I Promise You

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  And my dick is a steel pipe.

  I. Am. Insane.

  “Open the door so I can set this beer down. Please.”

  She frowns. “You’re sweating. What’s wrong with you?”

  I am sweating. The ride here was a little surreal, me hanging on to every word she said, watching her face in the mirror. My shirt feels sticky, and my heartbeat is faster than normal. A clawing feeling is growing in my gut, the sense that I’m about to get my world rocked. I feel light-headed. I eye the distance to the concrete below. If I fall…

  I lick my lips, about to tell her she’s what’s wrong with me—

  “Babycakes, you coming? Don’t forget we’re playing darts tonight to see who gets a kiss, and my aim is feeling lucky—”

  Frustration rushes at me. Can’t I have any alone time?! “Give me a minute!” I call back at Ashley, who’s obviously gotten out of the car.

  Serena crosses her arms. “Ashley the redhead, Bambi the brunette, and Chantal the blonde. You’re toying with them. They’re nice women—well, the jury is still out on Ashley. She kept giving me the evil eye, but still, you are ridiculous!”

  I’m part of a contest I wanted nothing to do with, but I refuse to defend myself.

  She knocks open her door with her boot, making a loud clattering sound. “You want to come in? Help yourself, Casanova.”

  I shoulder past her and she clicks a light on behind me, illuminating the small apartment. I take a steadying breath of the cool air inside and look around, willing my chest to slow down. It’s apparent she’s put work into the interior, the walls a pale blue color featuring graphic artwork from the Beatles and Pink Floyd. A retro orange velour sofa sits against the window with pops of bright pink pillows. A green puffy chair sits in the corner, a basket of knitting supplies beside it, and a sewing machine sits on a desk beneath a window that overlooks the backyard. The place has a funky vibe and is fastidiously clean, yet cluttered with books and papers and magazines stacked on the coffee table. I see a collection of old albums. A laptop gleams from an end table. Two closed doors head to the right; I imagine it’s her bedroom and a bathroom. Her kitchen is tiny, only a table with two modern looking chairs, a little stove, and a pink fridge that looks like it came from the fifties. Marching in, I set her groceries on the kitchen table and pivot around to face her, but she’s already brushing past me to grab two of the bags.

  She thrusts them at me, the clink of glass echoing in the quiet. “Here, take your beer, please. I doubt I’ll drink it.” She pauses and says grudgingly, “It was petty of me to buy them all.”

  I can’t move. I’m rooted to the black and white linoleum tile on her floor as I stare at her. My chest rises, inhaling gulps of air. She took off her hat at the door, or somewhere, and pulled her hair out of her ponytail. Gleaming brown, copper, and blonde strands spill around her shoulders. Three colors in anyone’s hair should be over the top, but on her it’s…

  My eyes scan over her face, clearly lit by the fluorescent lights in the apartment.

  Adrenaline hits my bloodstream. Swaying on my feet, I right myself with effort.

  She’s—holy shit—the girl from the bonfire.

  Same face, petite body, and fierceness.

  I had the hints at the Pig, then the parking lot…

  That night from three years ago rushes at me, playing back in my head: the movement of her hips, the dandelion on her nape…

  “When can I see you again?” I blurt.

  “What?” Confusion mars her features, her nose scrunching. “Are you crazy? I’m not one of your kittens!”

  I’m barely registering what she says.

  Maybe I am crazy.

  She’s…here.

  Right here.

  I try to speak and fail.

  She nibbles on her bottom lip. It’s lush and a pale pink color. I remember the fullness of her mouth, how she melted against me...

  “We can’t stand each other. I don’t know you,” she adds.

  I swallow.

  Oh…

  Oh, she doesn’t… I exhale gustily.

  “You don’t remember me,” I murmur incredulously, more to myself than her.

  She pauses for a second, frowns, looks away, then shrugs.

  I huff out a breath. I’m used to girls knowing me by the way I walk from clear across campus, or at least that’s what they say.

  How could she forget?

  I read the uncertainty on her face as she darts her gaze back to me.

  She’s… God, she has no clue.

  I tore that party up looking for her, staked out the freshman girl dorms for a month, asking about her, describing her. I even checked out the dance studio on campus, all while enduring the trash talking the team tossed my way, the kissy noises they made.

  She doesn’t know that I’ve compared every girl I met to her, and they always came up short! All over a kiss!

  The craziest part is, I was absurdly celibate for months, turning girls down left and right. Waiting. Holding out hope I’d find her. Am I the kind of guy who believes you can have a brief moment with a girl and fall hard? If anyone had asked me then, my answer would have been hell yeah, but now, after all this time? That’s crazy talk.

  Clarity sinks in, and I lean against the table.

  You were just another guy who hit on her.

  What sucks is that she wasn’t even a freshman at the bonfire, so if the legend is true, would it apply to her? I don’t know. I always assumed she was a freshman since most of the partiers were, but—

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  No. I built up this idea of her, that one day we might see each other and, I don’t know, be together?

  You don’t even know how to be in a real relationship, my head says.

  Whatever. This is fine. It’s going to be fine, dammit! I don’t need feelings in my life. Not with the pressure of this season, and hello, she doesn’t even like me as a person. That much was obvious from the Pig.

  “Forget it.” And then I’m stalking away to her door.

  “Wait!” She catches up with me and tugs on my arm.

  Her eyes meet mine, and they’re a pale golden color, like topaz.

  Our gazes cling and hope, unbidden, fires off like a rocket inside my chest.

  “Yeah?” I say gruffly, shifting closer to her. Her skin is like porcelain, soft and creamy, the tilt of her eyes giving her an otherworldly, exotic look…

  She toes her boots, fidgeting, her shoulders shrugging. “Thank you for the ride.”

  “I see. Thank you for the ride…that’s all you got?”

  A slow blush rides up her neck to her face, hinting at vulnerability. That makes twice. Does it mean anything? Is she even attracted to me at all?

  “We rub each other the wrong way, but I am appreciative that you brought me home.”

  She’s appreciative? I whip my cap off and scrub my face. “I can’t believe this… Karma really is a bitch…”

  “Believe what?”

  I shake my head. “Just do one thing for me. Say my name.”

  “Dillon, thank you for the lift. Happy?”

  No, I’m not. Not by any stretch. Frustration gnaws at me that there’s a girl in front of me, one who has been in my head for three years, and she can’t wait to see the back of me. It’s a blow to my chest.

  “I hope I never see you again,” I mutter under my breath.

  “Same!” she calls as I slam her door.

  5

  I’m awake by six for a run, my goal to get some cardio in before our morning practice. After slipping on my running clothes and shoes, I enter the den. A disaster meets my gaze: red Solo cups on the floor, the TV still playing, empty beer cans on the end tables and on the kitchen counter. Chris, our tight end, doesn’t live here, but he’s sleeping on the couch, his mouth open as snores reverberate through the house. He’s gonna be useless at practice today, and an angry rumble comes from me as I head out the door, shutting it hard to wake him up.

 
My usual route takes me through a quiet campus, the sky dusky, just a hint of the sunrise peeking over the horizon. It’s my time to think, to assess, to focus, to work out this elephant that sits on my chest.

  When I get back, Sawyer’s in the kitchen, scrambling a skillet of eggs. Wearing his practice gear, he’s got a frilly, pale pink apron tied around his frame. Grandmas Never Run Out Of Cookies Or Hugs is stitched on the bodice. It’s faded with yellowed lace trimming the bottom. His granny passed last year, and it belonged to her.

  “Got breakfast for us.” His skin is dark brown, his voice a slow Southern drawl, a testament to his small-town Georgia roots.

  “Where’s Troy?”

  “Still recovering from the party. I knocked on his door.”

  “He better get up if he doesn’t want to be late.” I grab a Gatorade from the fridge, my heart coming down from the adrenaline as I suck it down. He grabs us plates and divides the eggs while I get the oatmeal ready in the microwave, mixing in protein powder for both of us. We move around each other in a coordinated synchrony, our routine the same since we moved into the house at the beginning of summer camp. He pours the orange juice and grabs napkins. I get us forks and spoons. He unties his apron and drapes it over the oven handle, his fingers lingering on the worn fabric for a few beats before he takes his place across from me.

  “You disappeared last night,” he comments a little later as he sticks a spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth. “Dude, what a mood you were in—at your own party. Those poor girls…” He chuckles. “Ashley kept knocking on your door.”

  “I slept with ear plugs.”

  “You’ll be glad to know I drove Bambi home after she had too much to drink.”

  “Nice of you,” I grunt and shovel eggs into my mouth. “Would be nicer if you were the prize in the contest and not me. Thank you again for nominating me. Asshole.”

  He smirks. “Cry me a river.”

  When we got back from dropping Serena off, my mood had soured, and I roamed the party for an hour before claiming a headache and going to my room. Before I escaped, Chantal was talking to Troy, Bambi was on her laptop, probably researching stats, and Ashley shadowed my every step, pouting.

  “I saw her last night at the Pig.” My words are flat, and he pauses mid sip of orange juice.

  “Her?”

  I jerk up from the table, rinse my plate and bowl, and stick them in the dishwasher. “Freshman year, bonfire party, the girl I never found. Remember?”

  There’s silence from him as he figures it out. He gives me a wide-eyed look. “Wait… Nah, you don’t still believe in that legend, do you?”

  I shrug. “Maverick mentioned witches. He straight-up told me about Delaney, and now he’s wrapped around her finger. Take Blaze—he met Charisma the night of their freshman bonfire and now they’re living together in New York.”

  He sings “Witchy Woman” by the Eagles.

  I flip him off, and he stutters to a stop.

  “Dude.” A gasping laugh comes from him. “You’re serious.”

  I throw my hands up. “I know! She doesn’t remember me, and I dreamed about her last night. Again. She wore a white dress and was standing on the football field, right at the fifty-yard line, and I was…” I exhale and grip the top of the chair. “On my knees in front of her asking her to…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Marry me…” I stop.

  “Shit.”

  “You were a zombie, by the way.”

  “Hope I was badass.”

  “I killed you with a sword.”

  “Zombies and swords at a wedding—pencil me in.”

  I lean against the fridge. “I know the legend is just a bunch of frat boy mumbo jumbo…”

  “But?”

  “She got in my head and then she ran away—from me.”

  “The nerve.”

  “It’s not like that.” I’m not being cocky. It just bugs me that she didn’t feel the same for me that night. And Sawyer? He doesn’t know everything. It’s embarrassing to admit the torch I carried. “It feels like everything Maverick warned me about came true… That she’d haunt me.”

  He belts out the chorus to “Haunted” by Taylor Swift and I throw a dishtowel at him. He stops, a maniacal grin on his face. “So what if you saw her? She’s just a girl. There are five thousand more on campus.”

  “I didn’t know who she was at first, but as soon as we got close and I smelled her scent—”

  “Smelled? What are you, a wolf?”

  “—something niggled at me, like a ghost ran its hand down my back. It’s like that whole destiny thing at work.” I throw him an impatient glare. “Don’t discount scent. Pheromones are no joke. They’re behavior-altering chemicals you emit, and once you smell the right one, it triggers your instincts, and you’ll want to mark your territory—”

  “So you are half wolf. Always suspected.”

  “Go on, laugh all you want. Everyone emits pheromones. Why do you think cologne is so popular?”

  His lips twitch. “What scent should I buy?”

  “Keep on joking. The right kinds of pheromones elicit a sexual arousal response. Dude, I can’t walk past cherries or any kind of fruit without thinking about her. For three years!” I shake my head. “Therapy—I need aversion therapy for this girl so I’ll stop thinking about her. Maybe a hypnotist.”

  “I’m stuck on the fruit thing. Cherries give you a hard-on?”

  “If you sing ‘She’s My Cherry Pie’, I’ll kick your ass.”

  Glee dances over his features and he laughs for several moments, wiping at his eyes. “Honestly? I’m blown away. You, the guy who’s always in a good mood, are actually in a snit over some girl who doesn’t recall a kiss. Who are you?”

  I arch a brow. Oh, he wants to trash talk… “I know you still keep that stuffed tiger Bambi gave you freshman year. Under your pillow.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Liar.” I crack my knuckles. “I need another run this afternoon.”

  “Is the worst part that she doesn’t remember you? Or is it that you’ve found her and don’t know what to do with it?”

  A long exhalation comes from me. “Both. I don’t know.”

  He shrugs. “She was probably drunk at the bonfire. Most people were. I was. Woke up in my dorm on the floor with Troy curled around me like a girl. Slapped him silly and kneed him in the nuts. Good times.”

  “I didn’t smell or taste alcohol on her, and my tongue was in her mouth long enough to know.” Every detail from that kiss is etched in my mind as if I have a photographic memory. I don’t.

  He pops a cookie left over from last night in his mouth. “She was probably there with a boyfriend, kissed you, and freaked out.”

  Anger rushes at me. “She was dancing by herself.”

  “Okay, okay, obviously you’ve built this up in your head over all this time, created a shrine to her sweet cherry pie memory—”

  “Smartass.”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s break this down: wasn’t one of your theories that she wasn’t a student or was from out of town? What did you find out?”

  “Nothing really except that she hates me. She’s a grad student. Two years older.” I’m almost twenty-two. I wonder when her birthday is…

  “Ah, a girl you have to work for. This is new for you.”

  I sigh. Freshman year, I had a list of theories about the unicorn. Perhaps I was drunk with beer goggles and wouldn’t recognize her. Perhaps she cut her hair. Perhaps she transferred. But those full lips… I just knew I’d know them anywhere. If it hadn’t been for the hat and glasses last night, I would have spotted her right off the bat.

  “I think you should have nailed her and didn’t and that’s why you’re still wondering about her. She’s the one who got away. Everybody’s got one. Mine is some chick from middle school. She was my first kiss, and I thought she’d be my first everything, but she dumped me for a high school kid. Good thing—she got busted for money
laundering for the mob a few years ago, but I still wonder…” He snaps his fingers in my face. “You know what this is, right? It’s a challenge.”

  “Dude…”

  “Nah, listen. This girl—she could be your lucky charm. Remember last year when Zane challenged me to knock him out in a boxing match?”

  Zane is a defensive player and weighs close to three hundred pounds. Sawyer is muscular but wiry, his body perfect for playing wide receiver. Not boxing.

  I nod. “Yeah, you practiced for six weeks, worked out your arms like crazy. You lost ten pounds, but your shoulders filled out—”

  “Right! And I had the best season of my career—because I knocked him out and beat the challenge. Along the way, I overcame my fear of getting punched. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

  I scrub my face.

  His brown eyes narrow. “I’m serious. You need to work your magic and check her off. Mystery solved. No more wondering about the what-ifs. Flush her pheromones from your system. You have the game to focus on, but if your head is daydreaming about some girl…” He pops an eyebrow. “Do it for the team.”

  Screwing Serena for a challenge? Nah. I don’t have a shot with her. Besides, the idea of using her to make my game better is inherently wrong—and the idea of wooing her makes me jittery. “That’s a no-go. She couldn’t wait for me to leave her place.”

  “So? You’re Dillon McQueen. Has any girl ever turned you down when you turned on your smile? Come on.”

  She did three years ago.

  Troy slinks out of his bedroom, his shoulder-length brown hair everywhere. A talented running back from Texas, he rounds out our roommate situation. I’m not as tight with him as I am with Sawyer, but he’s cool. A stiff expression grows on his face as he approaches me, his eyes wary as he enters the kitchen.

  “Uh, Dillon…” he says, his eyes shifting from me back to his bedroom.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  He exhales. “Don’t be upset. It just happened. Well, I mean…” He chews on his bottom lip. “She looked so hot, man, and a little lonely. You weren’t around.” His look turns defensive.

  I stalk toward him, towering over his six-one frame. For some reason, my mind goes to Serena. “What are you talking about?”