Promise Me (28 page)

In the midst of class I’d forgotten that I already had plans.

“What do you mean you can’t?” she asked in irritation.

“I’m meeting Logan for lunch,” I told her. “We made plans yesterday. I’m sorry.”

“So, I’ll just crash,” she said with a shrug, probably thinking it wasn’t a big deal, since usually it wasn’t.

She’d had lunch with us before, but this time I wasn’t interested in her tagging along. Logan had asked me to have lunch, saying he needed to talk to me about something, and from his tone, I had a feeling it was something serious. I doubted he’d want my girlfriend there.

“Uh, no,” I told Alyssa.

“No? Are you serious?”

“Actually I am. I didn’t invite you.”

“But I’ve crashed before,” she whined.

“I know, but Logan wanted it to be just us.”

She rolled her eyes. “I swear, if I didn’t know you were cousins, I’d think you two were gay.”

“Well, we’re not,” I assured her.

“Glad to hear it,” she snapped.

“Lys, don’t be pissed. This isn’t a slight against you. It’s just lunch. We can have lunch on Wednesday.”

Considering I wouldn’t be having lunch with Kate and Sara, I was free. Maybe Alyssa would be back to her normal self by then.

“Fine,” she grumbled, and then she started to leave.

As irritated as I was, I didn’t want her to walk away mad, so I grabbed her arm. She turned to look back at me with a mix of expectation and irritation.

“Give me a kiss before you leave,” I told her.

That softened her, and she stepped back toward me. She stood on her toes and pressed her lips to mine. When she pulled away, I moved my hand to her waist, holding her in place for a few seconds.

“What?”

“Just let it go. Kate and I are friends. Nothing is going on, and you acting all clingy and showing up for a class you don’t want to be at isn’t helping.”

“I wasn’t–”

I shook my head. “Don’t. I don’t do well with games, and in the past year that we’ve been together, you’ve never played them. Don’t start now.”

From the look on her face I knew I’d struck a chord. I was onto her, and she knew it. She didn’t say anything, but she nodded.

“Thank you,” I said, and then I kissed her again. “I’ll call you tonight.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

Then I turned away from her, walking in the opposite direction to my next class.

* * *

“Dude, what’s going on with you?” Logan asked me when I had a big bite of bacon cheeseburger in my mouth.

“What do you mean?” I asked him, hoping he’d be able to make out the words around the mouthful of food I was chewing.

“Well, you’ve just spent the past hour talking about Kate and how cool and fun she is, and I’m pretty sure the last time I checked, you already have a girlfriend.”

“Kate and I are just friends,” I told him after I’d swallowed.

I was getting a little tired of repeating that same phrase multiple times a day. Why did everyone have such a hard time believing that I could be just friends with a girl?

“Are you?” he questioned skeptically.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

Logan shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I saw you two at the party on Saturday night. You looked tight. And apparently that wasn’t the only time you hung out this weekend.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, suddenly on the defensive.

“Alyssa called Kelly late last night. She was upset. I heard most of what she said through the phone, since she wasn’t exactly quiet.”

Fuck.
So maybe Lys and I weren’t as good as I thought if she’d called Kelly after she left my place. At least that explained her showing up to class to police me, even if it didn’t justify her doing it. I didn’t need or want a babysitter.

“Yeah, well Lys has nothing to worry about,” I assured Logan.

“I didn’t think so either. That’s why I defended you to Kelly. I told her I’ve known you since you started dating girls, and you’re the most faithful guy I know. You’re not going to cheat on Alyssa, and if you didn’t want to be with her, you wouldn’t.”

“Exactly,” I agreed, glad to hear he was on my side.

“But,” he said, throwing me off-guard, “after hearing you go on and on about another girl for the past hour, I’m not so convinced that there isn’t a little bit of temptation floating out there. And don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t blame you if there was. Kate’s hot. I mean, she’s really hot, and she’s funny, and she rolls with the punches, and she puts guys like Pete in their place when they need it. She’s great, but I also don’t I think you should fuck around behind Alyssa’s back.”

“Are you serious?” I questioned, feeling like I’d been sucker-punched. I’d really assumed Logan was on my side, but here he was thinking I was the bad guy, just like everyone else. It was bullshit.

“Yeah, well, like I said, I’ve seen you two together.”

I glared at him, hating that he automatically assumed the worst of me. I had no idea what he thought he’d seen, but whatever it was, he was wrong. And he should have known that. He knew me better than most people.

“Fuck you,” I grumbled at him as I crumbled up my napkin and threw it in the basket that had contained my burger and fries.

Logan threw his hands up in surrender. “Dude, what the hell?”

“Everyone assumes I’m fucking Kate, and it’s complete bullshit,” I growled at him.

“Look, I don’t know what everyone else thinks,” Logan said quickly, knowing I was pissed. “I’m just telling you what
I
think.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What you think or what your girlfriend thinks?”

He glared at me. “What
I
think, asshole. I don’t let my girlfriend shape my decisions, but in all honesty, we sort of agree on this one. It’s weird, okay? Some girl you just met is suddenly around all the time. You’re hanging out with her at parties, you’re taking her to dinner with Charlie, and apparently you’ve had some deep conversations, since you know more about her than you should, considering you just met her.”

I fixed a glare on him, pissed off that I was having to justify myself to him – to anyone really. It was fucked up to think that just because I’d started hanging out with someone, who happened to be a girl, that there was something going on. And it bothered me even more that Logan, my best friend, my fucking cousin, who’d lived under the same roof as me for six years, would have such little faith in my character.

“I’m going to tell you what I’ve told everyone else who seems to have an opinion on this subject,” I told him, my voice like steel. “I’m not sleeping with Kate. She’s just a friend. That’s it. And because I’m tired of defending myself to you, I’m going to tell you why we’re so close. I didn’t just meet her. I’ve known her since we were kids. She was my best friend when I lived in Indiana. She knew all about what happened with my parents, and she was the person I went to when I was alone and scared and needed to forget that my dad was a sadistic prick who couldn’t feel vindicated as a man unless he put his hands on his wife and son and made them feel like they were worthless.
That’s
why Kate and I are so close. She knows things that no one else knows – hell she knows more than you – and she was my friend when I didn’t have anyone else. So don’t ask me again if I’m fucking her. I’m not, and I don’t plan to, and I’d honestly like a little bit of consideration from the people who are supposed to care about me.”

With that, I got up from the table and walked out. I didn’t wait for Logan to respond. I was too pissed. I’d just let him think about what I’d said, and then maybe we could revisit the conversation when I was calmer.

“Jack!”

I was halfway across the street when I heard Logan call my name. I didn’t turn around, and I didn’t slow down.

“Jack!” I heard him say again, and I could tell he was closer.

My face felt hot, and my fists were clenched at my sides, my whole body rigid. I was livid that he would even bring that shit up, that he thought my love life was somehow his business. Where did he get off thinking that was okay?

“Jack, man, slow down,” Logan said breathlessly as he caught up to me and put a hand on my shoulder.

I shrugged him off and kept walking. “Leave me alone.”

“Man, I’m sorry,” he said as he continued to follow me. “I didn’t know. I feel like a dick.”

“You
are
a dick,” I told him.

“Well, why didn’t you just tell me who Kate was when you realized it? I would have defended you from the start had I known she wasn’t just some girl you’d met.”

I shook my head. “Because I don’t talk about the past. You know that.”

“Jack, stop,” he said, grabbing my shoulder and stopping me in my tracks. He spun me around so I was facing him. “I know you don’t talk about the past, and I’m not asking you to do that, but you could have at least told me who Kate really was.”

“Why?”

“So when my girlfriend got all pissed on Alyssa’s behalf I could have explained things. It’s much more plausible to believe that you and Kate aren’t sleeping together if you have history.”

I sighed. “It’s not that simple. Alyssa knows nothing about what my life was like before I moved in with you guys.”

“She doesn’t?”

I shook my head.

“But you’ve been dating her for over a year.”

“I don’t talk about the past,” I repeated. “Not with her and not with anyone else.”

“But she’s your girlfriend.”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t talk about that shit with anyone.”

Logan looked puzzled for a few seconds before his face relaxed into what looked like acceptance, and he nodded. He knew not to push me. “Yeah, okay. I get it. You don’t talk about the past with anyone.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But Kate knows everything?”

“She does. Not that we’ve spent hours digging into what happened or anything. I don’t talk about it with her either, but she knows. And somehow it just makes things easier.”

“Because she knows the real you?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s not like I’m different around her than I am around anyone else. For the most part I’ve dealt with my issues, and whether people know about my past or not, it’s not like they get a different version of me.”

“Okay,” Logan said, not seeming to understand what I was getting at.

“I don’t have to worry about her finding out about who I used to be and what my father did. She already knows. She’s not going to judge me because of it. She’s not going to hold it against me or be fearful that I might turn out like him. I know that she wants to be my friend in spite of my past.”

“And you think Alyssa wouldn’t want to be with you if she knew?”

I blinked a few times as he said that, because even though I hadn’t parceled out my feelings like that before, it was exactly what I was afraid of. It was like clarity had struck me over the head with a sharp smack.

“I’m not sure if she would.”

“You don’t think she loves you enough to look past it?” Logan asked, sounding appalled.

I shook my head slowly. “I’m honestly not sure.”

I didn’t want to say it, but the more I thought about it, the more it felt like Alyssa and I were together for superficial reasons. I thought back to all the things she’d ever said she liked about me, and none of them equated to who I was as a person. She liked the fraternity I was in, she liked my truck, she liked that I had a good body, that I was hot, and that I dressed well. She liked that she could show me off to her friends, that I paid whenever we went out, and she liked the fact that I could keep up with her in bed.

But she’d never once talked about liking the fact that I was smart or studious or that I spent my free time volunteering at the hospital and hanging out with an eleven year-old who needed a friend. She’d never asked me why I wanted to be a doctor, and she’d never shown any interest in what I wanted in life. It was almost like she valued pieces of me, but I wasn’t sure she valued the things that were important to me.

“But she loves you. I’ve heard her say it,” Logan interjected.

“She does,” I said vaguely, not entirely convinced that the love Alyssa felt for me came from the place I wanted it to come from.

I wanted to think that she appreciated that I took care of her when she needed it, that I looked out for her when she was wasted and made sure no one tried to take advantage of her, and that I knew when she was feeling shitty because her parents forgot to call her on her birthday. I hoped she appreciated that I wasn’t like the other assholes she’d dated who’d just used her, but she’d never come out and thanked me for any of those things. And maybe it was because she didn’t know how to say thank you, because she wasn’t used to people treating her like I did, or maybe it was that she really didn’t care about those things.

Suddenly I was standing in the middle of campus with people all around me, walking to and from class, laughing with their friends, and with my cousin staring at me with worry and concern in his eyes, and I was wondering what I’d been doing for the past year. If I couldn’t tell my girlfriend, who was supposed to love me, that once upon a time I’d had a shitty life that I hadn’t been able to help, what did that mean?