The Promise of Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page B

again. I had missed Nick. I had missed being with him, seeing him, talking to him. He had been the only one that had ever really known me. I realized that I had lost more than a boyfriend all those years ago; I had also lost the best friend I had ever had.
    “Nick,” I said his name warmly and deeply, and he reached across the table and squeezed my fingers. We gazed at each other for a few seconds and time seemed to stand still as we slowly took in each other’s faces once again.
    “I’m sorry.” His words were slow and deliberate. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
    “It’s not your fault.” I smiled at him gently and in that moment I knew it was true. “You don’t have to apologize. You were right you know, all those years ago, I was becoming a bitch.” My voice caught, and I looked away. “You deserved better than me.”
    “There is no better.” His words were a whisper, and I wasn’t sure that I had heard him correctly. I didn’t want him to give me a hope. There was no room for hope in life. Everything in my life was shit. I was a loser. I’d had the world and lost it all.
    “It looks like you are doing well for yourself.” I offered him a wide smile, as I changed the subject, I didn’t want to go backwards, and I didn’t want to relive the pain of the last two years.
    “How are you really?” His voice was urgent as he leaned forward. “Your parents left town a few months after we broke up, and none of us knew what happened to you, and you never answered any of my calls.” He took a breath. “I was worried about you.”
    “They moved to Florida.” I stared at a spot on the wall past his head. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to look into his green eyes. They reminded me of too many broken promises. Too many dreams and hopes that had never come true. They reminded me of love and I no longer believed in love. “They didn’t want to stay in Herne Hill anymore.” I fidgeted with my fingers, and he grabbed a hold of them. I looked up at him again and he stroked my fingers softly, his eyes never leaving mine. “My parents had to sell the house, due to some bad business deals my dad had.” I laughed bitterly. “Ironic, huh? They always judged you for being poor but look what happened to them.”
    “You were still my friend, though. You still dated me.” His eyes looked searchingly into mine. “It didn’t matter to you that I was poor.”
    “Not at all.” I said honestly. “Money didn’t mean anything to me. You were you and I was me and that was all that mattered.”
    “We really screwed up, didn’t we, Snitch?” He sighed and squeezed my hand. “We really fucked this up.”
    I nodded mutely. There were so many things I had done wrong in my life, and I wasn’t quite sure how I had gotten to this place. I couldn’t blame Nick though. It wasn’t my heartbreak that had led me to this place. My decline had started before we broke up, and I had just spiraled out of control once he was out of my life. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about what would have been, if I had just stayed with Nick and not gone to Harvard.
    “I missed you, Snitch.” His words interrupted my thoughts and I let the sound reverberate in my ears and brain. He missed me. I hadn’t heard anything that had made me happier in years.
    “I missed you too, Nick.” My voice was earnest and pained. The words seemed inadequate to express just how much I had yearned for him. How much my heart had hoped to sing our song again.
    “Where did we go wrong?” His voice was a whisper. “I just don’t know, I’ve thought about it and thought about it and I just don’t understand how it all fell apart.”
    “We were young and dumb.” I laughed painfully. “I guess you were right that day, young love never lasts.”
    “I loved you from the first day I saw you, you know.”
    “Yeah you told me before. When we met in the hallways, right?” I looked at him with a small smile. “The