"Hey, yourself."
He leans in and presses his lips to mine. My heart flutters in my chest. Will I ever get used to this? I hope not.
Xander sits back and meets my gaze. He looks nervous—reallynervous. Is he serious right now? Does he think I'll say no? Silly boy.
"T, I…"
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it's not prom but something else entirely—something bad. "What's going on, Xan? Is something wrong?"
His eyes widen. "No, no. Nothing bad." He rubs the back of his neck. "I, uh… I was just wondering if maybe you wanted to, uh, gotopromwithme?"
Heisnervous over prom. Incredible. I would never have expected that from him. He's always so confident. Hmm. Maybe he's not as confident as I think he is.
"Really?" I ask with a grin.
He nods and swallows hard.
I narrow my gaze. I'm not going to force him to do something he doesn't want to and he looks really uncomfortable right now. "Are yousureyou want to go, Xander? If you don't, that's totally fine with me."
He pauses and looks at me blankly. "No. I do. Do you not want to go with me?" he asks, his voice squeaking. He clears his throat.
I hear chuckles coming from the other room and roll my eyes.
"Ignore them. They're dumb," I say. "Yeah, I want to go to prom with you, but I don't want you to go if you're going to be miserable there."
"I want to take you, Tera. Will you go? With me? To prom?" he stutters out. He's so adorable in this moment. I wish I could put this moment in a memory box and play it back whenever I want.
"I will. I absolutely will," I answer with a big smile.
He smiles back. "Yeah?"
I nod. "Yep."
"Awesome. We'll go to dinner. I'll get a limo. We'll do prom right," he tells me.
"Sounds great. Let's totally do prom Xander style."
At that he puffs up his chest—his confidence is back. "Hell yeah. Xander style. I like that." He leans in and kisses me again, then pulls me in for a hug. "Thank you for going with me, T," he whispers in my ear.
I nod against his neck, then kiss it. "Thanks for asking me."
Linc groans from behind Xander. "Ugh. You two are sickening."
"Fuck off, dude," Xander admonishes with a grin.
"Xander Mackenzie!" Mrs. M scolds. "You know how I feel about that word."
"Sorry, Mrs. M!" He blushes. "She has the ears of an elephant."
"I think that's a memory," Kennedy corrects.
"That too!" Xan exclaims.
"So true," Ethan agrees.
"You know she's gonna tell your pops, right?" Ben asks with a smirk.
"Dick. You just had to remind me. I was enjoying this moment with my girl," he scoffs, then lifts me up, sits in my chair, and puts me on his lap. They all seem to do that, but with Xander it's special. It's something we haven't done in nearly four years.
