16. Archer #2
“Should I give you two a minute?” Willow asks, pinning her hair into a massive roller.
“No.” I step into Allie, grasping her face and planting my lips against hers—warm and soft, yet hesitant. “You two get ready and I’ll see you in a little while, okay?”
She sighs, nearly collapsing against my chest—like all the apprehension swirling inside her is washed away against my body. I know, because I feel the same.
“I love you,” I whisper into her hair.
She hugs me tighter. “I love you too.”
I played “Only One” just before Allie came down the stairs, and while I thought it was funny, she damn near burst into tears the minute the chorus played, and she stumbled off the bottom step and into my arms. It was an effort to console her before she ruined her carefully crafted makeup.
“More beautiful than the sunset,” I’d whispered in her ear.
A fitting compliment, I think, considering her dress is orange.
Thin straps and a cinched waist, tightened with drawstrings pulled tight across her bare back, it tapers off at the knees, flowing to the floor while highlighting her curves to fucking perfection.
Geometric designs are printed into the fabric, outlined with sparkles.
The entire dress is covered in some kind of sparkly netting, and a slit up the left side shows off the smooth, tawny skin of her thigh.
She wore her hair in its natural curls, a few strands pinned on the sides with orange butterfly clips.
I imagined she’d be beautiful, but I hadn’t expected this.
I knew the dress was orange because I had to get my tux to match, and my aunt Darby helped me pick out a corsage that would look best with it.
An orange tiger lily is what she went with, and as I fasten it over Allie’s wrist now, I know my aunt was absolutely right.
The clips in her hair remind me of the ones she wore when she was a little girl, and I was just beginning to realize that I might fall in love with her someday. Now, we’re about to become adults, and I’ve got no fucking doubt.
Allie Evans is the love of my entire goddamn life. What a privilege I’ve had to see her grow from that girl to the woman in front of me.
We’re in Darby and Leo’s backyard now, and I’m feeling somewhat like a fucking show animal at an auction as Allie attempts to pin my boutonniere to my jacket while our parents jump around us taking photos from a million different fucking angles.
We take couples photos, then group photos with my brother, cousin, and their dates.
Finally, we reach a point where we’re so burnt out we start flipping off the cameras and making stupid faces before Allie has a fit and decides to just sit right in the grass.
I laugh, peering down from where I stand next to her.
She crosses her arms and pouts at me, and according to her mom, inadvertently recreates a photo of us from her fifth birthday party.
Our parents tire of us after that and let us leave.
We get dinner at a pier-side restaurant with an ocean view before driving out to the hotel in downtown Pacific Shores where prom is being held in the ballroom and adjoining courtyard.
Twinkle lights, floral arrangements, and multi-colored strobes accent the ballroom, with a balloon arch leading outside where there is another dance floor set up beneath a tent of Edison lights, and a refreshment table with a seating area at the perimeter.
Most of the evening is spent with Allie and Willow dancing together, and though she pulls me in often, I get the most joy from watching her shine. She’s most herself when on the center of the dance floor, swaying around and gathering all of the attention in the room.
She’s been a little distant since this morning when my mom broke her news. It probably would’ve been best saved for later, but I think she was so excited to tell Allie about the opportunity that she couldn’t hold it in.
I think it took us all by surprise when Allie showed hesitation to accept it.
I can’t stand the fact that I’m likely the reason for that.
When a slow song finally floats through the room, I pull Allie outside to the less crowded dance floor and away from my family.
I just want a moment alone with her. To touch her. Hold her. Love her.
She smiles up at me, but it doesn’t reach her glittering eyes. I wrap my hands around her lower back, tugging her against me. Her hands snake around my neck, and we begin to sway to the slow, sad song.
“You look so beautiful tonight, Allie,” I whisper.
Her glimmering gaze searches mine before I notice her full bottom lip begin to tremble, and she blinks rapidly, eyes falling to her feet. “I’m going to cry.”
“Why, Amor?” I laugh lightly. “I call you beautiful all the time.”
“This one feels like goodbye,” she murmurs. “Everything tonight feels like goodbye.”
I open my mouth to tell her it’s not, but something inside me stops short.
I’ve been smiling all day, laughing, doing all I can to give her the ease I think she needs to have the experience she deserves.
But…yeah. After my mom broke the news this morning, I’ve been anticipating a more painful conversation.
A creeping awareness has been pricking at my neck for months. My last football game, her last dance competition, prom, graduation—then separation.
Allie and I are perfect together, but somehow we end up in catastrophe when we’re apart. We break our own hearts, and we lose sight of not only our individual dreams, but of each other too. We make promises that I’m terrified distance will prove too great to keep.
And deep down, I don’t know if we’ll survive it.
That awareness sank deeper after the conversation with my mom. I’ll be damned if Allie doesn’t take that opportunity and go with her, but I don’t know what our relationship is going to look like knowing that after she leaves in June, I won’t see her again until November.
“We don’t have to say goodbye yet,” I whisper, mouth hovering above her ear before I press a kiss to her head. “We can enjoy tonight.”
When I pull back, and her lashes flutter upward, it’s a flame burning in her dark gaze. “But it is goodbye?”
“Allie.” I sigh. “You’re going to Italy.”
She rears back, attempting to pull away, but I grip her tighter. “Who are you to make a decision for me? What if I want to stay?”
“You want to stay for me. Just like I wanted to stay for you. You didn’t let me do that, and I won’t either.”
“I can miss one trip one summer, Archer. It’s not going to change my life the way TU is changing yours. It’s—it’s okay.” She stumbles over her words, eyes welling with tears as she rapidly shakes her head. “Time with you is more important. I don’t care about the program that much.”
“Allie,” I rasp, sliding my hands up her body to cup her face. “No. You can’t do that. You can’t lose yourself for the sake of us. We’ll never make it that way.”
“We’ll never make it if we’re apart.” Her voice breaks, and tears spill over.
“We’ll find our way back together. We will.” I assure her. “But not if you start giving up your life for me. Not like that. I don’t want us if that’s what it means to be together.”
“What are you saying?” Her voice lifts above the music, and I glance around to realize we must be causing a scene, because we’re the only couple still out here.
“You’re going to go to Italy, okay? You’re going to go to college, and I don’t want you feeling any obligation to me. I want you to experience all that you can with…” I swallow, because my next words feel like fucking nails in my throat. “With whoever you want.”
Devastation overtakes her pretty face, lip curling with anguish as her eyes dart away—unable to look at me.
“You know why?” I tilt her head up, forcing her gaze back to me.
“Because I’m coming back for you, Allie.
Someday, we’re going to end up together.
I’ll make fucking sure of that. And when we do, you won’t ever, for a single second, question it.
You’ll choose me because you’ll have lived and grown into the woman you are meant to become—all on your own.
And even then, you’ll know it was always going to be me. Us.”
“That’s not something I need to learn, Archer. I already know.”
“Promise me, Allie,” I snap. “Promise me you’ll go to Italy. Promise me you’ll come home and you’ll give yourself every college experience. You’ll party, and you’ll dance, and you’ll bake and create. Take every opportunity, so that when you choose me in the end, you’ll know.”
“What about you?” she cries.
I swipe my thumb beneath her eye. “I chose football.”
I love Allie with every fiber of who I am, and I know that I won’t ever want a woman the way I want her, but at the end of the day, I didn’t choose her entirely.
I chose my sport, and a future in it. If she’d followed me, or sat around and waited for me, the guilt would eat me alive because I wasn’t willing to do the same for her.
I know that someday we’ll figure out a way to balance it all. My dreams, and hers. The place we fit into each of them. We’ll find happiness and fulfillment, and nothing will feel sacrificed.
But right now, we’re seventeen, and it all feels like fucking sacrifice.
“Promise me.”
She nods, dropping her head against my chest. “I promise.”
I hold her tightly, rocking us around the empty dance floor, savoring the warmth of her skin, the heat of her breath, and the thrumming of her heart against me.
It wasn’t the way I intended our night to go, and I wonder if we’ll walk away from this as shattered remains of the whole beings that stepped outside together at the start of this song.
We’re slow dancing, but it feels as if the room is burning down all around us.