As we walk into the main room, I’m flooded with a Carrie-level sense of doom. Tables take up half the venue, the rest used up by a dancefloor. The DJ is tucked in a corner, already taking requests based on the line in front of him.
“You want something special played?” Zach asks me while pulling out a seat. I check the cards to see who else is at the table. Caylon and a plus one—written that way on the slip, since he obviously didn’t bother to elaborate to the planning committee—and on the other side, Dee and Em.
At least my foreboding came to fruition. Unless half the table decides not to turn up, then the night is careening towards disaster.
“No, but do you want to dance?” I ask Zach, who nods and pulls me onto the dance floor. The DJ immediately changes the song to a slow beat, and he places my hands around his neck before looping his around my waist.
“Forgot to say, Caylon wiped your phone. You don’t need to worry about those pictures falling into the wrong hands.”
The rush of relief pushes me closer to him and I lay my head against his chest. “Thank you.”
“There’s also… I’ve got the gun.”
I jerk back, losing the beat entirely. “What? You mean, here?”
“Not right here, no. But I promised I’d get it back to you.”
“Can’t you just, I don’t know, destroy it?”
“If you want.” He pauses and gathers me in his arms again. “I thought you might want to witness that or something. Lay your mind at rest.”
It hadn’tbeenresting on my mind. The gun had fallen out of my top concerns a long time ago, replaced with a multitude of other worries.
“That’s okay,” I say in a low whisper, conscious of the other couples drifting onto the floor near us. “I trust you.”
His feet still for a split second, then resume the dance, leading me in small steps in time to the music, his entire body humming like a substation full of energy. “Good. I trust you, too.”
As the song ends, he pulls me closer, rubbing a hand over my back in an instinctive gesture of comfort. “Want to stay out here for another?”
“Well…” I pause and glance back at our empty seats just as Em arrives, scanning the room with vicious energy. “I mean, the table is so welcoming, but I guess I could last another song.”
His soft chuckle reverberates through my body as he hugs me tighter. “Yeah. If I’d known these were the seating arrangements, I would’ve asked you to dress up and go for pizza instead.”
“Can we?”
His startled eyes meet mine, a small crease disappearing as he reads my expression. “Sure. Anything the lady wants.”
My smile contains the first genuine happiness of the evening. “Then the lady wants out of the table of supreme awkwardness, kind sir.” I pause, gazing longingly at the only person here that holds any attraction.
“If this is how you react to the long-awaited milestone of your senior year, I’m starting to think you might not have been planning your wedding since you were five years old.”
“I mean, you could be right, but it would take a proposal and setting a date to find out for sure.”
“And here’s me without my trusty engagement ring at the ready.”
“Such a missed opportunity.” I issue a fake sigh that contains all the disappointment in the universe. “I guess a girl’ll have to settle for pizza.”
“And chips.”
“And a soft drink.”
“Such an expensive date,” Zach says with a broad smile. “We’ll have to pace ourselves or you’ll bankrupt me.”
Caylon arrives at his seat just as I pick my phone up from the table, stuffing it into the side of my bra, where it spoils the lines of my dress. “We’re off.”
He frowns lightly. “The after-parties won’t get going for another three hours.”
“We’re skipping them and going straight to sex in the back seat,” I say, the jibe a joke at first, until I remember the alluring interior of Zach’s vehicle and turn to him. “You promised me something a while back.” I tap my bottom lip. “Can’t remember all the specifics, but it did sound enticing.”
