for the night. There was so much more to it than that. And as I stared at Aiden, I realized that when it came to dancing there wasn’t much choice in partners.
The projector screen flickered to life, pulling my attention away from Aiden. I walked farther into the room to get a better look at it and gasped when I saw a video call was displayed on the screen. There were little boxes all over the screen, and within each box were friends from school. They were all dressed in their prom dresses and suits.
“Say hello to everyone,” Aiden said, facing his laptop toward me.
I laughed and waved at the camera. “Hey, everyone!”
A series of greetings all echoed out of the speakers, along with a squeal that could only belong to Zoey. I grinned when I finally found her face on the screen. She still had her prom makeup on from her tutorial this morning and was wearing her hot pink prom dress. She looked gorgeous. I continued looking over the screen, searching for the rest of my friends. Most of my girlfriends were there, and so were almost all the guys Aiden was friends with as well as other seniors.
It felt like more than half our class was on the call. I walked over to the laptop and pressed the mute button so I could talk to Aiden. “Who exactly did you invite to this?” I asked. “And when on Earth did you put this together?”
“Well, I invited everyone at school. And I put this together while you were packing up your room.”
“You rounded up all these people for an iso-prom in one afternoon?”
He laughed. “You say that like it’s hard.”
“It is hard.”
“Not for me.”
I shook my head before focusing on the screen. I knew Aiden had influence at school, but this was something else. There wasn’t one other person in our class who could gather this many people in such a short space of time.
As I looked at the faces on the screen, I realized our friends weren’t alone. Some were with their siblings while others had gotten their parents involved. Aiden wasn’t the only one with sad-looking balloons and decorations. Zoey had covered her bedroom in so many streamers I couldn’t even see her bed.
“Right,” Aiden said, unmuting our end of the call once more. “I sent everyone the playlist. Don’t forget to put all your mics on mute, and let’s get this iso-prom started!”
I watched as everyone stepped away from their laptops and started dancing in front of their screens. Everyone was doing something different. One girl was dancing with her dad, and the boy in the box next to her was practically tripping over his younger siblings as they spun around. There was a girl who had a life-size cardboard cutout of Shawn Mendes, and I noticed Zoey was dancing with her cat. I quickly looked away when I spotted one of Aiden’s friends dancing with a blow-up doll, which I really wished I hadn’t seen.
The moment felt bittersweet. This was the only prom we were going to get, and it could never compare to the real thing. People were laughing as they danced with their families though. Some had their phones out and seemed to be talking with their friends. While this was different from the prom we’d all been looking forward to, it wasn’t bad.
As I looked over at Aiden, he smiled. His hair had fallen across his eyes, and, in the suit he was wearing, he looked like a wicked Prince Charming. This definitely wasn’t the prom I imagined. Never in my wildest dreams would I have pictured going with Aiden or dancing with him. I certainly couldn’t have imagined him looking at me the way he was right now.
“Will you dance with me?” Aiden asked, offering out a hand.
I nodded and slowly stepped toward him. His skin was warm as he took hold of me, and my fingers tingled in his grasp. My stomach tightened as he pulled me closer to him and lifted my arms so they were wrapped around his neck. My heart was racing as he rested his hands on my hips. We weren’t even dancing yet, and already it felt like too much.
We slowly started to move to the beat of the music, but my heart was rapidly pulsing out of sync. I didn’t know where to look, so I settled my gaze straight ahead on the small sliver of skin peeking out of the collar of