Linda was busy giving a rundown on the video she was recording and Martin was snapping photos of me staring like an idiot at the screen. Jere picked me up off the chair and spun me around. I screamed and laughed, tears pouring down my cheeks. We had dinner and I talked endlessly about what environmental engineers did and how I was looking forward to the hard work, living in a city with history, all of it.
Linda and Martin eventually went home, and I found myself in my room with Jere. Vibrations shuttered through me, rising and falling in intensity. It was a nervous-excited shiver I couldn’t seem to shake.
Jere smiled a big grin that reached for his ears and made his eyes sparkle like stars. “So, you’ve conquered high school and got accepted to a fancy college. That just leaves prom…”
“We’re not talking about prom now! Besides, nothing has changed from last year or the year before. I’m not going.”
He pouted his bottom lip out that made it hard for me to turn down anything he’d decided upon. “Oh, come on, it will be fun. Besides, this is yourlastchance. Don’t be that kid that regrets not going twenty years down the line.”
“You forget I have no one to go with. I mean, you’d think out of seventy-eight boys there’d be more than one gay kid,” I lamented. Living in a smallish town was boring, but the solitude was worse. Of course, statistically speaking there were more gay kids in our school, but none of them were speaking up.
Jere shrugged. “I’ll go with you.”
“W-what?”
“You need someone to go with, who else better than your best friend?”
Eying him, I couldn’t think of a reason why he would do such a thing. “You’d give up going with Erica or Linda or even Alexia to try and make me feel better?”
“Buddy. Danny. I can have any girl anytime I want. Besides, Jackson Tomlin says playing hard to get will just make them want me more,” he said, a wicked glint entering his eye.
“Don’t listen to that meathead, Jere.” I folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t get what they see in you. You flirt with them but never actually go on a date. You blow through like a tornado, leaving behind debris, crushing vulnerable, young girls’ dreams of dating the most handsome boy in high school.”
“It’s a girl kind of thing, I guess. They all want to be the one to fix me or so I’ve read inTeen Vogue.Twilightis all the rage.” He must have realized what he’d said because he turned the color of a strawberry. Jere was not the quarterback, nor the most popular boy in school. Three years in a row he’d been voted “Golden Retriever,” a position created just for him. He was like an adorable, clumsy puppy you couldn’t help but to like and if anyone threatened you, he didn’t hesitate to bare his teeth. “Man, the school nurse needs to update their reading material.”
I let out a sigh that sent my hair fluttering.
Jere grumbled something then cleared his throat. “Maybe I don’t want to waste senior prom with some clingy, boring girl that knows nothing about me. Maybe I’d rather go with my best friend who is the coolest person in the world.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t help being charmed by Jere. I smiled until my cheeks hurt. That coming from him meant the world. “Fine, I’ll go.Wewill go as friends.”
Jere pumped his fist in the air. I couldn’t believe a nerd like me was going to prom with my best friend, the hottest kid in school.
I was going to MIT. And leaving my best friend behind.
For a brief moment I wanted to ask him to come with me, but I wasn’t sure how that would work. I hadn’t told him yet what Mom had told me this morning. She had a good job lined up in Chicago. After I went off to college, she was moving several hours away to a larger city and leaving this town behind.
I worried about Jere. His father was a piece of crap. Who was going to take care of him when I was gone? He could be naive at times. Innocent, almost.
“Since we’re going to prom together, who wears the dress?” he inquired. I knew it was a completely honest question for him.
We shared a laugh, but I could see the sadness in his eyes. I was going to have to leave him, and it would break our hearts.
CHAPTER ONE
Jere
Some people stayed with you your entire life. Sometimes you heard their laughter in a crowd, the lilt of a voice uniquely theirs, or got a whiff of a scent that sparked a memory. It was the little things that made you think of them, a snippet of the past you’d thought you’d forgotten. But when that special person left me, he hadn’t taken everything. He’d left a thread attached to my heart and every now and then it tugged at my ticker.
In The Devil’s Den on a Saturday night, the triggers were endless.
Mostly it was the music. The techno beat was a remix of a vintage tune taking me back to my high school days. It snagged me to a time when my best friend and I had spent our days in his room, goofing off while pretending to study. He’d never needed to study because he was a genius, whereas I was dim, but his attempts to pound fractions into my brain had come with a side of entertainment.
I thought about my best friend Danny often. We still texted and talked every week, but the times I’d gotten to see him over the years were too far and few. Everything seemed to remind me of him lately and I wasn’t sure why. I supposed, I missed him and the nostalgia of our childhood.
A group of well-dressed men walked into The Devil’s Den and took a seat in a corner booth. The strip club was one of a few in Springfield, Illinois. A majority of the customers were city workers and traveling lawmakers looking to enjoy their weekend after a long, grueling week of fucking over the working class. Then there were the regulars, who had nothing else to do than drink and leer at half-naked women. All in all, it was a typical evening.
It didn’t take long for the group to become a problem. I eyed one guy in particular, his expensive gray suit and shiny oxfords giving off theI can do whatever I wantvibes I was used to. He was on the younger side—late twenties, maybe. He’d had one too many and was riling up his buddies while lamenting about the club having too many rules regarding no contact with the dancers.
