Their eyes met when he entered the room and shut the door behind him. Ashley saw his swollen eyelids and bleeding fingers.
He had been crying.
He didn't take his eyes off her until he was close to her on the bed. He looked like he was afraid she would fade away if he did.
Ashley took his hand and wiped it with a roll of tissue on his dresser.
"You didn't have to do this, baby. I have never seen you this sad. What's wrong with you?" She said, massaging his palm after bandaging the cut.
"Ash"
"Nick"
"Is this you?" He said, a tear falling down his left eye. Ashley touched his shoulders and leaned in to kiss him on his cheek. He took her chin and kissed her back.
"It is you. It is really you" he embraced her and broke down all over again on her shoulders.
Ashley did not understand everything that was going on with him, so she cried with him.
"That was a dream, right? What happened right there was a dream, right?" His voice was breaking but his gaze was fixated on her. Nothing else in the room caught his attention as her face.
"Where? What happened?" She quizzed, uncertain. "Are you okay, Nick?"
"The accident at ..at the alley"
"Oh, yeah. I had an accident. A van hit me and broke my leg but surprisingly, I'm fine now.
I lost a great deal of blood, Nick but I survived, without treatment" she smiled, unconvincingly.
It felt like she was narrating a story to him. A story that didn't involve her.
Her mind drifted back to the circumstances of the accident.
Someone had hit her on purpose with a van that looked like Nicolas'. It looked like Nicolas was framed on purpose.
The person actually had a cloth that looked like her boyfriend's, on him. She had in fact thought it was he.
"I can't believe this" his eyes spelled fear in place of relief.
"I can't believe it too. I don't understand how I was able to survive this. Look at my leg"
He lifted her leg and saw how battered it looked. He took out his first aid box and started to work on it.
"Should we go to the hospital? It still hurts" she asked him, wincing as he touched the spot.
"No, Ash. Stay right here with me. Don't go anywhere, okay?" He said, searching her face carefully. "Do you promise?"
"I promise. I'll stay here. I have nowhere to go anyway"
He covered it up with band-aid after a few hours of cutting and joining, and then he left the house, after making her promise for the umpteenth time to wait for him.
All alone, Ashley wondered why everyone didn't want to help her to an hospital. Not even Mrs Nelson came to check up on her, or did Nick tell her she was dead as well?
Mrs Nelson was his very good old friend and neighbor. Ash was too confused about it all but she waited for him.
She waited forty minutes but he was still not back.
When she started to get bored and hungry, she ate some chicken feet and drank some soda from the refrigerator.
It was as if he left it there for her on purpose.
Somehow, she appreciated the fact that her parents already thought she was dead.
She believed Nicolas lied to them so that they would not look for her. He must have done that for her.
Maybe it was time for them to elope. It was their last option.
He was already gone for an hour when Ashley started to worry.
To get her mind off her anxiety, she started to clean his room. While cleaning, she found some pieces of cardboard cut from a larger one.
It was very beautiful and on it were written all the promises they had made to each other.
It was sealed with their blood. They both knew they would never regret being with each other.
She took out the cardboard from his drawer and stared at it. The blend of their handwritings was 'sick'- a slang they constantly used. It meant 'excellent, very good'.
There were six promises in total, but they didn't think to add punishments for breaking any of them.
Ashley read them out with admiration.
1. WE PROMISE NOT TO LEAVE EACH OTHER WHETHER THROUGH BREAK-UP OR SEPARATION.
2. WE PROMISE NOT TO LET OUR COMPLICATIONS GET TO US SO MUCH. WE GOT EACH OTHER'S BACKS EVERYDAY, FOREVER. WE'LL COMMUNICATE INSTEAD OF ARGUE ALL THE TIME.
3. WE PROMISE NEVER TO GIVE UP ON LIFE BY COMMITING SUICIDE OR ACCEPTING FATE BECAUSE OF OUR PROBLEMS.
INSTEAD, WE'LL STAND STRONG, PULL THROUGH IT TOGETHER AND TELL THE STORY OF OUR BREAKTHROUGH TO THE WORLD LATER
4. WE PROMISE TO TELL EACH OTHER EVERY SECRET WE HAVE ALWAYS HAD IN MIND, AND NOT TO HOLD ANYTHING BACK
5. WE PROMISE TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE IN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS BY TEACHING THEM THE CORRECT WAYS TO LOVE AND BE LOVED.
6. WE PROMISE NOT TO DIE BECAUSE THAT WILL MEAN ONE PERSON HAS LEFT THE OTHER. IF DEATH HAS TO HAPPEN, THEN IT SHOULD TAKE US BOTH. EVEN SO, WE HOPE WE LIVE LONG AND ONLY DIE AT A RIPE OLD AGE"
Ashley giggled. The butterflies in her tummy flapped their wings and the smiles didn't leave her face. She was going to abide by her promises for as long as she lived. She trusted that he would too.
She did not realize how long she had been re-reading it until she checked the clock.
It was a quarter past 4pm. He had been gone for three whole hours. She went next door to Mrs Nelson to check on him but even the old lady was not around because no one answered the door when she rang the doorbell.
Ashley started to panic.
If she still had her phone, she would have called him. She staggered towards the door and started to search for him everywhere.