Page 152 of Promising You
“We’re going down to my room. Get dressed.”
“Why would we go down there? Let’s just stay here.” He holds his arm out for me. “Come back to bed.”
“Nope. Get up. We need to go downstairs.” I toss his clothes at him.
He laughs. “What’s going on with you?”
“Just hurry up.” I’m dressed now and I sit down next to him and put my shoes on.
“You’re acting very strange, but okay.” He leaves a kiss on my cheek as he gets out of bed.
As he’s getting dressed I try walking around the room without the crutches.
“You sure you don’t need them anymore?” he asks, watching me.
“Yeah, it’s still a little sore but I can walk on it.” I stand in front of him. “You ready, yet?”
“Yes, I’m ready.” He smiles and takes my hand as we leave.
We go down to my room and I open the door and pull him inside.
“What’s this?” he asks as he shuts the door and sees the movies and snack foods piled up on my desk.
“It’s Garret night. I picked out your favorite movies and made you a concession stand.”
A huge grin crosses his face. “Why? It’s not my birthday.”
“It doesn’t have to be your birthday. I just wanted to do something special for you and I wanted to do it before I left for spring break. I’ve wanted to do something for you for a really long time but I didn’t know what to do. I never have money so I can’t really buy you anything.”
Garret goes over and looks through the movies. I took them from the box in his room. They’re all action films and I don’t really like them but this night is about him, not me. I bought his favorite snacks, too. Buying them used up my laundry money for the week but I’m going home tomorrow so I’ll just wash my clothes at Frank’s house.
Garret’s not saying anything.
I go up to him. “You don’t like it, do you? I guess itiskind of lame. We watch movies all the time, so it’s not that special but I didn’t know what else—”
He takes my face in his hands and kisses me before I can finish.
“I love it,” he says, still holding my face. “And itisspecial because you did all this just for me.”
“I got you something, too. Well, I kind of made it and I’m not very crafty so if you don’t like it you can—”
“Wait.” His smile gets even bigger. “You seriously made me something?”
I nod, now a little nervous that he won’t like it.
“Can I see it?”
“Yeah. It’s in my dresser.” I walk over and open the top drawer. “Promise me you won’t laugh or say it’s stupid.”
“I’d never do either of those things. I guarantee if you made me something that I’ll love whatever it is.”
I take the navy blue photo album from my drawer and hand it to him. It’s one of those photo albums where you peel back the clear cover on each page and put photos on the sticky surface. I made it into a scrapbook of Garret’s years on the swim team during high school. It’s divided by each year with photos and a list of all his swim meets along with his times and where he placed in each event. I hand wrote the stats on small pieces of paper using different colored pens for each year. Then I mixed the photos with the swim meet stats so that each page is like a collage. That’s where the craft skills come in, and as I said, I’m not at all good at crafts.
Garret takes the photo album over to my bed and sits down. As he opens it up and I see the pages again, it looks like something a kid made. I should’ve asked Harper for help. She’s way better at crafty things.
“Where did you get all this?” Garret asks. He’s still smiling so maybe he likes it.
“I asked your dad for help.”
