“It’s a men’s track team,” Torres adds, squeezing my hand, and when I look up, he’s smiling.
I roll my eyes playfully. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“I know.” He kisses my temple.
I wrap an arm around him, drawing in a breath and then exhaling. “I know you have to go. You have to do this. It will be good for you. I just hate that you’ll be so far away.”
He’s quiet.
I go on. “I don’t want you to leave, but like you said, this is big and coaching is what you’re meant to do. I’m not going to hold you back from that. The same way you sacrificed your job by resigning so I could stay on the team and out of trouble, I’m okay sacrificing some distance for you to fulfill your dreams.”
He releases my hand to tip my chin up. “I appreciate that, Lakes.”
I smile. “I’ll miss you though. A lot.”
He reels me in for a hug. “And I’ll miss the hell out of you, but I want you to focus on school. You said you wanted to become a therapist? Well, take advantage of that Ivy League schooling and get your degree and become that. Run your heart out at the track meets. Do your damn thing. You deserve to be where you are, Amber. As badly as we want to be with each other, we have to do what’s right, and what’s right for you is to finish school and focus on your future. And I suppose what’s right for me is taking this job, coaching, and doing everything I can to make sure my life serves some kind of purpose.”
My eyes prickle with hot tears. “I understand.”
“Let’s make a promise to each other right now,” he says with a joy in his eyes I’ve never seen before, and I sit up to face him. “Promise me that you’ll do your best, and that you’ll graduate from BU. And when you graduate, I will be there—hell, I’ll drop everything to fly up and see you walk across that stage. But you have to give me your word that you won’t worry yourself crazy over a pendejo Mexicano like me.”
I giggle as he reveals a toothy smile. “Okay. I promise.”
“And in exchange, I promise to call you every night, no matter how busy I am. I promise to show up when you graduate, and after you graduate, I’ll have you fly down to Florida with me, and we’ll have a vacation together. Just you and me. You’ll be older than twenty-one by then, we’ll have drinks and go out and have so much fun.”
“Okay.” Tears slide down my cheeks, but I keep my head up.
He swipes the tears away with his thumb, still smiling down at me. “I love you so much, Amber. Everything is going to be okay between us. I promise.”
I nod over and over again, eventually dropping my head to press my cheek to his chest and wrapping my arms around his torso.
He hugs me tight, holding me for a long time and then stroking my hair. I listen to his heart beat a steady rhythm, and eventually my tears come to a stop because I realize he’s right.
It hurts now to have to create this distance, but we will be okay in the end. We have our promises. Our bond. A few miles between us shouldn’t change that.
When he’s gone again, I will miss him. He’s the man I think about day and night—the man who drives me crazy one minute and makes me feel whole and completely in love the next.
Torres means everything to me and he wants this job. He’s excited for it and happy for the opportunity, and before even attending BU, I was happy as hell to have the scholarship and to be at a school that was amongst the best. Happiness is all we’ve ever been after.
What we’re doing now? It’s only temporary.
But our future? That’s where the shine will happen.
Our future has already been paved for us. Three more years and nothing will be able to separate us. No distance will come between us because we will be together. Holding one another just like we are now. Whispering how much we love each other. Looking into each other’s eyes, eager for our futures to collide again.
We are meant to be, and one day we will be, and that gives me so, so much to look forward to.
FIFTY-FOUR
“Is that the last box?” I ask as Torres makes his way toward the U-Haul. I’m at his apartment in Fayetteville, helping him pack his things so he can move.
He was staying with his mom for a while, I suppose to cope with everything that happened, but he came back to the apartment to pack up since his lease is over in two days. He also has to be in Florida in three days, so the timing adds up just right.