Promises of Forever, page 1
Promises of Forever
Nicky James
Promises of Forever
Copyright © 2024 by Nicky James
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Artist:
Natasha Snow Designs
Cover Model
Wander Aguiar Photography
Editing:
SJ Keir
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the author.
Contents
Note to Readers
Prologue
1. Jersey
2. Jersey
3. Jersey
4. Koa
5. Jersey
6. Jersey
7. Koa
8. Koa
9. Jersey
10. Koa
11. Koa
12. Koa
13. Jersey
14. Jersey
15. Koa
16. Jersey
17. Koa
18. Jersey
19. Jersey
20. Jersey
21. Koa
22. Koa
23. Jersey
24. Jersey
25. Jersey
26. Koa
27. Jersey
28. Koa
29. Jersey
30. Jersey
31. Koa
32. Jersey
33. Koa
Epilogue
Need more angst?
Dear Reader
Also by Nicky James
Note to Readers
For a complete list of trigger warnings for this or any of my books, please visit my website.
The views of the character do not necessarily reflect the views of the author.
Prologue
Jersey
Koa once told me he didn’t believe in god, heaven, or the afterlife. He claimed organized religion was nonsense since in his opinion, our existence on the earth was about as special as the algae in the ocean or of allergy-inducing dust mites found in most peoples’ homes.
“Life is meaningless,” he’d said. “Whatever we do, however we act, none of it matters in the end. It makes no difference.” A bold statement from a preteen, and one I was too young to fully dissect and understand at the time. But Koa had always been beyond his years. When most boys were catching frogs and having races on their BMXs, Koa’s childhood had imploded, altering the course of his entire life.
His best friend called him morose.
But who might he have been without tragedy?
My convictions about god, religion, and the afterlife were more ambiguous and obscure. A constantly changing ideology, morphing with my ever-fluctuating mood. A seed of doubt prevented me from classifying myself as an atheist, yet most days, I didn’t feel the presence of a higher power in my heart. The few years I’d spent as an altar boy at my parents’ church had left an impression, and there were days when I yearned for a stronger faith, for the certainty and naivety of those childhood beliefs.
So, I waffled, knowing the answers to those universal, cosmic questions could only be discovered at the end of a lifetime.
On days like today, with frost coating the landscape, the sun warming our cold cheeks, and as we shared coffee on the back fence, faith or something akin to faith burned in my heart.
Koa and I had been brought back together by forces I couldn’t explain. Be it fate, destiny, or chance, I didn’t know. Be it a god who was tired of seeing two middle-aged men alone in their suffering. It didn’t matter. What mattered was we made it out of the darkness and into the light. Koa had trudged through the toils and despair of an unforgiving life and found a way to smile again.
To enjoy each day.
He had found serenity.
Meaning.
Purpose.
Peace.
Koa might never believe in a higher power, but I didn’t think he continued to dwell on the pointlessness of his existence. He had found a reason to live.
A reason to smile.
A reason to go on.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Our story started many years ago.
1
Jersey
The tick and ping of a cooling engine filled the cab of the Gladiator, joining chorus with the accelerated drum beat of my heart. I’d driven her long and hard from Toronto several times that week, the all-season tires eating up the road and chewing a path through the morbid conversations that had been playing on repeat in my brain since I’d received the dreaded call five days ago.
Had it been five days?
“Jersey Reid? This is Constable Everett from Lakefield OPP. I regret to inform you…”
Squeezing the leather steering wheel, I stuffed those life-altering words into a mental steel box and slammed the lid.
The funeral was already lost in the haze. As if I didn’t already feel guilty enough, dozens of people had felt the need to remind me how much my absence over the years had hurt them.
The two-story country-style house at the end of the driveway sat weary and haggard in the fading daylight. My perspective could have been tainted by the recent news, but I hadn’t been home in almost fifteen years, so it was possible the house’s disrepair was caused by nothing more than the dreaded passing of time that plagued us all.
Fifteen years. Had it really been fifteen years?
Derby was seventeen next month, and Christine had left when he was shy of two. Yep. Christmas of 2008. I’d been on crutches still, fresh out of my second surgery, chewing oxy like they were candy. The following March, officially addicted to painkillers, miserable from injury, and caustic with the world because my career had ended abruptly, my wife announced our marriage was over too.
Fifteen years.
How many hits could a person take?
It didn’t take much to derail a life. A teen accepting drugs in a back alley. A man stepping out on his wife. A mother taking her eyes off her rambunctious toddler for two seconds to admire a sundress in a store window.
Bam.
In an instant, life could become something entirely different. I knew all about it.
Twice I’d experienced life-altering events.
Early December, not long into our 2008 season, I’d taken a bad hit on the ice and torn my ACL. Because of the injury, I’d lost my career, marriage, son, and parents. I wasn’t blameless. Apart from the physical hit and subsequent injury, the rest of the tragedy was on me. An addiction to painkillers was not something anyone had anticipated, and it had changed me.
By the time I’d gotten clean, it was too late.
Then, five days ago, a distracted teenage driver in an SUV crossed the center line and hit my parents’ compact Honda Civic head-on, killing them both instantly—or so I was told. I hoped they hadn’t suffered.
Ever since the phone call, a fog had descended on my life as I tried to pick up the pieces and make sense of what was left, as I learned to mourn parents I hadn’t seen or conversed with in more than a decade.
Guilt had burrowed a hole in my chest and wouldn’t leave. I deserved it.
Moving robotically, I exited the Jeep, stretched my aching knee, and aimed for the front door. A false spring had settled over my hometown, typical for March. It wouldn’t last. At some point, the balmy temperatures would dip, and snow would return. It happened every year.
A few flyers and envelopes stuck out the top of the mailbox. More jobs to add to the list—canceling subscriptions, phoning the utility companies, informing the lawn boy he wouldn’t be needed this summer.
I gathered the mail, peeked inside the box to ensure I hadn’t missed anything, then wedged the few envelopes under an arm as I dug keys from my bomber jacket. The coat was overkill, but I hadn’t listened to the weather before leaving the house that morning.
Grant Maurier, my parents’ elderly lawyer, had met with me not fifteen minutes earlier at his ramshackle office in central Lakefield. “I’m an old family friend,” he’d informed me. I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me either, outside the stories my dad had shared. Offering his condolences, Mr. Maurier had gone over a few legal aspects, had me sign the paperwork, and handed over the keys to my parents’ house, shed, garage, and safety deposit box. “If you need anything or have any questions, don’t hesitate to call,” he’d said.
Fifteen years.
How had it been fifteen years?
Lakefield was the same, but wasn’t that the joke? “Gotta get outta this shit town. Nothing ever happens here.” How many times had my buddies and I said that in high school?
I unlocked the front door, hesitated, then reluctantly stepped inside. The stagnant, oppressive air made it hard to breathe. The furnace pumped scads of heat into the empty house, unaware its services were no longer needed since the occupants would never return.
I grew roots in the front hallway, unable to move forward yet incapable of reversing time. The house emitted a special type of silence unique to the dead. I had felt it at the funeral home and again in the cemetery. Life contained substance. A soul? Maybe. I wasn’t sure I believed in souls. When you died, you died. It would be nice to imagine my parents living it up in heaven, but my conflicting beliefs about the afterlife had been put to the test lately. If there was a god, he was cr
Either way, no one could argue that a living person projected an unmistakable presence into the atmosphere. In the absence of that soul or whatever you wanted to call it, the rooms were like dark, empty voids, sucking all remaining hopes and dreams into the abyss.
I shivered, momentarily ready to reverse course and hire a random company to take care of this part.
Accosted by memories, crippled by grief, I lingered in the hallway, getting a hold of myself before I kicked my shoes onto a mat, hung my coat on a hook, and wandered beyond the foyer.
The furniture had changed—modern couch, classy end tables, no more TV stand since the flatscreen hung on the wall—but the decorations were the same, right down to the ceramic vase I’d broken as a kid. Dad had glued it back together, promising he wouldn’t tattle. Mom had always displayed dried flowers from her garden within. Dusty roses occupied the vase now.
As I stood in the archway to the living room, gaze skipping about, more of the past unfolded. An indent in the plaster, low to the ground next to the window where I’d ridden my skateboard into the wall. A faint wine stain on the carpet from a New Year’s Eve spill. Mom had gotten tipsy, and Dad had danced with her until she was too dizzy to control the glass. The afghan my grandmother had knitted. Whenever I was sick, Mom would wrap it around me, tucking in the sides so I was snug as a bug in a rug. She would pet my sweaty hair off my fevered forehead and tell me stories, feeding me chicken noodle soup and flat ginger ale until I felt better.
It was too much. How was I supposed to deconstruct an entire lifetime of memories? How was I supposed to sell or donate their possessions like they meant nothing?
Fifteen years.
I aimed for the kitchen—a new table, upgraded counters and cabinets, a fancy KitchenAid mixer—and opened the fridge. Grimacing at the rotting scent of spoiled food, I closed it again. In a high cupboard, I found Dad’s not-so-secret stash of booze. He wasn’t a big drinker but enjoyed the odd glass of whisky when the mood was right. Mom preferred chardonnay.
I stilled with a half empty bottle of Forty Creek in hand.
Had preferred. Had enjoyed. Those indulgences were no more. They were gone.
Forever.
Gut-punched, I twisted the cap off the bottle and rooted around until I found a clean tumbler. Two fingers, no ice, exactly how Dad drank it. I held the glass in a toast and spoke to his ghost.
“To you, old man. I wish you could be here to enjoy it with me. I wish… I wish I’d gotten my shit together sooner. I wish I’d not been so goddamn stubborn.” It burned, but I drained the liquor, leaving the tumbler on the counter as I continued to reacquaint myself with my childhood home and all I’d left behind.
Fifteen fucking years.
I’d never hated myself more.
I climbed the staircase with the wobbly banister. “I’ll have Dublin come fix it next week, hun. Don’t you worry.” Like hell you would, Dad. At ten, I’d taken into my head I could do the banister slide. Eleven and a half hours later, after a trip to the emergency room for stitches in my forehead and a long wait at the dentist’s office for a shattered tooth, I swore I would never play daredevil with the staircase again.
The oath had lasted one year and six months. On my twelfth birthday, using an empty cardboard box from a present as a sled, I tackled them anew, earning a scolding.
The third and seventh steps from the bottom creaked underfoot as I climbed, the same as they had done all those years before. A teenager noted those imperfections when planning a midnight escape to be with his girlfriend. One had to be wise when evading the parents, especially when the goal involved losing one’s virginity. It should be noted, said virginity was not lost that night.
The upstairs hallway veered in both directions, and I stood at the top, undecided and queasy. My childhood bedroom was to the right. A bathroom, a spare room, and my parents’ domain were to the left.
Which would hurt less?
I veered left, remembering how my first hockey coach had nicknamed me the Wrecking Ball since I rarely waited for an opening on the ice and plowed through the heaviest congestion, leveling anyone and everyone in my path.
“It’s like you live for pain, Reid. I hope your parents have good insurance.”
A pained chuckle rose with the memory as I placed a hand on the cool metal doorknob leading into my parents’ bedroom. I’d skipped two doors along the hallway, determined to take the biggest hit first, knowing the damage it caused would make the rest of the tour seem like a cakewalk.
I didn’t make it past the threshold. Caught in a vice, my heart squeezed and ached. I gritted my teeth against the pain and clung to the doorframe when my bad knee threatened to buckle. It had never been the same after the hit. All the physiotherapy in the world hadn’t helped. The pain was constant. Drugs had been my saving grace, but I didn’t touch them anymore. Tylenol was all I allowed myself, and even then, I used it sparingly.
In the end, understanding the impact such an injury could have on a person’s life helped me excel at my new job. I could empathize and commiserate. I could help other young men and women come to terms with their future.
Fifteen years, yet the scent of my mother’s laundry detergent and perfume hit me hard. The woodsy aroma embedded in Dad’s flannel coat hanging less than three feet away was a one-two punch to the gut.
Before tears could burn my eyes, I closed the door like a coward. I would deal with their room another day when I had more strength.
The bathroom was functional and didn’t tug as hard at the past. The spare room, intended long ago for a sibling who never arrived, sat stark and austere in the slanted sunlight shining through the window. The bed and dresser weren’t familiar. The wallpaper was new and tacky. Who put up wallpaper in this day and age?
I closed the door and continued down the hall toward my old bedroom, convinced it wouldn’t be the same, prepared to witness how effectively my parents had erased their only son from their memory. I wouldn’t blame them. The shrine of my life had remained long after I’d signed with Hamilton and the Ontario Hockey League at seventeen. It was still there when I’d gone pro at twenty and moved to Edmonton. The switch to Vancouver had come seven years into my career, and Mom had made a point of giving my then-pregnant wife a tour, indulging her in fantasies of how her first grandson might play hockey too.
Derby hated sports as a child. If that had changed, I hadn’t been told. I wasn’t privy to updates.
Fifteen years had passed. Fifteen years of failed communication. I was the stubborn son and husband who had fallen into the pits of despair after a freak accident had ended his career, turning to oxy for comfort, shunning the support Christine had offered because she couldn’t understand.
Fifteen years since the argument.
Fifteen years since she’d walked.
My parents had chosen Christine and Derby over me. They couldn’t let go of their grandson, and I’d obstinately refused to listen to reason and seek help. They had rightfully left me to drown in a pit of despair.
The five stages of grief weren’t reserved for death. I’d experienced them all after surgery. Denial—I would so play hockey again and fuck any doctor who said I wouldn’t. Anger—at the situation, at the guy who’d hit me, at my wife, parents, and life in general. Grief—which had coupled nicely with depression. And, years down the road, acceptance. By then, I’d made a mess of my life and didn’t know how to go back.
Fifteen years.
The heat was getting to me. I considered retracing my steps and finding the thermostat. No one said I had to fully evaluate the house on the first day. I could rip the Band-Aid off little by little. There was no hurry.
“Coward.”
I opened the door, and my breath caught. The shrine hadn’t vanished. It had blossomed and grown, immortalizing my failed career. The haze of tears I’d been holding at bay filled my eyes.
Posters of a nineteen-year-old, a twenty-one-year-old, a twenty-five-year-old, and a twenty-seven-year-old hockey hero lined the wall—my second year playing in the OHL with Hamilton, my first year playing pro with Edmonton, the short switch I’d made to Philly, then my first year with Vancouver. The ignorant man smiling from the glossy print of the last poster was unaware that it would all be over three years down the road.
