Today's Promises

by S. R. Grey

  Suspicious of what else went on today in that freaking town, I carefully ask, “What’s with the gum?”

  Leaning back and peeling the foil from a stick of chalky green, he says, “I bought the gum this afternoon.” His eyes meet mine, and he comes clean. “It was either chew gum or smoke a cigarette, Jaynie.”

  “Wait.” I twist to face him. “I thought you said the interview was a breeze.”

  “It was. It’s just that being back there… Well, you know how it is. Being in the thick of things, close to all the shit that happened, it just kind of stirs it all up inside you, you know?”

  “I do know,” I say, since I do. “But that’s what I meant when I originally told you I was against this job over there. One damn afternoon in that crappy town and you’re already stressed to the max.”

  Around the piece of gum he’s chomping on—spearmint, by the smell of it—Flynn says the same thing he’s maintained from the start. “We need the money, Jaynie.”

  “I don’t know if it’s worth this grief,” I counter. “Maybe you should turn down this particular job. You can look for work in other places. You already know how much I absolutely hate the idea of you spending any time at all over in that evil town.”

  “It’s not the town that hurt us,” he replies. “Plus, I won’t be working in Forsaken, not technically. It’s just that the interview was there.” He draws a breath, and then releases it slowly, like he’s calming himself. “Like I told you already, the job itself is on the outskirts of town. It’s almost completely outside the city limits.”

  “I know you said all that, but…”

  “What?”

  “Bad things seem to happen all around that place. It’s like there should be some kind of a sign.” I make air quotes. “‘Stay away’, it should read. And also, ‘oh, by the way, give yourself a one-mile radius, just to be sure.’”

  I’m kidding, of course. Well, sort of.

  Flynn, determined to make our lives better at all costs, insists, “This is a good job, Jaynie. It’s a full-time, steady gig. One with better-than-decent pay.”

  When he can’t look me in the eye, though, I suspect something more is at play here.

  That prompts me to ask, “Are you sure nothing else happened over there today?”

  “Oh, yeah, there was one thing,” Flynn says, as nonchalant as ever. “I did run in to an old buddy. It happened when I came out of the job center.”

  Aha!

  There’s only one old friend Flynn could possibly have run in to, so it’s with confidence that I say, “Crick, right?”

  “Yep.” He nods. “He drove right by me, and I waved him down. We ended up talking, and then grabbing a quick lunch.”

  I’ve yet to meet Crick, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to. He was a good friend to Flynn during the months he was stuck in Forsaken.

  Seeing Crick wouldn’t upset Flynn, though—not like this—so I press, “Did you guys go anywhere else? Besides to lunch, that is?”

  Flynn schools his features to an expression that reveals nothing, making it hard for me to discern whether he’s telling the truth. Especially when he says, “No. We just ate lunch together. Then we went our separate ways.”

  Hmm… “You plan to keep in touch?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure we will.” Flynn shrugs. “We exchanged digits, plus I’m bound to see him around.”

  “Ugh.” I topple to my side and plant my face in a pillow.

  “What now?”

  “The same thing as before,” I say, sighing. “I still just can’t believe you’re going to be spending so much time in and around that freaking town.”

  I peek up, and find Flynn scrubbing a hand down his face.

  “Jaynie, please, stop,” he whispers. “What choice do we have? I mean, really?” He gestures around our small place. At the bare wooden floor, the tiny closet in the corner, the small, outdated attached bath. “Do you want to live in this little room forever? Do you want to take the bus for the next five years?”

  “No,” I mutter.

  “Okay then. Case closed.”

  Accepting that this is our only real option, I say, “You have to promise me one thing, then. Can you at least do that?”

  Reaching down and tucking a wayward lock of hair behind my ear, he says, “Anything, babe.”

  “Promise me you’ll stay far, far away from the Lowry property.”

  Flynn has to look away when he says, “Okay, yeah, sure.”

  Crap. I know then and there that something bad definitely happened in Forsaken this afternoon. However, I can’t keep questioning him. Not now, not after all the emotional upheaval of this goddamn day.

  What I need is a break…and maybe a candy bar.

  “Hey,” I say as I scoot to the edge of the bed. “I think I’m going to take a quick shower before we go to sleep.”

  Flynn seems completely distracted when he replies, “Yeah, okay, Jaynie.”

  He doesn’t try to stop me, even though he has to see the guilt on my face. Still, he just lets me go to the bathroom, where he knows I’m about to pig out.

  I know for a fact, then and there, that the promise he just made, the one to stay away from the Lowry property, is destined, if it hasn’t already, to become what so many of our promises end up to be—simply another one of tomorrow’s lies.

  Flynn

  I can’t bring myself to share with Jaynie everything that happened during the time I spent over in Forsaken today. I want to tell her, I do. But I can’t, not just yet.

  See, that promise I just made to stay off the Lowry property? Well, it’s already been broken. In fact, it’s the events that occurred this afternoon that have me craving a smoke, to the point now that I may lose my goddamn mind.

  Reaching for another stick of gum, to prevent what I fear is about to become inevitable, I check the bathroom door to make sure it’s still closed.

  It is.

  No surprise there.

  Jaynie went in a couple minutes ago to take a shower before bed. Or that’s what she claimed she was doing. Though water is running in the bathtub, I suspect it’s all a cover. She’s probably sitting on the floor, chowing down on multiple candy bars.

  We all have our demons.

  “Yeah, like you and cigarettes,” I remind myself.

  When I start taking off my jeans, readying for bed myself. I come upon the small card, a business card, in the back pocket.

  Shit, I have to hide this from Jaynie, or she’ll flip.

  It’s bound to come out eventually, though. Yeah, soon enough I’ll have to confess where I went after lunch with Crick.

  Most of what I told Jaynie was how it really went down. Just not all of it.

  The interview went well, as I expressed, but it took far less time than I expected. Afterward I had a lot of time to kill, before the evening bus was due to take me back to Lawrence. I considered walking home, for about a minute, but then I ran across Crick.

  My old friend kept me sane during my time away from Jaynie. And despite his past—he was once addicted to meth—he’s a stand-up dude. I was happy to see him again, as the only sad part when I left Forsaken to return to Jaynie, was me thinking I’d never again see my good friend.

  But there he was this afternoon, driving down the main drag in a cable company truck. I was standing in front of the job center, a spot where we used to hang out and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes before work.

  I started waving like a madman, hailing him down. “Hey, Crick!” I called out. “Whoa, man, hold up.”

  He slammed on the brakes when he saw me. And then he pulled over to the curb, to just beyond where I was standing.

  Smiling, I ran up the sidewalk and skidded to a stop by his truck.

  Reaching over the front bench seat, he rolled down the passenger-side window.

  “Flynn, my man,” he said, breaking into a genuinely happy smile. “You look glad to see me.”

  “I am, man. I am.”

  “So, I gotta ask,”
he went on. “What the hell are you doing back in this goddamn dirtbag town?”

  “Looking for work,” I replied, chuckling.

  “Really, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  He nodded to the job center, his stringy, dishwater-blond hair moving right along with his bobbing head. “They have anything for you in there?”

  “Actually, they did. I saw an ad in the paper the other day, and it said, ‘come to the job center, interview on the spot.’”

  “Great. How’d it go?”

  Smiling, I informed Crick. “I got hired on the spot. You’re looking at one of the newest workers on the construction crew that’ll be putting up those fancy apartments out on Route Nine-Ten. You know the ones, right? There’ve been signs everywhere, bragging about how nice they’ll be.”

  “Yeah, I know the ones you mean,” he said. “So, when you start?”

  “Tomorrow.” I rapped my fist on the roof of his truck. “But enough about me. What’s this new ride all about? You work for the cable company now?”

  Crick looked proud as ever when he said, “I do, kid. Right as snow, I do.”

  I chuckled. Damn, I’d missed this guy. Crick’s a trip, always spouting off his own crazy-ass mixed-up versions of well-known sayings.

  Instead of correcting him and saying I think the saying goes ‘right as rain,’ I said, “That’s great, man.”

  Crick then mentioned how it was his lunch hour.

  Since I had plenty of time to spare, I said, “Well, I got nothing to do right now.”

  He then asked if I wanted to join him, and I said, “Hell, yes.”

  When I hopped in the truck, he warned, “Now, it ain’t gonna be nothing fancy. I only got ‘nough money for one of them cheap fast food value meal deals.”

  “Hey, I hear ‘ya. Cheap works for me.” Sighing, I added, “I’m kind of low on funds myself.”

  We ended up rolling through the drive-thru of the local McDonald’s. Crick ordered two of those value meal deals, and he asked for them to be super-sized. To this day, it cracks me up that he stays skinny as fuck when he eats like a horse. I had to give him some good-natured grief about it, of course.

  After I finished my burger, I said, “Dude, you are a machine. Where do you put it all?”

  “Fast metabolism,” he replied, polishing off his extra-large fries.

  “Hell, you must’ve been skin and bones when you were on meth,” I remarked.

  “Fuck, kid, I looked like one of them there skeletons you hang on the door at Halloween.”

  “Shit.”

  Crick lowered his voice. “I remember you looking like a bag of bones at one time too. And it wasn’t all that long ago.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I blew out a breath. “Only thing different was my days as a bag of bones wasn’t from drug use. Allison Lowry was literally starving me and Jaynie before we got out of that place.”

  Crick knows all about our past, and he shook his head, disgusted. “Yeah, I remember you telling me about that crazy bitch and the things she was doin’ to y’all. That was some fucked-up shit right there.” He gestured to my jeans and flannel shirt, to the clothes that no longer hang on my body but instead showcase how bulked up I’ve become. “Look at you now, though, kid,” he said. “You’re big and strong and healthy. And those are the things that matter. You beat that bitch, yeah?”

  “Yeah, it’s amazing what good nutrition can do,” I deadpanned.

  Crick, fumbling with his smokes, nodded.

  Lighting up, he held the pack out to me. “You want one?” he asked from around the filter of the cigarette he’d wedged between his lips.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m good.”

  And I was good, at that time.

  It was the events that followed that freaked me the fuck out.

  Jaynie

  When I emerge from the bathroom, fresh from the shower I eventually got around to taking, my hair is wet, and my skin is damp and sticking to my oversized sleep tee.

  Since he didn’t check on me, not once, I know for certain something is up with Flynn. He’s still so damn distracted, in fact, that he doesn’t even notice that I’m back in the room.

  Seated on the edge of the bed, in just his boxer briefs, he’s peering down intently at a small piece of cardstock in his hand.

  A business card, maybe?

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Oh, hey, you’re back.” Flynn quickly opens the drawer of the nightstand next to our bed and tosses the card in. “And that”—he gestures to the drawer—“was nothing.”

  I let out a little snort. “Since when do we save ‘nothing’?” He shrugs, and I add, “That’s not a very good hiding spot if you plan on keeping whatever that is a secret from me.”

  He falls backward onto the bed and covers his face with his arm. “Jaynie,” he says on a sigh, “can you just let this one go?”

  “Not a chance, bud.” I walk over to the bed.

  As I stretch out next to him, lying on my stomach, I remind him, “We don’t keep secrets from one another, remember?”

  He groans, then sneaks a peek over at me from under his arm. I touch the little crescent-shaped scar beneath his right eye, a present from his biological father, when he got too enthusiastic with his belt.

  “If something’s going on, Flynn, you should want to talk to me about it.”

  “Fuck.” He jumps up from the bed and heads over to the closet where he hung his coat when he first came in. After a few seconds of frantically fishing through the pockets, he pulls out a slightly crumpled cigarette.

  I sit up, alarmed and surprised. “Flynn, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He ignores me as he scans the room. “Where’s that lighter we use to light candles with?” he asks.

  “No, no, no.” I wave my hands around as I jump up. But when he gives me a look to not go ballistic, to let this one slide, I sit back on the edge of the bed.

  Giving up, I say, “The lighter’s in the bathroom, next to the candle on the toilet tank lid.”

  “Thanks,” he murmurs.

  Flynn disappears to the bathroom, and less than a minute later, he reemerges with the cigarette, now lit, dangling from his lips. The tip glows an angry orangey-red in the dim lighting of the room.

  “I’m only smoking this one, babe,” Flynn assures me.

  “Okay,” I whisper, not convinced.

  He walks over to the window in our room and starts fidgeting with the latch. “I promise, Jaynie. This is it.”

  “Flynn…” I shake my head. We have a thing about promises—don’t make ones today that you can’t keep tomorrow.

  When I open my eyes, Flynn has the bottom half of the window pushed open, though it’s just a crack. Still, even that tiny bit is enough to allow the cool breeze to drift in. When winter’s icy fingers reach me over on the bed, I’m filled with a sense of dread.

  Flynn gestures that I should come over and sit next to him on the hardwood floor.

  “Come on, Jaynie,” he says softly. “I’ll blow all the smoke out the window. We can even light some candles afterward to get rid of the smell. But, really”—his steel-gray eyes implore me to understand him on this one thing—“I need this smoke to calm my ass down.”

  “Why are you so on edge?” I ask, treading carefully. Sometimes it takes a little extra patience to get Flynn to talk. He’s not like me. I always tell him everything. Well, unless not telling him is my only option.

  “I want to come clean with you on what actually happened today over in Forsaken.” He looks away. “The whole story, that is. Not just the part about the interview and running in to Crick. Those were good things.”

  “So…there is something bad.”

  He looks away. “Yes.”

  Folding my arms across my chest, I blow out a breath. “Damn it, Flynn, I knew there was more to this.”

  “Jaynie, just be quiet and get over here.”

  “But, it’s cold,” I murmur, resistant.r />
  He reaches for a hoodie that’s on the floor, some piece of clothing one of us discarded and never bothered to pick up. “Here,” he says, “put this on. It’ll keep you warm.”

  Before I give in and go to him—because I will, in fact, always go to Flynn—I say in a soft voice, “You went up there, didn’t you? You went back to that goddamn place where we endured so much torment.” My voice rises, as does my frustration. “You returned to the place where I lost my baby.” I stifle a sob. “…the place where we lost our baby, Flynn.”

  “Jaynie, just come to me, please.” His voice is a whisper, a comforting caress. God, I need him. He’s the only person who can ever understand my pain, especially when it comes to this subject.

  So I go to him.

  And I let him slip the hoodie on me.

  I then sit on the floor, across from him.

  I also let him smoke his damn cigarette in peace.

  Flicking an ash into a discarded paper cup, he tells me how after lunch, on a whim, he asked Crick to drive him up to the Lowry property.

  “Why in the world would you ever want to go back up there?” I ask, truly perplexed.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I just kind of wanted to see it today. That place where so much bad shit went down. It just seemed… I don’t know…”

  He’s trying to explain, but this is clearly hard for him to put into words.

  Flynn puts the cigarette to his lips and inhales, sucking smoke deeply into his lungs.

  On his exhales, he says in a tight voice, “Hey, at least I didn’t break any promises.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You hadn’t yet asked me not to go up there. That didn’t happen until tonight.”

  He has a point, so there’s no good reason to dwell on promises that weren’t technically broken. He went to the Lowry’s and that’s the end of it.

  “So,” I begin, curious to hear the rest of what happened up there. “You felt like you needed to see the place today…for whatever reason.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I did,” he says, nodding.

  “Why, though?” I press. “Why today of all days?”