Swear on This Life: A Novel

In the morning, I heard Jase shuffling around. I knew he was gathering his things. I wasn’t ready to go back to reality yet, so I kept my eyes shut for a while. It’s easy to look from the outside and say, This is a no-brainer; what is she thinking? But I still loved Trevor in some way. I wanted them both. I wanted Trevor because he wasn’t a reminder of anything. I was Emi with him—he didn’t associate me with thoughts of pain or abuse. I knew it wasn’t fair to either of them, but that’s how I felt.

Jase had been wearing a persona too. I saw glimpses of the vulnerable, sweet boy I once knew, but he was also this fancy author, a cocky, brilliant ladies’ man. He was as familiar to me as myself, yet we’d spent over a decade apart, changing in subtle ways. I’d seen Jase several times now, but we weren’t in the context of our normal lives. Where did he live? What did he do during a normal day? What did he eat for breakfast? I didn’t know any of the basic details of his life.

When he came toward me, I closed my eyes and feigned sleep.

Don’t go. Don’t go.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his hands up and down my arms a few times. “I know you’re awake, faker.”

I started laughing with my eyes closed. “No, I’m sound asleep.”

“Your breath smells really nice.”

I opened my eyes, covered my mouth, and mumbled through my fingers, “Jerk! Move so I can go brush my teeth.”

“I have to go, Em.”

“Not yet.” Tears sprouted from my eyes. I just shook my head as I felt my throat tighten.

“I have to catch a flight and get to my next event. Emiline, will you promise me something? Two things, actually?”

“Okay,” I said, my voice raspy.

“Whatever you decide, wherever life takes you, promise me you’ll finish the book and promise me that you and I will not let this much time go by without seeing each other again.” He wiped tears from my cheeks.

“I promise. You’re still my best friend,” I said.

He smiled. “Swear on your life?”

“I swear on your life,” I told him.

We stared at each other for a few seconds, our faces serious. “I have some things to figure out, but we definitely need to see each other more,” I said.

“Naked, I think,” he added.

I pushed his arm. “Go, get outta here, Romeo.”

He bent and kissed me on the cheek. “Call me. I’ll be in New Orleans tonight.”

“Okay.”

My eyes followed him as he left the room. I went to the window and watched him walk out to the parking lot. Before he got in his car, he looked up at me, kissed his hand, and waved. I did the same, and then he was gone.

I was rushing around my hotel, trying to get my things together before my one p.m. flight that I had booked yesterday, when I finally checked my phone and saw that Trevor had called me three times the night before.

“Shit!” I hit CALL BACK immediately.

He answered on the first ring. “What the fuck, Emi?”

“Trevor, I’m sorry, I fell asleep early and . . .” First lie.

“Are you with him right now?”

“No.”

He took a deep breath. “When does your plane get in?”

“Eight.”

“I’ll pick you up,” he said flatly.

“Okay,” I said, and then he hung up.

I GOT TO the airport early to return my car. In the airport bookstore, there was a display of All the Roads Between. I stared at it until an elderly woman approached me and said, “Sad book.”

“So I shouldn’t read it?”

“Not unless you like being depressed.”

“What’s it about?” I said.

“It’s about two people who fight fate and lose. You’re always gonna lose when you go against the big guy.” She pursed her lips.

“Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I believe.”

I used to kind of ignore old people. It’s terrible, really, but then I learned that they can offer some really priceless life hacks if you’re willing to listen.

“Yeah, but what if those two people weren’t sure what their fate was, or what exactly they were supposed to do?”

“Oh, they knew, trust me.”

“So God has a plan? And we all know what it is?”

“God, Buddha, the universe, whatever you want to call it. I’m a forward thinker, missy. I don’t know if it’s that black-and-white. I kinda think it’s like magnets. Put them close enough and they’ll come together, but turn them around and they’ll repel each other. When you feel the pull, you gotta give in to it. These two . . .” She pointed to the cover of the book.

“Don’t tell me! Please, I have a copy. I haven’t finished it yet.”

“Okay, well, when you’re done with it, look up the author’s photo. He’s a handsome one, my goodness.” She gave me a little wave.

I couldn’t wait to tell Jase the story.

WHEN I GOT to the bottom of the escalator at the San Diego airport, Trevor was there waiting for me. It was hard not to feel nervous around him. I kept thinking he knew everything that had happened while I was away, though of course, he didn’t. I used to be annoyed that he took everything at face value and didn’t ask questions, but this was one instance where it worked in my favor.

“How was your trip?” he asked as we walked to the parking lot.

I told him about meeting my dad and my mom, and he nodded along beside me.

When we got to his truck, my nose had started running, so I opened the center console to look for a tissue.

“No!” He slammed it back down.

“What’s in there?”

“Nothing. My medication.” He was pulling out of the parking lot, trying to focus on the road, his right hand still holding the lid closed.

“Let me see.” I brushed his hand aside as he made a turn and forced the console open to reveal several bottles of prescription pills. “What are all these for, Trevor?”

He looked straight ahead as we merged onto the interstate. “They’re just painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Nothing unusual.”

I reached in and started taking the bottles out, and Trevor shook his head. The first two were Vicodin and ibuprofen. I pulled out another bottle that was a muscle relaxer, and then some kind of steroid, and then OxyContin. “How much of this are you taking at any given time?”

“Just what they prescribe.”

“They don’t prescribe all of these together, Trevor. Be honest with me.”

“Goddammit!” He slammed the steering wheel and pulled onto the shoulder, killed the engine, and turned toward me. “What the hell do you want to know?”

“I want to know if you’re addicted to all of this shit.”

“Well, I want to know if you saw and fucked that writer guy in Ohio.”

I stared at him evenly. “I did see him, but I didn’t have sex with him. I kissed him. I lost my virginity to him when we were fifteen, and we have a really complicated history.” It shocked me that I hadn’t told Trevor that. “He was the only person I had when I was growing up. We took care of each other. I made a mistake kissing him, and I’m sorry. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“I love him, but I love you too. I’m trying to figure everything out.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed. The truck was silent except for the sound of Trevor breathing fast and deep through his nose. “I can’t get off the pills.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t understand how Trevor had been able to keep all of this hidden from me. I wondered if maybe I was the one who wasn’t being present in our relationship. I guess it’s hard to be present when you’re busy denying who you are and shutting out the world. All this time, he was falling deeper and deeper into his addiction to pain meds. It explained a lot about his behavior—his mood swings, his air of indifference.

As I sat there in his truck, I realized I had an easy way out. The decision was made for me. I could leave Trevor because he was a drug addict. But when I looked into his pleading eyes, I realized I cared too much for him. I couldn’t leave him like that.

“You need help; you can’t do it by yourself. Your parents will help. I know they will.”

“I can’t tell them,” he said.

“You have to.”

He lowered his head into his hands, so I reached over and rubbed his back. “Trevor, you were an amazing athlete, but that’s not all you are, and you certainly aren’t a drug addict. Don’t let this become your identity, please.”

He started to cry. Trevor never cried. Not once in our entire relationship.

“Let me drive,” I told him. “We’ll call your parents when we get to my apartment.”

When he looked up into my eyes, I thought I was going to cry too. He looked helpless and lost. “You’re not gonna leave me over this, are you? You won’t leave me for him?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll stick by you.”

AT MY APARTMENT that night, Trevor called his parents and told them. They were completely supportive, insisting that they pay all the costs for rehab. His mother got on the internet and found a place that would take him in a week. He stayed the night and slept in my bed, but we only just kissed each other good night.

I spent the next several days helping Trevor get ready to leave for the month he’d be in rehab. He was distant, but I think it was the drugs and his looming fear of the struggle ahead of him.

I talked to Jase every night after I’d leave Trevor’s. We basically just laughed at all of his book tour adventures and the growing number of women who were trying to throw themselves at him on a daily basis. I told him Trevor was going to rehab, and instead of reminding me of the parallels to his book, he just said, “Well, at least he’s getting it taken care of.”

My copy of All the Roads Between sat on my dresser and taunted me all those days. I promised myself that I would wait to read it until Trevor left, when I would be all alone to think about the book and my life and what I wanted to do. I also knew I owed Professor James ten thousand words before I could show my face at work.

I drove Trevor to the rehab facility, which wasn’t too far from my apartment, and sat with him until he was all checked in. When it was time for him to go, he kissed me on the cheek. “I hope that we’re both thinking more clearly by the time I get out,” he said.

“Me too.”

“I love you, Emi.” It was the first time he had said it while looking me in the eye.

“I love you too.” There are so many ways to love. My foster family, my aunts, Cara, Trevor, and Jase had all taught me that.

I went home and opened All the Roads Between.

From All the Roads Between

“Emerson, can you wipe down tables one last time before you leave?”

“Sure,” I said to Cathy, the night manager at the diner where I worked. I had been working graveyard shifts there for over a month, so I had gotten used to the weird hours. Twenty-four-hour diners can attract some interesting people in the wee hours of the morning, but I didn’t mind—it was a job.

I’d leave the diner around six a.m., when the sun was coming up beyond the cornfield horizon. Sometimes I’d stand there, watching the sun rise, thinking about Neeble. I hadn’t driven out there since I had returned to New Clayton. I just couldn’t bring myself to go back. But that morning, as I stood there in the parking lot, I realized it was my birthday.

After finding Jackson’s book a month ago, I had thought about our adventures on the old dirt road. I’d thought about all the pain Jackson had endured too, losing his brother and losing me. I hadn’t celebrated my birthday in years, but that morning, as I pulled onto the highway headed toward Neeble, I made a pact with myself that I would face my fears. And if I saw Cal Junior, I’d run him over with my car, even though he was probably almost eighty years old by now.

I pulled onto El Monte Road as the sun crept higher in the sky. Each time I passed a mile marker, I called the number out loud. Right where old Carter’s egg ranch used to be was a pile of wood scraps next to the skeletal remains of the big chicken house. Beyond that were just miles of dirt and weeds until I got to the five-point-five-mile marker.

I gasped when I saw that there was still a mailbox there. I thought, Who in their right mind would want to live here? I pulled onto the dirt road, which had bumps in almost the same exact places it did thirty years before. When I got to the end and saw that the house Jax grew up in was still there, I almost peed my pants. There were two cars parked in front. I pulled off to the side, still about a hundred yards from the house. After turning the engine off and rolling down my window, I sat back and listened. I could hear the trickling sound of the creek, the loud buzzing of cicadas, and nothing else.

Closing my eyes, I thought about Jax and me playing explorers in the field. I could almost hear the triumphant voice of ten-year-old Jax joyously shouting at me as we chased each other around. I looked in the mirror at my pale eyes framed in heavy lines. I wished they were laugh lines, but they were only reminders of the sadness I had endured.

When I finally had the courage to get out of the car, I walked first to the empty, crumbling slab where my father’s house sat and then past it to the field, then past the tree line, and down the short embankment to the creek, where our now-dilapidated dock still stood. I ran my hand over our initials. J & E FOREVER.

On my way back toward the road, I was startled by two figures standing near the old shed. It was a woman in her fifties, and behind her, several feet away, stood a much older woman, maybe in her eighties. The younger of the two said, “Can I help you, ma’am?” She was wearing an apron. Her long, gray hair was braided down her back, and her hands were on her hips.

“Um, I was just wondering if you knew of a Jackson Fisher? If maybe he still lived here?”

“He does,” she said unemotionally.

“Are you his wife?” I asked.

“Who wants to know?” came a raspy voice from the old woman, who was scrutinizing me.

“My name is Emerson, and I grew up here, in the house that used to be next door.” I pointed.

The older woman put her hand over her mouth and gasped.

“I’m not his wife. I’m his caretaker, Alicia,” said the younger woman.

The old woman came closer to me, bent, and looked right into my eyes. “It is you.”

In that moment, I recognized her too. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Leila, but I’m actually surprised you made it this long.”

“Me too.” Her voice and expression softened. She leaned in closer.

“Why does Jax need a caretaker?” I asked.

“Because he’s sick, darling.”

I felt a searing ache deep in my chest. “Sick with what?”

“Lung cancer,” Alicia’s voice came from behind.

I didn’t take my eyes off Leila. “But you were the smoker.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” she said.

“It should have been you.” I used the line she’d used on Jax after Brian had drowned. I was so angry and so sad for Jax that I could feel a part of me dying with him already, and I hadn’t even seen him yet.

She looked down at the ground. “You’re right. I deserve that, but look at me. I’m an old woman full of regrets.”

“Me too,” I told her as I fought back tears.

I traveled there to see a place I thought had long since been abandoned, but he was still there. What was he waiting for? I wondered. “I saw his book. Did he ever write anything else?”

“No, just the one book,” Leila said. “After the book failed, he got a job at the glass factory and worked there until he got sick earlier this year.”

“Does he have a family?”

“Just me.”

I became extremely emotional. Tears were running down my face, and I was having a hard time breathing. Pulling my sunglasses on, I said, “How long does he have?”

Alicia came up next to me and said, “The doctors say it could be months. Could be weeks. Could be any day now. Basically, they don’t know.”

I fell to my knees, dropped my head into my hands, and cried. Leila, as old as she was, knelt down next to me and held me. Why did he have to be sick? Why couldn’t Jackson have gone on and made a beautiful life for himself? I thought I was saving him when I called out to the police that night. I thought loving someone meant letting go, but by the time I learned that loving someone means fighting for them too, it was too late.

For years, I’d fantasized that Jackson had gone on to be rich in life and love and family. I’d dreamed that the old house I was facing on my knees would be demolished, along with all of our past pain, but it wasn’t. It was still there waiting for me.

“Can I see him?”