21. Lucy #3
“I’m trying not to overinflate your ego before we’ve left the house.”
“Too late. I’m already there.”
Dad took another picture. And suddenly, it was a full event.
Dad directed us to stand by the fireplace, then by the front door, then near the stairs because apparently the railing had “nice lines.” Arlo muttered that Dad had become a lifestyle photographer.
Naomi posed dramatically with one hand on her hip while Ty informed her she looked like she was about to judge a baking competition.
She told him he looked like a very attractive tablecloth. He bowed slightly and said he accepted.
I stood in front of the fireplace while Dad looked through the camera, adjusting something with far too much concentration.
“Dad,” I said softly.
He lowered the camera a little. His eyes were wet again.
“Oh my God,” Arlo muttered. “He’s going to lose it.”
“I am not,” Dad said. “I’m focusing.”
“On not crying?”
“Arlo.”
Ty laughed under his breath.
Dad cleared his throat and lifted the camera again. “You look beautiful, Lucy.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He took the picture.
Then Ty stepped beside me. His hand found mine out of habit, fingers warm and familiar, and the contact steadied me so quickly it almost scared me. I glanced up at him. He was already looking at me.
The room, the camera, Naomi’s teasing, Arlo’s suspicious glare, Dad’s emotional sniffle—all of it blurred around the edges.
Ty squeezed my hand once.
I squeezed back.
Dad took the picture.
“You have her home by midnight,” Arlo said.
Dad gave him a look. “That is my line.”
Arlo shrugged. “You were busy with the tripod.”
“I’ll have her home by midnight.”
Dad hugged me before I left. He held on longer than usual. When he released me, his eyes flicked briefly toward the desk upstairs where the Aldenmere letter sat. He did not say anything in front of Ty. Neither did I.
But I felt the future waiting up there. Folded in creamy paper. Too big to fit in my room.
Outside, the evening had turned soft and cool.
The last of the daylight stretched across the street, turning the bare branches gold at the tips.
Betsy sat crooked at the curb, freshly washed or at least aggressively sprayed with a hose.
The old truck gleamed in patches where the water had dried unevenly.
Ty hurried ahead to open my door. “Careful,” he said, suddenly serious as he looked at the layers of my skirt.
I laughed as he took my hand and helped me climb into the passenger seat. The dress gathered around me in a sea of green, spilling over my knees and brushing the edge of the dashboard. Ty stood there for a second after I settled, one hand still resting on the open door.
“What?” I asked.
His eyes lifted to mine. The teasing slipped from his face. “Nothing,” he said quietly. “Just looking.”
My chest warmed so fast I had to look away. “Close the door, Burns.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He shut it gently, then jogged around the hood and climbed in beside me.
Betsy started on the second try, which Ty pretended was a personal triumph.
The radio came alive in the middle of a Beatles song, low and crackling through the speakers.
Something bright and familiar, all jangling guitar and old harmony, filled the cab as he pulled away from the curb.
The night moved around us in soft spring colors, porch lights flickering on, lawns still patchy from winter, the air cool enough that Ty cracked his window.
The breeze slipped in, carrying the smell of damp pavement and thawing earth and somebody’s charcoal grill starting up several houses away. My skirt rustled around my legs. Ty’s hand rested loose on the wheel, thumb tapping once against the beat before going still.
He glanced over at me.
“You’re staring,” I said.
“I know.”
“At least deny it.”
“I’m trying honesty tonight.”
I smiled down at my hands.
My joy had been waiting beneath my ribs since the moment I opened the letter, pushing up against my restraint, asking to be let out. I had planned to wait until after prom. Or during a slow dance. Or maybe tomorrow, when the night would not have to hold both glitter and gravity.
But I was eighteen.
And in love.
And the boy beside me had written my initial on his tape before the biggest game of his life.
“Ty.”
He glanced over immediately. “Yeah?”
“I got in.”
His brow furrowed for half a breath. Then he understood. Betsy drifted slightly toward the right side of the lane before he corrected it with a sharp little jerk. “Aldenmere?”
I nodded, and the smile broke across my face before I could make it smaller. “I got in.”
“Lucy.” The way he said my name nearly undid me. He pulled the truck to the side of the road so quickly I grabbed the edge of the seat.
“Ty.”
“What? I’m not hearing major life news while operating heavy machinery.” He shoved the gearshift into park and turned toward me fully, blue eyes wide and bright in the dim cab. “You got in?”
I nodded again, laughing now because his face, his whole face, had opened with joy. “I got in.”
“Shortcake.” He reached for me, then stopped because of the dress, apparently uncertain where he was allowed to touch. “Holy shit.”
Then he leaned across the space between us and kissed me.
It was not careful enough for lipstick. Not dramatic enough to ruin anything.
Just his mouth on mine, warm and smiling, one hand cupping my jaw while I laughed against him because I could feel his happiness.
It moved through him like sunlight. Unreserved.
Uncomplicated. Entirely mine for that moment.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine. “I’m so proud of you,” he said.
My breath skipped. Everyone had said it. Dad. Naomi. Arlo in his own emotionally stunted way. “You are?” I asked.
His head lifted. His expression changed. “Luce.”
“I know. I just—”
“Of course I am.” He brushed his thumb across my cheek. “You’re brilliant. And terrifying. And you write things in notebooks like a tiny secret genius. Aldenmere was lucky you applied.”
I smiled, but something inside me wobbled. The future pushed softly against the windows, asking to be acknowledged.
He studied me for a second. Then he looked away toward the road ahead, the smile still there but changed around the edges. He put Betsy back into drive and pulled carefully away from the curb.
We were not going the direct way to prom. I noticed after the second turn. “This is not the school,” I said.
“Nope.”
“Prom is at the Lakeside Pavilion.”
“Correct.”
“You’re going the long way.”
“Also correct.”
“Why?”
He glanced over, and the grin he gave me was pure Ty Burns. “Because you got into Aldenmere and you look like that, and if I have to walk into a room full of people right now, I’m going to say something embarrassing into a microphone.”
I laughed, settling back into the seat while the Beatles gave way to another old song, something with soft guitar and a voice that sounded like it had been playing from truck speakers long before either of us existed.
For a few minutes, we let the long way be enough.
Betsy rolled past the edge of downtown, past storefronts glowing against the evening, past the coffee shop where we had once argued for twenty minutes about whether hot chocolate counted as a personality trait.
The sky deepened slowly, blue folding into violet.
My dress whispered every time the truck hit a bump.
Ty’s hand found mine between us. I turned my fingers into his.
“So,” he said eventually. He inhaled, then let it out through his nose. “I need to tell you something too.”
My stomach dipped.
I had known. Since the section final, since the Fargo scout, since the way adults had started speaking around him instead of to him, since the way his name had grown heavier in hallways.
I had known something was coming. We had talked about long distance like it was a math problem.
Four years. Weekends. Phone calls. Summers. Temporary.
But knowing did not stop my body from reacting.
I kept my voice steady. “Okay.”
He laughed once, mostly at himself. “I’m going to Fargo.”
The words settled between us. Like snow beginning to fall over a road we still thought we could drive.
I looked down at our joined hands. “For the Force?” I asked.
His thumb stopped moving. “Yeah.” His voice warmed immediately, eager despite the carefulness. “I mean, there’s still camp and paperwork and all that, but Mercer called Coach, and Dad talked to him, and it’s real. They want me there after graduation.”
My fingers tightened around his. “What about St. Croix?” I asked.
“Still interested.”
“But you’re not going.”
He shook his head. “Not now.” Ty glanced over again, then back at the road. “College will always be there.”
He said it like something adults had said first. Something he had repeated until it fit comfortably in his mouth.
“And hockey won’t?” I asked.
His expression shifted, not defensive exactly. More honest than that. “Not this version of it.” He kept both eyes on the road, his profile lit by the faint glow of the dashboard. “I’m eighteen,” he said. “My body feels like it can do anything right now. I know that sounds cocky.”