Promise Me (18 page)

He nods and holds the door open for me to walk in while he turns on a few of the overhead lights. It's beautiful. There's a long oak bar to my left that has private booths with dark brown leather upholstered seats opposite it. A narrow hallway separates the bar area from the dining room on my right that has quite a few tables already prepared for customers to sit and enjoy their meals. Each table has a crisp white tablecloth with black linen napkins already folded and propped up like little teepees throughout the room. The modern decor is impeccable with splashes of color throughout to give it a cozy, yet elegant feel.

"Do you like it?" He asks from behind me somewhere as I'm roaming around the place genuinely impressed.

"I love it," I say turning back to find him leaning against the door frame of the dining room with his arms crossed on his chest. "It's beautiful, Tyler. I'm so happy for you."

"Thank you, I appreciate that."

"I'm kind of bummed it's closed though. I would have really loved to have tried it out while I was in town," I say disappointed while looking around the room again.

He comes up to me as his lips curl up in a half smile, "For you, I'll make an exception. Come on." And he guides me back through the bar and a set of double doors that lead into the largest kitchen I've ever seen.

He leaves me for a minute or two and returns with a comfortable bar stool that he places on one side of a large stainless steel countertop. On the other side of the countertop is the cooking area with four stoves that are just like the one he has in his apartment.

"How does Parmesan Crusted Tilapia sound?" He asks.

"It sounds yummy. Perfect."

He moves with grace and ease while he preps our meal right in front of me. The whole time I'm in awe as I watch him move around the kitchen like it was a second home to him. Not to mention, that it is beyond sexy to watch him cook.

"So tell me how all of this," I say waving one hand around me, "came to be."

"Well, my good friend Jimmy," he says then turns his head over his shoulder to wink at me. "Yeah, well he gave me my first job cooking when I moved to Philly. At the time, I could barely make Mac and Cheese out of a box, so when I say 'cooking' it was really more like kitchen bitch."

Tyler excuses himself while I'm still laughing at his description and returns with items to make a salad for us. He begins efficiently chopping some lettuce and starts the story back up at the same time.

"He took me under his wing and taught me everything he knew. A couple of years into being his apprentice, he recommended that I enroll in the culinary program at The Art Institute here in the city. I completed the program and eventually… the young padawan surpassed the Jedi."

He smiles then turns back around to pick up a cast iron skillet and put it in the oven. I can't take my eyes off of him when he stops to wipe his hands on a small dishtowel, then leans across the counter to give me a quick kiss and instructs me to go back to the dining room.

I walk back through the doors and around the bar to the dining room to find all the lights have been turned off with the exception of a flickering flame from a candle on one table in the center of the room. As I take my seat, I look up to see Tyler making his way into the room with two plates of food. He sets the plates down on the table and leaves again but returns a moment later with an unopened chilled bottle of wine.

"Tyler, I don't know what to say," I manage while watching him open the bottle of wine. "All of this. It's amazing."

He coyly smiles. "I'm glad you like it. But you haven't even tasted the food yet, you might hate it."

I have to laugh and tell him I disagree since the aroma coming from my plate is mouthwatering. He pours the wine and we do a small clink of our glasses before I dig in. It's delicious and the wine goes perfectly with the food.

"So,
Deep Blue
… how did you come up with that name?"

"It's kind of a stupid story, to be honest," he says sheepishly.

I'm in the middle of chewing so I give him the "oh please" look to let him know that I want to hear it anyway.

"Well, my partner, Jimmy, who I told you about before, he's kind of a big Beatles fan."

"I love The Beatles," I chime in quickly.

"Yeah, well, Jimmy takes it to a whole other level," he says with a laugh. "Anyway, a couple of years after completing the culinary program, I knew that I wanted to open my own place up eventually. Since he'd been such a big help to me when I knew absolutely nothing or nobody here, I approached Jimmy about it and he convinced me to go for it. Then, with his help and connections, we found this little spot." Tyler waves his fork around him before taking a bite of his food. He takes a sip of his wine after chewing and then continues. "Which was perfect for me since not only is it in a great neighborhood, but it's fairly close to my apartment. So, I bought it. We started fixing up the place but kept having trouble picking out a name that we both could agree on."

"Like what kind of names," I interject.

He rolls his eyes. "All kinds of crap. We were so desperate that one time we were just driving and looking at street signs to see if anything caught our eye."

"Then how did you pick something having to do with The Beatles?"

He smiles. "Well, there we all were in Atlantic City for the night: Jimmy, me, and a couple of our other buddies from a local poker game I play in. So, we're all at the Roulette table and Jimmy goes on a crazy streak. I mean, the guy was either picking the right number or color every single time the wheel spun. It got to the point that he had made me so much money, I told him if the next number he picks hits, he could name the restaurant anything he wanted."

I lean forward and rest my elbows on the table. "What was the number?"

"Eight," he says with a grin. "Like I said, he's a Beatles fanatic, so it took him all of a day to find some really obscure song of theirs called "
Deep Blue"
, which fit perfectly with the seafood portion of the menu we were planning. To be honest, as soon as I heard it, I fell in love with it and I just knew it was the one."

I can tell he's more than proud by the way his eyes light up when he talks about his restaurant. You would have to be blind not to notice it. His whole body is relaxed and his eyes glint with enthusiasm the rest of our dinner as he explains some of the things that happened during the building process. Before I know it, I look down to an empty plate and he's refilling my glass again.

"That was delicious," I say to him and hold my glass steady for him to finish pouring, "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

While he takes a sip of his wine I blurt out, "This place is incredible, Tyler. I have to hand it to you, you really know how to impress your dates."

The air in the room instantly grows thick. I cringe inwardly at the way what I just said sounded out loud rather than how innocently it played in my head.

"Is that what you think?" He asks with one eyebrow cocked and calmly puts down his glass.

"I'm sorry, I…"

"Let me make this perfectly clear for you Sabrina," he says cutting me off and leaning back casually in his chair. "I have never done anything like this for anyone other than you."

"Never?"

I don't mean to sound like an idiot, but really, never? The guy has all of this at his disposal and he's never tried to use it to impress a woman before?

"Never."

"Haven't you…," I clear my throat because not only am I ecstatic that he told me this was all for me, but I'm kind of embarrassed to ask the next question. The hell with it! Here it goes anyway. "Haven't you been in a serious relationship or even just a steady girlfriend? I mean, you are quite the catch."

He laughs and I smile as the vibe in the room has visibly returned to its previous light feeling before I had stuck my foot down my throat.

"I did date a girl a few years ago but it didn't work out."

I can deal with this. It's just one girl, right?

"We were together, off and on, for about a year or so."

Oh.

"Since then, I've casually dated a few girls, but nothing too serious."

Uh-oh, he's not into relationships. Maybe he's a player?

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not used to this, Sabrina."

Snapping me out of picturing him with all these faceless "girls" from his past, I ask, "What do you mean, you're not used to
this
?"

"This. You and me. A relationship."

The way I see it, I have two choices. I can either, one, dissect what he just admitted to death and drive myself crazy over it. Or, two, I can leave it alone for now and get back to enjoying my time with him. I go with what's behind curtain number two and change the subject.

"Your family must be so proud of you," I say and bring my wineglass to my lips.

He leans forward slightly in his chair as his eyes darken under the glow of the candlelight. Uh-oh, I think I put my foot in it again. I honestly didn't know much about his family other than the fact that his mom passed away when he was very young, so I assumed that it was a relatively safe topic of conversation.

"I'm sure my mom would have been proud," he says cryptically.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up a sore subject."

I bring my hand across the table to hold his. He looks down at our fingers and rubs his thumb against the back of my hand before lacing our fingers together. Lifting only his eyes, he speaks softly. "It's okay. You didn't say anything wrong."

Then with a small shrug of his shoulders, he starts to tell me about his past.

"My mom and I were very close since I was an only child." He smiles, just barely, but enough that it reaches his eyes as if he's reliving a memory.

"She spoiled me rotten," he says with a laugh. "She use to take me everywhere with her. I remember when I was five and she signed me up for tee ball, she was so excited. She would tell all her friends how her son was going to be the greatest baseball player that ever lived." Then the light in his eyes extinguishes as quickly as it had appeared. "Then she got really sick and just after my sixth birthday, she was gone."

"I'm so sorry, Tyler," I say tightening my grip on his hand. "She sounds really lovely. I wish I could have met her."

His body visibly tenses when I ask him about his dad. Since he didn't mention him yet, I get the distinct feeling that whatever he's going to tell me next will not be good.

"After my mom died, my dad never recovered. He kind of dropped off the face of the Earth after that. He started drinking. A lot. He couldn't ever hold down a job because he was drunk all the time. And since I was the only one around, he took all his frustrations out on me. Like it was somehow my entire fault my mom died of cancer."

My heart constricts at the thought of him not only having to deal with the loss of his mother at such a young age, who obviously meant the world to him, but the knowledge that his dad treated him so poorly as a result. He lets go of my hand and runs it through his hair before he exhales loudly. His fingers land on the edge of his wineglass and he starts to tap it nervously. I feel terrible that I've made him relive this, and I tell him as much, but he ignores my plea and continues anyway.

"As I got older and bigger, I learned to fend for myself and he eventually stopped using me as his punching bag. Then he just stopped acknowledging me altogether. It was like I didn't exist... so I would just leave. I started hanging out with the wrong crowd and got into quite a bit of trouble back then. I was pretty stupid about some of the shit I did and some of the people I chose to hang out with, but it was all I knew. Graduation day could not come soon enough for me, because I knew that the moment I was done with high school, I was getting the hell out of that house for good and never looking back. I was out of there the next day and never heard from my dad again. It was maybe two or three years later when I got a call from a lawyer that had tracked me down to tell me that he had passed away from liver failure and that the house I had grown up in was left to me. I sold it and used some of that money to help me open this place up a couple of years ago."

You can tell that all of what he just told me affects him to this day. He's still noticeably tense when he brings his glass up to his lips and I can't help my reaction as my eyes begin to water. He leans forward and smoothly reaches over to rub a tear off my cheek that has fallen while a small smile reaches his eyes.

"I didn't tell you all of that so that you'd go and cry on me," he says quietly "I wanted you to understand why I never told you how I felt about you before that night. My life was a complete and utter mess and I seriously needed to get my act together. If I had said anything to you, I would have only been dragging you down with me and you didn't deserve that. Plus, after what happened with Chris and Lisa, you needed to get as far away from there as possible too."

"You made me promise," I say just above a whisper to him.

"I remember."

He takes his hand away from my cheek and we stay silent for a long moment. It's as if we don't require the unnecessary complication of words that couldn't come close to quantifying the emotion passing between us right now. If pressed to explain, I don't think I would be able to. I don't even know how long we end up just sitting there quietly, but it's a special moment I will always remember no matter what happens after tonight.