He did it again a moment later, the way you’d step around a puddle without making a scene. Brielle laughed too loudly and tried once more. Austin moved a full foot away from her and kept his eyes on the door.
It finally clicked. Brielle had attached herself to him the second he’d walked in. She’d been performing couplehood all night.
Austin had been quietly refusing to perform it back.
She reached for his arm.
A flicker of memory hit me.
At one point, when Austin tried to catch up with me that week, he asked, “Emma, can I tell you something before Saturday?”
I’d brushed him off.
Now his eyes locked onto mine across the gym, and there was no pity in them at all. There was something else. Something steady. Like he’d been waiting.
I’d brushed him off.
I suddenly remembered that Austin’s grandmother, Margaret, had lived next door to Grandma Ruth for as long as I could remember.
Forty years of porch coffees and birthday cards.
Before I could finish the thought, the music cut off. The principal stepped up to the microphone an hour after I’d arrived.
“And now, your prom king and queen! Austin and Brielle!”
Brielle glided to the stage as if she’d rehearsed it in her sleep. She was wearing her crown and holding flowers, smiling as if the night belonged to her.
Before I could finish the thought.
Austin followed a careful step behind her, the sash already draped across his shoulder and chest, but he wasn’t smiling at her. I noticed that he still hadn’t offered Brielle his arm. He took the microphone.
Brielle laughed as if she expected him to say something sweet about her, but Austin wasn’t looking at her.
His eyes found mine in the crowd.
Austin’s voice carried through the silent gym.
“There’s something important I need to say.”
The room went quiet.
Brielle beamed beside him, her fingers tightening around her flowers. I saw her lean in, expecting her name.
He took the microphone.
The ballots had been collected at the door hours earlier, dropped into a shoebox wrapped in foil before anyone had even reached the punch table. The votes had already been counted. The sash was already his.
Then Austin looked at Brielle.
“The girl in the dusty rose dress, Emma, is wearing a gown that belonged to my grandmother Margaret’s best friend, Ruth. Ruth was my grandmother’s best friend for over four decades.”
A murmur moved through the room. My knees went weak.
Then Austin looked at Brielle.
Austin continued as Brielle’s mouth hung open.
“Before Ruth passed, she asked for one thing. She told my grandmother that she wanted Emma to have her dance in the dress, and she wanted someone to watch out for her when she did. I promised I would.”
Brielle’s smile cracked.
“What happened to Emma tonight is something I can’t stay quiet about,” he said.
He lifted the king’s sash over his head and set it gently on the podium.
“I don’t want this. Not like this.”
He stepped down from the stage.
“I promised I would.”
The room parted as Austin crossed the floor toward me. I couldn’t breathe.
He stopped in front of me, and his voice dropped, soft.
“Emma. May I have this dance?”
“You promised her?” I whispered.
He nodded.
The DJ understood without a word.
I couldn’t breathe.
A slow song drifted into the silence, and Austin took my hand.
Brielle stood frozen onstage, her crown tilting, her mouth agape, the flowers loose in her grip. Nobody was looking at her anymore. She slipped down the side steps and out the gym doors, and no one stopped her.
I smiled and rested my head against Austin’s shoulder. The satin moved against my skin like a second heartbeat.
“She arranged this, didn’t she?” I murmured.
“Months ago. Through Margaret. They worked it out between them,” Austin confessed.
No one stopped her.
Tears slid down my cheeks. I felt my grandma in every step, in every turn of the dusty rose dress.
I’d kept my promise. And somehow, so had she.