Promise Me Forever (Top Shelf Romance)

by Kate Stewart

  “Fuck, yes!” The exclamation comes from upstairs.

  Mother freezes and whatever drops of scorn she was poised to deliver congeal on her painted lips. Her eyes slowly climb the staircase before they return to meet mine. She looks as self-assured as she ever has, but there’s a film over her eyes as fragile as blown glass.

  “Mother, we could—”

  “It’s fine, Bristol.” She nods to the suitcase by the elevator. “Take your bags upstairs and we’ll talk at dinner about your trip to see your brother.”

  “But, Mother, we should—”

  “Bristol, my God! Can’t you just listen for once? Can’t you just for once do exactly what I ask you to do and not make my life any harder?”

  It isn’t true. It isn’t fair. I haven’t made her life harder. Not ever. I’ve accepted the nannies who raised me when she and my father took Rhyson on the road. I laid on the couches of New York’s finest therapists when Mother abdicated walking me through my “issues” as a child. I was an honor student. When she asked me to do the stupid debutante thing with the sons and daughters of all her Upper Eastside friends, I did it. I’m in an Ivy League college, like she wanted. If anything, I’ve bent over backward, pretzeled myself to please her when I could.

  I turn to leave, but a door upstairs flies open, and a blonde girl, maybe a year or two older than I am, rockets down the hall. Nina Algier, a brilliant flute player and one of my parents’ clients, stops and stares at us over the railing above, hair wild, eyes wide and horrified. Tall and coltish, she’s a rising star in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She looks back over her shoulder as my father joins her there.

  Rhyson and I share his dark coloring, taking only Mother’s gray eyes. He looks so much like Rhyson and Uncle Grady, handsome, distinguished, with just a little gray at the temples. His eyes flick to me before moving on. I never feel like I even register for him. I’m not musical; therefore, I’m worthless. That is how it’s always felt. The hardness in his eyes softens just a bit when he sees my mother, maybe with remorse. I’ve never seen my father sorry for anything, so I wouldn’t recognize it on him.

  “Angela,” he says so softly that his voice barely reaches us by the door. “You’re home.”

  I bounce a look between my father and my mother and Nina Algier, certain that I’m in an alternative universe. That’s all? That’s fucking all he has to say?

  Nina, who has been as still as an ice sculpture to that point, galvanizes into action, rushing down the stairs. Her white silk blouse is half-buttoned and hanging from the waistband of her skirt, and there’s a flush painted on her cheeks when she cannons past us. She smells of my father’s cologne.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gray,” she mumbles, avoiding our eyes and fumbling with the door handle until it finally opens and she springs free.

  “Go to your room, Bristol,” my mother says, her voice the same low, even tone it’s always been. “We’ll talk about your trip later.”

  I’m torn between railing on my father, comforting my mother, and getting the hell out of here. I take door number three.

  Or rather I take the elevator. As soon as I step off and start toward my bedroom, I hear their raised voices. Their anger, their contention, it was a sound I had never heard before that moment. Not even when Rhyson sued to emancipate did they present anything other than a united front. A cold front, but always united. My parents aren’t prone to displays of affection or expressions of love, so I never expect the emotion that rises from downstairs before I hear the front door slam.

  Damn this day. It has ravaged me.

  I flop onto my bed and close my eyes. My room, which has been empty for months, is cold. New York is cold. It was only last night that I waded nearly naked into the waves, a hedonist seeking my pleasure with a beautiful man I thought I knew in no time. Even after only a handful of days, I thought I knew. How he got close enough to break my heart so quickly, I’m not sure, but I know it is not whole. Maybe I fell for the possibility of him. The idea that there was actually someone out there who saw me, flaws and all, and would accept me. “Got” me. That must be it. And yet, I can already feel those places around my heart that I stiffened and starched to forget him . . . softening. Giving some quarter and asking me if I shouldn’t let him explain. If maybe he does deserve that second chance.

  “Weak bitch.” I’m the only one in the room to hear the admonishment. I’m the only one who needs to.

  Exhaustion must have demanded her due, because I don’t even recall falling asleep. When I wake, the room is darker and colder. I’m not in LA, the land of sand and sun. It’s still New York, and it’s still cold, and maybe that’s as it should be. I slip out of the wrinkled clothes I flew and slept in and put on leggings and a Columbia sweatshirt before padding down the stairs in search of food. Surely Bertie made something for me.

  I’m in the kitchen, foraging between the pantry and the fridge, when I hear the weeping. I drop a drumstick on the counter and follow that sorrowful sound. Seeing your mother cry for the first time is always hard for a child. I don’t know that it’s any easier because I’m twenty-one years old. I can’t recall ever seeing her tears, not this way. Not sprawled on the living room floor surrounded by shattered glass and spilled liquor.

  “Mother, let me help you.” I reach for her, but she wrenches away.

  “Leave.” A broken sob drowns the word. “God, why can’t you just leave me alone like everyone else does?”

  Her words are always sharp, but I think she sharpens them to their finest point for me. And they always find their mark, bull’s-eye in my heart.

  “Get up.” I grab her arm despite her efforts to keep it from me. “There’s glass everywhere.”

  “Bertie will get it,” she slurs.

  I look more closely and realize she’s drunk. Totally, sloppy drunk.

  I loop her arm over my shoulder, half-dragging her to the couch where I prop her up. Her head droops to the side, and I see the tracks of tears in her usually flawless makeup.

  “Mother, he isn’t worth this.” I keep my voice soft but try to sound convincing.

  “How would you know?” The words roll around in her mouth, a soup of consonants and vowels. “You have no idea.”

  “I know that if a man cheats once, he’ll do it again.”

  “Once?” A bitter laugh cracks her face open. “You think this was the first time? Oh, God. I’ve lost count. There’s the ghosts of a hundred Nina Algiers in our bed.”

  “Then leave him.” I take a seat beside her, grabbing her hand to urge her. “You’re stronger than this.”

  “No.” She says the word sadly, quietly, helplessly. “I’m not.”

  When she looks at me, I see that it isn’t just the decanter that’s shattered all over the floor. My mother is shattered, and there’s shards of glass, decades old, in her eyes.

  “I love him,” she whispers. “He’ll have to leave me, because I love him, and I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to let go.”

  The strongest woman I know? Tough as nails negotiator? The enemy you never want to face, leveled by love?

  “I can’t believe you tolerate it, Mother.”

  “Oh, spare me, Bristol.” Her disgust and anger trip over each other to get to me. “You’ll be here one day if you’re not careful. In this same spot, with this same broken heart.”

  “You’re wrong.” Something in my heart whispers that she’s right, but I can’t acknowledge it. I won’t.

  She sits up from her drunken slump and looks me right in the eyes with sudden clarity.

  “You are just like me, maybe worse,” she says. “You need too much. And you’ll love too much, too, if you’re not careful. I fell in love with the wrong man a long time ago, and people like you and me, we don’t know how to stop.”

  “Stop saying I’m like that.” The words throb in my throat before I can release them.

  “I don’t have to say it.” She drags herself up and over to the bar, grabbing another bottle and pour
ing herself a drink. “You already know it’s true.”

  Even knowing all that Grip has done, there is still some part of me that wants it to all be a cruel joke so I can forgive him. Give him that second chance. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am like her. But if I am, I’m learning her lesson here, today. She loves the wrong man so hard that even when he hurts her, she can’t turn it off.

  If that’s how we love, then it’s better to never start.

  Grip

  Six Years Ago, After Graduation—Los Angeles

  By the time I arrive, Bristol’s welcome party is in full swing. Maybe that’s best. Maybe it will make things less awkward. We haven’t seen each other in two years. When she wouldn’t answer my calls or text messages, or even confirm she received the book of Neruda poems I mailed to her, as hard as it was, I had to let it go. I messed up, and she shut me out. I told myself I’d try again when she finished college and moved here to LA. Rhys and Bristol kept in touch and made progress over the last two years. Now, she’s here to do what she said she would—manage Rhyson’s music career.

  I’ve entered Grady’s house more times than I can count, but I’ve never felt nervous crossing this threshold. Like can’t-eat-need-a-drink nervous. And there hasn’t been anyone to really talk to about this. I know Bristol didn’t tell Rhys what happened between us, and I took my cue from her. How we resolve this is our business, no on else’s. I hope once we get this shit sorted, once she understands, we can see if there’s anything left of what we started two years ago. If it’s even worth trying. It wasn’t long enough to be love. It’s too deep, and I’m too old for a crush. It’s too raw for infatuation. I may not be able to put a name to it, but it didn’t vacate the premises when Bristol left. I can’t evict it.

  The living room is packed, crowded with people I don’t think Bristol knows. They’re our friends, and all they know is that Rhyson’s sister is moving to LA. I walk in on some joke already punch lined because everyone is laughing. I slip in, wanting to go unnoticed. Jimmi immediately makes that impossible.

  “Grip!” She unfolds herself from the cross-legged pose on the floor and throws herself at me. “I wondered where you were.”

  I squeeze Jimmi but look over her shoulder and directly into Bristol’s silvery eyes. Only for a second before she looks away and dives back into a conversation as if I don’t exist. But that second tells me a lot. It’ll take more than an apology to fix things between us. She looked right through me as if I wasn’t there. As if she wished I weren’t.

  She looks even better than before. Her hair is shorter and sits just above her shoulders instead of down her back. Her face looks leaner, like something chiseled all the illusions away from the soft flesh and striking bones, sharpening her. Black jeans, high-heeled boots, and a silk blouse that leaves her arms and shoulders bare and ties behind her neck. She had a high shine before, but now there’s something more polished about her. The sophistication gleams even brighter. It could have been that big time internship she got with Sound Management in New York. Or maybe she just grew up.

  “Dude.” Rhyson stands, too, coming to dap me up and grin. “How’d the session go?”

  “Good.” My eyes stray to Bristol, who is still in deep conversation with a small group of people. “We knocked out both verses in no time.”

  “Nice.” Rhyson glances at his phone and grimaces. “I’m still waiting on that call from the label.”

  “For real?” I reassure him with a grin, though I know I can’t un-knot his stomach or calm his nerves while he waits to hear back from the record label considering signing him. “They’ll call.”

  Rhyson’s finally ready to perform again, but he’s going back in as a contemporary artist instead of a classical pianist.

  After a few minutes, I work my way over to the circle of conversation Bristol is embroiled in. I even take an empty spot on the couch facing her, restricting myself to a few furtive glances, though I’d rather stare.

  “So, Bris,” Luke, our friend from high school says. “What are you gonna do while you wait for Rhyson to make it big?”

  “I’m not sure I’m ‘waiting’ for him to make it big.” Bristol’s laugh is husky and assured. “I think it’ll be my job to ensure he makes it big.”

  She rakes her hair, cut into its stylish bob, back from her face.

  “But I’m doing some stuff with Sound Management’s LA office while we work toward our goals.” She goes to take a sip of her white wine, only to find it empty. “I’ll be back. I’m grabbing a refill.”

  She doesn’t acknowledge me, but stands and heads toward the kitchen. I could let this go. She’s sending me clear signals. It’s unlikely she wants to take up where we left off in the ocean that night, but my whole life has been a series of unlikelies.

  I swing the kitchen door open soundlessly. I’m glad Grady oils his hinges because I get a moment to study Bristol before she realizes I’m there and that she isn’t alone. She leans into Grady’s kitchen counter, arms stretched to the side, both palms laid flat on the surface. Her wine glass sits empty beside a full bottle of white. She drops her head forward and expels a heavy breath. The ease she projected out there drops away. I know an escape when I see one. If she’s running from me, I’ll have to disappoint her.

  “Hey.”

  I drop that one word in the quiet kitchen, and she jumps as if it were the report of a bullet. She rounds on me, and for just a second, everything about her whispers vulnerable. The wide, troubled eyes. The tremulous line of her full lips. An uncertain frown. She tucks it all away so quickly, you’d miss it if you weren’t watching. One thing I got really good at the last time Bristol visited, was watching her.

  “Hi.” She picks up the bottle of wine, her excuse for leaving the room, and pours herself a glass.

  “Salut.” She lifts her glass and starts to walk past me.

  I grab her elbow before she makes it to the door. Her eyes zip-line from my hand on her arm to my face.

  “Did you need something, Grip?”

  She raises both brows, disdain on her face. When she told me she had been one of those high-class New York debutantes, I couldn’t reconcile that with who I met: the approachable girl with the easy laugh and curious eyes. I see it now in the frosty look she gives me. It’s designed to put me off, but it’ll take more than that.

  “Did you get the book I sent you?” I ask, not letting her go, waiting for her to jerk away. She doesn’t. She wants me to think our skin-to-skin contact doesn’t affect her the way it affects me, but her pulse is a hummingbird flapping at the base of her throat with rapid wings. Pink washes over her cheeks. Her pupils swallow the silver in her eyes.

  “The poems?” she asks calmly. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Thank you.” Her lashes drop. “I brought it back for you.”

  “No, I wanted you to have it. You never returned my calls or text messages. I emailed you. I—”

  “I didn’t see the point,” she interrupts. She tugs at her arm to gently extricate herself and walks back over to the counter, putting a safe distance between us.

  “You didn’t see the . . .” I check my frustration. This is, after all, my fault. I’m the one who didn’t tell her the whole truth. “I think we were the point, Bris.”

  “Then I’m glad I didn’t waste my time or yours because there is no us.” She looks me in the eyes, but I think it’s only to prove she can. “You lied to me.”

  “Not really.” I risk a few steps closer until I’m leaning against the counter beside her. “I was trying to figure out how to break things off with Tessa for a few weeks.”

  “You aren’t still together?” she asks nonchalantly.

  “Wasn’t my kid.” I suck my teeth and release a short breath, exasperated. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If you’d just listen—”

  “Listen?” she cuts in, showing a spark of anger. “To what? You cobble together some technicalities and semantics to disguise the truth?”

  I
prefer this, the honesty of her anger over that frigid, fake indifference.

  “I should have told you,” I admit softly, pouring all my regrets into the gaze we hold. “I was looking for the right time.”

  “The right time was somewhere between the airport and that Ferris wheel.” She curves her lips into a fraudulent smile. “But that’s okay. It doesn’t matter now. It’s worked out for the best.”

  “It isn’t worked out. I tried to get in touch. You never responded.”

  “Nothing to say.” She lifts one slim shoulder, perfectly executing carelessness. “It’s behind us now, and we can have a fresh start.”

  Is she saying . . .

  “You mean—”

  “As friends, yes.” She looks at me pointedly. “Look, I’m on a whole new coast and starting my new job. Figuring out where I’ll live. Getting Rhyson’s career off the ground. There’s a lot of things I need to focus on. What might have been between us if you hadn’t lied isn’t one of them. Let’s forget all the other stuff.”

  I roll back the sleeve of my denim shirt, showing her the black watch I wear every day. The cheap watch she won for me on a priceless night.

  “Does that look like I’ve forgotten, Bristol?”

  Surprise flits across her face before she cements it back into her designated expression.

  “Look, we’ll both be in Rhyson’s life,” she says with her eyes on the floor. “You trying to make that week something it really wasn’t will only make things awkward.”

  “I’m not trying to make it something.” My voice scolds and pleads. “It was something, and you know it.”

  “I know you lied to me.” Her voice is flat, eyes steady. “And the only thing left for us is friendship.”

  Her face softens, and a smile warms her eyes for a moment.

  “I actually think we could be good friends,” she says. “Who else is gonna teach me remedial hip-hop?”