AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Well, at least someone coughed up the truth.
“Stall me from what?”
Several text notifications go off all at once in the kitchen. Mama looks up from her phone with an overly bright smile. “Nothing anymore. Go on up.”
So, yeah. It’s definitely a trap.
I don’t even care at this point. At least, that’s what I tell myself as I slowly make my way up the stairs. All I wanted was a catnap before work, but as I stand outside my bedroom door with my hand shaking around the knob, I’m not sure going in here is going to accomplish my goal.
Still, might as well get it over with.
I have no idea what it even is.
The second I swing open my bedroom door, everything becomes clear.
Well, not quite clear. The flicker of candlelight competes with the soft twinkling of hundreds of tiny lights. In the center of the room, my bed no longer looks the same. A different, but decidedly familiar, navy-blue comforter now graces the mattress. A collection of wrinkled t-shirts covers the pillows. But, the most brilliant sight of all is my Rob, down on one knee, holding up a piece of torn notebook paper.
“What is all this?” My voice sounds breathless, stilted. Not like me.
Rob grimaces, then turns the notebook paper around. “Shit. It’s too small. You probably can’t even read it.” He stands, crosses the room in two long strides, then thrusts the paper toward me.
I’m almost afraid to look. Is he…is he actually giving me the pages of our notes from his old Bio notebook?
Is today an anniversary of something I don’t know about? Maybe the first time he tried to work up the nerve to ask me out?
“Read it,” Rob softly prompts.
“This—this is our Promposal?”Tears blur my vision as my hands shake.
“It’s…I mean, I didn’t…I tried…” Rob sighs, runs a hand through his hair, then offers me his lickable dimple with a half-sided smile. “Yeah.”
I reread his note. “What does this mean? I don’t understand.”
He shrugs, then looks around the room. “I don’t get to sleep with you at night, so I thought…maybe if you had my old t-shirts and blanket to sleep with, it might help. That, and lots of nightlights.”
My eyes take in my changed bedroom with all new perspective. I can’t catch my breath. This… This is nothing I ever imagined, and everything I never knew I wanted.
“There’s more,” he whispers, his lips feathering across my forehead. Rob takes my hand and leads me to the closet. Inside, the floor is lined with pillows. The same pillows that used to be on his bed; the ones that smell like him. He crawls onto the floor, tugging me down with him. “I took the liberty of rearranging some of your things.”
I glance at the wall of the closet to where he’s pointing. Sure enough, the old picture of us together at one of the post-game bonfires that used to be on my dresser mirror is taped to the wall. As is the poster of the football team from last year that I swiped from the local newspaper. Pictures of us together from Spirit Week round out the collage, some I’ve never seen before. A row of small teddy bears—one from every birthday I’ve celebrated since freshman year of high school, lines the wall beneath the pictures.
“It’s stupid and makes me feel like kind of an egomaniac, but I thought maybe if you could see me, see us together and happy, it would ease your fears at night.”
I have no words. Already, my tenuous grip on maintaining some semblance of self-control is slipping. My chest heaves with the effort of holding back the building sob in my chest; my eyes burn, waiting for the imminent flood.
Rob hauls me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s not so much a Promposal as it is a promise. Only a few more months, then you’ll never sleep alone again.” Though I can’t see his face, I hear the frown in his voice when he continues. “Except when I’m away for camps and games, but I’ll make arrangements for then, too.”
I twist until his handsome face comes into focus even through my tears. “I can’t wait.”
And I mean it. The idea of falling asleep with him every night and waking up to his smiling face every morning keeps a faint flicker of hope in my chest that one day I’ll be strong enough to face these ghosts alone. He won’t need to make “arrangements” for when he isn’t with me. Kind of like charging a laptop or cell phone to full battery, the more I’m with him, the longer I can go without him.
His chameleon eyes dance across my face. “And, uh…I’ll tell you what? I’ll make you a deal. If you say yes, I’ll even give you a taste of what’s to come in the fall. We can rent a hotel after Prom, just like we did for Homecoming. It’ll be a practice run for sharing a bed at State. How does that sound?”
It sounds wonderful. “What am I saying yes to? Because sign me up for that.”
He brushes his knuckles across my cheek. “Prom?”
“I didn’t think I had to say yes. You said we were going. I assumed it was a foregone conclusion.”
