by Knox, Abby
“You look—”
“You look,” he interrupts, “radiant.”
I smile, turn red as a tomato, and drop my eyes to my gown. The fitted pastel chiffon flares out at the bottom, where it’s dotted with a random pattern of wildflowers and accented with sequins. The dress has none of the cut-out patterns like most of the other girls on the team chose. I just can’t do strapless and tight with cut-out designs. Mine is a bit more modest with a gathered criss-cross bodice and short sleeves that flutter when I walk. The plunging neckline is the only thing sexy about this dress.
“You look very handsome,” I spit out.
His eyes drift down to my chest, and I feel my nipples react. “You look like a goddess.”
It’s then that I notice his pocket square and necktie are the same color as my dress.
I point to his necktie and back at my dress. “Hey, how did that happen?”
A smirk crawls across his face. “I have no idea.”
My tomato-colored face is now the color of an eggplant.
“I hope you have a wonderful evening, Shermer.”
“I’ve given up on wonderful, but I’m enjoying my time with Hunter, and that’s all that matters.”
30
Weston
I want to ask her to dance, but if I dare touch her, I won’t be able to stop.
The material of her dress almost floats around her dreamily; she could be living proof that magic is real.
“Save a dance for me,” I say, but she’s already walking away, back to her friends.
31
Addie
I head back to my table where Roland and Ridley are lounging close together and speaking conspiratorially. She’s got something in her handbag and I see her sneak it to Roland. It’s a flask, of course.
I truly do not understand that relationship, and I don’t think I want to.
The entire group takes a swig on the down low and I shock everyone by asking for a sip.
“There’s my girl! Where’ve you been all my life?” Roland asks while everyone laughs.
“Shut up. We don’t want the newbie drawing attention to what we’re doing,” Ridley remarks.
It’s not the first sip of alcohol in my life. My dad occasionally lets me drink from his beer at backyard barbecues. But this stuff in this flask doesn’t even taste good. However, it does sort of feel good after I force myself to swallow it.
I consider having another sip, but Hunter drags me out to the dance floor. Our favorite hip hop song comes on and it feels good to be dancing with my best friend, just like when we were younger and used to act silly together in our pajamas and pretend hair brushes were microphones. I haven’t felt silly in a long time, and it’s needed.
After a while I start to feel sappy. “I’m going to miss you!”
Hunter hugs me. “I’m going to miss you!”
“Do you really have to leave right after graduation?”
“Yeah, the big guy is very impatient. Plus, I have another audition the day after, so he’s flying me out there. You should come up and stay with me in New York over the summer.”
“Yeah, but you’re going to be working and going to school. I don’t want to get in the way.”
She grimaces and says, “Can you keep a secret?”
I look at her like she’s lost her mind. “Can I keep a secret? Can I have a crush on my coach and tell nobody but you? Yes, yes I can.”
“I’m not going to waitress. I’m not going to have a job at all.”
I stop dancing. “And how do you plan on paying for acting classes?”
She spills all the beans in one single breath. “He’s moving me into his penthouse and footing the bill for everything.”
My jaw hits the floor. “You’re kidding, right?”
She shakes her head.
I stop dancing and pull her to a dark corner. “Are you sure about this? Moving to New York for a guy is one thing, but moving in? That’s starting to scare me a little.”
She squares her shoulders. “Well, I’m not moving to New York for a guy, am I? I’m moving to New York to take acting and singing classes, remember? I’m just…relying on him to take care of things so I can do that.”
“But you’re pinning everything on him? What if he cheats on you? Dumps you? You know he has a bit of a reputation, right? Where will you go?”
She looks pissed. “First of all, thanks for the vote of confidence, and secondly, do you think I can’t figure it out?”
I shake my head because I didn’t mean it like that. I see Roland and Ridley slow dancing together out of the corner of my eye. Whatever. “I’m sure you will. I’m just worried that you’re taking a huge leap.”
She scoffs. “This from the girl who’s scared of her own feelings. The woman who can barely look her crush in the eye. The girl who can’t even notice that he’s drop dead in love with you and you with him, and yet the two of you continue to waste time because of what everybody thinks!”
“Hunter, shh, someone will hear you.” I look around to see if anyone’s listening, but the closest people are bustling past us to go outside to the gardens, appearing to be quite drunk.
Hunter hisses. “I don’t fucking care anymore. We are basically graduates already, so we can do what we want—don’t you get that?”
I look around for Weston, but I don’t see him anywhere. “He’s made his feelings clear. He could lose his job.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. And that right there is where we’re different. I don’t want to spend my life pining over something I didn’t try,” she says.
Her words sting. But I don’t want her to see me cry.
Funny, she’s the only person I usually do allow to see me cry.
“I need some air,” I say.
“Addie,” she calls after me, but I’m already outside.
She doesn’t follow.
I find myself hiding in the garden behind the hedge that surrounds the swimming pool. Under a nearby rose arbor, a bench facing the marble fountains seems like the perfect place to cry. I’m not sure how much time passes, but eventually I sob my way through a whole packet of tissues. It’s not saying much, since I could only fit so many tissues in my tiny clutch.
Out of nowhere, someone hands me a fresh tissue.
I reach up to take it and I see that it’s Roland.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Rough night?” he says. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He smells like a distillery.
“I just needed some air.” I don’t invite him to sit, and yet he does.
A little too close.
“Roland, I—”
“Listen,” he interrupts. “I know you have a thing for Weston Ford.”
“What? No I don’t.”
“Come on. It’s all over your face whenever you see him. Just let it go, OK?”
I glance around for the quickest exit. Maybe I can push him into the fountain if he gets too close. There’s a little Cupid pissing water, and I’d love to see it pissing all over Roland right now.
“It’s none of your business.”
“I thought we were friends,” he says, slurring his words.
“We’re chummy acquaintances at this point. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re friends, Roland.”
He laughs and scoots in closer to me. “That’s good because I’ve had my eye on you all year and I’m planning on being more than friends.”
I scoot away from him. A goldfish splashes in the koi pond nearby.
“Roland, I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me. I thought we decided we were just doing this as a group hang?”
“Yeah, but it’s prom night…”
He leans in for a kiss, and I feel his warm whiskey breath on my cheek. “No.”
He jerks back as if I’ve bitten him. “No? You’re telling me no?”
“Correct. I don’t feel things for you, Roland.”
He doesn’t back away. In fact, he gets closer. “Ridley told me you’r
e a virgin.” His voice is in my ear. “That’s so fucking hot. See how hot you make me?” He grabs my hand and places it on his lap.
I am livid. I’m so angry I could nearly start crying all over again.
I jerk my hand away but his grip remains around my wrist.
“Let me go.” More people are traipsing around the garden, and I can hear people making out not far away.
“You can’t expect me to be a sad sack on prom night. You can’t expect me to be celibate just because Ridley broke up with me.”
I wrench my wrist free and try to stand up as I sneer, “Get the fuck away from me. I don’t belong to you.”
“You’re my prom date, Addie.” He pulls me back to him. I lose my footing and land in his lap. He regains his grip around my wrists and it hurts. I yelp.
“Not anymore.”
It’s what I was about to say but someone says it for me. Someone with a deep baritone voice with a crazed, murderous tone. Both Roland and I swivel our heads and see Coach Ford stalking toward us. He looks like his head is about to explode.
He grabs Roland by the front of his shirt and whips him backward into the hedge. If it had been a wall, Roland’s head might have cracked open with the force. Instead, his body is pressed into the side of an oversized azalea shrub. The bright green leaves and bursts of hot pink flowers make a funny sort of crown around Roland’s terrified face and I have to stifle a laugh.
Coach Ford is breathing rapidly, audibly, and I would not be surprised in the least if he is foaming at the mouth. Then he turns to Roland and speaks purposefully, just quiet enough to be terrifying. “You ever touch her again, I will cut off your puny little balls.”
I look down at my wrists, which are red where Roland had gripped me. I think I would like to have a shot at removing his balls first.
“You’re a fucking psychopath. My dad will have you fired for putting your hands on me.” Roland’s words are insolent but the spreading wet spot on the front of his designer slacks tells another story.
“Go ahead and try it, you little punk.”
“You’re history,” Roland grunts before sprinting off around the side of the building.
We watch him go. My attention snaps back when I feel warmth on my cheek. The coach’s hand is examining my face.
“Are you OK?”
I am shaking all over from the heightened emotions of the moment, from fear and confusion and surprise at his touch. He brushes my hair away from my eyes.
“Come on. I’m taking you to get checked out.”
“For what?”
“For injuries. We need to document everything in case you press charges.”
“Press charges? I’m fine! He barely touched me.”
But he doesn’t answer me. Instead he picks me up and carries me straight through the ballroom, out into the lobby, down the grand staircase, and out to the street where his truck is already waiting.
I’m reeling from being carried by my swim coach across the dance floor to the utter astonishment of all my classmates. And there’s no sign of Hunter anywhere.
He puts me in the passenger seat gingerly and snaps the door closed. In another few seconds we are speeding down the highway to the hospital.
I open my purse and pull out my phone. I calmly tell my shocked parents that there was a fight at prom, that I’m perfectly fine, and that they should meet us at the emergency room, where I will explain everything.
This whole situation is so ridiculous, so over the top, it reminds me of the romance books I read late at night when I can’t sleep. He actually carried me like a distressed damsel out of a ballroom in front of everyone I know. It occurs to me that maybe I’ve manifested this man from those books. Maybe Weston Ford isn’t even real. Maybe I made him up and this is just a dream, a long, angsty, slow burn kind of dream that never pays off in the end.
I can’t help it, I get the giggles. I cover my mouth and snort. And then the guffaws come loud and fast, and I’m doubled over in my seat.
“Shermer,” he rumbles. “Are you laughing or crying?”
A tear trickles down my cheek and I say, “I don’t even know anymore. This is not how I envisioned my prom night ending!”
32
Addie
It’s all over.
I’m finished.
My eyes scan the audience in the vast auditorium. He’s not here to see me graduate.
At the hospital after prom, he handed me off to my parents, and I didn’t see him the rest of the night. I didn’t see him at school during the days following prom. I moved through the last weeks of my high school career in a fog, highlighted by comments and whispers here and there from people who had seen me in his arms on prom night.
My valedictorian speech is brief, funny, inspiring—everything everyone expects of me.
But my heart is on the floor.
We won’t get our happily ever after.
I was so sure there was something real.
Is it his fault? Had he been giving me hope all this time, or was I seeing signs that were not there?
I take my diploma and shake hands with the headmistress. I’m the only student she hugs, and it’s such a tight squeeze, it makes me regret not getting to know her better.
Why did I waste my mental energy this whole school year? These people believed in me and I didn’t treasure them. I never took the time to create a mental picture of my last year of high school.
Yes, I aced every class. Sure, we won the state title.
But I did it for the wrong reasons.
From now on, I resolve to succeed for myself, not to get the attention of a man who doesn’t even care about me.
I brush past the black curtains at stage left to make my way through the backstage area toward the side door of the building. No way I’m going back to my seat.
Before I reach the door, something clamps down around my wrist. I gasp in fright. It’s a hand, and for a split second I think it might be Roland. The hand around my wrist tugs me through the back curtains and toward the shadowy edges of the stage.
My eyes finally adjust to the backstage darkness, and I see what’s happening. That hand on my wrist is attached to the world’s most beautiful and exasperating and wonderful human.
I feel as though I’m being lifted outside of my body.
Weston Ford has me.
Without warning, he releases my wrist and takes my face in his hands. He claims my mouth in a ravishing, angry kiss.
His hand lets go of my face and his arms wrap around me so tight I am exquisitely out of breath.
My feet rise off the floor.
Every resolution I just made flies out the window.
His lips, his sweet breath, his fresh, woodsy scent, is everywhere—0n me, inside my lungs.
I know that half a dozen of my classmates are filing past us just on the other side of the curtain. Surely someone will see us.
But they aren’t my classmates anymore. They are former classmates.
And I’m no longer a student.
“Adelaide,” he murmers into my mouth.
His low, gravelly voice makes my body shudder in response.
I savor this moment. I take a mental picture of it. I memorize what his lips feel like against my lips, what his strong fingers feel like as they dig into my hips. His hard length presses against me so tight I feel it in my bones.
“Weston,” I breathe into his kiss. I have to, since he’s not letting me break away to speak.
We’re moving.
I can’t see where he’s taking me, but I no longer care who I am, let alone where we are going.
33
Weston
After carrying her into the abandoned prop room deep in the bowels of the auditorium basement, I grip the front of her white graduation gown with one fist and unbuckle my jeans with the other. I should slow down, kiss her tenderly to prepare her for me, but it’s too much. I can’t hold back. I’ve got her pinned against the wall in the darkened room.
“Sweetheart, this is not how I wanted your first time to be, but—”
She quiets me with a quick kiss before saying, “You don’t have to be sweet to me. Do what you need to do. Wreck me.”
A noise escapes me that’s part joy and part mad beast.
I hike up her robe and her dress.
Adelaide puts her arms around my neck, one hand still gripping her diploma while I hoist her legs to wrap around me.
I back her up against the chipping ivory paint on the cinder block wall. This isn’t good enough for my sweet girl but my blue balls are beyond caring.
To hell with it. Not even the Four Seasons is good enough for my princess.
When I’ve got her firm ass cheeks in my hands, she grinds against me, and I respond with an angry roar and rip away her flimsy panties. My hand finds her warm, wet pussy and the touch makes her moan into my mouth.
“Hold on tight, baby.”
She grips me with her thighs like she’s climbing a tree. I use my free hand to spring my cock from my boxer briefs, and it can’t find her core fast enough.
“I need you now,” I rasp into her mouth.
She whimpers. “Yes please, god. Oh god, yes please.”
I don’t wait another second. My cock swells as the tip finds her entrance, and I dive in.
She urges me on with a squeeze of her thighs, a thrust of her hips.
“I’m gonna break you and it’s gonna hurt.”
“Fuck you. Nothing can hurt me more than spending months heartbroken over you.”
Fuck. I cram into her all the way and feel her barrier break. She cries out, but squeezes me, urging me to keep pushing. I kiss her mouth. She’s so unbelievably tight it almost hurts.
I slide out all the way and push back into her with so much force that her mortar board is flat against the wall.
“Yes! Weston!”
Her words ramp me up and soon I’m flat out fucking her at a frenzied pace.
Her pussy is soaked, and the harder I fuck her, the louder she moans. Her pussy sucks me in and it feels so damn good to claim her. Finally.