“I’m the one who forced the overpriced dress upon you,” she says. “Therefore, the overpriced dress is my responsibility.”
“Is that like a law or something?” My phone buzzes again but it’s still not James.
I glance up at Diane. Maybe I should put my phone away if she’s being so amazing as to buy this perfect, perfect dress for me. “Can I ask, like, a weird question?”
“As weird as you want.”
“Is seventeen too young to think you love someone? Because sometimes I . . .” I cover my face with my hands. “Oh my god, sorry. I’m such a goober sometimes.”
“Of course it isn’t too young,” she says. “And you should hear your dad rave about Quinn. She sounds pretty special.”
I can’t imagine Dad being so open with someone, especially someone new. At least the someone new is Diane. “It’s only because she baked us lasagna once!”
“It’s definitely not just that,” she says. “Though he has brought up the lasagna quite a bit.”
I invite James over on Friday night, like old days, like everything’s fine. Maybe everything is fine. People sometimes say I’m dramatic. This could be what they mean, the way it’s easy to take a small kernel of something and imagine the whole popped cob. A kernel can be a kernel sometimes.
“I found a dress,” I tell her once she’s arrived and we’re sipping fruit-flavored seltzers I bought in an attempt at festivity. “Do you want to see it?”
She says yes, so we head down the hallway. It’s weird to see James at my house, in my room, and then it hits me that it’s weird that it’s weird to see James at my house. There were weeks when we were little that she was probably at my house more than she was at her own.
“Wow,” James says when I unzip the dress from its bag, and she sounds sincere. “It’s pretty great.”
“Right? It ended up being, like, this whole thing because I got all weird and missed my mom so much out of nowhere, but Diane is sort of amazing actually? She didn’t let it seem awkward at all, even though I was crying in Nordstrom like a freak. And I think she didn’t say anything to Dad, thank god, because you know he’d be all awkward about it.”
“It’s good that you like Diane and that she seems great,” James says.
“Duh, I know. I can like Diane and still be allowed to have complicated feelings and wish my mom could see me in my dress and all of that. My dad probably won’t even know to take pictures of us, or if he does, they’ll turn out all blurry like the ones he took of me and Luke at Christmas.”
“My mom is like that, too, still,” she says. “How hard is it to take a picture on an iPhone? Not very hard.”
I laugh and get my dress safely back into my closet before flopping down on the bed. “Oh, so do you want to share a limo again, like last year?”
She gives me a look. “I think three in a limo is a pretty awkward number, don’t you?”
“Everything is awkward in a limo! It’s so long!”
James laughs again. It’s nice it’s like this and not like everything about me is annoying. “I’ll pass. But thank you.”
“Now I’m not even sure I’ll get to be in a limo. Quinn thinks it would be more romantic to rent a cool car and drive me.”
“You’re the one who thinks limos are awkward,” she says. Everything is so easy for James, just a decision and then moving on. Her brain is a machine. “You should let her.”
“I guess I have to let her. It’s, like, the only thing she asked for!”
“Well, you’re making a really big deal out of prom,” James says.
I just let it go because of course I’m making a really big deal about it. We’re in the paper and changing history and also even if we weren’t, I’m going to prom with the super dreamy girl I’m in love with.
“How was T&F?” I ask instead. “Did you run faster than everyone?”
She smiles a little. “It really isn’t only about running fastest. I’m not sure how many times I can explain that to you.”
I hear the front door, and I give James a look. “See how on-time he is now? Like he’s not trying to live at his office anymore?”
“That’s good,” she says.
“Duh, I know.” I regret my duh, but you can’t put words back into your mouth. “I can still wish it was also, like, about me, and not just Diane. Can’t I?”
Dad knocks on the door, and I call out that it’s OK to open it.
“Hey, James, good to see you,” Dad greets her. “You staying for dinner? We can order from the weird Asian place you guys like.”
“Dad, it’s not weird, they just have Thai and sushi,” I say.
“I should actually get home,” James says, of course, because of course this was too good to last very long. Like, longer than half an hour, apparently.
I wave good-bye to her and turn back to Dad. “Can we still get sushi and Thai?”
“Yeah, you wanna invite Quinn?”
“Dad, I can hang out with just you,” I say, and he grins. It’s funny how dads can be cute sometimes, like I can look at Dad and see what he was like when he was my age. I think about the guys I go to school with and wonder if someday they’ll be having dorky conversations with their teen daughters.
We get our order placed and sit down in the living room to watch TV. Well, Dad turns on the news, but it feels like neither one of us is really paying attention.
“It’s OK if I stay out all night for prom, right?” I ask.
“Yeah, yeah, sure, kid, that’s fine. Just be careful. Don’t drink and drive. No drugs.” He shrugs. “So, uhhhh. Diane asked me to check with you if she could come over, take pictures, all that stuff. She thinks maybe I won’t be the best at it.”
“Oh, wow, it’s almost like she knows you,” I say, and he chuckles. “Of course she can come over. Diane’s sort of the best.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “Glad you’re OK with her.”
“Dad, I’m, like, way more than OK with her. I guess I didn’t think you’d date someone so cool.”
“I could say the same thing about you,” he says, which makes me crack up. “I know it wasn’t all easy on you—”
“It’s totally fine,” I say. “I just said it! Diane’s the best.”
I do wonder, watching him smile in his dorky awkward dad way, how much worse it would be if I said the other half, too. Does he also wonder if Mom would like Diane or if she occasionally has an eye on us and if she approves of how things are going? I still remember that Mom saw me wearing a choker made out of a ribbon only a couple weeks before she died and said, Kat, leave the bad parts of the nineties back there.
I wore it again the next day just to annoy her. I’ve never worn it since though.
Oh my god, I am thinking about a stupid ribbon choker instead of the millions of real ways I miss Mom. And then I wonder what the dumbest way Dad misses her is, like maybe how she always teased him that he legit thought that Target was pronounced Tar-zhay or that I’d hear him yelling about her hair clogging up the shower drain. But maybe Dad’s lucky and he’s not fighting all of it all the time, and the last thing I want is for him to start.