I swallow the lump in my throat and gaze into his eyes. “Forever yours.”
He rests his hand over my heart. “Forever mine.”
I place my hand on his chest. “Forever ours.”
Forever Starting Over
I open my desk drawer and consider taking my old hairbrush, so I’ll have two: the new one and the old one. But then I have a sobering thought. Going off to college is a new experience. It shouldn’t be encumbered by old things. Right?
Chris pulls my hand away from the desk and pushes the drawer closed. “That’s enough. You’ve checked all your drawers four times. I think it’s safe to say you didn’t forget anything.”
The butterflies in my stomach spread over my entire body, until I feel as if my skin is humming with nervous energy.
He turns me around to face him and takes my hands in his. “Are you ready?”
I shake my head. “I’m so nervous.”
“It will be fine. And you can call me if it gets really bad. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
I take a deep breath as I look around the room. It looks almost exactly the same as it did before I packed. I didn’t want to bring too many things with me to the dorm. I want this room to still feel like home whenever I visit.
“Are you still playing that gig tonight?” I ask, hoping he’ll tell me it was canceled.
He nods his head. “Couldn’t get out of it. Xander said this guy has a lot of pull with Arista Records. If I play a few more shows there, and they do well, he might pull some strings for me.”
“That’s good.”
I don’t mention how this means I can’t call him if I get really homesick tonight. I can only call him on the nights when he doesn’t have a show.
Jackie walks in and lets out a deep sigh as she tilts her head. “It won’t be the same without you here.”
“Stop pretending, Mom. You were just telling me how happy you’ll be when Claire is gone so you can finally win Dance Dance Revolution.”
“Stop it, Christopher. That’s not funny,” she chides him, but I try not to laugh.
I let go of Chris’s hands and turn to Jackie so I can give her a hug. She squeezes me so tight. I’m almost afraid to pull away. I’m afraid she’s crying. I’ve never seen Jackie cry. I don’t think I’d be able to handle that.
When we finally let go of each other, her eyes are pink and watery, but she blinks a few times and the moment is gone. She wipes a few tears from my jaw and smiles.
“I fully expect you to spend at least one weekend here every month. Chris will pick you up. You’re only forty minutes away.”
“I’ll try my hardest.”
“I know.” She kisses my forehead and gives me another quick hug. “Get out of here before I start crying. Go.”
Chris and I chuckle as we leave Jackie in my bedroom.
“Go. Get out of here,” Chris says, tapping my butt to push me toward the stairs.
“Stop!” I laugh, smacking his hand away.
Chris drives me to the dorm in Jackie’s car. I spend most of the drive there hugging my knees to my chest to comfort myself. When he pulls into the parking lot at Spencer Hall, I get even more nervous as I wonder who I’m rooming with.
Chris parks in the loading zone and grabs my two boxes out of the trunk while I take my purse and my suitcase. I have my card-key, but a girl with curly hair and square glasses is nice enough to hold the door open for us to enter.
“Thanks,” I say.
I hope my roommate is someone like that. Please let me get a nice roommate.
We get off the elevator on the second floor and head for room 207. Chris sets the boxes down next to the door and I knock. I can hear footsteps on the other side of the door. My roommate is already here.
The door opens and a tall girl with beautiful dark hair and golden skin flashes me a tight smile. “Hi,” she says softly.
“Hi. I’m Claire. I think you’re my roommate.” I grab the piece of paper that’s folded and tucked in my back pocket, which shows my dorm assignment.
Before I can unfold the paper, she opens the door wide for us. Chris and I come in with my stuff and I see she’s already taken the bed on the left, closest to the door. Her bed is covered in a gray and lavender comforter. But, other than a few bottles of lotion and hairspray, the desk on her side of the room is pretty bare. No dozens of pictures of friends and family.
Chris places my boxes on my new bed and looks around. “This place could use a little love.”
He wiggles his eyebrows at me and I shake my head as I turn to my new roommate. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I got your name.”
“Senia,” she replies, plopping down on her bed. “Short for Yesenia.”
“That’s pretty.” I look at Chris and he raises his eyebrows. This girl obviously is not in the mood to talk.
“You want me to help you unpack,” he asks, grabbing my hand to pull me against him.
I press my hands against his chest, unsure whether we should be affectionate in front of Senia. It might make her uncomfortable. He smiles when he notices what I’m doing, then he leans in to try and kiss me.
“Stop,” I whisper, but he just laughs. “I can unpack by myself. Are you leaving now?”
“Trying to get rid of me already?”
I try to transmit the answer to that question telepathically, so Senia can’t hear how desperately I don’t want him to leave yet.
“I have to go move the car and get ready for the show,” he says. I guess he didn’t receive my telepathic message. “Do you need anything before I go?”
I shake my head. “Call me before the show … to say goodnight.” I whisper the last three words so my new roommate can’t hear how needy I’m feeling right now.
He smiles and kisses my forehead. “I will. I love you, babe.”
“I love you.”
I wrap my arms around his waist and breathe in as much of his scent as I can before he leaves. I close the door behind him and Senia is looking at me when I turn around.
“Is that your boyfriend?” she asks.
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce you two. His name is Chris.” I move the boxes off my bed and onto the floor.
“Is he some kind of actor or something? He said he had to get ready for a show.”
I laugh as I lift the suitcase onto my bed. “No, he’s a musician. He has a band. They’re playing a show tonight.”
“Oh.” She keeps playing with her phone for a moment, then she looks up from the screen with a sober expression on her face. “My dad wouldn’t let me date anyone when I was in high school.”
“Sorry,” I reply, unsure what else to say to that.
She shrugs and flashes me a smile. “It’s okay. I think this year is going to be different. You know?”
I let out an uneasy chuckle. “Yeah, I do.”
Forever Promised
After we had sex two months ago, I knew I had to do something to show my commitment to Claire. Something to keep me in her mind when all those sex-starved college guys are trying to get a piece of her.
We’re too young to get married — at least, according to Claire we are. But I hope this promise ring will serve as a little reminder of who she belongs to.
She swears that she hasn’t had a lot of guys hitting on her, but she doesn’t understand her own appeal. Claire doesn’t ooze sex appeal until you know her. Before you know her, she exudes this closed-off, innocent vibe that begs to be explored. You can’t help but want to get close to her; know more about her.
I’ll admit that this aspect of her personality was a huge turn-on for me when she first walked into our living room four years ago. Now, it’s just scary. I don’t want anyone to take Claire away from me. But, most of all, I don’t want anyone to hurt her.
I worry about her every day.
Claire sits down on the grass under a large oak tree in Moore Square. I sit next to her and lay my guitar on the grass next to me. She crosses her legs and sits up straight, lik
e she’s about to start meditating. We look around for a while at the groups of people enjoying a Saturday in the park on a long Columbus Day weekend. Forty feet away, a father is kneeling on the grass, playing catch with his toddler son and it gives me an idea.
“We’re gonna have kids someday, right?”
She laughs. “Not for at least five or six years. But, yeah, I guess.”
“We can’t do it when we’re old. I don’t want to be one of those old parents who doesn’t have energy to go to the park.”
“Twenty-five is not that old.”
“So … if we’re having kids in five or six years, when are we getting married?”
She’s silent for a moment, then she turns to me with a question in her eyes. “What are you getting at?”
“Nothing. Just talking.”
She scrunches her eyebrows together as if she doesn’t believe me. “I don’t know. After I graduate?”
“Why do we have to wait till then? I mean, it’s not like we haven’t already lived together. We could get married before you graduate, then move in together right after graduation.”
“What are you saying? You want to get married now?”
“No, not now. Maybe your senior year or something.” I shrug, suddenly regretting I brought this up. “Anyway, it’s not a big deal. We can get married whenever. Or not. We don’t have to ever get married.”
“Now you don’t want to get married?”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean that we don’t have to ever get married if you don’t want to. We could be one of those progressive couples that stays together forever but never gets married because we’re too cool for that.”
“Sounds like an excuse not to get married,” she says, leaning back on her hands and closing her eyes as she leans her head back.
I take the opportunity to take the promise ring out of my pocket. Then I lay the ring on her knee. She opens her eyes and stares at the ring for a while.
“What is that?”
“It’s a ring.” She glares at me and I laugh. “It’s a promise ring.”
She picks it up and examines it. “What kind of promise are we making?”
“I’m promising to love you forever. You can decide what kind of promise you want to make.”
She smiles and looks me in the eye. Then she hands the ring back. “Aren’t you supposed to put it on me?”
I take the ring from her, then I take her left hand in mine and slide it onto her middle finger. I lay a soft kiss on the back of her hand and look her in the eye.
“I promise to love you forever. Even when I’m lying in my grave, all dusty and cobwebbed. I’ll be whispering your name inside my coffin.”
“That is so creepy.”
“Creepy and romantic.”
She shakes her head and holds up her hand to look at the ring. Finally, she turns to me and places her hand on my cheek. “I promise to love you forever, and — ”
“There’s an and?”
“And … I promise to make sure they bury me next to you so you can still sing me to sleep when we’re dead.”
“Now that is romantic.”
She smiles, looking very impressed with herself. I lean over to plant a kiss on her cheek and she throws her arms around my neck. I lose my balance and fall backward. She lands on top of me and plants a kiss on my mouth. I grab her face before she can sit up again and lick her cheek.
“Ew!” She pushes off me and I laugh as we both sit up.
She straightens her shirt as she sits up straight and I lean in to whisper in her ear. “I’ll settle for your cheek, but I’d rather lick you in other places.”
She shakes her head, but I can see her brain working. Probably trying to think of a way to cut this outing short so we can go back to her bedroom or her dorm and lick each other. Not that I would object.
But first, I have a song I want to sing. What can I say? It’s the performer in me.
I grab the guitar and begin playing an upbeat sort of bubble-gum pop song I’ve been working on since the day Claire first gave herself to me. I don’t normally write that type of music, but I was on a bit of a high after that day. It seemed appropriate.
Claire spins around on the grass so she’s facing me and I begin the first verse.
* * *
“Sun in your hair, ignites my insides,
Glow of your skin, lights me up right,
Touch of your hand, I’m on my knees here,
Begging please, baby just stay near,
Yeah, right here.
* * *
‘Cause we don’t have to go nowhere,
This place is ours, it’s everywhere,
Yeah, we can stay,
Stay forever.
Ours.
It’ll stay forever ours.”
* * *
I’m about to start the second verse when she gasps. “Forever Ours? Is that the name of the song?”
I place my hand over the strings of my guitar to stop the resonant sound. “Yeah, why?”
Her eyes widen as she smiles. “I got you something. This is so funny.”
She reaches into the back pocket of her jeans and pulls out a smooth glass heart about half the size of my palm. She hands it to me and waits impatiently as I read the words engraved on the heart: Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.
“I got it at a little stationery shop off campus.”
I chuckle as I realize what I said to her two months ago stuck in her head, too. “Thank you,” I say, then I kiss the corner of her mouth. “It’s perfect.”
She smiles and taps my guitar. “Sorry, I interrupted you. Can you finish the song now?”
I start the song from the beginning again, and by the second verse, a crowd of about six people have gathered around to listen. When the song is over, the crowd has grown to at least a dozen. They clap loudly and one man asks if I have a change bucket, but I tell him that’s not necessary.
“Another one,” Claire insists and the crowd joins in her plea.
I get the feeling I always get when I step onto a stage; that mixture of nervousness and excitement. That rush that I can’t get enough of. And I slip right into another upbeat song.
After four songs, I have to quit. The crowd is getting too thick and I don’t have a stage here to separate us. The last thing I need is for Claire and I to get crushed on the day I promise to love her until the day I die.
I give my appreciation to the crowd and say my goodbyes. A few people ask for my name so they can look for my album, but I have to tell them I’m not signed yet. Still feels good to be asked.
“Where are we going?” I ask as Claire and I walk back to my bike.
“I don’t care. Wherever you go, I go.”
Forever Studying
Senia and I went to our first college party last week. And she met a boy. A very handsome, very strong football player. Tar-Heel running back Justin Neely. I think the only way to get Senia to come out of her shell may be to ply her with alcohol.
Of course, I don’t drink. I never have. After losing my mother to a heroin overdose, I swore I’d never drink or do drugs. And I really have no desire to break that promise to myself.
But I must admit that it was fun to see Senia finally let loose a little. I wasn’t aware just how shy she was until she opened up to me the second week of school. I had just asked her if she wanted to go get something to eat at the campus café and she rejected me.
I didn’t think anything of it; though I was a bit disappointed. I’ve never really had any girlfriends, unless you count Rachel. But we only attended high school together for three weeks before she graduated. She’s always seemed a little annoyed by my immaturity.
I thought Senia would finally be my chance at having a normal female friendship, but she didn’t seem interested. So I grabbed some cash out of my wallet and I was all set to go to the café alone. Then Senia stopped me.
She opened up to me about how she only had a couple of friends in high school, but they went to a d
ifferent school. And they weren’t even good friends because her dad refused to let her go out partying or even to the mall or the movies. By the end of our discussion, I was beginning to think I had it good as a foster child.
So I gave her some time to loosen up a little, then we went to our first party last week. Neither of us are huge partiers, so we kept to ourselves most of the night. Until handsome Justin Neely approached shy little Senia and offered her a bottle of beer.
If it had been a cup, I would have made her reject the drink. But Justin opened the bottle right there in front of us, as if he knows the rules of staying safe at a college party. Never accept a drink from a stranger. Unless it’s an unopened beverage.
One beer led to two tequila shots. Which led to another beer. Which led to me practically carrying her back to the dorm. And she’s been babbling about Justin for eight days straight.
“He’s taking me to meet his sister today,” Senia says while brushing her dark, luxurious hair.
“Wow. Sounds serious. Do you mind if I make your bed?”
“Go ahead. Is Chris coming over?”
I smile in response. It’s really all I can do. I haven’t seen Chris in six days, but it seems like an eternity. I’m giddy with excitement.
Today, Chris and I aren’t going to stay in the dorm and have sex for hours. Not that I object to that. But I was thinking we could get out for a change.
I know we’re way past the dating phase of our relationship, but four months of weekends filled with almost nothing but sex and breakfast food feels almost wrong. Almost. I mean, we went to Moore Square a couple of months ago and that was beautiful.
And it’s so cold outside. I thought we’d go get some coffee. Or something that normal couples do.
Then again, Chris is the only guy I’ve ever really been with. I’m not sure I know what normal couples do. They’d probably envy us.
Senia twists her hair and pins up one side of her hair. “How do I look?”
She’s wearing a killer red dress she ordered online from an independent designer, accentuated by red lipstick.