Page 61 of Promise Me This

Even after I see the crumb fall into the crack between my seat and the center console, he doesn’t let go. Instead his thumb finds my lower lip, trailing from the corner to the very center and pressing gently. My skin tingles where he’s touched. I don’t dare breathe, afraid that if I do, it’ll break whatever trance we’re in.

Boldness is not usually my forte, or it hasn’t been for many years, but when Callum is near me, I feel it spark to life in my veins. My spine straightens, my shoulders brace. I do things like strip my shorts off right in front of him, without ever looking away.

I do things like biting the tip of his thumb.

Heat flares in his gaze when it cuts to me. A moan forms in the back of his throat, and his glistening teeth peek out to dig into his lower lip. One deep breath is drawn in, then two. He’s a more responsible driver than I could be in the situation; he manages to keep us on the pavement. Every time he has to look at the road, away from me, I swear he winces like it pains him.

“We’re going,” he says at last, clearing his throat with the words, “to the Ring of Kerry. And you’re going to be the death of me.”

I sit back in my seat, letting my pulse return to its normal cadence. “Why?”

He shakes his head. “Because you’re fucking beautiful, and you’re wearing tiny black panties, which I shouldn’t know, but I do, and I can’t unknow it, and—”

“I meant,” I interject, giggling, “why the Ring of Kerry?”

A scoff cuts out of his throat, but it’s punctuated by a wry grin. “I always told you I’d bring you when you came back.”

It’s not meant to be a barb, but it pierces me all the same. I tip my head toward the window, peering out at the sweeping landscape as it passes, trying to let go of the past while a piece of it rests in the little amulet nestled against my chest. I reach for it to anchor myself to her.

When I lived here, driving was what we did. It’s how we spent every spare moment where I wasn’t working or in school and he wasn’t busting his ass for his uncle. We drove to every corner of the country. Well, he drove, and I napped between talks about our dreams for our lives. One day, I’d muse, we’ll be riding through the streets of Bali or Australia or Madagascar. We’ll see the world together.

I wanna see the ports all the ships are coming from, he’d add. So I can picture them when I sign off on each arrival one day.

One day seemed like such a mystical, far-off concept at the time. But it was ours for the making, or so we thought. When I glance over at him—at the way the sunlight makes the pale blond hair on his forearms shimmer where he’s pushed up his sleeves, at the swoops and swirls of his hair, at the scar in his chin—I imagine this moment as some image that my younger self could’ve seen in a crystal ball, not realizing all the hell that came in between then and this one day.

Up ahead, the road winds through a narrow arch like a train tunnel carved right into the mountain. As we pass under it, tour buses travel in the opposite direction, their tops narrowly missing the roof of the tunnel. We climb higher, the road rising up the circumference of a grand valley spread out below, dotted with lakes and clusters of dense forest and small cottages with smoke rising from their chimneys. When we’ve nearly reached the rim, a café appears on our left advertising gelato and sandwiches. Callum slows, then pulls into a spot opposite the café. The nose of the car comes to rest against a barrier just before the sheer drop of a cliff.

“Ready?” he asks, staring straight ahead rather than at me.

I study his profile, the hard lines of his jaw and the bridge of his perfect nose. His eyelashes are blond and usually I cannot tell how long they are, but from the side I can see them fan out and nearly hit his glasses when his eyes are wide, watching, like they are now. He must sense my gaze, because he turns to face me, offering a twitch of his lips that I suppose is meant to pass for a smile.

“Come on, I’ve got something to show you.”

I nod silently, because now that I’m this close to him in the cab of a car that’s parked on top of a mountain, it feels like the years never passed at all. Like I’ve stepped through a wrinkle in time and found myself back in Tallaght that night, overlooking Dublin, with the worst of life still ahead.

“Right, then,” he says, grabbing the door handle, and steps out into the brisk breeze.

I follow suit, grabbing the jacket I brought along from the back seat. Up here, the wind has a bite, and despite the fact that the sun has briefly decided to grace us with its presence, a shiver runs down my spine.

Rather than walking toward the trunk of the car, in the direction of the café behind us, Callum follows the barrier we parked against toward its end some twenty feet away from us. “You coming?” he calls over his shoulder. It jolts me out of the trance I’ve fallen into, and I force my feet to follow him.

When we reach the edge of the barrier, I realize there’s a dirt path that stems from it, descending a few feet and then swooping off to the left. Callum offers his hand to steady me, and I take it. I don’t have the heart to tell him that his touch is a lot more of a hazard than the sharp drop-off on our right.

Once we’ve rounded a sessile oak, lush and green despite the cold, our destination comes into sight. A large boulder that juts out over the valley below, veins of moss dissecting its chalky gray surface, stands in solitary guard. Callum guides me toward it, steadying me as I traverse the smaller chunks of rock that make a haphazard staircase up to their grander counterpart.

“Wow,” I breathe, trying to take in everything beneath me. The tall, evergreen grasses sway and bow beneath gusts of wind sweeping through the valley. Smatterings of boulders, none as grand as this one, break up the endless green. All around us, mountains rise up like they are a crown, the valley a king’s head, and we’ve just been lucky enough to witness his coronation. “This is incredible.”

My hair is whipping against my face. I run a hand through it, holding on to what I’ve gathered at the back of my head so that when I turn to look at Callum, I can see him clearly. When I do, he’s already watching me, a lopsided smile on his face and mist that must be from the wind filling his eyes.

“I’m glad you like it,” he says, his voice almost a hum it’s so pleased. “It’s the best place in the world.”

Normally when people say that, I’m tempted to ask them if they’ve seen the rest of the world. If they haven’t, how can they be sure that Disney World or the Empire State Building is truly the pinnacle of what this earth has to offer? But now, with this expanse before me, I finally understand. There can be no better place than this.

“I can see that.” I offer him a broad smile, letting it take over my face completely. When he returns it, my heart triples its step.

“In the summer I like to cycle here. Sometimes I can convince Padraig to come with me. There are trails that wind through the valley and you gain a hell of a lot of speed.” His hands brace on his hips. We’re so close that his elbow brushes against my arm. I make no effort to move away.

“I wish we’d come here before.”

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