You Promised Me the World

All high school romances ended the same, or so Emma’s mother told her. They were amazing while they lasted; they seemed to be the only thing worth giving up every dream, every person and every priority for. Her mother had the same talk with Emma every time she started dating someone, don’t slack off in school or at practice, don’t blow off your friends or your family, because while it may seem like true love it’s really only “love right now”. When a boy comes into your life he’ll leave it just as quickly, and all of those things you blew off or neglected will still be there.

In other words, Emma’s mother was a cynic. She didn’t believe in love, that much could be told by her two failed marriages, one of which happened to be her high school sweetheart, or as Emma called him “dad”.

In some way, when she was younger, Emma didn’t have much faith in love either. She was completely content on her own or going out on dates that usually meant nothing by the time the boy dropped her off at her door. She had a couple of boyfriends, but those relationships never passed the sixth month mark for one reason or another. And then Kennedy came along.

She hadn’t liked him at first, finding his shy behavior a complete turn off. Emma was used to boys either talking to her to get to one of the other girls on the cheerleading squad, ignoring her completely or coming on way too strong. So when this baby faced boy sat across from her in English class, looking at her like he was horrified to speak, she wrote him off. The way his eyes bugged out of his head at the sheer thought of her being paired up with him for group interviews annoyed her, it almost seemed like her partnership would be a chore to him.

She knew that being a cheerleader had stereotypes, and some of the girls on the squad lived up to them, but Emma Thomas did not. She didn’t try to pull off the “fake nice” act, didn’t try to suck up to teachers and use excuses to pull off the perfect GPA, and she most certainly did not think that she was above any other person. She wasn’t too good to be partnered up with any jock, nerd or other person, like Kennedy Brock seemed to think he was.

Like every fickle teenager though, Emma changed her mind once Kennedy began to answer the simple questions for their group interview. He cracked jokes and gave outlandish answers, and from that day forward their unexpected friendship bloomed.

When he had asked her to come with him to his friend’s that faithful day after class, Emma hadn’t expected much. He had shown up in a car that wasn’t his, with the music blasting through the speakers at an unspeakably high volume and a look of embarrassment all over his face.

That first night was the farthest thing from a date and both of them knew it. After a few more nights almost identical to the first, sitting around with his friends and watching a movie or two, Kennedy asked Emma on a real date. He picked her up in his car, with no music and a huge smile on his face. They drove to a low key chain restaurant, ordered a ton of food and spent the night laughing, while getting to know each other a little bit more.

He walked to her right up to her door at the end of the night, the whole time Emma wondering if he was going to kiss her. It was so cliché, standing out on her front porch, both nervously looking at one another and saying an awkward good-bye.

Truth be told, Emma had an amazing night; she had assumed that the whole date would have been a disaster. Emma figured that she would have continued to see him as only a friend, but to her surprise she realized that she actually liked Kennedy. Even though they didn’t run in the same crowd, Emma realized that they still clicked. She hadn’t felt that right with a boy in a while, and she wasn’t sure that she would feel that right with a boy ever again.

Emma Thomas was going to put all of her eggs in one basket; she was going to prove her mother wrong. Love existed in the form of a high school boy and girl, a love that could stand the test of time, break the high school sweet heart curse and have the happiest ending known to man.

Emma Thomas willingly got inside of the roller coaster and strapped herself in even against her mother’s advice, because in her mind roller coasters were safe. The chance of it coming off the tracks was one in one-and-a-half billion; she had never expected to be that one.

______________________________________________________________________

Kennedy was done.

He climbed grimly inside of the cab, mumbling his destination to the driver before fixing his eyes out the window. He didn’t want to carry on a conversation with the man taking him home; he wasn’t in the mood to talk about why he was so glum, or how he had just seen his ex-girlfriend for the first time in months. No, all he wanted was to get home and crawl back in his bed. He wanted to wallow in self pity alone, not cover it up with alcohol.

The big, typical Arizona architecture of Max’s house stared back at him through his half open eyes. It brought all of the alcohol that he had consumed running towards his throat, her hazy face still flashing through his brain.

Slamming his eyes shut and trying to breathe steadily through his nose so that he wouldn’t decorate the back seat, he let the familiar motion of a moving vehicle put him in a somewhat hypnotic state. There was nothing in front of him then, not Emma, not Max’s constant glares from across the room, just open road and the thought of his warm bed.

When he felt the jerking motion of pressure being applied to the set of breaks, Kennedy’s eyes slowly opened. Digging through his pockets he paid the fare, giving the guy a little extra for the silence and quickly hurried inside of his house.

The low sound of laughing could be heard, a dim blue light coming from the living room. He stuck his head in and smiled at the women sprawled out on the couch, a small white ball of puff curled up against her stomach, Neil Patrick Harris radiating off of the big screen in front of her.

“You’re home,” she said softly, jarring Kennedy who didn’t realize that she had seen him.

“Yeah,” he nodded, stepping further into the room. Any thought of running up the stairs had suddenly been pushed to the side at the sight of his mother. It made him wish that he could be a little kid again, that it could be completely acceptable to cry and ask her for comfort.

“How come you’re still awake?”

She let out a low and tired sigh, carefully picking the white puffball up and placing her on the floor before settling back down in sitting position, she nodded her head for her son to come and sit.

“I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Okay,” Kennedy said warily, taking a seat at the opposite end of the couch.

Leaning over, the older woman grabbed something from the thick glass coffee table and glanced over at her son. “I found this in the garbage Kennedy,” she began, holding it between her fingers like it was an egg. “Now I know that this situation isn’t simple, but throwing this out is not a solution to make you feel better. I don’t even need to mention the fact that this was expensive.”

He stared at the ring box located in his mother’s hand, feeling the heat creeping up his neck. The day he came home and found it amongst his things, he had waited until everyone was asleep and crept downstairs to hide the box in the trash can, hoping that nobody would find it. It had been almost two weeks; he had assumed that nobody had seen it and that he had gotten rid of it.

She placed the box in her son’s hand and sighed. “Honey, you need to find another way to get rid of this.”

He only nodded, knowing that she wasn’t just talking about the ring. His mother had the uncanny ability to sum up an hour long conversation in less than twenty words.

As Kennedy said good-night to his mother and retreated towards his bedroom, he shuddered at the texture of what was sitting in his hand.

He remembered the day he bought the ring; he asked the sales clerk if it came in anything other than a velvet box. He hated the feeling of velvet against skin; it was one of those feelings that gnawed at him and made every single hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was either that or a bag the sales clerk unfortunately told him, so Kennedy had to settle on the awful blue velvet.

Three months that blue velvet box sat tucked away in Kennedy’s top drawer, behind a bunch of old magazines, pens that didn’t work, and a calculator he was convinced he lost. It was his junk drawer, the only place she didn’t look. He knew she reveled in the opportunity to steal t-shirts, sweaters, even boxers that she could sleep in. Emma was a typical girl; she loved wearing his clothes, especially now that they were touring more regularly.

Three months it sat in his drawer, it spent two more days in his coat pocket until one night they had gone out for dinner.

Her laugh cut through the entire restaurant, her perfectly white teeth seemed to bring a natural light to the dim atmosphere.

“He did not say that!” She exclaimed, covering her mouth once she realized that she had been shouting. “He didn’t say that, did he?” She whispered, leaning over the table to touch Kennedy’s arm.

Still, after all this time, she made him feel like he did in high school.

“He pretty much said that,” Kennedy chuckled, watching her gasp and cover her mouth again.

“I am so sorry; my brother can be such an asshole sometimes.”

“He thinks we’re totally lame.”

“He’s just jealous that you can play the guitar and his acoustic just sits in the corner as a glorified statue.”

Smirking, he reached across the table and grabbed her hand, running his thumb slowly across the back of her hand. “I love you,” he whispered, watching her smile shyly and try to hide the sudden surge of red that appeared on her cheeks. “You ready to get out of here?”

“Ready when you are.”

Sucking in a breath, Kennedy clutched the small box a little tighter in his hand. “Ready when you are.” Her voice pulsated against his ear drums; he thought he was ready then.

He had stuck his hand in his pocket to look for his keys as they exited the restaurant. He felt the smooth material brush against his fingers, truth be told he had forgotten the ring was there, so he took it as some kind of sign.

Swallowing hard he drove them towards her house in silence; he knew she would be suspicious of that, but Kennedy was caught up in his thoughts. He was about to ask the most important question that could be asked, so he had to make it good…right. He wanted to make this right.

“Are you okay?” Emma questioned as he cut the engine in her driveway.

Nodding, he gave her a half smile. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You seem so weird,” she mumbled, studying his face in the way she always did. She always looked like she was trying to figure him out, the way someone looked at a math problem they understood but didn’t quite remember how to solve.

He didn’t respond, he only took her hand and placed something inside, causing her eyes to get bigger, and her eyebrows to rise.

“Kenny,” she whispered so softly he barely heard her. “Kenny this isn’t, is it?” She asked in a louder voice, still holding a hint of a whisper.

They had jokingly talked about this moment; her expectations were romantic and classic, she wanted the cheesy down-on-one-knee-lame-speech moment. This wasn’t going to be anything like that.

“Yeah,” he breathed out, realizing seconds later how shaky he was. “Yeah it is.”

“Oh my god.”

“Em, I want to marry you,” he said, brushing the back of his hand against his forehead, it was suddenly way too hot in his car. He took a deep breath, “will you?” He asked, trying to get the pair of eyes that were fixated on the diamond ring to look at him. “Will you marry me?”

They spent the night driving around in his car; laughing at how crazy the idea was, living in the excitement of young and now changing love. Emma Thomas was no longer Kennedy Brock’s girlfriend, she was his fiancée.

Throwing the pesky box across his room, Kennedy sat down on his bed and sighed.

He had debated for a long time on whether or not he was going to tell his friends that he had asked someone to marry him. He knew they would find out eventually, somebody would let it slip, and maybe that was the way Kennedy wanted it. He figured that he would hear the same things he had thought himself, “you’re an idiot”, “you’re crazy”, “why would you do something so stupid?”, “you’re too young”. He didn’t want to have to explain what he knew.

Kennedy just knew that he was doing the right thing. He felt that she was the one, felt it all the way down to his bones without a shadow of a doubt. He had asked, she had accepted and that was it. They weren’t going to run out and do the deed in a week. She made it clear that she wanted to wait, a year at the very least. He was okay with that, he would wait for her.

He was ready then, and now he was sitting alone.