37 | Promise Me
Promise Me
Molly
IWASN'T SURE what I had in mind when Niall suggested to “sneak away for a bit,” but this wasn’t on the list.
Instead of doing something normal like taking a walk down the street, or maybe just slipping out onto the back porch, I’m standing in the middle of Niall Blue’s bedroom and staring dubiously at his open window.
“Ma would have my head on a spike if we went anywhere,” he had explained when moving the chair full of laundry out from in front of it and removing the screen. “She’s got ears like a bat. She’ll think we’re eloping if she hears the front door latch. She’d kill me.”
“So you’re gonna try and kill me instead?” I raise a brow, looking out the window. It wasn’t a straight drop to the lawn, thankfully. There was a section of the flat garage roof right below the windowsill—maybe a ten-foot drop to the grass below that, but easy enough to step onto.
He laughs, clearly thinking I’m joking. He climbs out first with practiced ease, and then extends his hand back to me. “C’mere to me. I’ve got ya.”
I take a breath, grabbing his hand, and swinging my legs over the sill. His hand is warm and he uses the other one to steady my waist as my socked feet find the cold, textured surface of the roof.
He had insisted I wouldn’t need my coat, that we were just gonna sit out here and not go anywhere.
But I’m freezing my tits off within a couple seconds of being out here.
The coldness of the tiles bleed through the denim of my jeans as I sit down.
He drops down beside me, stretching his long legs out and laying all the way back against the siding of the house, using his elbow to keep himself propped to the side.
“So,” he murmurs once he’s comfortable, gazing up at me. “Reckon yer parents utterly despise me, or what?”
“As if,” I laugh, keeping my arms crossed tight over my chest, and biting the inside of my cheek to keep my teeth from chattering. “I think they love you more than they love me.”
“Well, don’t fret, so does mine,” he says, reaching out and poking me gently in the side. “Maybe they can arrange a trade.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’d just love that,” I snort, then cover my face immediately. Oh, god, did I just do that?
Niall either doesn’t notice or care, trying to coax me into getting “comfortable,” as if anyone could ever get comfortable laying down on roof tiles in freezing cold weather.
“Does it snow here?” I ask, risking sounding stupid. But in Pennsylvania, it would’ve already snowed at least 3 times just this week with how cold it’s been. But Ireland is all rain, rain, rain.
“It’s usually not this cold,” he says. “Even being close to the water. We might get some light snow ‘round Christmas. Some years we don’t get any at all.”
“Huh,” I say, trying to imagine a winter without snow.
I glance over at him, all thoughts of snow melting from my mind.
Instead, I’m more focused on how ridiculously long and dark his eyelashes are, which flutter every time he blinks.
And, of course, this just leads to more admiring of the rest of his face, something I do more often than not lately.
When I’m not ticked off at him, that is.
I never knew that normal boys, you know, who weren’t Hollywood stars or in a Calvin Klein ad, could be so beautiful. Then again, the longer I spent in his orbit, the more I realized that Niall Blue was something much, much more than a normal boy.
At face value, of course he is. An athlete, just a guy with talent on the field and a lot of friends. You might think he’d be a little arrogant, maybe dimwitted. The only mystery about him would be why does he bleach his hair?
But beyond that, I’ve seen most of Niall’s layers in the past couple months I’ve spent getting to know him, peeling back more of his paint to see the walls behind them.
He’s really smart, and in high-level classes that he makes good marks in. He’s kind, and caring, and puts other people before himself all the time.
And he’s hurting. Physically, with his knee, and emotionally, with grief that even I can tell is still there.
And with all these layers, it makes sense to me why he would feel the need to drink and numb the pain. But that doesn’t make it right. Sometimes coping mechanisms, however effective, are just habits that need to be broken or replaced.
His hand abandons its resting place on his stomach, making its way across the rough shingles and taking my much colder hand in his.
“They’re cold,” he murmurs, wrapping his warm fingers around my freezing hand. His thumb begins rubbing soothing circles on the back of my hand, essentially rubbing the life and warmth back into my skin.
When I look up from our hands, he’s looking at me. Really at me, in a way I don’t think I’ve ever been looked at before. Like I was something actually worth gazing at like a sky full of stars. Like I was something worth wasting his own body heat over to keep warm.
It’s terrifying, the way he makes me feel completely seen.
Does he see all my layers, too?
Maybe he can feel them, tell that they’re there. But I’m still too afraid to open up the door and let him see all the bloody details.
Someday, maybe, someday.
“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout, Molly?” he asks, voice soft as a kitten’s purr, like he too understood that this fragile bubble we were living in could pop with the wrong amount of force or simply saying the wrong word.
“You,” I answer honestly.
Heat rushes to my face so fast I’m surprised the freezing wind doesn’t turn to steam against my cheeks. But Niall doesn’t mock me. His lips twitch upwards into a sweet smile that shows off the dimple on his chin.
“Me, is it?”
“Yeah,” I breathe out, the air in front of me puffing. I decide doubling down with faux confidence is the best option for survival here. “Don’t let it get to your head, now.”
“Oh, please. Me? Never,” he mock-scoffs, that sassy smile never leaving his face. But it does soften for a moment and his hand squeezes mine. “Besides. I was thinking about you, too.”
“Well, aren’t we just made for each other,” I say softly.
I expect some sort of retort, be it something that makes my cheeks flare up fire engine red again, or something that will make me laugh.
“You’re shivering,” he says instead, and I don’t care if it’s a subject change or not. He’s not wrong. “Are ya freezin’?”
“No,” I try to lie, shaking my head even though the thin green knit of my sweater is doing nothing against the winter winds.
He sees right through me, rolling his eyes fondly. Without letting go of my hand for longer than a second, he sits up and grabs the hem of his oversized grey hoodie—which he threw on over his fancy button up when we got upstairs—and pulls it over his head in one fluid motion, messing up his hair.
“Here,” he says, giving me an intense sense of deja vu, reminding me of the night after our first game when we were at the strand together.
I tried to refuse it last time, but I know he won’t take no for an answer, so I just take it and pretend to be huffy instead of grateful. “This is becoming a habit, y’know? You taking me to freezing cold places and then trying to act all chivalrous and giving me your clothes.”
“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he shrugs, laying back down on the shingles, so his back is flat and he’s staring up at the stars.
“So,” I say, my voice sounding thin against the crash of the waves, “you always bring girls out to the water after games? It’s a bit serial-killer esque, if you ask me.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “No. Just sometimes—I come here when I need to think... look at the stars and stuff. Alone.”
A small smile touches my lips, remembering what he told me about looking at the stars. Just moments before he first gave me his hoodie.
Did I fall for him there? That night? At the strand or when he picked me up at the game?
“C’mere to me, I need ya to keep me warm,” he motions to the spot beside him.
Instead of pointing out that he could easily slip into the bedroom window and grab himself his own sweater, I sidle up beside him and lay down.
He tucks me into his side, arms wrapped around me, and I hold onto him tight—not just for warmth, but because this feels right.
But as the silence stretches between us, my mind starts to pull me back to Thursday. The alcohol, the kissing... what Jamie told me.
Jamie had to have been around Niall’s age when her addiction started. Could Niall... does he see it as a problem? As an addiction?
After Jamie left my room that night, I’d spent countless hours on my laptop going down internet rabbit holes, searching for some sort of answer about my sister’s drug addiction, and — yes — Niall and his alcohol problem.
Sometimes addicts don’t see themselves as addicts. Sometimes they don’t see themselves as having a problem at all. Did he really lie to me when he said that Saturday was a one off, that he wasn’t a ‘drunkard,’ or was he lying to himself?
Did Jamie lie to herself?
“What’s got you thinking so hard?” Niall’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. “I can hear your little wheels turning.”
I bite hard on my lip, so hard I can actually feel it pinch and squish between my teeth, and I taste blood. Ow. “Uh, my sister and I had a talk the other day... Jamie. You remember what I told you about her, right?”
“Right, I do,” he says, waiting for me to continue.
“Uh, the reason she left... She left because she was an addict. Like a drug addict. She took pills, I think, and other stuff. And that’s why her and my mom were always fighting...
” I take a deep breath, trying to think of the best way to gently segue into this conversation, without straight up accusing him of being a teenage alcoholic.
“But she’s better now. She does therapy and stuff...
so, I’m going to... give her a second chance.
Maybe try to be nicer to her, more understanding. And my mom, too.”
He nods. “That’s great, Mol. Really. I’m happy for ya.”
I gnaw at my lip again, debating whether or not I should just drop it, but I decide to take a leap of faith.
I can’t let it go unsaid between us any longer.
I don’t want to have another fight, like the one we had in the hall.
Yes, it ended in a kiss, but that’s not the point.
Letting things go unsaid and letting them keep mounting up never gets you anywhere. We need to communicate.
Even if he doesn’t want to talk about this, we have to.
“Yeah, um, I was just thinking... she told me that she didn’t realize she was addicted at first... she didn’t see it as a problem until she was already dependent on it... and...”
I feel Niall stiffen beside me. “And...?”
“And I was just wondering...” I swallow thickly, staring at the dark sky above us, and the expanse of glittering stars. Looking at anything but his eyes, which I know are on me. “Do you think... maybe... you might have a problem? Like that you’re dependent on alcohol?”
He doesn’t answer right away, his body still rigid beside me, his grip around me tightening just a bit. I feel like I’m walking through a minefield, and now I’m frozen still, holding my breath, waiting to see if I’ve just stepped on a landmine and will be blown to bits.
Finally, after a few painfully silent seconds, he speaks. “No.”
“No?” I press, turning my head to look at him. He’s looking up at the stars now too, and I can tell his jaw is clenched.
I don’t think yelling at him again, like on Thursday, would be of any benefit. But a part of me wants to. A part of me is desperate to scream you have a problem at him again.
He’s not lying to you, he’s lying to himself.
“No,” he repeats, and his voice is firm but it lacks its usual confidence.
“Niall...”
“Drop it,” he snaps, his grip on my waist loosening as he sits up, pulling away from me. His voice is cold, colder than the wind biting at my skin. “Just drop it, Molly.”
I sit up beside him, pulling his hoodie tighter around my body, feeling a mixture of guilt and anger churning in my chest. “Look, I didn’t mean to upset you but—”
“Then why’d ya bring it up?” he asks.
“Because like I said before, I care about you,” I say softly, reaching out to touch his arm. He flinches away from my touch, but I persist, grabbing his hand and holding it tight. “I care about you so much, Niall. And I just... I want you to be happy and healthy.”
He sighs, running his free hand through his hair, messing it up even more. “I am happy and healthy.”
“Are you?” I squeeze his hand. “Because I don’t think you are. I think you’re hurting... and I think you’re using alcohol to numb that pain.”
He doesn’t answer, his jaw working as he stares at our intertwined fingers.
“Please,” I whisper, leaning closer to him. “Please talk to me. Don’t shut me out.”
Finally, after a few more moments of silence, his shoulders slump in defeat. “Fine. Okay? I drink too much because I feel like I need it. Ya happy now? Ya got me to admit I’ve got a problem.”
“No,” I frown, shaking my head. “I’m not happy. I’m worried. And I want to help you.”
He scoffs, shaking his head. “And how exactly are ya gonna do that, huh?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, biting my lip again. A nervous habit. “But I’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out together.”
He looks at me, his blue eyes searching mine for something. Whatever he’s looking for, he must find it, because his expression softens and he pulls me into his arms, burying his face in my hair.
“You can’t fix me, Molly,” he murmurs quietly into my hair.
“I don’t want to fix you,” I whisper back, wrapping my arms tightly around him. “I just want to help you.”
He holds me tight, his grip almost painful but I don’t complain. I just hold him back, letting him know I’m here, that I’m not going anywhere.
“Hands,” I think I hear him whisper.
“What?”
He pulls away, cupping my face in his hands and pressing his forehead against mine. His breath is warm when he whispers, “nothing. Just... thank you.”
“For what?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
“For caring,” he answers simply, before closing the small distance between us and pressing his lips to mine.
The kiss is soft and gentle, a stark contrast compared to the heated one we shared in the art room on Thursday, where we were basically breathing in each other’s oxygen. But this one is just as meaningful, maybe more so.
Every kiss we’ve shared feels different.
I’ll just have to keep kissing him to find out how many there are.
When he pulls away, he rests his forehead against mine again, his eyes closed and his breath mingling with mine.
“Can you promise me? That if you ever feel like you need to drink, you’ll call me or something instead?” I ask, voice trembling.
He hesitates for a moment before nodding, his eyes still closed. “Yeah. I promise.”
I smile, pressing another quick kiss to his lips before pulling away completely. “Good. Now, can we go inside? I’m freezing my tits off out here.”
He laughs, shaking his head as he stands up and offers me his hand. “Yeah, c’mon. Let’s get ya warmed up.”