The Sordid Promise

By: Courtney Lane

Copyright © 2014 by Courtney Lane

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

This book is a work of fiction. the names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental

First Printing: 2014

For more works by this author, visit: www.redcherrypunch.com

Edited by: Book Peddler's Editing

My obnoxious alarm sounded, alerting me to take my medication. I sat up, glancing around my childhood bedroom—a place I never thought I’d come back to. It’s a bad kind of nostalgia, remembering all the times I came back here after having to endure the brutality of high school. My harsh experiences with people eventually sculpted me into becoming antisocial. People disappoint you and cause unnecessary drama. There was enough drama within the confines of my mind, and didn’t need anyone else to further expand on it.

I didn’t understand most of the people I encountered anyway. I always felt like there’s some ritual I wasn’t privy to, and never had been privy to. Too many people posture or fake who they really are in order to be accepted. I’d like to think I had a freedom most don’t; I lacked the ability to care about mass acceptance. I actually preferred it when people deemed me as socially inept and stayed clear of me. While I didn’t think of myself as socially inept, I didn’t react to situations the way most people did. To most, strange differences equated to a communicable disease that needed to be purged.

Despite having had two past relationships, I mostly kept to myself. I didn’t have any friends—well except for one person, and he’s much too tragic to be considered a real friend.

I partly followed in my mother’s footsteps with my foray into investing. I became a moderately successful day trader after I graduated college. While my mother’s interests expanded into Harvest Investments, her financial investment firm, my admiration never manifested into working for her.

I put my major to good use and set up an online business for graphic art design. It served as supplemental income when the markets weren’t on my side. I only dealt with clients through e-mail and instant message. It was perfect, for a time.

I took a shower and threw on something without a care about what it was—skinny stonewashed jeans and a cheap, oversized men’s T-shirt. I wasn’t in the mood to do my makeup, but I had to do something with my hair; thick, midnight black, it hung midway down my back and required daily maintenance. I never fussed too much with it, and usually pinned it up in a messy, voluminous bun.

As I opened the medicine cabinet to take my medication, there it was, an affront to my mental order. A blue and white packet of straight edge razor blades sat on the top shelf of the cabinet. I fell into a daze as I fingered the brand new box until yet another text from my mother snatched me out of my brief reverie.

I continued my morning ritual and fixed a cup of coffee. Stepping out on the back deck of the house, I fell into deep contemplations as I looked out at the large body of water. Two and three-story European style brick homes surrounded the bay on the west side, while a dense forest outlined the east.

The house was my mother’s dream home. The front detail included arched windows and a metal roof. Quite a few large bay windows with black shudders complemented the dark brick exterior of the home. Stained concrete flooring with radiant heat, crown molding, and marble tile accents were throughout the inside. The decor had a heavy Tuscan theme.

Many of the houses in the neighborhood were so similar it was hard to tell one from the other in the master planned community.

The Homeowner Association was headed by a slew of retirees and alimony collectors whose children had flown the coop, leaving their parents with nothing to do but gossip a little too much. Throughout my childhood years here, and the time I came back six months ago, a few of them have tried to befriend me.

I took note of the house next door. It had lain empty for nearly a month due to a recent foreclosure. There was a large moving van parked out front. Men in uniforms lugged an array of dark modern furniture inside.

I hoped my new neighbors were the quiet type, like most of my other neighbors—the woman across the street excluded. She was a middle-aged divorcée, who used to be a trophy wife to a politician. In one of our many one-sided conversations, which I tried to avoid, she told me she received a hefty alimony payment that allowed her to live in the gated community.

I looked down in the water’s reflection, taking in the view of the woman with large, sad brown eyes and very full lips. She used to care about the way she looked—lately, she can barely get out of bed.

Another text alert chirped, waking me out my daze, again.

I decided to take my walk before my mother threw a fit and questioned why I was taking so long. I walked the trail daily; it was the only good thing about the neighborhood. The trail led a good mile through a secluded forest near a quiet street and onward through a community park three miles up.

Popping in my earbuds and connecting the 3.5 mm cable to my phone, I walked along the sidewalk. I discreetly looked over to see if my new neighbors were around, but they didn’t seem to be. My walk continued down the pristinely paved street until I reached the walking trail at the edge of the master-planned community.

As I plodded along the paved trail, I tried to get lost in my thoughts, but my mother’s texts were more insistent than usual. If I wasn’t at her hospital bedside at nine a.m. sharp every morning, she pestered me until I arrived.

She’s driving me crazy more than she ever had previously. After my ‘incident’, which had nothing to do—directly—with the scars on my wrists, she nearly smothered me with attention. It was hard to get used to; being that it was about seventeen years overdue.

I transferred to a college across the country, Washington State, to get away from her. She called me daily, sometimes several times a day to check up on me—to babysit me from across the coast. I remained in Pullman, isolated in my small duplex from most normal social behaviors. About six months ago, my mother requested my return. I wasn’t convinced until she told me the reason why, and then…my world completely fell apart.

I came back to western New York for her. Because in the end, I had no one else and neither did she.

My phone chimed again, interrupting my playlist for the ninth time during my walk. I picked up my phone to send her a text, but in trying to juggle my coffee and my iPhone, both slipped from my hands. I tried to catch the items in midair, but fumbled when I saw a blur rush past me.

It took a minute to realize what happened. My earbuds, still in my ear, disconnected from my phone in the shuffle. While blasting “Control”, my phone rested in the hands of a man in fleece jogging pants and a sweat soaked T-shirt. My travel mug laid on the ground with the lid cracked, expelling my coffee onto the pavement.

“Joy Division?” His gravelly baritone voice rang out. “Wouldn’t be my choice, but I prefer less depressing music.” With a small grin aimed towards me, he pressed pause on my phone’s menu.

Gradually, I took in the man standing before me. His height ranged at least six-three to my five-eight, because he had me by quite a few inches. His muscular lean build showed through the sweat-soaked transparencies of his slim-fit burned out T-shirt. His face was angular and almost seemed carved. Much like the men who frequented magazine spreads in nothing but their underwear. He had the prerequisite wide jaw with prominent and sharp cheekbones, as well. His complexion, a smooth honey-beige tone that had not a flaw to be seen—it glowed with a golden luminescence. His generous pout was a succulent dark rose shade.