The doorbell rings as I’m putting the finishing touches on my makeup. I run downstairs expecting to greet Veronica, but instead I find both my parents sitting on the living room sofa. I freeze on the stairs for a moment, my heart lodged in my throat, because seriously, no good ever comes from meetings around that couch. But they’re both wearing relaxed smiles. Weird.
“This is trippy,” I say, eyeing them as I hedge closer.
“Your father stopped by so the two of you could get a picture together.”
“Really?”
“You’ve got so many big events happening over the next couple months, I don’t want to miss any of them. Plus, I wanted to give you this,” he says, and hands me a boxed corsage. “I brought one for your friend, too.”
I pull out the corsage and smile at the yellow baby roses. “Thanks, Dad.”
“You’re welcome.” He slides it onto my wrist and hugs me to his side. “You look beautiful, honey.”
We take a couple pictures together before Veronica arrives. Then my mom takes a few dozen more when she does get here. Veronica opted for one of Reese’s shorter dresses—probably because she’s too tall for any of her floor-length ones. Paired with some three-inch heels, Veronica is over six feet.
“Um, you look amazing,” I tell her.
“As do you.”
“Both of you girls look great,” my mom says before relocating us to the front yard for more pictures by her azalea bushes. By the time they let us leave, we’re fashionably late. Which, given Veronica’s hesitation about the night in general, she doesn’t seem to mind.
“I thought you said your parents were divorced,” she says as we climb into her car.
“They are. That’s the most time they’ve spent together in weeks, actually.” I glance back at the house, watch the way my father holds the front door open for my mom, the way she squeezes his shoulder like she knows him well enough to know he needs support today. And I realize there’s still a lot of love there, even if it isn’t the same kind they had before.
“Well, they’re nice. Thank your dad again for the corsage, okay?”
We reach the reception hall across town where prom is being held, and both of us take a big breath before walking in. Then we look at each other and start laughing, because this isn’t exactly a life-or-death situation. As we reach the ballroom decorated in black streamers and white balloons, I try not to scan the tables for familiar faces. But I do spot Reese at a table to my right and wave. Unfortunately, it’s also the table Sam is sitting at, so Veronica and I head for a different table with some empty seats nearby.
This is the kind of venue where they host a different type of event every night. In a few hours, all of our school-colored streamers will be taken down and tomorrow this room will host a family reunion, or a wedding, or an anniversary party. I think I’m starting to understand what Reese has been feeling these past few months. Suddenly it feels like something big is about to end.
“The decorations were better at the Snow Ball,” I say as we sit down.
Veronica smirks, but a moment later, her gaze shifts over to Reese’s table. To Sam.
“Why don’t you go talk to her?”
She shrugs and picks at a spot on the tablecloth. “Too late for that now.”
I take a sip of water from the glass at my place setting. “I’m not convinced that’s ever the case.” I relate so hard to that feeling of distance and desperation, though. Of pushing someone away so at least, when you lose them, it won’t come as a surprise. “I’m just saying, who we are now doesn’t have to be who we are forever. People fuck up. It happens. But if you still miss her, I think you should tell her.”
Veronica doesn’t respond to this, but glances over there at least four more times while we eat. Dinner is already wrapping up, so we finish quickly and then join everyone flooding the dance floor. Which is when I finally catch a glimpse of Webster, right as Anna throws her arms around his neck. Hugs him closer. He’s laughing, happier than I’ve seen him in days. Until he lifts his head and he sees me standing here, staring at them like the pathetic loser the old Webster always told me I was.
He straightens, his hands pressing her hips away, putting space between them. Clearly he feels guilty, but he shouldn’t. Doesn’t need to.
I fix my smile back into place and spin Veronica around. Reese and Kevin catch up with us a little while later, and for a string of fast-paced songs we all dance in the same group. Reese throws her arms around me, and for the length of a ballad we sway around the dance floor belting out lyrics and dissolving into laughter whenever one of us hits a particularly terrible note.
Time slips by and I stop worrying how I look, stop worrying what Webster is doing, and focus instead on how good it feels to just move, to laugh with my friends, to make a new memory.
The DJ announces there are only a few dances left, and Veronica slows to a stop after the song winds down. She chews the inside of her lip. I follow her gaze, which has predictably landed back on Sam again.
“I’ll be right back, okay?”
I nod and watch as Veronica makes her way over, hands in loose fists at her sides.
The next song is moody and slow. Everyone around me couples off and I’m stranded, searching for an exit. Then my eyes lock with Webster’s again. I don’t know where Anna went, but now he’s moving closer. Standing right in front of me.
“Hi.”
I shift my weight from one heel to the other. “Hi.”
“You want to dance?”
In his voice I hear a note of vulnerability, and it softens the knot inside my chest. I nod and step closer, slide my hands over his shoulders. His palm finds the small of my back, pressing me against him. My breath hitches.
I listen to the song playing overhead, but I can barely hear it over the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. I stare over Web’s shoulder, eyes scanning the swaying couples around us, but in truth I can’t see much. Everything’s a blur. My senses are entirely tuned in to Webster—the smooth fabric of his dress shirt under my fingers, the warmth of his palm through the back of my dress, that citrus-and-earth scent of him coupled with a bit of dewy sweat.
After the first verse, Webster lowers his head, his mouth just beside my ear. “You look beautiful tonight, Aubrey.”
I turn toward his neck, but don’t pull back enough to see his face. I can’t. If I’m able to see his eyes I’ll read too much into them. Already I’m feeling too much. This growing pit in my stomach, this burning in my sinuses like I might need to cry. I squeeze my eyes shut and press my forehead against his jaw.
“That’s probably the kind of thing I’m not supposed to say as your friend,” he says lightly. I feel him swallow. “True, though. You’re always beautiful.”
I can’t take it. I lean back and look him in the eye. Webster is wearing the saddest smile.
“Where’s your date?”
He flinches. He tries to recover his smile but it’s like a flashlight with a dying battery. Only a flicker comes through. “Around somewhere.”
“I saw you guys earlier—seems like you’re having a great time together.”
He stares at me for a long moment, his jaw coiled tight. “What do you want me to say, Aubrey? I mean, is this your way of asking if something’s going on between me and Anna?”
“No. I wasn’t—” Heat flashes across my face and there’s no way I’m not blushing. “That’s none of my business.”
“Not anymore.”
A nonanswer. A blank for me to fill in. And I’m not usually the most creative person, but my mind takes this and runs with it, conjures all kinds of images that I’m pretty sure will be stuck behind my eyes forever. I blink at the floor. Focus on the scuff mark left behind by someone’s black-soled shoe.
The song ends, and his hands pull away from my hips like two magnets with the same pole. They land in the pockets of his trousers. My hands slip off his shoulders, landing stiff and heavy at my sides.
“Yesterday, you said I got what I wanted,” he says quietly. “But I told you what I wanted when I drove you to school that morning. You just didn’t believe me.”
His voice breaks and he looks away. When his gaze finally meets mine again, his expression is so defeated. “I messed up, I’m not trying to pretend I didn’t. But you’re the one who gave up on us. I never wanted that.” He shrugs, his shoulders pausing at his ears for a moment before crashing down. “Enjoy your night, Aubrey.”
With that, he steps around me, weaves quickly through the crowd and grabs his jacket from the table he was sitting at before. He finds Anna at the edge of the room and walks into the foyer outside the ballroom with her. I’m stunned into stillness. His parting words echoing in my head—so similar to what he said to me at homecoming, yet so completely different at the same time.
Under my ribs, a dull ache I’ve carried all week starts to sharpen. A fragment of bone that has finally come loose, scraping against my lungs. My next breath stings so much that my eyes flood with tears.
Reese pulls me off the dance floor, then brings me over to her dinner table. I’m vaguely aware of Sam and Veronica talking in low whispers nearby, but Reese curves her arm around me, like she wants to shield me from the rest of the room. “You okay?”
I shake my head and feel the first tear fall down my cheek.
I’m not okay. And I’m not over it. Because Webster isn’t just my neighbor, not just a boy I had a crush on when he first moved in across the street, and he’s definitely not my enemy. He’s the only person I’ve ever been able to imagine a future with. The only person besides Reese who makes me feel more like myself, like I never have to filter what I say or pretend to like something I don’t. He’s the person I want to turn to when I’m sad or angry, who I can trust to be there for me without trying to fix things that aren’t his to fix.
Reese wipes a tear off my cheek and runs the pad of her finger under my lower lashes to catch my mascara. “You have a tendency to do this, you know.”
“Do what?”
She stops fussing with my makeup and looks me in the eye. “Convince yourself you’re the only one who gets scared. But we all do. The way I see it, if you’re not a little bit scared of what it would mean to lose someone...then they probably aren’t your person.”
The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.
I look toward the doors Webster disappeared through. “I have to...”
Reese nods. “Yeah. Go.”
I move quickly into the foyer, but he’s not there. The automatic doors whoosh open as I walk outside. But half the dance has emptied into the parking lot now, on their way to one of many after-parties. Webster is nowhere to be seen.
Veronica appears at my side with both of our purses. “You ready to get out of here?”
I nod and we head to her car. We skip the after-parties in favor of hitting up a pizza joint in a strip mall near school for some slices. While we eat, Veronica tells me about her conversation with Sam—they still have a lot of ground to cover, but tonight set them in the right direction. But as happy as I am that it went well for her, the whole time she’s talking, I’m distracted, replaying what Webster said to me. Picturing what he and Anna might be doing right now—in a spare bedroom at some house party. I don’t even know which after-party they were going to, but I’m debating asking Veronica to drive around to all of them. And then I get a better idea.
I place another order at the counter, and when it’s ready, Veronica and I head back to my neighborhood with the to-go box warm in my lap. We pull up to my house, and I smile at Veronica as I click off my seat belt. “Thanks for being a great date.”
She nods. “Right back at you.”
When she pulls out of my driveway, I don’t go inside. Instead I carry my pizza box across the street to stand under Webster’s basketball hoop.
It’s so easy to fixate on the past. I could obsess about my mistakes forever, pick my memories apart and keep trying to use them to predict the future. But right now I have so much to look forward to—going to Michigan State, taking classes in a subject I love and pursuing my dream career—I don’t need to know exactly how everything is going to turn out. I’m determined to enjoy this feeling instead. The excitement that comes with endless possibilities unspooling ahead of you.
Though a solid percentage of that excitement is replaced with nerves when headlights flash across the asphalt.
I turn around and blink in the sudden brightness. I start to panic, because if Anna is in Webster’s car right now, I will absolutely die of mortification. But when he parks and cuts the lights, I can see that he’s alone.
He gets out of the car and slowly walks around the front to me. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might be hungry.” I close a little more of the distance between us and open the pizza box, lips caught between my teeth while I watch for his reaction.
“You hate olives.”
“Well, that’s why I only got them on half.” I lower the lid and say, “I was sort of hoping you might share with me.”
Webster’s mouth slowly tips into a smile. He takes the box and sets it on the hood of his car, then turns back to me. “That sounds really good.”
I haven’t reached a point where I’d consider myself an optimist. I don’t expect a long-distance relationship to be easy, and I know it’s still a risk. I know we might fall out of love one day. But trying to control for that outcome hasn’t exactly worked out. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him when I wouldn’t see it coming, so I made sure that didn’t happen. And in the end...losing him that way hurt just as much.
“It sucks that you lied to me, Web. And you better not do it again. Like, ever. But...” My voice wavers and Webster leans even closer. “I think I’m ready to take that leap of faith.”
Webster slides his arms around my waist and holds me like we’re back on the dance floor. “I missed you.”
My eyes are still stinging, but I break into a grin. “Yeah?”
“Little bit.” He reaches up and gently brushes a tear off my cheek. “Nothing happened with Anna. Nothing was ever going to happen there.”
I shake my head—that doesn’t matter now. I trust him.
A thick laugh catches in my throat. “So much for our do-over, huh?”
He tilts his head and grins. “At least we didn’t wait a year to talk it out this time.”
My arms fold around his neck, and for a moment, we just grin at each other. And as his lips meet mine, I’m certain this is worth the risk. Because I’ll always want another day with Webster. And then another, for as long as forever lasts.