To most people in the room, this isn’t a slow song. In fact, judging by the sneers and jokes, most people don’t even know what this song is. But I know. Hayden D’Angelo knows. And now his twin knows, too.
“Did you set this up?” I say, leaning back and quirking a brow as “Midnight Hour” transforms our high school gym into a time machine right back to the nineteen-sixties.
“I thought you did!” Lucas laughs, flattening his hand on his chest and crossing his heart.
I narrow my eyes in thought, and scan the room in search of my suspect, but I don’t have to look far. Tory leans proudly with his right elbow on the tower speaker near the DJ booth. He blows on his fingertips then runs them down the length of his lapel like a regular fucking Sinatra. My, I have taught him well.
The dance floor clears for the most part, but Lucas and I stay there for the entire song, singing along with the chorus, showcasing the worst of our vocal talents. When the DJ breaks through the end of the song asking the homecoming royalty court to step forward, I peel back so Lucas can join the other seniors standing near the platform set up under the basketball scoreboard. He instead slides back and out of the way with me, letting the twins and that guy Cannon walk up on their own. It’s glaringly obvious he’s not where he should be as three guys stand to the right of our principal and four girls stand to his left. Even more obvious is the disdain on Ava’s face as she stares across the half court at me. There was a time when that small, insignificant action of hers would make me feel incredibly small, but tonight, it only serves as a source of amusement.
“She could not possibly hate me more,” I say. Lucas bends his head down and claps through the reading of the nominees for king, including himself.
“Ava?” he questions.
I punch out a short laugh. “Yeah. She hasn’t really bothered me since the whole spray paint and black eye incidents. What’s weird, though, is I don’t get why she hated me so much when you were dating her.”
Lucas’s eyes glimmer in his gaze, and a smirk paints his lips.
“Oh, I know why,” he says, standing tall and not filling in the details just to torture me.
I clap through the list of queen nominees but keep my skeptical eyes on my boyfriend, my stare penetrating his ability to ignore it.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, turning to the side to kiss the top of my head. I look up and meet his smile.
“But you’re probably gonna win,” I say.
“I don’t really give a shit,” he responds.
I give him side eyes for a moment, but it’s easy to see he’s telling the truth. I take his waiting hand and we weave through the crowd, having only stayed for four songs. They announce Ava’s name behind us as we let the gym doors fall closed. It’s a perfect way to leave her, on top of her completely irrelevant and fake mountain. It doesn’t change the question I’m still dying to know the answer to, though. I hold my tongue until we get to Lucas’s truck, patient a few minutes longer than I expect because Lucas quickly discovers I followed through with my promise in wearing this dress.
I sit sideways in his passenger seat with him standing between my legs. My body satiated from his touch, I peel away from our kiss and reach up to grab the knot of his tie. I tug it forcefully, and he grins.
“Tell me, Lucas Fuller. Why does Ava Pryor hate me so much?”
I may never be prepared for his answer.
“Because when she told me she was in love with me at her eighth grade birthday party I told her I was in love with you. And deep down, she knows I never stopped.”
Epilogue
It’s strange to contemplate where we all started the year—where Lucas and I started the year. There was a time when I dreaded this day . . . graduation. I was so deep in my own head that I thought the day would come and go without things like parties, or friends. Certainly not boyfriends. And yet somehow, I’m in a world where I have all three.
In six hours, I’ll walk across a stage and be handed a ticket to my future. That future isn’t as dim as I fear it would be, either. My mom is an inspiration. She believes in her work, and she works hard. That hard work has turned a solo photography business into something that not only pays the bills but also afforded her to tuck away enough for me to go to Indiana East. It’s not Notre Dame or Ball State, but it is away from home, and an adventure. And it has a really great liberal arts program, so maybe I’ll be able to figure out what the hell I want to be when I grow up.
Grow up.
It’s funny to look back and remember those words Abby said to me when the year began: that we’ve all grown up. She was right. In many ways, we have. But we’ve also got a lot of growing left to do. I hope somehow we’re lucky enough to still be together at the end . . . all of us.
Lucas leaves after summer for MIT. He’s going to love it there, and I’m all right with that because I know he loves me too. I might lose him for a little while to that great big world he’s going to experience. But his roots will always be here, on some tree-lined street about an hour from a big city, where a pair of driveways brought us together when we were young.
I trust him enough to know he’ll always come back to me in one form or another, and we will always be in love, even if it’s only first love. I can’t help but believe there’s a chance that me and him? We might be the real deal. The forever, and the always.
“Are you sure you aren’t peeking?” Lucas shouts. He left me here at the bottom of his driveway about ten minutes ago with this stupid tie wrapped around my face. He tied it snug, so not only can I not see, I might actually be blind. He said he has a graduation gift for me that requires a little maneuvering. I’m nervous about what that means.
“I promise!” I shout back.
“Okay, you’ll know when to pull off the blindfold,” he says. I shake my head because I have no idea what that could possibly mean, but trust . . . I trust him. So, here goes nothing.
At first, all I hear is the slamming of a car door. I lose count how many seconds pass before another noise touches my ears, but when it does, yeah . . . he’s right. It’s time to pull off the blindfold.
“No fucking way!”
My dad’s impossible project, the piece of junk I assumed my mom finally had hauled away, is backing out of Lucas Fuller’s garage. On its own. Nobody is pushing it. It’s being driven.
The rumble is like honey to the ears, and even though the body is in desperate need of a paint job, the form . . . my God, the form of that vehicle is sexy.
“I can’t believe you got the Buick running!” I shout so he hears me over the deep growl spilling from the engine.
Lucas hops out, leaving the door open behind him. The seats are still torn, but the dash looks new, and the steering wheel is in the right position with a leather wrap around it. I palm my face and stare in shock as I walk closer, sitting inside briefly so I can touch everything. I step back out, closing the door behind me, and put my hands right back on my cheeks, tears forming in my eyes.
“I figured what good is an MIT degree if I can’t get my girl a car to drive to college in,” he says with a casual shrug. He acts as if this is no big deal but I know what shape that car was in. It was a shell. A ghost. He brought it back from the dead. And he did it for me.