Page 89 of The Company

“And you won’t be late?” I plead up to him. “You won’t forget?”

“I won’t,” he says as he kisses me once more. His fingertips thread though my hair and he pulls back just enough to whisper in my mouth. “I promise to never be late.”

I sigh with relief. But it’s just a small relief. It’s stupid to ask for this promise because there are so many ways for him to break it. I’m just setting myself up for disappointment and heartbreak.

“OK,” Sasha yells from the living room. “I’m ready.”

James kisses me one more time and then leads me back to the living room.

“I’m so hungry, I want seafood,” I tell him.

“This is the desert. You might have to settle for fish tacos.”

“Oh.” I let the disappointment slip out, but then I recover so my sucky attitude doesn’t ruin our night. “OK, fish tacos are fine.” You’d think I’d have taken advantage of all the fresh seafood while I was living at the beach, but I didn’t frequent any of the nicer dining places. I only ate takeout. I’ve never had a fish taco. We usually ate on the ship when we were in port. But if we did go to a restaurant, it wasn’t the beach huts where one usually finds fish tacos in the tropics. But if that’s all I can get here, I’ll take it.

We pile in to the sweltering Hummer. Sasha complains loudly about the hot leather seats and scoots over to sit on the ‘hump’, which in a Hummer is as big as a table. There should be a nice long bench set in this thing so a person could use it as a bed. But no. Two regular-sized buckets and the table thing in the middle.

“Sasha, sit your ass in a seat,” James barks at her. “And put your seatbelt on.”

She does what he says, but not quietly.

I peek back at her and smile. We feel sort of like a family. James is talking about restaurants as we pull out of the long driveway, then wait for a lone car to pass before turning towards the late afternoon sun and heading into the actual city of Palm Springs. Sasha talks about things kids think about. Things I might have thought about last year, like the shimmer you see on the road off in the distance when it’s hot out or the different types of cactus. Back when I was a kid. Back before I gave up my family for this life of waiting.

I know James is lying about the ten days thing. But he knows, no matter what my head says about it, my heart will believe him once.

And I just have to hold out hope that once is all it will take for him to come back for me.