Page 8 of The Promises We Were Never Meant To Keep

“Do you promise?” He turns my words back on me with a devilish grin. Really, there’s no other way to describe the fleck of light in his eyes, or the slight curve of his upturned lips.

My breath snags, but I somehow manage. “I promise.”

That slight curve transforms into a full grin that melts me. Seriously, the hot sun has nothing on this boy. Nothing.

He slides his hand from my hip to weave his fingers between mine, breaking the connection of our gaze for another connection that has the fireflies in my belly tittering in a whole new way. Holt pulls me from the trees where we’ve left our bikes, to the rocky shore of a very secluded, very clear lake.

He picks a giant boulder and lowers to it with his hand still linked with mine. Then, I’m being pulled onto the boulder with him. I laugh as he tucks me into the space between his legs, caging me with his body the way he seems to like. This position, I realize as he looses a content sigh, is natural to him.

I can’t help but wonder if he’s had other girls, he’s sat like this with. It’s a sour thought that tints my sunny mood.

Holt feels it. “What’s wrong?”

“Hmm? Nothing.”

“You tensed. Something is wrong.” He starts to shift away. “You don’t like sitting like this?”

I catch him with a hand on his bare knee, holding him in place with my touch alone. He freezes, instantly stiff. “I like it, Holt.”

“So, what’s wrong?”

“I’ve never sat like this with a boy,” I admit, my face flushing hotly. “It seems like a natural position with you—and I was wondering…”

“You were wondering…?” he prompts when I let my words fall away. The sun dips behind a cloud, giving me a moment of much needed reprieve from the August heat.

“I was wondering if you’ve done it before—with—with other girls.”

I somehow know he’s smiling, even though I can’t see him. I don’t dare look.

He admits, “I’ve had other girlfriends.”

“Other girlfriends…” Words feel stuck in my throat. It takes effort to push them into the space between us. “Is that what I am?”

“That’s what I’m hoping for.”

“Oh.”

He laughs. I love the sound so much.

This boy.

He dips his head, and I can feel the breath from his lungs on my neck as he asks, “Will you be my girlfriend, Faye?”

I don’t know that I’m breathing.

“Yes.” Why am I so breathless?

“Promise?” he presses.

“I promise,” I vow, with my whole heart.

He tugs me back against his chest then, his sigh a thing of beauty. And that’s when it happens. Content in the cage of his body, I fall for him. Completely.

My heart cracks all the way open wide to let him inside. It’s a youthful thing, this unrestrained, unafraid offering of the most sacred part of myself. Some might call it folly, but I think it’s a right of passage. A girl teetering on the cusp of womanhood.

We all start out with whole hearts, and then that one boy comes along—that first boy. He slips inside, easier than all the others who will come after him—and he plants himself deep.

His roots aren’t shallow, not at all. Maybe that’s why, no matter the years that pass, he’s still there inside us, twisted in the undergrowth of life. We haven’t learned to harden the earth of our hearts yet. The tender parts of us haven’t yet been scorched by the burn of a broken love, a promise we were never meant to keep, shattered.