Carter
“Are you sure you’re okay to miss prom?” I ask for the twenty-second time.
our non-prom.”
“Okay.” I give her a goofy smile.
Going to prom wasn’t really an option, as Maggie still isn’t ready for the world (meaning Chord and her family) to know about
us. I keep telling her she could go on her own. You only get one senior prom. And, if you’re me, you might never even get
that.
But she insisted on skipping, so we drove several towns over to this seafood restaurant where we won’t know anyone. We’re
sitting outside on a beautiful spring night, twinkle lights strung above, as a cheesy cover band called Beachy Bill and the
Bobcat Boys provides background music. I’m wearing one of the two ties I own—this one has Spider-Man on it—and Maggie is in
a yellow sundress, her hair up so I can see every freckle on her shoulders.
It’s hard to imagine that any prom could be better than this.
“Hey,” I say once we’ve ordered, “can I ask you something kind of funny?”
“What kind of funny are we talking about?” Maggie asks, her eyes narrowing. “Hilarious? Uncomfortable? Embarrassing? Strange?”
“Maybe all of those?”
“Okay, yeah. Go for it.”
“So, I guess I’m wondering . . .” I unfold my cloth napkin. “What was it like the first time we dated?”
“Aha,” Maggie says, and I can tell she’s the slightest bit uncomfortable. We’ve been secretly hooking up for almost two months
now, and it’s been pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me. (At least, as far as I can remember.) But this is
the part of being with her I’ve enjoyed the least, having a history that only she knows, needing SparkNotes for my own relationship.
“What was it like?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Like, the first time we dated. And when we first met. Your first impression of me. What we did on dates. Stuff
like that.”
“Oh.” Maggie takes a sip of her water and crunches an ice cube. “Well, I mean, we met at Scoops ’n’ Sprinkles. Which I think
you already know.”
“And was I an attractive scooper?”
“The most attractive,” Maggie says. “My god, such dazzling scoop work.”
“Were you, like, immediately into me?”
“I . . . I was. Yes.” Maggie shifts in her chair. “But can we come back to this topic? Another time? I just feel sort of put
on the spot. Or something.”
“Oh,” I say. “For sure. I wasn’t trying to . . . Sorry.”
“It’s totally fine.” Maggie squeezes my knee under the table, which only slightly eases the curdling sense that I’ve messed
up somehow. “Will you dance with me?” she asks, standing up and extending her hand.
“Here?”
“Yes, here! Beachy Bill needs us.” She points at the fiftysomething white men with instruments, who have just started playing a buoyant and aggressive rendition of “Brown-Eyed Girl.”
“Yeah, okay.” I reluctantly rise. Maggie lifts my arm and spins herself underneath it, which makes me laugh.
I spin Maggie close and wrap my arms around her waist.
She puts her arms around my neck.
“I like you so much,” she says, as we sway back and forth to some of the most unsubtle sha-la-las I’ve ever heard in my life.
“I like you so much,” I say.
“Okay, good,” she says, her breath tickling my ear. “Glad we’re agreed.”
We dance beneath the twinkle lights until our food arrives.
It’s one of my favorite nights of all time.
And we emerge from it closer than ever. Over the next couple weeks—other than when Maggie goes away for the weekend with her
family for her sister’s commencement—we hang out almost every day.
Never at school, sometimes in my car, but mostly at my house.
And it’s not just making out!
We also watch classic nineties movies and play Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo Switch (Maggie, despite never having played before, is exceptionally good at it) and sing along to throwback
playlists of hits from ten years ago (so that I have a shot at knowing the lyrics).
But okay, yeah, it’s a lot of making out. In my bed. With the door shut tight.
“Hey,” I say now, my free hand moving up and under Maggie’s T-shirt as my lips descend from her mouth to her chin to her neck.
“I have a question.”
It’s something I’ve been wanting to ask for a while, but since she shut down all lines of inquiry at our non-prom, I’ve had a hard time finding the right moment. It feels more urgent every day, though.
“Uh-huh,” Maggie whispers.
“Did we ever, you know . . . do it?”
“You mean have sex?” she asks. “Almost. But no. Not yet.”
“Maybe we should,” I say, my lips still grazing her neck. “One day. At some point in the next six and a half months. Not that
I’m keeping track of time or anything.”
I’m expecting Maggie to laugh at this, but she just says, “Yeah. I would like that.”
OH HELL YEAH.
“Okay. Cool,” I say. I shift upward, so I can look into her eyes, but she pulls away and propels herself from the bed.
“Hold on, sorry. I keep hearing my phone buzz.” Maggie digs around in her bag on the floor, then crouches staring at her phone
with an increasingly disturbed look on her face.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Um, it seems my dad is . . . coming to my mom’s wedding?”
“Is that bad?”
“Well, it’s not good!”
“Okay.” I sit up, recognizing that our make-out session is going to be on hold for a moment.
“I mean,” Maggie says, finally standing up out of her crouch, “I wrote a song for my mom and Ron, all about their love and
stuff, and now I have to perform that in front of my dad?”
“Will he be . . . jealous? Does he want to get back together with your mom?”
“No. It’s not that.” Maggie slowly paces around the room. “They were . . . They weren’t the right fit. But I know he’s bummed about the wedding. Like, six years after the divorce, Mom is moving on and he’s . . . not. I didn’t think he’d want to be there to watch, though.”
“Your mom invited him?”
“No, he asked her if he could come, which is so my dad. He said he wanted to see my band play. And see my sister officiate.
’Cause she’s, like, the one leading the ceremony.”
“Oh. That’s cool. What is her name again?”
Maggie pauses at the window, staring outside. “My sister?”
“Yeah.”
“Vivian.”
“Vivian . . . Was she in my grade?”
“Um. Year below you.”
“Vivian Spear . . . Oh yeah! I think I remember who that is. She’s pretty.”
“Mm.”
Maggie’s voice has gone cold, and I realize maybe it’s not the classiest thing to tell the girl you’ve just been making out
with that you think her sister is attractive.
“Not as pretty as you, though!” I backpedal. “At all! Obviously. You’re the hottest girl I’ve ever known. I was just trying
to be nice.”
“Thanks, Coco.” She doesn’t sound mad. Just kind of sad. Or something. She turns around from the window and sits back down
next to me. “Anyway, Ron told Mom she should tell my dad he’s welcome, that it could be healing for the whole family if he’s
there, so she did.” She chucks her phone onto her bag. “Kinda makes me want to barf.”
“Feel free. Just aim for the carpet and not my lap.”
Maggie falls backward onto the bed, arms sprawled out above her. “Why is everything so stupid?”
“I ask myself that all the time. Don’t move.” I grab my camera from the dresser and frame Maggie, adjusting the focus.
“Hey, I didn’t grant permission for this.”
“I’m sorry, your breathtaking beauty made me forget myself. Can I take your picture? In honor of you graduating in less than
a month?”
“I guess so.” She stretches her mouth into a giant smile. “Anything in my teeth?”
“Nope, you’re golden.” I snap a pic, then another and another. Maggie’s completely goofy at first but gradually relaxes into
something more natural. I snap a few more, then look at them in the viewfinder. The end-of-day light is shining onto her in
this almost ethereal way. It’s like she’s glowing.
“Can I see?” Maggie is up on one elbow.
“Not yet.” I surprise myself with how decisively I pull the camera away.
“Come on!” Maggie paws at my shoulder. “Why not?”
“Because I’m worried I actually suck at this.”
“So what if you do?”
“Then I’ll feel stupid and embarrassed and not want to take photos ever again?”
“You’re insane,” Maggie says. “Take one we’re both in.”
I mess around with the depth of focus, then grab Maggie around the waist with one arm and hold my camera out with the other.
I snap a few pics.
“Yay! Can I at least see those?” Maggie asks.
“Nope.”
Maggie sighs and drops back onto her side. “You wouldn’t let me see your pictures in the fall either, even though you’d obviously
gotten very good at it.”
“How about this,” I offer. “When you tell your family and the rest of the world about us, then I’ll show you these photos.”
Maggie sighs. “I am going to tell them, okay? I promise. Just not yet.”
“Okay. But I could be your date at the wedding. I could follow you around with a barf bag.”
Maggie sits up and throws her arms around my shoulders from behind, nestling her head next to mine. “I appreciate that. And
I’m so happy about this. About us. It’s just . . . My mom and dad and sister don’t want me to be with you a second time for
the same reason I didn’t want to. They know I’ll likely get hurt again.”
“I know, I know,” I say, turning myself around so I can face Maggie again. “But maybe you won’t! Like, maybe my apology to
Layla really did shift something. And either way, we’re feeling good now, right? Doesn’t your family care about that? Instead of just you being happy in the future?”
Maggie looks into my eyes with this unreadable expression. Maybe hopeful. Maybe scared. “Is it okay if I just say no on this?
For . . . reasons?”
“It is,” I say.
She kisses me, and I kiss her, and the make-out hold is officially lifted.
“One sec,” Maggie says, lifting her hand off my thigh and bending down to reach for her bag. “I just—” She pokes around in her bag for a moment before stepping over to my desk. She opens the drawer and studies its contents. “Aha!” She triumphantly lifts up a pack of wintermint gum. “Still here!”
“Ha, what?”
“I left this in there in the fall! For moments like this!” She unwraps a piece and pops it into her mouth. “I love that it’s
still here. You want?”
“Uh . . . I don’t think so.”
“Okay. I feel better now, thanks.” She sits back down and leans in, and we’re kissing again.
But I’m still thinking about the gum.
Like, that’s my desk. And I didn’t even know that was in there. But Maggie did.
She stops. “You all right, Coco?”
“Yeah. Totally.” I clutch the edge of my mattress, trying to shake off this feeling. “You know, I have no idea why you call
me that.”
“Coco?”
I nod. “It’s like an inside joke between you and the old me.”
Maggie is silent for a moment. “Yeah. I’m sorry,” she says finally. “When we first started hanging out, I was using both your
names a lot. Like calling you Carter Cohen, just in everyday conversation. And then that shortened to CarCo, but you complained
that it sounded like a discount car brand.”
“It does. CarCo is the worst nickname I’ve ever heard. Also sounds like a rotting—”
“Carcass. Yes. That was your other line of complaint. So I switched to Coco as a joke. Which you also kind of hated, but maybe
secretly sort of loved?”
“Huh. I do like that Pixar movie. And I’m kinda like that kid. We both wear hoodies a lot.”
“Actually,” Maggie says, folding my fingers into hers, “I would joke with you about that song Miguel sings to get his great-grandma Coco to remember her dad. ‘Remember Me.’”
“Oh. Yeah. More relevant than the hoodies.”
We both go quiet, reminded of the horror of our situation. Because, once I looped, I definitively did not remember Maggie. And I’ll likely forget her again. I sort of am Coco. But no song, not even that one Maggie wrote about me, is going to snap me out of it.
I must lighten the mood.
“In that case,” I say, “maybe I should call you Maguel.”
“Please, no,” Maggie says, gently shoving my chest. “You tried to do that last time too.”
“Of course I did. Because it’s a brilliant nickname. Why do you get to call me Coco but I can’t call you Maguel?”
Maggie throws her head back and sighs. “Fiiiiine. I guess you can if you really, really need to.”
“I do, Maguel. I really, really do.”
Maggie narrows her eyes, touches her forehead to mine, and growls.
I growl back.
Her gum slides into my mouth as we start kissing again.