Ash posed for the mirror. The dress was amazing, but she was even more interested in hearing the end of their conversation.
Sebastian said nothing more than, “I just want to make sure it’s worthy of the work you did to make Ash her dress.”
Ash took that as the cue to throw back the curtain.
In the big mirror outside the dressing room, the dress was even more stunning. It was cut perfectly at the hips and was fitted until it reached her knees, where it just exploded into S-shaped ribbons of chiffon fabric overlaid on top of the glittering lehenga fabric below.
The halter top was elegant. Beaded at the bodice sides and the straps, which tied behind her neck. Cut just to the top of her navel and showed off a discreet amount of midsection.
The room was silent as Ash twirled.
“You were right, Ash. I do want my dress back,” Laila deadpanned. “It’s just beautiful.”
Lyra was practically jumping up and down. “Oh, please tell me you’re nominated for prom queen. You deserve to be. God, that is gorgeous!”
Ash was watching Sebastian. “What do you think?” She did a curtsy in his direction.
He shrugged. “It’s amazing, of course. But then you always are. In this dress or anything else. You’re always the most beautiful girl in the room.”
Ash felt her heart speed up. He’d never told her that before. She believed that to him, that was true.
The room was again silent. Lyra gazed at Sebastian in adoration, but he didn’t take his eyes off Ash.
How stupid I’ve been, was Ash’s only thought.
* * *
This is crazy.
BANG!
He’s your best friend.
CRASH!
It’s just the emotions talking.
CLANG!
Don’t get so carried away by the past few weeks.
“Honey?” Ash’s dad smiled gently at her from the doorway to the garage. “When did you become a drummer?”
Ash shifted the drumsticks to her left hand and swigged more iced tea with her right. “Just giving it a shot.”
“Your mother is asking for that shot to be over soon. Apparently this household is big enough for exactly one drummer and I’ve already claimed the ‘most annoying’ title.”
Ash vacated the spot and handed off the drumsticks to her dad.
“So, what’s really going on?”
Ash shrugged as she took a seat on the ratty old beanbag on the floor.
“You can tell me, I’m forgetful. I won’t hold it against you when you’re older.” Josh started playing air-drum dramatically.
Ash smiled, despite her mood.
“It’s the dress.”
“What? This again? I thought you loved it.” Josh paused his drumming motion in midair. “Even your mother said it looks incredible.”
“It does.”
“Yeah, this sounds like the worst thing ever.”
“It looks so good thanks to Seb.”
“He’s a great kid. And your best friend. I don’t see the bad news anywhere.”
Ash sighed and picked up a stray Nerf ball off the garage floor.
“He’s not a great kid?”
“He did all this for me and he’s not even going to the prom. He didn’t want to ask any of the girls he knows. Any one of them would die to go with him.”
Josh raised an eyebrow. “It’s modern times. He can ask a guy.”
“Daaaad.” Ash sighed even more dramatically.
“Aaaaaash,” he replied. “Tell me what’s really bothering you.”
Ash filled him in on the app fiasco, Seb’s friends being ultrapissed at him and how she was at a loss for how to fix it.
“Now he has to spend the rest of the quarter making that website. All because of me.”
Josh twirled his drumsticks. “Sounds like you’re feeling guilty.”
Ash considered this as she tossed the ball from hand to hand. “I feel like a lousy friend. What should I do?”
Josh stared at her for a minute. “If you could do anything for him, what would it be?”
Ash bit her lip. “Make that app for him with his friends. I wish I could just write the app for him. Is JavaScript really hard to learn?”
Josh laughed.
Ash took that to mean a “yes.”
“And plan B is?”
Ash’s shoulders dropped. “Don’t know.”
“There’s the problem-solver I raised!”
Ash threw the Nerf ball at him.
* * *
“Prepare for amazement.” Armstrong’s voice floated over the dressing-room door.
Ash looked up from her phone. Sebastian hadn’t texted her all day.
“I’m ready.”
She was at the final fitting of Armstrong’s suit for the prom and was trying to sound as excited as possible. This was what she wanted! This was what she’d been hoping for since freshman year. She and Armstrong together. Prom. Her in a gorgeous, unique gown no one had ever seen. Armstrong in a cool suit that was so him. She had to pull it together.
“Ready-ready? You’ll never get a first glance again.”
Ash tried not to sound annoyed. Was he always this dramatic? Was this how she sounded when she was in a dressing room? No wonder no one liked to shop with her. “Yeah, Armstrong. I really am.”
Seconds ticked by and finally he threw back the curtain.
She blinked as Armstrong stepped out in front of her.
“So? Awesome, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah, really cool.”
He looked...pretty much the same. Skinny pants. Nice shirt tucked into it. Only a slightly oversize jacket was different.
She smiled, she hoped, encouragingly.
“So...first thoughts. Tell me fast. I want quotes for my blog.”
“Um...”
Ash’s stomach sank as she realized what she’d been trying to bury all day. She had wanted nothing more than for Sebastian to be on the other side of that dressing-room door.
Eleven
Ash had never been so nervous. There was a huge chance this was not going to go well. She’d paced up and down her driveway for half an hour, wondering if today was the day to do this.
It was not going to get easier.
Shaking, she raised her hand and knocked. She hoped he would just answer so she didn’t have to make chitchat with his mother. She almost got her wish when Connie, Sebastian’s mother, opened the door with one hand, the other holding a cell phone to her ear.
“Yes, yes. We’ll send that basket of peaches over right away,” Connie said into the phone. She gestured for Ash to go on up to Sebastian’s room. Ash wondered how much Connie knew about Sebastian’s app development fiasco...and her role in it. She hoped very little.
Ash clutched the book she held in her hand tighter as she knocked on Seb’s door. Everything was about to change. For the good or bad, she didn’t know yet.
A muffled noise sounded like a “come in.”
She pushed the door open.
He sat at his desk in front of his computer, staring at lines of code. “What’s up?” He didn’t seem surprised to have her in his room after almost a week of very little communication.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
Seb didn’t turn around as he typed a few words, then scrolled to the very top. “Sure.”
“Can you stop that for a second?”
Seb turned around and noticed she was holding something. He didn’t ask what it was.
“How’s it going?”
Sebastian shrugged.
“I know it was a little...weird. At the shop the other day.”
Sebastian didn’t s
ay anything, instead turning around to face his computer screen again.
This was not going the way she’d envisioned. Ash forced herself to launch into the speech she’d memorized on the driveway beforehand.
“So...since like the first day of high school, I’ve been making this book. It’s kind of like a scrapbook, but not the crazy old-lady kind with cats and string, just the regular kind.”
Ash paused to breathe, realizing she sounded an awful lot like Laila when she got nervous.
“You’re a closet scrapbooker?” Sebastian said, not turning around. He pressed a few keys on the keyboard. It looked as though he was working on the website.
“No!” Ash laughed, tension broken. “Well, sometimes. Seb, can I sit down?”
“What next? Knitting and collecting cats?” Sebastian moved to the bed and motioned for her to take a seat on the chair he’d just vacated.
“I’ve been making this book for almost four years now. I wanted to show it to you.”
Sebastian watched her expectantly.
Ash took another breath and handed it over. “Every page has some important thing.”
Sebastian flipped open the cover and looked at the first two pages. “Orientation.”
Ash smiled. “Oh, I remember how lost we were!”
“We didn’t find the cafeteria in one shot for a week!” Sebastian recalled.
“Look at how cute we were.” Ash gestured toward a picture of the two of them standing between their driveways on the first day of high school. They’d been terrified. Laila taking fifteen million pictures of them hadn’t helped at all.
“Remember the time you didn’t know if school ended at two or three or if you had another class after fifth period?” Sebastian broke into a smile as he flipped another page. “Freshman homecoming.”
“God, the float we made was terrible!” Ash recalled. “A giant cake float?”
“You wanted a cake, you got a cake.”
Ash stopped laughing. “You’ve always tried to make my harebrained schemes happen. Always.”
Sebastian continued to smile ruefully. “It’s my job.”
“Remember when no one asked me to freshman year homecoming and you got everyone together in the limo to come pick me up? You wouldn’t let anyone else have a date, either.” Ash remembered how Seb had saved the day—yet again.
“Oh, God, the bagel shop!” Sebastian stopped flipping. “You worked there for what—a month?”
“Or less!” Ash peered over his shoulder. “You drove me every day since my mom wouldn’t let me get my learner’s permit till I was sixteen!”
“Remember the time your parents came in and you refused to acknowledge them?”
Ash shoved him. “I did acknowledge them!”
“You yelled at them for spying on you and made me get rid of them!”
Both were laughing so hard, it was getting difficult to breathe.
“This is really cool,” Sebastian said as they started to reach the end. “You kind of made your own yearbook. Just your memories.”
“Our memories.” Ash touched the last filled page, which just had a picture of the finished dress, the picture she’d taken in Haute. “Just the final prom page left. And graduation. And summer.”
Sebastian was quiet as he stared at the last blank page. “I can’t believe it’s almost over.”
“You’re on every page, Seb.” Ash moved from the chair to the bed next to him.
Now was the time.
Sebastian glanced at her, his eyes full of love...and so much more.
“You’ve been a part of every single aspect of my life. You’ve always given everything possible to make my dreams happen.”
“I love watching you shine,” Seb said simply. “Nothing makes me happier. You know that.”
That was what Ash had started to realize that week. He truly did love making her happy. He always had.
“I don’t want my prom page to not have you in it. I want you standing next to me in that gorgeous dress we—you really—made.”
Sebastian sighed and closed the book. “I’m not going, if that’s what you’re here to convince me of. You don’t have to feel guilty! I just want you to have a good night.”
Ash paused. “You won’t go no matter what?”
Sebastian glanced away as he handed the book to her. “No. You’ll be fine. You guys will have a good time.”
“There is no ‘you guys.’ There’s just me.”
A flutter of confusion crossed Sebastian’s brow, but he didn’t say anything.
“What if I asked you to be my date?”
He didn’t look up. “Stop.”
Ash reached over and stroked his jaw, where he was getting the finest stubble. She’d realized recently how much she liked touching him. How natural and wonderful it felt.
“Sebastian, please?”
“Does Armstrong know you’re inviting a third wheel?” Sebastian attempted to sound lighthearted as he pulled his face away from her hand.
“I broke it off with him. It wasn’t right. It was never right.” Ash bit her lip. “He’s—he’s not for me.”
“Are you being serious?” He turned to her. “But you were so into him for like four years.”
She shrugged. “I was into an idea of him. Not really him-him. Turns out I was looking at the wrong thing.”
He took her hand, tracing her palm. “This isn’t funny if you’re messing with me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I want to go with someone who means something to me. Someone who means everything to me.” Ash paused, hoping he would catch on.
Sebastian kept his head lowered as he continued to tickle her palm with his tracing fingers. She realized he was tracing her heart line.
“Will you go with me, Seb? To our senior prom? Will you be my date?” Saying it out loud was so much simpler and easier than she’d expected.
He stopped tracing her hand.
“It would be such an honor if you were my date. Sebastian, please say you’ll go with me. I won’t go if you say no.”
Twelve
“Tell me again how this happened?” Sebastian put an arm around Ash as Laila took the hundredth picture of the two of them.
“You came to your senses and finally asked me to the prom.”
“Me!” Sebastian hadn’t stopped grinning since he’d arrived almost an hour ago for pre-prom pictures. “Crazy girl.”
“You could have saved us months of angst by just asking me in the first place. God, Seb.”
Seb twirled Ash in the living room for Laila’s benefit so she could capture more pictures.
“Mom! We’ll miss the prom.”
“One more.” Laila snapped at least six as Josh stood off to the side, looking as proud as could be. “Last one. That one wasn’t good. Last-last one.”
“Leaving now. Bye, Dad. Be good, Mom.”
“One more photo of you two getting into the car.”
She snapped two more before realizing they were truly leaving.
“Don’t spill anything on the dress! Don’t drink alcohol! Certainly don’t spill alcohol on the dress!”
“Drive! Drive!” Ash yelled as Sebastian jumped into the driver’s side of the Mazda6. “And this time she is not coming with us!”
She could see her mother snapping more pictures through the rearview mirror as they drove away.
* * *
“Our hero!” Dave, Sebastian’s friend, practically picked Ash up in a bear hug as Ash and Sebastian made it out of the photo booth inside the Palace Ballroom in Belltown.
Even surly Richard managed a smile.
“Why are you guys here?” Sebastian looked confused as he looked from Dave to Richard. “You do know this is the prom, right?
”
Dave shrugged. “Once-in-a-lifetime high school experience and such, right?”
“We’re here to photobomb all these people,” Richard explained.
Ash was not surprised by his goal.
“Who are you here with?” Ash asked, looking around for Dave’s date.
Dave shrugged again, in Richard’s direction.
“You’re here. Together?” Sebastian looked questioningly at them. “Like, as in a date?”
The foursome squeezed together as another couple pushed past them in an effort to get into the photo booth.
“Not all of us have a computer-savvy chick show up in our bedroom and ask us to go, man.” Dave held up his hands. “It was a mandated man-date. It’s a thing.”
Sebastian raised an eyebrow in Ash’s direction. “Computer-savvy?”
Ash smiled, she was sure this time, enigmatically. “Maybe.”
Sebastian looked among the three of them. “What are you guys talking about? I don’t like this.”
Dave nodded in Ash’s direction. They’d agreed she was going to be the one to announce the news.
“Remember that app you guys were supposed to do?”
Sebastian frowned at Richard and Dave. “The one we agreed we were done talking about?”
Ash smugly smiled. “It’s happening after all. With or without you.”
Sebastian looked completely baffled. “But—”
“My mom, dad and I are going to help you guys to make it happen. This summer. That’s the Montague family project for this summer. All of us.”
Dave and Richard were now smiling smugly.
“Wait. Your dad. The professional software engineer. Is going to help us? Your mom. The lawyer.”
“And me. Let’s not forget me. I’m excellent at marketing good ideas.”
Dave broke into a huge smile. “Ash’s dad is going to help us formulate the codebase. Ash’s mom is going to help us with the venture-cap paperwork. She already convinced BlueDog to give us an extension till the end of summer. Something about labor laws since Richard here is under eighteen. Ash’s sister is going to help with graphics and story. Ash is going to help us with... Wait, what were you going to do again?”
Prom Ever After Page 8