frosting off my fingers.
“She said, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’”
“Ouch.”
“Agreed. It could have been worse, though. She could have said, ‘No way, loser! Get away from me!’ I think she was at least trying to be polite. And anyway, my friends and I beat the Dragonstar Arena on veteran that night, and that wouldn’t have been possible if I’d been at homecoming with Lola, so, I figure it was destiny.”
“Destiny, like the game.”
“No, the real thing.” He hands his empty plate to a passing waiter. “As in fate.”
“I go to a private Catholic school. All girls.”
“You’re Catholic?” He sounds surprised. Maybe because he thinks Catholics prefer to wait until they’re married to have sex, and that doesn’t exactly seem to be my modus operandi.
I shrug. “I am for the purposes of school, which basically means I go to mass once a week.”
“So you’ve never been to a dance, either,” he says.
“Well, yes, I have,” I admit. “I went to prom this year.”
“Oh. With the asshole.”
“Yes.” I remember the way my prom dress burned when I tossed in the fire in my backyard. It was pretty satisfying, watching it go up in flames like that. I turn my focus back to Nick. “So you’re a dance virgin.”
“I guess so.”
I stand up. “Not if I can help it. Not anymore.” I hold out my hand. “Dance with me.”
He takes my hand and jumps to his feet, like he’s been waiting for me to ask. “All right, let’s do this, doll.”
I stifle a smile. “You’re so weird.”
“You know it.” He catches his bottom lip in his teeth and does what could be interpreted as a disco move. “Now this is a first I can handle.”
I follow him onto the dance floor. The guy’s singing about a full moon rising, and dancing in the light, but there’s only a white sliver of moon in the sky above us. Nick spins me and then pulls me close to him, his feet moving steadily from one spot on the floor to another and back again. He isn’t a great dancer. But he tries. That counts for a lot.
I wind my arms around his neck. I am too tall to lay my head on his chest, like Afton did the other night with Michael, but I kind of lean my head against Nick’s. Not cheek to cheek, exactly, but close enough. I close my eyes and feel the tension slowly drain from my shoulders.
“It’s been a good night, hasn’t it?” Nick says. “Even if it had a bumpy start.”
“I’m sor—” I stop myself from apologizing. Sigh. “I think we managed to salvage it.”
“And we always have next year, right?”
“Right,” I say softly, but I don’t believe that, deep down, because I can’t imagine that what was wrong this year is somehow going to be right, next year. But I don’t want to think about that now. I want to dance. Breathe. Be myself. “Crashing the wedding was a good idea,” I admit.
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty smart,” he says.
“Humble, too.”
“Of course. And you forgot to mention that I am smoking hot.”
“How could I forget that? I can’t even think straight, right now, because you’re so blindingly attractive.”
We both laugh. Then silence falls between us.
“I want you to know, it wasn’t about you not being sexy,” I say after a long moment.
He doesn’t answer, but his Adam’s apple jerks in his neck.
“I did think you were sexy. I mean, I still do. It wasn’t about that.”
“Okay.”
“It just didn’t feel right. That’s all.”
“I know. I really didn’t know what I was doing.”
“No, the thing is, I just found out that—” The words catch in my throat. The secret is stuck there, and suddenly I want nothing more than to get it out. So I make myself say it: “My mom’s having an affair.”
He stops dancing for a second, but I hold on and continue moving, keeping us close so he can’t see my face. He falls into the rhythm again, the slow back and forth of our feet.
“How did you find out?” he asks.
I tell him everything. About me blundering into the hotel room that day, yes, but also about Mom and Pop and how solid I thought things were between them until recently. I even fill him in about Afton and her drama. It takes dancing to two more songs.
Nick doesn’t say much. He’s the epitome of a good listener, quietly taking in all that I have to say. Then he simply says, “No wonder you put