No distance, no objectivity.

  I walk to where he’s standing, so we are staring at the same blue wall. I think hard for something to say, anything to say, but then I feel the lightest pressure of his hand on my waist and abandon hope. I will not be coming up with words. His other hand is on the other side of my waist, and I can smell him again. I feel the faint tickle of his breath on my neck and wonder if my legs are going to give out. Is that just his breath, or do I feel his lips brushing the side of my neck? I’m almost sure it’s his mouth when my phone buzzes from inside my purse and I jump several inches. He takes a step back and lets his hands drop.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, digging into my purse. “It’s probably my parents.”

  I’m wrong. I glare at Mo’s name on my phone. I’m going to kill him.

  “Do you need to get it?” Reed asks.

  I shake my head and drop it back into my purse. “Just a friend. I’ll call him later.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He is almost smiling, his lips perfectly shaped and parted a little. I glance up at his eyes and realize he saw me staring at his mouth. I nod. “I’m sure.”

  He moves to close the space between us, but the phone buzzes again before he can reach me.

  I close my eyes to hide the frustration. “It’s him again.” I check just to be sure. Yeah.

  “Wait, the one who’s moving?” Reed asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you take it?” he says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  I press talk but keep watching Reed. He walks over to the window, the single break in the waves, and waits.

  “What’s up?” I say into the phone and rub my eyes with my thumb and index finger. I can’t yell at him with Reed right here. I’ll save it for later. “Mo?”

  “I did it,” he says. He sounds out of breath. Or scared.

  “Did what?”

  “I talked to my mom. I asked her if she’d, you know, give consent.”

  I suck in all of the air in the room. I’m such a ditz. He said he was doing it tonight, and I totally forgot. “And?”

  “And it was messy.”

  “So . . .” My heart is falling, everything slipping from me, and my thoughts are blurred but not too blurred to understand. Whatever I was feeling before this phone call is gone because that’s it, the only chance Mo has, shut down by one weak woman who doesn’t care about her own son. I feel tears spring to my eyes, then panic to blink them away before Reed sees. “So that’s it.”

  “No. She said she’d do it. She wants me to stay.”

  Suddenly I can hear what I didn’t before: The tremor in his voice isn’t fear. It’s excitement. Relief rushes through my veins, and I’m back to wanting to kick Mo in the shins. Hard.

  “She said she’ll come to the courthouse with us tomorrow morning and sign whatever she has to sign.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” I repeat. What he’s saying makes sense and it doesn’t. Too many contradictions: Mrs. Hussein said yes, but knowing her, she might back out, but Mo will talk her back into it if she does, and we’ll get married, which means Mo’s practically safe, but of course we’re both totally screwed if anyone finds out. And the marriage will be the biggest contradiction of all—pretending to love each other when, well, we actually do love each other. I don’t know whether to laugh or sob. “That’s . . . amazing.”

  “I know.” His voice is jittery, and the words are coming too quickly. “It’s soon, but I don’t trust my mom not to flip out and tell my dad if we wait too long, and I know he’s going into Louisville to say good-bye to a few colleagues.”

  “Um, I have to work at noon,” I say slowly, strangely numb. I don’t mention that I was planning on going to Myrna’s for more brushes in the morning—it seems unimportant, less than unimportant, now that I’m trying to wedge a wedding into the schedule. “Is that enough time? How long does it take to get . . .” I stop myself in time. Reed is looking at me. I can’t believe his lips were just touching my neck.

  “The courthouse opens at nine,” Mo says, “so based on how long all my other courthouse weddings took, I’d say you should be fine. Oh, and I think we should do it in Taylorsville, just in case. It would be too easy for someone to find out if we did it here.”

  I’m not listening. Reed has turned away from me and is holding his hand out to another ribbon of color, tracing the indigo current now.

  “Annie? Hello?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m just . . . relieved.”

  “I know,” Mo says. “I feel like I can breathe for the first time since my dad told me we were leaving. So tomorrow is okay?”

  I release a shaky breath. “Yeah.”

  He laughs, a weird un-Mo-like chuckle. “Can you believe this?”

  “Yes. I mean no.” Reed finishes tracing the indigo wave and comes back to the center of the room. “I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

  “Sure. Wait, are you still at that baby shower?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Oh, sorry. Yeah, call me later. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping tonight.”

  “Okay, bye.”

  I slip the phone back in my purse. “Sorry about that,” I say, my brain circling and circling for a lie that makes sense, but I can’t even remember what I said aloud.

  “What’s amazing?” Reed asks.

  “Hmm?”

  “On the phone. You said, that’s amazing.”

  “Oh, right.” I swallow, and miraculously the lie Mo told my dad lands on me. “Mo’s been trying to get some special student visa. He just found out he can stay.”

  “That’s great,” Reed says. “Are you okay? You look like you’re going to faint.”

  “No, I’m fine.” I sit down on the bed because I’m not entirely sure I won’t faint. “It’s just such great news, I . . .”

  He furrows his eyebrows and I’m almost convinced he knows I’m lying, when I realize it’s more likely he misunderstands what Mo means to me.

  I stand back up and take two steps toward him. I can’t explain it properly. He needs to meet Mo, see us together, to understand that Mo isn’t a threat. Except now more than ever, I don’t want him to meet Mo. But that doesn’t make sense either, because a fake marriage that nobody will ever know about is not going to change anything between anybody. My head hurts.

  My phone chirps. A text. “Sorry, I have to check it,” I say, pulling the phone back out. Of course. “It’s my parents. They’re on their way home.”
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  “Your phone doesn’t want us alone together in this room, does it?”

  I grin. “I guess not. I’m also guessing you don’t want to meet my dad.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, trust me, you don’t.”

  He shrugs. “I should be getting back anyway,” he says, and leads the way into the hall. He takes one last look over his shoulder at the mural. “Will it be done before the end of the summer?”

  “Why?”

  “So I can see it before I go back to school.”

  Two months. That doesn’t seem long enough, not for Reed or the mural. “I hope so.”

  I follow him, but at the top of the stairs he turns around suddenly and I almost bump into him. I’m an inch from his chest, close enough to feel heat pulsing from his body without actually touching him.

  “What?” I ask. I’m not sure why I’m whispering, except that he’s so close I don’t need to use my voice. Or maybe I’m afraid the electricity flowing between his body and mine will vanish beneath anything louder.

  He answers me with his eyes. I can see the kiss coming, feel the intensity in his gaze as he lifts my chin.

  I close my eyes. The rest is about touch and texture: his smooth warm lips on mine; a finger lighter than a whisper tracing my jawline and the length of my throat; another hand, firmer, almost insistent on my lower back pulling me forward, forward, forward; a rush of heat when my body hits his.

  I’m not sure what I thought kissing Reed would be like, but it’s not this. The shy, bookish Reed from work, with glasses and endless patience for rude customers, wouldn’t kiss like this. The glasses are off now, but I don’t know when or where they went, and he’s cradling my head in his hands. I’m leaning in to him, letting him hold me up because the alternative is melting under his lips and sliding to the ground. His mouth is hot, but I’d rather be burned from the inside out than push him away. I hear myself sigh, but I’m too far gone to be embarrassed. I don’t think Chris Dorsey ever made me sigh.

  He pulls back gently. I don’t open my eyes yet. I can hear that he’s as breathless as I am, still feel his chest heaving up and down. I’m scared that when I do open my eyes, he’ll be shy and it’ll be awkward and that minute of perfection will start to fade.

  “Annie,” he says.

  I open my eyes and he’s looking at me, just a hint of a grin on his face. Not awkward at all. We stare at each other, silently acknowledging the truth: That was not a first kiss. No nose bumping, no excess saliva issues, no rhythmical difficulties in the least.

  We need to do that again.

  He bends down and picks his glasses up off the floor, where someone—Him? Me? I have no idea—tossed them, and takes my hand. “Just so you know,” he says as we walk down the stairs together. “I usually do okay with dads.”

  “I’m sure you do. But he’s not . . . it’s not . . .” I abandon the attempt to explain, letting my starts hang between us. I’m not going to tell Reed about Lena, and without that explanation, my dad is just a caricature of a Neanderthal, the overprotective father who turns rabid around every male his daughter encounters. “He’s not a bad person.”

  Reed looks over his shoulder at me as we head out the front door, and I’m struck by the line of his jaw and the muscles in his neck. I want to touch him again.

  “Of course not,” he says.

  “He carries a gun.”

  “Right. I’ll go.”

  We walk out onto the porch and down the steps. “Would you have kissed me if I’d told you that before?”

  He turns to me. “About the gun? I thought you were kidding, but yeah. Of course.” He meets my gaze and the glimmer in his eye holds me there. “I just would’ve kissed you twice as hard for half the time.”

  I want to come back with something witty, but my stomach is flipping backward and over onto itself because I can’t not imagine what it would feel like to be kissed twice as hard, and maybe I need to sit down.

  “I’ll drive you back,” I offer, but he shakes his head.

  “It’s a ten-minute walk. Besides, aren’t you drunk off virgin piña coladas?”

  I grin. “Maybe.”

  He leans in close and his lips tickle my ear as he murmurs, “I’m just saying you taste like pineapple and coconut. That’s all. Good night, Annie.”

  He turns and walks up the street, leaving me, heart thumping, under the streetlight.

  * * *

  Changing clothes is too much work. Besides, I want to stretch tonight into forever, or at least into tomorrow. So I crawl into bed still wearing my dress, ignoring the way it strangles my waist, bunching and twisting, because honestly, whatever. After that kiss, whatever. I don’t even know.

  I pull the cool sheet over me and live it again. Then again and again. His scent, his pulse, his heat, his breath. How could I feel both weaker and stronger in that single kiss than anything I ever got pressured into with Chris Dorsey?

  Exhaustion presses down on my calves, my chest, my eyes, but my mind can’t let go of my body. That kiss made color explode in my brain, and I’m almost afraid that sleep will fade it. It was that perfect. In that moment, I was closer to whole than I’ve been in forever, or at least since Lena left, except I can’t see the chain that connects the two—losing Lena and kissing Reed.

  I’m hovering over sleep when it occurs to me that Mo is absolutely right. Some things are meant to be. Not that I’m about to believe in fate or God or soul mates, but as of this evening, I might have to believe that in this world of random chaos and pain, I am meant to be kissing Reed.

  Which reminds me, I should call Mo back.

  Chapter 14

  Mo

  Of course Annie doesn’t call me back. It’s fine, whatever, I don’t care. Why would I want my fiancée checking up on me during my bachelor party, anyway?

  Bachelor party. Ha.

  I’m not sure what I would call my evening, but it’s not a party. I don’t get drunk. I don’t get a tattoo or a lap dance or anything significant to celebrate my exit from bachelordom, which is fitting since I’m not really leaving it anyway.

  Here’s a breakdown of the night’s lameness. Guest list: me and Sarina. Festivities: helping pack Sarina’s china doll collection in bubble wrap, while listening to her try to convince herself she’s happy for me. Menu: Tropical Skittles and teriyaki beef jerky (the latter of which Sarina refused to eat even though we’ve never kept Halal.) Playlist: every song Taylor Swift ever sang.

  Definitely not a bachelor party. If Bryce wasn’t off riding ponies in Argentina, the two of us could at least try to sneak into a strip club. Not that I could tell him about getting married, but he’d probably go along without a reason, and it would at least be something. Maybe I’d be too distracted to feel like a traitor.

  It’s not like Dad doesn’t deserve a backstabbing. He did it to me first. I shouldn’t be feeling guilty for going behind his back when he’s the one screwing us all over like it’s nothing. Like we’re nothing. At Mom’s insistence, I’m faking it well, acting just as shell-shocked and dejected as before so he doesn’t think something’s up. What a joke. He wouldn’t notice if I was high as a kite.

  Mom should be more worried about her own acting skills. She’s stopped crying and gazing off into nothing and is actually packing. She almost seems happy, which is crazy because at some point we’re going to have to tell him what we’ve done. I can’t even imagine what he’s going to do. He doesn’t have much of a temper, but as far as I know, Mom’s never done anything so deceptive or brave in her entire life. But she’s clearly not thinking about what he’s going to do or say when we tell him. Or maybe she is and that’s what’s making her happy. I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

  After the so-called bachelor party, I lie in bed and wonder if I’ll be able to do it. Not get married—though that’ll be weird enough—but watch Sarina get on a plane in a week wearing her feeble, optimistic smile. Why does she have to be so irrationally hopeful?

&n
bsp; She cried when she found out I’m not going back too. I rub my eyes, trying to force the memory back down, but I don’t think it will ever be very deep. She couldn’t have just thrown a tantrum like a normal teenage girl, or even pulled a Mom and sobbed inconsolably. No, she had to sit there with her hands over her mouth and cry without making a single sound.

  “I’ll visit,” I said. Lame, but the only thing I could come up with in that moment of unadulterated self-loathing. How could I be so happy about abandoning her?

  She took her hands away from her mouth. “When?”

  I had no clue. Still have no clue. “I won’t be able to leave the country while they’re processing my documents, and that can take a little while,” I said.

  She nodded, believing me, not because I had any idea what I was talking about but because she always believes me. And as soon as I could, I slunk out to go shoot hoops. Shoot hoops. Because I’m heartless and I’m staying and basketball matters again.

  By evening, when Sarina came out with china dolls and packing boxes, the tears were gone, replaced by the eerily positive glow.

  Now, lying in bed, I realize it’s not that I can’t handle the crying or the hopeful glazed-over look. It’s that both are the wrong things to be feeling. Sadness—that’s for victims, and I don’t want her to be one. And optimism—in this case, that’s for idiots.

  She should be severely pissed off. I need her to recognize the injustice of what’s happening to her, because I did nothing to earn redemption and she definitely did nothing to deserve what she’s getting. I’d feel so much better if she was raging like a lunatic, ripping pillows open or flailing around or kicking her evil little cat.

  I roll onto my side, stare out my window into the Dubrowski backyard. Now that Mom’s stopped crying, our house is silent. So weird.

  My stomach hurts. Puking is a very real possibility tonight. I blame Sarina for providing the Skittles—everyone knows beef jerky is a stand-alone.

  I swing my legs out of bed and reach for my phone, on the off chance I missed Annie’s call. Nope. Whatever. I lie back down. She’s probably with that Reed guy from work, or whoever she’s been so giddy and secretive about lately. Like I’d care that she’s having a summer fling with custard boy.