Jessica Martinez - The Vow

I take the egg from his hand and pop it open. It’s a ring, the color of grape crush and the size of a dime, glued to an adjustable plastic band. “Sparkly,” I whisper. “How many karats—no, don’t tell me.”

“And we also have a collection of sticky hands and princess tattoos.” He pats his pockets.

The ring is too small, even with the adjustable band, so I slide it halfway down my pinkie. “Perfect.”

“If you were five.”

“I’m young at heart.” I reach down, pick up the two heavier bags, and hand them to him. “Thanks.”

He shrugs. “I can’t have my wife wandering around without a ring, can I? No telling who might hit on her.”

“Does that mean I’m supposed to buy you a ring too so girls aren’t throwing themselves at you?” I ask, and shove the rest of the banana in my mouth and throw the peel at him.

He dodges it, picks it up, and tosses it into the trash. “No amount of bling is going to stop the ladies from doing that. Let’s go.”

I examine the ring one more time. The plastic is already digging into my knuckle. I want to say thank you again—less for the ring, more for just being Mo—but I’m suddenly fighting to swallow over the lump in my throat.

Mo’s staring at me. “Your parents are going to get over it.”

Oh, them. I nod. And for just a second I consider really telling him about my broken, smashed, trampled-on heart. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so empty if I could explain I think I may have actually been in love.

“They will,” he says. “They love you. They’re just playing hardball. Ready?” He steps on his board.

I grab my bags and follow.

I don’t like being weighted on wheels, without hands free to catch myself when the inevitable happens. The bags are practically even, but I still feel like I’m leaning left. All I have to do is let go of the bags if I fall. I know that, but I doubt I’ll know that while I’m actually falling. Not everyone has the same set of survival instincts.

But I don’t fall. Not on the surprise lip in the sidewalk, not on either of the two hills, and not even when we roll back through the parking lot and I see my Explorer parked in a visitor stall, my mother in the driver’s seat, staring off into nothing.

It’s only been a week. I’m not sure if this makes me a bad daughter, but I haven’t missed her, unless the heart lurch I feel right now counts. I’ve been too busy dying over Reed, too busy playing house with Mo, too busy painting pictures of weird objects from the apartment to chase the ocean out of my head.

She turns and sees me, then lifts a hand—a greeting, not a smile.

Is she waiting for me to go to her? I step off my board, but I don’t get any closer.

Mo swears under his breath.

“You should go up to the apartment,” I say.

He tucks my board under his arm and takes the bags from me with his other hand.

She gets out of the car and walks toward us.

“Mrs. Bernier,” he says with a nod.

She squints at the skateboards instead of looking him in the eye. “You don’t have a car?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s over there.” He points to the Camry.

“It doesn’t work?”

“It works fine.”

“Mo’s just taking this stuff up,” I say.

He nods. “Nice seeing you, ma’am.”

She rummages through her purse, pretending to look for something so she doesn’t have to say good-bye politely, like she doesn’t know I’ve seen that move from her before.

I wait until the stairwell door clicks shut. “You could be nice to him, you know. It’s not like he has any family around anymore.”

“Is that why you married him? Because you felt bad for him? So you could take care of him? Girls who think like that don’t end up happy, you know.”

“Why are you here?”

“To help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Of course you do.”

“No, I don’t. I’m an adult. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. And adults don’t ride skateboards to the grocery store. You’re kids playing some kind of grown-up married-person game, and at some point you’re going to realize there’s a lot more to marriage than skating around and whatever else you two do together.”

I snort. Whatever else. This is the closest thing to a sex talk we have ever had. “Maybe my marriage isn’t anything like yours, but I happen to think that’s a good thing.”

She lifts her chin slightly, pulls her cheeks in so her face looks a little gaunter. The movements are all small, but I recognize them. I’ve hurt her. That familiar pang of guilt rings through me. I’m so tired of hurting her.

“I am here to help you,” she says. She may be wounded, but she’s always calm, like a bird with a smashed wing waiting for something worse to happen. “You don’t want to come home. Fine. I can’t make you. But your dad thinks you’ll change your mind faster if we sit back and let you sink, and I’m not prepared to do that.” She holds out the car keys. “Here.” The single word echoes through the garage.

“I don’t want it.”

“Take it.”

“No.”

“You can’t skateboard to school all winter long.”

“Mo has a car!”

“Then take this,” she says, slipping her MasterCard out of her wallet.

I shake my head.

“For when the car breaks down.”

“Mo has money.”

“You mean Mo’s dad has money. Is either of you working?”

I cringe. “No.” I wouldn’t have wasted my week moping about Reed if I’d known I was going to have to admit that to her.

She thrusts it at me. “Take it so you don’t have to go begging to Mo’s dad the next time you want a new outfit. Do you know anything about how those people operate?”

I look into her eyes and see tears pooling, her lower lip quivering.

“Those people?”

She grits her teeth, pulling the tears back in. “Don’t get all high and mighty with the political correctness now. You don’t just marry a person. You marry a family and a religion and a culture—do you even know the first thing about any of it?”

My heart is racing now.

“Do you know how they treat their women?”

“I know how Mo treats me.”

“Do you realize that according to them you’re his property now?”

“It’s not li—”

“Or that your children will be Muslim, even if you aren’t? Although if you’ve already converted, that’s obviously not something that’s going to bother you. Have you?”

I stare into her eyes. Who said anything about converting to Islam? Her eyes really are brilliant when she’s angry. The sparkle reminds me of my new ring.

“But if you think that’s something that’s not going to bother me and your dad, you’re wrong. Sorry if it’s not politically correct, or if it makes me old-fashioned and small-minded in your eyes, but there’s something to be said for calling it like it is.”

I’m too blindingly angry to speak. I can’t even think with her eyes cutting into me like that. It’s the glare. I don’t even know which question to answer first. But silence sounds like stupidity to her, and I wish I weren’t too stunned to breathe.

“I just never thought you’d hurt us this way,” she says bitterly.

“That’s the problem!” I hear myself yell, but it doesn’t even feel like me. It’s some other girl, some other explosion. “There isn’t a maximum amount of pain you can feel. It’s not like you can use it all up on Lena and expect to be done. I can’t hide in my room the rest of my life because your heart is already too broken. It’s not my fault that you let what happened to her crush you.”

She pulls in her chin and lifts her shoulders like she’s bracing, but it’s too late. I’ve already said it. We’re both too shocked to do anything but stare at each other. Tears pool in her eyes. Finally she stretches out her arm again, pushing the card inches from my hand. “Take it.”

I slap it away.

It doesn’t feel like my hand, but now there’s a slight stinging in the center of my palm where it connected, and in the seconds that it takes for the card to cartwheel through the air, I hear her gasp like it’s her face that I’ve slapped. The card clatters as it hits the cement, the sound echoing like applause. Or gunfire.

I can’t look at her in the silence that follows. I stare at the card, lying facedown beneath the tailpipe of a minivan. We’re finished. I turn away. Don’t run, don’t run, don’t run, my brain tells my body, and my body obeys even though walking hurts. Still, I force myself to the stairwell, one deliberate step away from her at a time, and when the door clicks shut behind me and I’m finally free to run up to Mo without looking like a baby, I don’t. The adrenaline is gone. I do exactly what my mother thinks I’m going to do. I stumble forward and sink.

Mo

I stumble backward and sink.

It’s pretty lame. I always thought I’d be able to take a punch to the face like a man. Sure, it would hurt, but there would be that wholesome, ringing crack that you hear on TV, and of course I would see it coming, brace for it, and not drop like a ten-year-old girl.

But I don’t see it coming.

I thought if I was going to get punched in the face, it was going to be by Mr. Bernier, which is why I’m in a constant state of cringing when I so much as think his name. But we haven’t seen either of Annie’s parents since she spiked her mom’s credit card across the parking lot two weeks ago. It never occurred to me I would take my first honest, closed-fisted punch to the jaw from my friend, which is why I’m not bracing when I open the door and see Bryce.

“Hey, loser! I thought you weren’t back till next week!” I say, and that’s the last thing to leave my mouth before Bryce’s fist smashes into it. Pain explodes through my face, shooting up into my brain and down my neck, followed by the sensation of flying in reverse, like I’ve got a rubber band attached to my neck and I’m being snapped backward. And there’s a lot of noise—a high-pitched screaming like a train whistle—but I can’t tell where it’s coming from, and it stops when I hit the open door behind me and slide to the ground. Colors go streaky. Rainbow Twizzlers fading into dust . . .

“One girl!” he shouts, but he’s blurry and his voice is fizzy and my face hurts so badly I’m afraid to touch it or to move. “My whole life, I’ve been in love with one girl!”

He’s leaning over me now, but I’m spinning too fast to be thinking defensively. I close my eyes. No good, still spinning. And the jaw ache is radiating into my skull now.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” he yells. “I would do anything for you! And you know what? If you’d have told me, I probably would have been okay with it. At least I would’ve tried. But you . . . How long have you . . . ?”

He can’t even finish it. And I can’t answer, not just because I don’t have any control over my jaw, or because my thoughts feel like they’re vibrating and are no longer in a language I speak, but because there is no allowable answer. I close my eyes and shake my head. I don’t want to look at his face anymore.

“How long?”

Guilt and vertigo swirl in my gut, pushing puke up into the back of my throat, but I swallow. It burns all the way down.

“Never mind,” he mutters.

I keep my eyes shut and listen as his footsteps retreat. Then nothing. I wish I could pass out for some temporary relief. Aren’t you supposed to get some unconscious recovery time when you get hit that hard? But no, I have to be wide awake to wallow in pain and guilt.

I was going to tell him. I was. But I didn’t think he was going to be back until next week, and I had no clue he’d take it so hard. Except now, even through muddy, concussive thoughts, it seems clear that he would. He’s always loved Annie—how did I forget that complicating and inconvenient piece of information? And unlike everyone else in E-town, he’s always believed we were just friends, because he was my friend, and friends believe each other.

I open my eyes to verify that yes, the entire world is still on Tilt-A-Whirl setting. Everything’s twisting together. I was lying to him or I am lying to him. It can only be one. I’m pretty sure it’s am, and it kind of makes me disgusted with myself and helpless at the same time. I stand up slowly, bracing my hand against the door. It takes a moment to make sure I’m steady, but when I’m sure, I make my way to the bathroom to inspect the damage.

My cheek is that vibrant pink of raw tuna. I touch it gingerly and then say every expletive I know to combat the pain.