He got down on one knee and my heart pitter pattered as he pulled out a ring. My heart skipped a beat. I had no idea what he was doing. There was no way that he was proposing, though, not after what happened. The ring box was plain black leather but the ring inside that he started to slip on my finger as he watched my face for a reaction was heavy, hefty, with two entwined metal pieces although it was flat on the inside. It was like two ribbons wound together, a braided of two instead of three, and one was a straw gold, like my hair, and the other a deep bronze, as rich and brown as his hair. I’d never seen anything like this. There was no diamond, no stone, but there didn’t need to be, because it was from him. It was from Skylar.
“This is a promise ring. The entwined metal symbolizes the fact that through it all, I want to be with you. That I’ll be there for you. Even as life twists, curves, and throws you for a loop, I’ll be by your side. Forever. I can’t promise you that it’s going to be easy, or even that it’s going to be pleasant, but I want you to know that I’ll always be there for you, through thick and thin, helping you be strong, even when I’m weak. Will you accept this promise ring? Will you accept me?”
“Oh, Skylar, of course I will,” I said as I took a knee and kissed him right back. I didn’t have a ring of my own to give him, of course, but what I did have was my heart, a heart that I held his hand up to so that through my white sundress, he could feel my pulse, that it was strong and steady and that my heart beat for him, that he’d saved me and that pulse that kept me alive.
All the people in the office who had been watching this, dumbfounded, were even further stunned.! They stood up from their seats and all started to clap and cheer. The same nurse from before said, “You go, girl!”. My parents, who had walked into the lobby, clapped with them and I turned to see my mom smiling with tears in her eyes from Skylar’s beautiful speech and my dad giving Skylar two thumbs up, the biggest blessing he could give anyway. He was trusting Skylar with me, his baby, and Skylar was going to take good care of me for sure and keep me in check.
After the clapping subsided and Skylar and I got up, an aide came up to me. “Miss Nelson, are you ready to sign your release papers?”
“My release papers?” I’d lost track of the time. I’d forgotten the past month had gone by already. I’d been counting the days at first, but not since I’d been working on my own recovery.
“Yes, you’ve made significant progress over the past few weeks and you can sign yourself out. You could at any time, of course, but your parents suggested that maybe now would be a good time,” explained the young nurse.
I knew that I was ready, that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I had in the past, time and time again. I knew that the cycle of drug abuse, of alcohol abuse, of self abuse, was over, that I was ready to make new mistakes and meet new challenges with Skylar beside me all the way.
So I signed my name on the dotted line.
Epilogue, #YOLO:
I’D BEEN SOBER AND CLEAN FOR TWELVE MONTHS NOW. All through the process, through the twelve steps, through recovery, through sobriety, Skylar had been by my side and made sure that I didn’t fall back into my old ways, with the old crowd. Finals were harder than ever without my study drugs, but I managed to get passing grades. I knew that with even more hard work, I could find a way to get even better grades in the coming year.
Eventually, my parents went back to Iowa, about a month after I’d resettled in our apartment in LA to recoup with Skylar by my side, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn't worried at first. If I said I wasn’t scared. I was. I didn’t want to ever go back to a hospital or to rehab again, and I didn’t want to be weak any more. I want to be strong for Skylar and for myself.
Even though Skylar hadn’t had a problem with substance abuse, he joined me in my journey of recovery. He quit caffeine and stopped eating junk food, which made him even fitter than he already was, so we started to hit the gym together so I could catch up. He assured me he’d love me at any weight but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be healthier so I could do more things with him and share more of my life with the one man I knew I wanted to share it with forever.
I never forgot the sacrifices that Skylar made for me to pay off the debt. My parents offered to reimburse him but time after time, he refused, until they ended up talking to the building manager and paying off two years of Skylar’s rent, in advance, no strings attached. He insisted it was too much but in his eyes, I saw relief. Still, he had to keep putting in extra hours at the nightclub for a while, but soon, found a way to get certified in welding so he was able to get another job. It was still dangerous, but he didn’t have to see the thing that broke his heart every night: girls like me, getting into trouble with the wrong type of guys, or getting too drunk or too stoned or too out of it. Anything was better than that.
However, I didn’t realize it was twelve months, a whole year and at the end of my sophomore year now, into my second summer living in LA and living with Skylar, until I got my chip at group, marking a year of being off drugs, alcohol, and nicotine.
Skylar was the one who brought it up as we got ushered into the first class section (I still treated myself on occasion). We were heading to Iowa, to see my parents for the Fourth of July. Skylar and my parents had spent a lot of time together: we all had, because I made more of an effort during sophomore year to remember who I was, where I was from, and to not let California change me...at least, too much. Going back home for major holidays, with Skylar by my side, kept me grounded. It reminded me that although I could live a dreamy almost celebrity style life, certain things were more important, things like love, like family, like Skylar.
My life had changed so much in the past year, the only constant the beating of my heart and Skylar by my side. I had never expected that I would have hit rock bottom after becoming a California stereotype, or that I would have been pulled out of it by someone I never thought I would ever see after just a few glances in a night club. Although life had thrown so many challenges at me, if it hadn’t been for those challenges, those hurdles, those trials, I would have never met Skylar, become a stronger woman, or fallen in love for the first time in my life.
That Fourth of July ended up being the best ever.
Skylar and I headed out that afternoon to the festival on Main Street. There was a parade with floats and they weren’t the flashy kind from Mardi Gras or Spring Break, but stuff by the 4H club, the cheerleaders, the knitting club, just normal stuff by normal people, but it was better than something as over the top and glamorous as my first year in the OC. The fact I could do this sweet, tender, more innocent things with Skylar instead of living the fast and dangerous lifestyle of before made me so glad to be with him. He wasn’t like the guys in town that wanted to go mudding more than to a movie, and although Skylar’s tastes were more artsy and “hipster” than I was used to, they also reminded me more of home: meeting people in person instead of relying on name dropping to get the privilege of meeting someone, a focus on things made locally by hand, and a small community like the one I’d left behind in Iowa, hidden in the LA underground music and arts scene. Skylar was my rock, keeping me grounded, keeping me from floating away again.
After the parade, we checked out the booths that were setting up. A girl from 4H recognized me, not because of the lottery or the fact that the town had talked about me, but because there was still a picture of me, my senior year with 4H, with my goat I’d raised to adulthood. She asked for an autograph and so I gave her one, as she beamed at me with her mouth full of silvery braces, and I made sure to donate a few (hundred) dollars to their program. Skylar rolled his eyes: donating was good but I’d started to do it more and more even as my expensive tastes in stuff like designer goods slowed and I became more reasonable with my spending. But it was an improvement.
There were so many food stands set up, I could have sworn I was at a carnival instead of in my sleepy town in Iowa, the only ride set up a Ferris wheel at the end of the street, at the end of town. We ate
our way down there, munching on funnel cakes, cotton candy, candied and caramelized apples, and drinking (or at least attempting to) frozen lemonade quickly turning to slush. By the time we reached the Ferris wheel, we were stuffed and had to wash our hands. We waited our turn in line and held our wet clammy hands together, but I didn’t care, because I was with him.
I leaned in to kiss him discreetly. We were still in line but Skylar had no qualms about public displays of affection. I usually did, and was shy, but around Skylar, I didn’t care. I didn’t care what people would say about the Nelson girl fraternizing with the tattooed youth, or about the fact that people would keep saying I could “do better”, and the fact I knew that what they weren’t saying was “because your parents won the lottery and you have the money to meet a rich boy now”.
The only thing I cared about was leaning up and into him, my breasts pushing at the buttons of my gingham checked blouse as I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and my feet, in white Keds I’d bought for this trip but already managed to turn a dingy tan color, popped into the air as my knee bent and I let Skylar hold me up with his two firm arms gripping me tight as if to stop me from flying away, as if I was a balloon and he didn’t want to see me soar into the sky and out of reach.
He tasted like summer, like Los Angeles, like Iowa, like Skylar. Like the one true love in my life, a fact I was sure of but didn’t want to pressure him into admitting himself, especially since I knew what had happened with Sandra and that maybe I couldn’t compete.
“Is there something wrong?” asked Skylar, pulling away and putting me back on my feet gently. He always had a way of sensing that about me.
“N-no, it’s fine,” I said, looking away, my tell, which by now, Skylar knew.
“Emma, please, I thought you knew you could tell me anything,” he said, his big brown eyes reflecting the baby blues of mine in their whites. Fuck. Skylar could get me to admit anything to him.
“It’s just...I know you love me. But do you love me, love me?” I asked this looking into his eyes although it hurt me to ask this kind of question. At best, it was accusatory, and that wasn’t a good “at best”. At worst, it meant that I’d have to confront a truth I was afraid of.
“There’s a stage past love?” he asked, sort of confused.
I rolled my eyes and brushed a lock of golden curls behind my ear. “No, I mean like, true love.”
“Yeah, I truly love you, Emma.”
“Really?”
“As in, you’re my one true love, yeah. I don’t always feel the need to say it, and maybe that’s a problem, but Emma, I love you. I’ll always love you. You’re the one person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Not the one girl, not the one woman, the one person. If I had to go to a desert island, sorry babe but you’re coming with me. If I was stranded in Antarctica, it’s you I’d want to see more than anyone else.” Skylar sighed. I knew he hated talking about this lovey-dovey stuff, but he was my first real, serious boyfriend, and even though he was older than me by only a few years, what Jaelle had said before, which was now over a year ago, remained true. Time made a difference and I’d never catch up to Skylar in terms of age, but would we eventually end up in the same place in terms of emotional maturity? Only time would tell, but I wish Skylar could tell me instead.
“But Sandra...”
“Sandra’s gone. You’re here, and you’re alive, and you didn’t fuck your life up to the point that it killed you. Not that you didn’t try, but obviously, there were other plans in store for you, Emma. I can’t love someone who didn’t love themselves enough to change, but you did. Even if you started to drink again, or to smoke cigarettes, I wouldn’t be mad as long as you remembered what it did to you in the past, kept that in mind, and didn’t make the same mistakes again, falling into the cycle of addiction. But I love you, and more importantly, I believe in you. I never believed in Sandra, because she never even tried to change. She ran into the darkness, but you ran into the light.”
Skylar held his hand over my heart and felt my heart beating. Buh bum, buh bum. We’d gone past the point where his touch made my heart beat faster and gotten to the point where it’s what kept my pulse steady, where it was the metronome to which my life’s rhythm was synced.
“I was going to wait to tell you, but, yeah, the band got a record deal. Jay-Z is interested in having us do some more witch-hop style stuff, maybe with vocals by Lana Del Rey. We’re going to have a chance to make it big, and I want you to be there with me. We’re going to be doing studio work for the next school year, so yeah, I’m putting off college for a little while longer, but then, next summer, I’m going to get to go on tour if the album does well enough. I want you to see the liner notes, though.”
Skylar opened up his phone, still that clunky Samsung Beam, and showed me an image of the cover of the album, the standard picture of a band on a beach looking around. I recognized the place as McWay Falls, the only place in California where a waterfall emptied into an ocean, and the place where Dr. Dre’s “Doctor” video was set, a place closed off to the general public. This album was serious. The band’s picture was in a silhouette of a woman’s head with her eyes fading in over the band like that scene from the Great Gatsby with the optometrist’s sign. Around her head was a crown of flowers, also faded in, so I knew it must be Lana. Holy shit. Skylar was backed by Jay-Z and would be working with the new queen of dark pop.
“Oh, wrong picture,” he joked. “But seriously, here.” He opened up the track listing which was filled with random words as filler, but what he zoomed into, a line on the bottom, wasn’t. It read “dedication”, and each of the band members had a litany of names after their own, except Skylar’s.
His simply read, “For Emma.”
“You...you dedicated your part of the album to me?” Even though they were just three simple words, Skylar: For Emma, I kept reading them over and over. These were going to be the words thousands, if not millions, of girls were going to be reading and wishing read Skylar: For Meagan, Skylar: For Teagan, Skylar: For BiebyGurl99. But that’s not what it read.
Skylar.
For Emma.
“Yeah, because my songs are about you, Emma.” Skylar pulled my chin up so I had to look him in the eyes, so that I had to see he was serious about this, about me.
“I thought they were about Sandra,” I whispered trying to turn but he gently put the back of his hand against my cheek and pushed it so that I was back to looking at him. It was amazing how he could use his touch to calm me, to control the parts of me I couldn’t control yet.
“What? No, I never wrote a song about her. Ever. Sandra was a mess, not a muse. Every song that I’ve written since I met you has been about you, from the night we first met. I didn’t know what it was about you, why I was able to put up with your antics, but I realized that maybe it meant something, that maybe, if you were the reason that for the first time since Sandra’s death, I was able to write something, to feel something, that there was something more to you. It scared me. Trust me, it did. But I’m not scared any more, of opening up to someone, of feeling something I know can be taken away, because I know that all the pains are worth the pleasures, that every tear is worth every kiss. I know that you’re my true love and I want to be with you forever, Emma.” He kissed me gently, butterfly kisses as tears streamed down my face and the kiss was broken by a cough. It was our turn to go on the Ferris wheel, so we handed over a wad of bills and got on.
The Ferris wheel made its way up over the small town and we could see all the way out to my parent’s farm, patches of corn fields all around us and the town looking small in comparison. It was like when we sat on the Hollywood signs and looked out over LA, except the sun was setting over the fields, which went on for as far as we could see, and there would be no bright flashing zooming pulsing lights to replace that sun.
Oh wait, it was the Fourth of July.
So yes, this one day of the year, Iowa would look somewhat like Los Angeles.
T
his wasn’t where we were supposed to be to catch them, though. We were supposed to head back to the high school football field, to find my family and watch with them, but I checked my phone. It was only seven, and the fireworks didn’t start until ten. We had time.
Of course, given our luck, the Ferris wheel stopped working when we were at the top. I guess it beat having it stop ten feet from the ground, feet practically dangling and without a view like the one we had. But Skylar wasn’t looking at the view, and neither was I.
I scooted over to sit closer to him and he wrapped an arm around my shoulder. I leaned my head in the crook of his shoulder and neck, and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. That was all he needed.
Skylar turned and pulled me in, pushing himself against the sides of the small carriage of the Ferris wheel which I was afraid would break, spilling us out into Main Street. Fuck. Why did Skylar have to be so sexy, pressing his chapped lips against mine and tasting the delicious desserts we’d ruined our appetites with, the powdered sugar making our mouths thick with taste and desire.
I reached my hand under his shirt to feel his firm pecs but he stopped me.
“Emma. Wait. We can’t. Not here. But, we can...there”. Skylar pointed and I knew exactly to where. There was a clearing in the woods at the end of town and it was a bit of a hike, but it’d be worth it. I hadn’t had a release with Skylar since we’d come out to visit my parents, who had kept us too busy and too tired out to do anything about our “condition”, so once the Ferris wheel started to work again, we went to the clearing.
I hadn’t realized I hadn’t brought Skylar here before. When the “Twilight” movie had come out, tons of people had tried to recreate the meadow scenes here and there were some pretty cringe worthy Facebook shots of me and my friends trying to pull an Edward and Bella (or, I guess, Edward and Emma), with Robert Pattinson’s picture PhotoShopped in so that we could pretend that “he had totally been there you had to have been there to see it don’t judge me GOSH!1!”.
Pulse (Contemporary new adult/college romance) (Club Grit Trilogy) Page 16