Promise Me This

by Sarah Ashley Jones

  “I knew you could do it. Must have been the amazing view you had.” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down with the last clicks of the locks. “There. Now we’ve got to figure out where everyone is. Can you text Gracie for me and ask?” He grabbed my hand and led us to the concrete barrier. There were already quite a few fires started up along the shoreline, and I got a feeling that we might have to walk the entire beach to find her.

  With my free hand, I sent Ginger a text. Within seconds she responded, except that I needed some type of decoder to figure out what it said. I handed the phone to Jhett, who just shook his head. “Does that mean she started the party without us?” I asked him. There was barely enough vowels the message to consider it a sentence.

  “I think that’s exactly what it means. However, I am fluent in ‘Drunk’ and I think I can us to where everyone is at.” Jhett slipped his shoes and socks off as I kicked my flip-flops off in front of me. He grabbed them before I could pick them up and put them into the same hand as his own. He laced his other hand with mine and gave it a small squeeze.

  I followed next to him with my eyes glued to my feet, carefully watching my step in fear of falling on my face, as we approached the wet sand. I instinctively trusted that he would guide me where we needed to go. Things once again changed between us. I guess that was the beauty of my new life: I held the power to decide which direction I wanted it to go in. Jhett may not have been part of the plan when I first arrived in San Diego, but he sure was a huge part of it now.

  The sun set quickly behind us as we raced the night with each step. “THERE’S MY GIRL! THIS IS HER, GUYS!” an extremely shrill and slurred voice rang across the beach. I grabbed onto Jhett’s side like a scared child. I was never good with being the sudden center of attention, especially with a group of people I didn’t know from a hole in the wall.

  Ginger finally reached us and dramatically pulled both of us into a hug. I tried to discern who was in the group of people gathered around the fire pit in front of us. Anxiety swelled in my chest when I realized what her words meant. I was her - Cameron’s sister. I pulled away from her quickly and hoped that the smell of beer that came off of her wasn’t contagious.

  “Hey Gracie. I see that you guys have already started. Been for a swim?” Jhett lifted up strands of her damp hair that fell down the front of her sheer white dress, exposing the black bikini underneath.

  “You could call it that. Now go find your friends. I’ve been waiting for this adorable little thing to get here so we could really start the party.” Ginger linked arms with me and began to pull me up the beach towards the blazing fire.

  “Remember Gracie – best behavior!” Jhett shouted behind us. I stole one more glance over my shoulder as he mouthed ‘sorry’ to me.

  I couldn’t stand being dragged through the sand away from Jhett. I watched as he greeted a group of guys further away from the rest of the group with a few hugs, slapping each other on the back forcefully. Ginger was deep in a conversation with me that I had no interest in responding to. This side of her made me nervous. She was already unpredictable, but when you added alcohol into the mix, I knew it was bound to be trouble.

  “Ladies, I found her. I told you she was coming with Jhett.” She led me up to a group of girls who stood around a huge metal container. They all seemed slightly less drunk than Ginger, but each one of them wore the same expression – disgust. She ducked her head in closer to the group, lowering her voice to a whisper. “You know they’re like…a thing now. They live together,” she explained to the circle of girls, like I wasn’t being held hostage next to her.

  The girls all started to giggle and talk amongst themselves; their eyes darting back and forth from each other to me like I was some kind of zoo exhibit. I yanked my arm away from Ginger’s grasp, which caused her to stumble from the sudden loss of stability. I caught her arm and whipped us around so that our backs faced the circle. “I don’t know what you’ve had to drink tonight, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to go flapping your trap about me and Jhett. It’s not anyone’s business what we are, and I sure as hell expect you to respect that!” My voice was low and stern. I meant to scare her. I wanted to have fun tonight - not be a spectacle for everyone to see.

  “Charlie, right? Why don’t you just have a drink and we’ll catch up about Jhett later.” Ginger and I both turned around to face the group slowly. I thought I was being stealthy with our conversation, but apparently I broadcasted my emotions to the world. A girl with jet-black hair and blunt-cut bangs across her forehead held out a red plastic cup in front of me, filled with an amber liquid, which splashed over the rim.

  Politely, I pushed her hand away. “Oh, I’m not twenty-one yet,” I told her. Instead of waiting for her reply I looked over my shoulder, trying to spot Jhett in the crowd of shadows that surrounded us. More fits of laughter made me turn back to the group of girls.

  “Three weeks is less than a month, which is close enough to twenty-one for me. Besides, no one here is a cop. Just have some fun with us. Pleeeasee?” Ginger dropped down to her knees with her hands clasped together in front of her. I was speechless – not because of the fact that she threw herself on the ground to beg me to drink, but because she knew my birthday.

  “How’d you…?” I whispered to her and reached down to pull her to her feet.

  She flashed me an eerie smile before she brushed the sand off her knees. “Hellloooo! News flash! I dated your twin!” Ginger waved her hands in front of my face, making it seem like I was the one who was clueless.

  Why did I not think about that before I opened my mouth? The girls still stood closely around us, never hiding their nonchalant whispers. We sure put on a good show for the masses.

  “Yeah, what Ginger said. In fact, if you start with these, drinking that disgusting beer the guys picked out won’t be so bad later.” The black-haired girl passed out enough tiny glasses for all of us, while her friend with the almost-white hair produced a tall skinny bottle filled with clear liquid. “Shots of vodka make everything better. You want to show Jhett a good time tonight, right?” She giggled as she passed over each of our glasses and filled them to the top.

  I stared down at my hand. The logical part of my brain told me to just walk away. These girls weren’t my friends. But unfortunately, another part of me pushed through to the surface. I did want to have a good time. When my friends back home drank, they seemed so carefree. I blinked, bringing myself back into the moment. Everyone else already held their glasses in the air together in the middle of our circle.

  “To Charlie! And to a night that no one will forget for a long time.” I followed their lead and clinked the rim of my glass together with theirs, before tossing my head back and dumping the liquid into my mouth. My throat burned as I swallowed the fiery liquor, and I struggled to keep the contents of my stomach in place. I put my hands on my knees as I bent over in a fury of coughs that wouldn’t let up.

  Ginger brought her hand down across my back and gave me some harder than necessary whacks. “Have you ever taken a drink before, Charlie? Please don’t tell me this was your first shot?” She asked, while I recovered from the feeling of a burning hole in my chest. All eyes were on me, and I knew that each of them wondered the same thing.

  “Is that seriously what all alcohol tastes like?” Laughter erupted all around me, which made me realize that I gave myself away. I always envisioned my first time taking a shot as being much cooler; never did I think I would end up looking like a weenie. Before I could react, the bleach blonde took a hold of my wrist and poured second shot for all of us. “Another one?” I asked nervously. My body was still in shock from the first one.

  “We’ve only just started. Think of this as one of many for tonight. Cheers ladies.” Everyone responded to Ginger this time with a simultaneous ‘Cheers!’ before clinking their glasses together again and throwing back their heads. This time, I tried to open my throat and let the liquid flow down easily; waiting until the very last possible moment to swa
llow and relive the fire coursing through my body.

  To my surprise, I made it through without even a sputter of a cough. “That wasn’t as bad as the first one.” I was proud of myself. This was kind of fun. “Maybe we should go ask Jhett if he wants to join us?” I tried to whisper to Ginger, but failed miserably. My voice was still loud enough so that everyone else could hear me.

  “Oh, honey. Jhett doesn’t drink anymore. But if you did get him to drink even after…well…you know, the accident, then I’ll place my bet and say that he’s in love with you,” one of the girls who hadn’t spoken yet told me out of earshot of the others.

  “Look, now you’ve got the hang of it!” Ginger danced around me, jumping up and down, while her friends messed with a radio that was hooked up to someone’s iPod. “Turn it up, bitches! Now it’s time to move onto phase two – dance your heart out. Take this and try not to spill.” She shoved the red cup from before into my hand and dragged me out a few feet away from the fire.

  The rest of her friends joined us, each of them waving their hands above their heads as they jumped wildly in the sand below us. They were singing along with the lyrics, but I never heard anything like the music that blared through the speakers, almost rendering me deaf. “I don’t know how to dance!” I shouted into the group.

  They all looked at each other and laughed. “Just keep drinking! You’ll figure it out!” the black-haired girl shouted into my ear. I did a quick check to see how I felt. I didn’t feel drunk, or at least I didn’t feel like what I thought being drunk was like. I was hot, like I had stood in the fire, and was dying of thirst. I gulped down the brown liquid in my cup as a last resort, naively trusting Ginger that nothing bad would happen to me.

  It was nice to be with the guys again. I wasn’t trying to avoid them, but ever since Cameron’s accident, things were a little awkward between us. We saw each other every once in a while at Riot Night when we played, but I didn’t feel too comfortable being around them anymore. Combine that with having to play babysitter to Gracie for a few weeks, and then everything with the restaurant - and not to mention Charlie falling into my lap when I least expected it - I just didn’t have time to hang out like we used to.

  “So, stranger. Your sister finally dragged you out of that shack of yours. Thanks for leaving her for us to deal with. I mean, she was bad before, but she’s really been out of control lately.” Danny, the bartender from The Point, nodded his head over to the group of girls across the fire, where Gracie dragged Charlie. I knew her friends all too well, and I wasn’t sure what they planned for Charlie. The only thing that put my mind at ease was that Gracie promised to watch out for her. “And I see that you brought some unique arm candy with you tonight.” He was looking in the same direction as me, right at Charlie.

  “Hey – let’s not even go there, alright? Yes, she’s special and no, she’s not just arm candy to me. Moving on.” I painfully diverted my attention back towards the group. I was worried that this conversation would be brought up tonight; I just didn’t realized how fast it would happen.

  Wes, the singer of the band I played with at The Point, shoved me with a laugh. “Uh oh. I think we struck a nerve.” Wes was the antagonist between all of us. He was half the reason why we didn’t play together on a regular basis anymore, and was walking proof that sometimes people didn’t grow up as they got older.

  “I just don’t think you should talk about ladies like that, Wes. It’s not very gentlemanly.” I gave him a nasty grin, still secretly trying to keep Charlie in my line of sight.

  “What the fuck happened to you? Since when do you care about being a gentleman? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you keep a girl around long enough to even know their name.” Wes played dirty. Maybe if I had a drink, I wouldn’t be so uptight.

  “Let’s just drop it while we’re still sober, you two.” Danny attempted to divert the growing tension. “I think we better go throw some more wood on the fire before it goes out on us.” Danny’s hand landed on my shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze, before pushing me toward to fire.

  Sparks arced up in different directions into the night sky when Danny threw another pallet into the flames. I still kept my eyes on the girls while the danced on the other side of the fire. They turned on the obnoxious chick music that we somehow always got roped into listening to during these types of parties. There was something about a heavy bass that made girls dance like they had no worries. It was a phenomenon I would never understand.

  I caught glimpses of Charlie swaying her body to the beat that thumped through my ears. She looked like she was having a good enough time, so I didn’t feel the need to interrupt. As much of a partier as Gracie was, I trusted her to keep a good eye on Charlie.

  “Now that I’ve got you away from the rest of the dicks over there, when do I get to hear the whole story about her? You know, I met her the night she came down to the bar, and I watched you run out the back door to follow her. Other people might not be smart enough to put two and two together, but I like to give myself a little credit and say that I can.” I sat down in a blue camping chair around the fire pit. A few other partygoers mingled around us, but Danny and I pretty much had a spot all to ourselves.

  I sunk against the back of the chair and tilted my head towards the night sky. “Nothing ever gets past you, does it?” I didn’t look at him as I asked the question.

  He shifted in his chair beside me. “I’m a bartender. You think I’m only supposed to make good drinks? No, my job is to read people. And I’ve never seen you move so fast in your life.”

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah. I may have had an ‘oh shit’ moment when I first saw her. I don’t know what happened, but I knew who she was and I knew that I needed to talk to her.” I couldn’t bring myself to explain anymore of the situation to him. It was far too complicated.

  “The way Ginger made it sound, you’ve done more than just talk to her. I can’t believe she’s still around after what happened. You must talk a good game if she stayed after hearing it all.”

  His comment knocked the wind out of my chest, and made me whip my head back in the direction of the fire. It was the first time someone verbalized the exact situation I tried so desperately to avoid. “I just got lucky, I guess.” Charlie’s eyes landed on me through the flames. Even in the dark of the night, I could see the excitement form on her face when she noticed I was watching her. She leaned in close towards Gracie and pointed in my direction. Gracie followed her finger with her eyes before whispering something to her and pushed her toward me.

  “Well speak of the devil…” Danny’s eyes were glued on Charlie as she ran over to us, kicking up sand all around her with each step. She was only left wearing her jean shorts and bathing suit, which left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Her red polka-dotted bikini only covered the necessary parts of her body to stop her from being arrested, but the rest of her porcelain skin glistened from the heat of the fire.

  “Jhett!! Goodness gracious, Jhett. I missed you. Where have you been?” Just from her words alone, I knew something was off. It wasn’t until she let each leg slip through the holes in the chair below the armrest and straddled me, that I knew exactly what was wrong.

  “Have you been drinking?” I pushed her up in my lap, but the smell of alcohol on her breath was overwhelming.

  “Isn’t it so much fun? Did you know I popped my vodka cherry? Oh, and my beer cherry. And I think my rum cherry, too. That’s a lot of cherry poppin’ for one night, don’t you think?” She continued to speak without taking a breath, her eyes never focusing on my face; just flashing from one side over to the next.

  Danny stifled a chuckle next to me. I gave him a look of death. “You know exactly whose fault this is. I swear - I can’t leave her alone for more than five minutes before she’s up to no good.” My blood boiled.

  “Are you mad at me? Ginger said you wouldn’t be mad at me if I drank with her. They told me that you liked to have fun like this.” I could hear the sudden shift of emo
tion in her voice. I forgot how naive she was, and it only intensified with the amount of alcohol she consumed.

  Charlie leaned her head down and against my shoulder, nestling under my chin. I stroked her bare back in a last ditch attempt to reassure her. “No, babe. I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You just tell me who told you that.”

  “It was the girl with black hair. She looks like she could be in a cartoon, but don’t tell her I said that. I don’t think she’ll find that funny. She kind of acts like she has a stick up her ass. Don’t tell her that either!” Charlie lifted up and held onto each side of my face with a death grip. Even though I was fuming at the girls, I had to admit, drunken Charlie was kind of cute.

  “She does have a stick up her ass. It’s called the bitter stick and Jhett-“ I cut Danny off before his words turned cute-drunken-Charlie into crying-mess-drunken-Charlie.

  “Shut up if you know what’s good for you, Dan.” I pointed my finger at him beside me. “Hey Kitten, do you mind if I go talk to the girls really fast? Do you think you could stay here with Danny? You remember him, right?” I slipped my hand up into Charlie’s hair and forced her to look at me. I needed to make sure that she was still somewhat coherent.

  “You’ve never called me kitten before. I like it. I like babe, too, babe.” I lifted her up into my arms with ease as I stood up. Danny gave me a nod and I set Charlie back down on the chair behind us. “Do you think I look like a cat, Danny?” She turned to him, ready to bombard him with her drunken banter.

  Once I left Charlie’s side, I was a man on a mission. It only took a few steps around the fire before I found the girls I was looking for. “Girls, we need to have a little chat.”

  As expected, I was answered with a round of groans. “Don’t act like you’re not enjoying Miss Goody Two-Shoes like that. Have you seen her moves tonight? I know how much you love a naughty girl.” Blair stared at me through her thick black hair in a standoff of wills. I knew that our past probably influenced her actions tonight, but they were uncalled for.