Prom Night
A cheap disco ball spun above the crowd of dancing teenagers, casting sparkling light all around our smelly high school gymnasium.
No amount of streamers, stringed lights, or tablecloths could disguise the basketball hoops and the scent of sweat that lingered.
My date, Cassandra, looked nice, and we were having a relatively good time.
But all that changed when Serafina walked through the door with the luckiest guy in the whole world.
All the cliché things from the rom-coms she watched happened the moment I laid eyes on her: time stopped, the music around me faded into a blurry conglomeration of noise, and everyone else in the room disappeared.
I would have given everything I owned to be the guy her arm was looped around.
The way her satiny gold dress draped around her curves had me stupefied.
The light from the doorway danced on her silky dark curls, but it was the tiny flowers pinned like a crown around her head that made my brain short-circuit.
Heaven forbid she turn around; her butt was my secret kryptonite, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist dropping my gaze.
I drank her in when she had no idea I was watching her, finally understanding why Mr. Darcy loved Elizabeth “most ardently.” I, too, was bewitched, body and soul.
I needed to quit watching these movies with her.
Her chocolate-brown eyes found mine, and her red lips parted into the most captivating smile I had ever seen.
I fought to catch my breath, and my heart railed against my ribcage like an angry animal.
She may have gotten all dolled up for stupid Paul Gibbons, but at that moment in time, she was staring directly at me.
I returned her smile and waved discreetly at her so our dates wouldn’t see.
She released the grip she had on her purse long enough to return the wave.
When a slow song began to play, Paul whisked her onto the dance floor, and Cassandra dragged me out there too.
I steered Cassandra close enough to Sera that I could make eye contact with her in the dimly lit space between us, and timed our circles to sync.
Every time I spun to face her, she locked eyes with me.
Then I noticed it: the way she let Paul hold her to dance was the “friend position” I had taught her a few days earlier on the patio.
I smiled knowingly at her and moved Cassandra to the same stance.
Sera winked, and for the rest of the song, our eyes held a secret conversation in a language no one else spoke.
As the night drew to a close, the lights came on, and the harsh fluorescent glow replaced the quasi-romantic one we had spent the last few hours in.
Cassandra unpinned her hair and gathered up her shoes.
I loosened my bowtie and unbuttoned the top button of my shirt.
I looked all around the gym for Sera, hoping to at least tell her how beautiful she looked before the spell broke at midnight and she’d go back to being my best friend’s kid sister.
I spotted her just as Paul was putting his tuxedo jacket around her and leading her toward the exit.
She glanced one more time over her shoulder, and the fire that burned in my chest gave me an iron-clad resolve:
I would never watch her walk away with another guy again.