Page 1 of Every Broken Promise
ONE
If there wasone thing I learned with age, it was that life was not all that it was cracked out to be. You needed school to get a better job. Guess what? Thanks to said degree, I was up to my ears in debt.
Whatever, though—I would not let that bring me down. It’s not like we died with our savings in our coffins. Morbid, I know, but it made me feel better on those days when I felt like a broke bitch.
The prissy rich people and I would all disintegrate the same way.
It really was the little things in life that kept you going.
As soon as high school ended, I packed my bags and said goodbye to my small town.
Before becoming persona non grata, I planned to go to community college. I loved my parents and knew I would be homesick, but I didn’t think I was ready to spread my wings.
When you grow up in a small town, you either want to leave it and try to pave your way in the big, scary world, or you stay comfortable in what you already know.
I was in the second category. I had everything I ever wanted right in town. I didn’t have big aspirations.
Since I was little, I knew I wanted to become a journalist. I was that weird kid who would watch the news, not really for the announcements but more for how they broadcasted. Watching how they reported everything in a few minutes so eloquently and without missing a beat was fascinating to me.
The art of it all intrigued me.
My plan for after high school had been simple: go to community college for two years. I never planned on being the next Anderson Cooper; I would have been content working for my local newspaper. So the plan was community college with my best friend—my ex-best friend now, if we’re being technical.
Not that said ex-best friend needed to go to college with me. His family owned their own business, and since he wasn’t too keen on higher education, he was only going because he was tired of hearing me nag about it. My plan allowed me to stay wrapped in a bubble of familiarity.
Unfortunately, life had other plans, and my safety cocoon came crashing down on me.
When you were your graduating class’s enemynumero uno, there’s no point in sticking around. So, that’s what I did. I packed my bags, saidbon voyageto my parents, and made my way to an out-of-state university.
The place I was too scared to be homesick over was the place I needed to outrun.
There would be no friends to miss me since they all turned their backs on me. Let me just say that avoiding people when you lived in a small town wasn’t easy, but damn, if I didn’t make that a work of art. In the four years I had been at school, you might as well have called me Houdini.
Luck had been at my side.
Sadly, you couldn’t have too much of a good thing. It’s like with sex. Sometimes, you had guys who were great at it and made you believe that you were one orgasm away from heaven,when others had no idea what they were doing, that even if you drew them a map with an X marking the spot, they would still be too blind to see it.
The balance of life demands that we must go through trials and tribulations.
So here I was now—it was time to pay the piper.
I was too calm for someone whose car had been stranded fifteen miles from town—way too calm. I looked down at my phone—twenty minutes had passed since my car had broken down on me, and I couldn’t force myself to dial a number I knew all too well.
Maybe he’s not even there.
Life is all about balance. My car breaking down was already negative, so the positive had to be that someone else would pick up my call and come, right?
Fuck it.
The number of Kanes’ Auto had long been erased from my phone, along with all the other Kane family members’ numbers. But when you grew up dialing the shop for rides because you and the youngest of the Kane brothers ended up needing a ride every other weekend, you tended to memorize it.
It rang once.
Twice.
By the third time, I almost gave up.
“Kanes’ Auto.”
