Always You

by Cecilia Gray

  She couldn’t let it go. Didn’t care what others said. Comments like “you’ll love again” and “you’re so young” and “nobody marries their first love”—these weren’t realities to be accepted, and part of her hated that others expected her to swallow them down like a pill that would fix what ailed her.

  “Looks like you’re in need of a shoulder to lean on.” Josh plopped down next to her in jeans and a gray tee instead of pajamas. He was never one to play to theme. He kissed her on the cheek. His hair tickled her temples, and she smelled alcohol on his breath.

  Worried, she whispered, “Have you been drinking?”

  “Just a sip to take the edge off.” He winked and rested his arm over her shoulder.

  She patiently pulled it off. “Edge off what?”

  “Of watching Fanny and Tran make out all night.” He pulled a face. “You won’t leave me, will you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “All the way through breakfast? You’ll drive.”

  “You’ll be sober by then.”

  He glanced back over at Fanny. “Not if I can help it.”

  Anne sighed. This time, when Josh slipped his arm around her neck, she let him. There were worse things in life than letting Josh Wickham flirt with her.

  * * *

  “Psst. Anne.”

  Anne lifted her head from the card game she was playing with Josh, which he kept trying, unsuccessfully, to turn into strip Go Fish (although by her count, she would have him down to his underwear by now).

  Emma beckoned for Anne to stand up and follow her.

  Anne looked to Josh since they were in the middle of a game, but he held up his hands defensively. “Far be it from me to get in the way of something Emma wants.”

  Anne set down her cards, uncrossed her legs, and stood. She stretched her hands overhead to ease the cramps from sitting down all night.

  “Follow me,” Emma said, putting her finger to her lips.

  “Where are we going?”

  Emma winked, which to her was probably as much of an answer as Anne needed. They walked over and around the sleeping bags and into the green room, where actors changed into costume between scenes during school plays. Knight was waiting for them, leaning lazily against a wall, knees and arms crossed. Only he could make a pink velvet-footed onesie look cool. Maybe it was the bow tie.

  “Uh-oh,” Anne said, eyeing them both. “What are we up to?”

  Emma’s green eyes were the picture of wide-eyed innocence. “Why would you think we were up to something?”

  Knight grinned and ruffled Anne’s hair. “Give the girl some credit, Emma. She has known you for more than half a second.”

  Emma made a sour face. “Oh, all right.” She reached into her pajama pocket and pulled out a red Post-it. “It’s my turn.”

  “And you’re stealing me?” Anne suggested with a sly smile. She held out her hand. “Red-post away.”

  Emma slapped the Post-it on the back of her hand. “No, but close. We have to hurry.” She walked through the green room.

  Anne cast a wary glance at Knight, who shrugged and followed his girlfriend, leaving Anne to bring up the rear. The green room led to a hallway and then the prop room, which was locked. Emma spun around. Her eyes filled with the closest thing to desperation Anne had never seen in her friend.

  “I’ve had this dream,” Emma said, “for a while now. It’s senior year. Prom. I’m wearing a white silk asymmetrical dress, Greek style, backless. Maybe a few jeweled—”

  “Move the dream along,” Knight urged.

  “Anyway.” Emma shot him a look. “It’s midnight and time to announce the prom queen, and someone goes to the mic, and there’s a screech of feedback right before they say Emma Greene.” Emma clapped, as if the memory was real. “Then everyone parts so I can make my way to claim my crown. It’s placed on my head.” Emma touched the crown of her head, her lashes drifting shut. “And then I’m queen.”

  “Am I the king in this scenario?” Knight asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t know you when I started having this fantasy.”

  “And the Academy has never had a prom before,” Anne pointed out.

  “I know,” Emma said. “It was always just a dream. A fantasy. But now we’re having a prom, and there’s a crown. And Anne—I want it.”

  “Er, but… you’re not a senior.”

  “I know.”

  “And the crown is behind that locked prop door,” Anne said.

  Emma nodded.

  “If you want to pick the lock, don’t you need Tran?” Anne asked.

  “Why would I pick the lock when you have a perfectly good master key to all the interior rooms?”

  Anne hissed in a breath. Knight looked at Emma in surprise. Her master key technically belonged to the Trust and was on loan to her and her mother while they finished marking all the items in the Academy for sale or return. “You want me to just let you in? To steal?”

  “Steal?” Emma blanched. “We all know that crown is rightfully mine. You’re going to let a little thing like me being born a year late get in the way of that? Why do you care, anyway? The Academy isn’t yours anymore!”

  “Emma!” Knight’s voice fell like an axe.

  Anne felt numb, but then something else eased through her. Something buoyant and lovely and so real.

  “I didn’t mean it to be hurtful,” Emma said.

  “I’m not hurt,” Anne said. She lifted her chin, as if she realized she finally meant it. “I’m not hurt. The Academy isn’t mine. It never was. I never wanted it.” She pulled the key out of her pocket and handed it to Emma. “Go get your crown.”

  The seniors were going to flip out when they discovered the crown missing, but for once she wasn’t going to worry about the Academy. She was just going to think about her friend.

  Emma hugged her and whispered, “Thank you,” in Anne’s ear before turning, unlocking the door, and running into the room.

  Knight sighed and folded his velvet-clad arms. “Something tells me she’s going to wear that crown straight through to graduation.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  Knight grinned and shook his head. “I hope she wears it through the summer.”

  “Are you spending the summer together?” she asked, surprised.

  “Probably. I’m moving to Manhattan. I start NYU in the fall, and Emma’s going back to her parents and starting school there.”

  “That’s lucky,” Anne said. “You’ll both be in the same city. You don’t even have to worry about being apart like the rest of them.”

  “Luck. Fate.” He shrugged. “It is what it is. And it just happens to be what I need.”

  Anne wouldn’t have pegged Knight for the type to believe in fate. Besides, what did that say about Ellie and Edward? Did fate not want them together? Or Fanny and Tran? Or she and Rick?

  She didn’t like the idea of fate, she decided. Of some fickle force deciding who was worth it and who wasn’t.

  Emma floated out the door, the crown nestled in her curls. “How do I look?” she asked.

  Anne smiled at her friend. “Natural as a queen.”

  * * *

  Even though they’d promised to stay awake all night, shortly after two in the morning they began to nod off one by one. The music had been turned off at midnight. A few hushed whispers and giggles echoed off the corners of the theater stage, but for the most part, there was soft snoring and the rustle of sleeping bags.

  Anne had drifted off and awakened to discover Josh’s arm belted around her waist. He wore cologne, something aquatic and fresh. Even asleep, his breath, which blew across her neck in even whiffs, smelled like minty toothpaste. She glanced down at his face resting against her shoulder. At his cut jawbone, his perfectly pouty lips.

  How much easier they could have made their lives by liking each other. Emma had even tried to set them up. If she could just get over Rick and he could just get over Fanny… and why couldn’t they? They were
reasonable people. Logical people.

  Anne herself had never been one to be ruled by her emotions, like Emma or Kat.

  Unable to sleep, she pushed Josh’s arm until he flipped over onto his back. Then she stood up and stretched her legs. She was sore after lying on the hard floor for so long, and needed a walk.

  Tiptoeing around the other sleepers, she made her way outside. The air was crisp and cool. She worried for a moment about getting the bottom of Emma’s footie pajamas dirty, but it felt too good not to walk around.

  She wandered to the courtyard, to the apple tree, and was surprised to see a figure beneath it.

  “Rick?” She bent her head and squinted. His face came into view as she got closer. He was leaning at the foot of the tree. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you at the Shut In?”

  He studied her in silence, and she felt his gaze raking over her. Then he said, “You were all asleep by the time I got there.”

  “You could have woken us up. We were trying to stay awake.”

  “You weren’t trying that hard. Besides,” he went on before she could defend herself, even though she didn’t know why she should have to, “you guys are always hogging the tree. I thought I’d get my turn.”

  She hugged her arms around her waist and shivered.

  “Want to get warm?” He crooked his finger.

  Anne felt nearly immobile but found herself walking to him, sliding against the bark of the tree, and coming to a stop sitting next to him. He scooted over so their legs touched. With a quick move, he shrugged out of half his jacket and wrapped it around her so that they shared it, like one body.

  She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to breathe, in case the moment rippled away like a dream and she awoke to find herself on a cold, hard theater floor. Anne couldn’t stop herself from being greedy. She snuggled closer to him and brought up her knees so her thighs rested on top of his.

  The jacket slipped off her shoulder, and he ran his arm across her back to pull it up. He left his arm there, warm and heavy around her. She dug her head against his shoulder. Her breath was coming in short, shallow gasps. She gripped the front of his shirt in one fist. She didn’t look up at him because she worried that if she did, his face would be completely impassive stone, even with them like this.

  “Are you comfortable?” she asked.

  She could feel the plump curve of his lower lip against the whorl of her ear as he said, “Mmhmm.”

  She wanted closer, she wanted more, and it took everything in her to remain still. After a thick moment when she thought she’d go crazy, she gained control of her breath and the thoughts in her head. It was then she finally heard his heartbeat.

  It wasn’t steady or serene. It was a firecracker of uneven bursts.

  She glanced up at him in surprise, and he seemed just as surprised at her movement when their eyes met. Her lips fell open, and his gaze dipped there and back up.

  “Do you need to go?” he asked.

  She shook her head. Her whole world was shifting around her, as if the only universe that existed was a snow globe containing the two of them and the tree that some god had whirled upside down with a flick of his wrist.

  “Do you want to go?” he asked.

  “No.”

  The arm around her waist tightened, and his other hand, resting on her knees, did the same. She waited for him to close the small gap between their lips, but instead he watched her face, carefully.

  “Oh,” she said, remembering with a shake of her head. “I do have to drive to breakfast. I promised Josh.”

  He disentangled from her in a flash and got to his feet.

  “But that’s not until morning.”

  “I should go anyway,” he said.

  “Maybe you can come to breakfast?”

  “I have to check on something.”

  Anne scrambled up. “Lucy?”

  His brow furrowed a moment. “She’s fine. You… you made her fine. God, Anne, you were amazing with her.”

  “She can come to breakfast too,” Anne said, desperate to offer anything for even a glimpse back at that moment.

  “She can if she wants. I don’t think I’ll be hungry.”

  It wasn’t until he’d walked away that she realized he’d left his jacket.

  Chapter Eight

  Emma insisted that everyone get ready for prom in her room. It smelled like hairspray and perfume, like the warm scorch of curling irons.

  “Stop wiggling around,” Emma ordered. She licked the tip of her eye pencil and ran it under Anne’s bottom lashes.

  “Is your saliva sanitary?” Anne mumbled.

  “It is unless you keep moving and I poke you in the eye,” Emma said serenely.

  Anne patiently waited under Emma’s ministrations, and by the time she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she knew the wait—and possible impending infection—had been worth it. She felt as beautiful as the portraits of her family members that had hung on the Academy’s walls. “Will you take a picture for me to send to my mom?” she asked Lizzie.

  Lizzie directed her to pose for several shots, and Anne texted one to Mary and her mother, even though she didn’t expect to hear back.

  Once everyone was ready, Emma took one last photo.

  “Are you ready?” Emma asked them.

  Her friends all nodded.

  “Ready for what?” Anne asked.

  “To go to prom,” Emma said.

  “But your dates aren’t here yet.” Anne expected Josh to run behind, but the other guys were usually more prompt.

  “We are each other’s dates,” Emma said. “We all decided. We’ll meet up with the guys at the gymnasium. But we’re all walking in together. Just us girls.”

  Anne bit back the unexpected trembling of her lower lip. “Are you sure? This could be your last big night with them for some of you. After graduation, who knows where you’ll all end up?”

  Lizzie took Anne’s arm. “We’re sure this is our last big night with each other. We started at the Academy with just us girls. We can end it that way, too.”

  * * *

  They entered the gymnasium linked at the elbows. Colored confetti—“Deadly end-of-world acid rain,” Emma clarified when pressed to explain how it fit into her theme—peppered down from the ceiling. The boys stood in a row in tuxedos and tails to meet them, each with a corsage in hand to match the color of the dress his date was wearing.

  The girls curtseyed and posed, then headed for the boys.

  Anne smiled at Josh. He’d worn a tux—a real tux like everyone else, with a blood-red vest. She’d half expected to see him in jeans just because. Josh motioned for Anne to twirl for him, and as she did, he slow-clapped and whistled sharply, two fingers at the corners of his mouth. He wrapped the corsage around her wrist, and she brushed the soft petals, releasing a heavy rose scent.

  “I would tell you that you clean up well, but you actually look just as fine when you’re scruffy,” Anne said.

  “You should see me in the shower.”

  Anne raised her eyebrows.

  “Too far?” he asked. He spared a quick glance at Fanny, his eyes drifting over the green flapper fringe skirt with so much longing that Anne almost thought he was going to give in to the urge to reach out and touch her.

  Anne tucked his hand into the crook of her elbow and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “Let’s see if all those fancy movie-star dance lessons paid off.”

  He threw his head back with a laugh and dragged her onto the dance floor. The gymnasium was dark except for the sweeping spotlights—“To represent helicopter search lights, obviously,” Emma had said—that spun through the room at a dizzying pace. The loud, pulsing music seemed to thrum up from the floor.

  Anne lost herself in being twirled around by Josh, in shaking back and forth, in stomping her feet and throwing up her hands. She needed this. She needed to close her eyes and let go. She’d spent the entire year holding on to things that seemed determined to slip away, and for just one nigh
t she wanted to stop fighting the inevitable.

  She wasn’t the only one. Josh also seemed determined not to think about Fanny, and he seemed to have decided the best way not to think about her was to devote every second of his time exclusively to Anne. He danced close, his arm occasionally roaming across her waist or his hand caressing her cheek. She felt a shiver, a thrill, beneath all that blue-eyed attention.

  She had kept herself from looking for Rick, bit her tongue so as not to ask Dante where he was. But after an hour, she found herself scanning the gymnasium, from the cluster of classmates around the punch bowl to the groups seated on the couches and the tired dancers lined up against the gymnasium walls.

  Henry skated by and cut off Anne’s view. She shook herself and swore to just be in the moment with her friends.

  Henry wore a top hat as high as Abraham Lincoln’s. His hair had grown out nearly to his chin for a movie role, and he looked like someone out of Oliver Twist. Kat danced around him, occasionally stealing his hat to cover her own riotous red curls before he stole it back.

  “Anne,” Henry said, his voice deep. “Did Kat ever tell you how I first got her attention?”

  Josh smirked. “You mean besides being pictured in a magazine?”

  Kat smacked Josh’s arm.

  Anne grinned at Henry. “Kat may have mentioned something about a dance…”

  “Watch this,” Henry said. He picked Kat up and swung her over his shoulder. The other couples on the floor quickly moved away to make room for Henry and Kat to do the Jitterbug, spinning and diving under each other’s legs, over each other’s heads, laughing louder than the swing music.

  When they were done, Anne clapped and elbowed Josh, who gave a mild shrug. “Save some moves for the red carpet,” Josh said. He glanced at Anne. “Want to be my date?”

  “Huh?” Anne asked.

  Kat clapped her hands. “Oh yes, please, Anne. You have to come. The horror movie we all filmed over Christmas releases this fall. Henry and Josh will be walking the red carpet at the premiere. We should both go as their dates.”