Mistakes We Never Made

6 Mistake One The Prom

(Eleven years before the wedding)

IT WAS MAY OFjunior year, and the air was sticky and thick with the scent of jasmine. We’d just won state, which, for debate kids, was the equivalent of winning the big game. I can’t even remember what our topic was—stem cell research? The US adopting a monarchy? Something about the nuclear test ban treaty? What I do remember is the moment we won, Finn drew me into a bear hug and whispered, “We did it,” in my ear. I remember his smell—woodsmoke and lavender—and his warm, surprisingly strong arms around me. I remember his whiskey-colored eyes sparkling as he looked into mine.

On the ride back from Austin, the team threw open the school bus windows and passed around a water bottle full of vodka, laughing and singing and celebrating our victory. As always, Finn and I were sitting together in the last row. I wasn’t a big drinker in high school. I’d only snuck a hard lemonade or two from Sybil’s garage fridge during sleepovers when Mr. and Mrs. Rain were out. But I was a certified pro compared to straitlaced seventeen-year-old Finn. After only a few sips from the water bottle, he was looser, bolder, gigglier, imitating our chaperone Mrs. DiTullio with such a pitch-perfect nasal drawl that I laughed until I cried.

We were just pulling back into the school parking lot when Finn turned to me and asked if I wanted to go to junior prom with him. I was floored. Up until that moment, I hadn’t allowed myself to admit that I had a crush on Finn. Prom was only a week away, and I planned on just going stag with Willow and some of her theater friends. But now, I had a date. Not just hanging out at a friend’s house at the same time—but my first-ever real date. I said yes with a smile, and Finn slipped his hand into mine.

A few days later, we all met at Willow’s house before prom to take photos. I was giddy, wondering if Finn would shake my mom’s hand when I introduced them, or if she’d bust out mortifying baby pictures saved to her phone. But twenty minutes passed, and there was no sign of Finn. I worried that maybe we got our signals crossed. Did he think we were meeting at the dance? I sent him a couple of texts but got no response. Meanwhile, everyone else was pairing off, both their mom and dad there to take photos of them. My mom, the only parent without a spouse, and me, the only kid without a date.

“Sweetie, let me get a photo of just you, okay?” I nodded because I didn’t trust myself to say anything. “We’ll get a photo of you with Willow too.” My mom waved Willow over.

“Em, are you okay?” Willow asked quietly as she put her arm around my waist.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Willow gave me a look like I was being ridiculous, but must’ve seen how I was barely holding it together, because she didn’t say more. I mirrored her pose, throwing my arm around her waist, and putting on my most dazzling smile for the camera. Until it became clear that Finn wasn’t going to show, I’d actually felt beautiful for once. But with each minute that ticked by with no sign of him, everything about my look began to feel wrong. My makeup was too harsh against my pale skin. My auburn hair clashed with the bubblegum pink of my taffeta dress. Willow has that photo framed on a gallery wall in her living room, but even now I can’t stand to look at it. All I can see is a girl in an ill-fitting gown playing at a life she’ll never have.

Sybil was going to prom with her boyfriend, Liam Russell, and their group was meeting up at his house. I felt grateful that at least I wasn’t getting stood up there. Liam and his church friends treated me like I must be recovering from some massive trauma since my parents were divorced. It always grated that they thought my mom wouldn’t be enough. She was more than enough, and I didn’t need a date to have a good time. At least, that’s what I repeated to myself over and over, standing there alone in Willow’s backyard.

After everyone else finished up with photos, my mom pulled me aside before we got in the limo.

“Honey, take my credit card. For dinner.” She pressed the thin slip of plastic into my hand, and I tucked it into my beaded purse. I realized that I was going to have to make it through dinner dateless before I could disappear into the crowd at prom.

The only one without a corsage or date in the limo, I kept flipping open my phone to see if I was missing texts from Finn, but there was just one from my mom: You look so beautiful! Love you. Finn’s friend Seth leaned across Willow and said, “He’s not answering my texts either.”

After we’d finished our meal at the steakhouse, the waiter came by with the checks. “Just by couple?” He looked directly at me. “And you, you’re alone?”

Seth said, “She’s with us.” It was the closest I came to crying that night.

“No, I’ve got it.” I pushed my mom’s credit card across the table with a soft scrape, relieved that she’d thought to give it to me. That I didn’t need a guy to take care of me.

When we got to the Radisson, where the prom was being held, I went straight to Sybil to tell her what happened. But before I could start, she said, “Liam and I broke up.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Sybs.” I was genuinely surprised. The two of them seemed so obsessed with each other. Actually, it always struck me as a little smothering. Maybe Sybil finally felt the same. But the look on Sybil’s face was definitely upset—though she looked more lost and distracted than heartbroken. “But wasn’t he your ride? How did you get here?”

“Finn let me borrow his car. I ran into him at the…” Sybil stopped as if catching herself. “At the mall.” She tucked a strand of shiny blond hair behind her ear, looking past me toward the bathrooms. “I’m gonna go find Katie Dalton and those girls,” she said—which I knew was code for going to bum a cigarette—and before I could say another word, she was walking away.

Frustration needled my temples. At Sybil—couldn’t she see how upset I was? Why was I the one always comforting her, making sure she was okay? Of course, Sybil would always be okay. Her glossy hair looked perfect against her navy-blue gown. Her makeup looked effortless against her sun-kissed skin. But mostly, my frustration was directed at one Finn Hughes. “Cha-Cha Slide” blared from the speakers, but all I could hear were Sybil’s words echoing in my head. Finn was at the mall? He’d let Sybil borrow his car? I’d felt sorry for myself before, and honestly a little worried about Finn, but now I was incandescent with rage. I looked down at my phone to see three missed calls and one text from him: Call me, pls. I remember being so livid that he couldn’t be bothered to type out the entire word please.

The plan had been to drive out to Willow’s family’s lake house after the dance, but I asked Willow and Seth to drop me off at Finn’s instead. I rang the doorbell, the sharp smell of fresh mulch mixed with the sweetness of Mrs. Hughes’s jasmine. Finn opened the door and stepped out onto the porch with me. He looked visibly upset. Good. He should be upset.

“What the hell, Finn?” I’d rehearsed what I was going to say to him on the way over, but actually seeing him in person leached away some of my anger, and the space it left behind filled with a watery sadness.

“I’m…” He took a second to finish. “I’m sorry, I just totally forgot about prom.” It was early May, but the heat of summer had already crept in and curled itself around us. Oppressive. Suffocating.

“You forgot? You didn’t forget about Sybil,” I said. “I’m sorry she wasn’t available to take as a date and you only got her best friend as a consolation.”

“What? No. That’s not it at all. Emma, please. Do you want to come in? I can explain.”

“No, I don’t want to come in. You humiliated me in front of all our friends. You gave Sybil your car while you were shopping at the mall, and you couldn’t be bothered to text me?”

“Is that what she said?” He let out a deep breath as if resigning himself to something. Finn Hughes, who never fumbled for words, just stood there silently. Until finally, he said, “I’m sorry, Em.”

“Whatever. It’s fine.” I felt myself shutting down. Closing off. Severing the diseased limb before it could infect the rest of the body. “We were just going as friends anyway. Teammates, actually. We don’t need to make this some big thing.”

Finn’s face fell a fraction, but he just nodded. “If that’s what you want.” It’s not what I wanted. I wanted him to chase after me. To tell me that he was just as into me as I was into him. To explain how you forget your prom date, but not her manic pixie dream girl of a best friend. But in that moment, my pride won out. I stormed down his sidewalk, and when I was two blocks away, pulled off my heels and finally let the sadness totally overtake my anger. I cried the whole two-mile walk home, the hem of my dress ruined from being dragged along concrete.

Senior year, Finn dropped out of debate, and the junior I was paired up with in his absence was woefully inferior. We didn’t even make it past regionals. And somewhere in that time frame, Sybil became best friends with Finn. To this day I have no idea how it happened. As the madness of senior year set in, I distanced myself even further from Sybil. If she was going to hang with Finn after what he did to me, then maybe she wasn’t as good a friend as I thought she was.

We might never have reconnected if Sybil hadn’t suggested we travel together one summer during college. On that trip the vestiges of our old friendship slowly began to regrow, eventually blossoming back into the fierce connection we have today.

All through college we never spoke about prom or the dark period where our friendship had waned or anything relating to Finn Hughes, outside of the occasional life updates that Sybil would toss my way and I’d pretend to only half listen to. But the truth was, I soaked up every word—half hoping to hear that he had suffered some humiliation on the level of the mortification he caused me… half hoping for signs that the sweet, nerdy guy I’d fallen so hard for was still there, deep down. And that, one day, we too might find our way back to each other. But I knew better than to hold my breath. Finn had revealed himself to be careless with people’s hearts—with my heart. And when someone shows you who they are, you’re supposed to believe them. So I did.

But over the ensuing years, there’d be moments where I’d forget. I’d let myself get swept up in dreams of what Finn and I could be instead of accepting the reality in front of me. When I eventually learned the true story of why Finn stood me up for prom—a story that proved more complex than it first appeared—I thought perhaps I’d misjudged Finn. That perhaps things could work out between us after all. But in the end, my hopeful musings turned out be nothing but another mistake.