Bailey stood then, walking back to the kitchen, where she said something to Colin I couldn’t hear. He replied, his voice also low, and then they were going out the back door, the screen swinging shut behind them.
“Someone seems tense,” Rachel said to me. “Everything okay with them?”
“As long as he’s asking her to the Prom right now, yes,” I said.
Hannah’s eyes widened. “He hasn’t asked her yet?”
“No,” I said.
“Who else would he take?” she asked Blake.
He held up his hands. “Whoa. Don’t look at me. I know nothing except I needed a date and now I have one.”
I couldn’t help but notice this was the second time I’d been referred to as his date, not by name. When everything comes easy, I guess you learn not to sweat the details.
“Boys are so weird,” Rachel observed, shaking her drink again. To me she said, “Hey, you need a dress? We brought a few options that should fit.”
This was a nice offer, I knew, extended in kindness. And maybe I’d been spending too much time with Trinity—okay, I was definitely spending too much time with Trinity—but I wondered about her motivation. I was a North Lake girl going to a Lake North Prom: of course they’d think I wouldn’t have something suitable to wear. And the truth was, here, I didn’t. But at home, my closet held a number of expensive dresses, most purchased by Nana for dinners atherclub. Not that they’d know that, though. They only knew Saylor, not Emma.
The back door opened again then, and Bailey came in, followed after a beat by Colin. Now, she was smiling and so flushed that I guessed what had happened even before she plopped down beside me and said, “He asked me! Finally.”
I looked at Colin, who was still in the kitchen, getting another beer, his face, unlike hers, neither relieved nor overjoyed.
“That’s great,” I said as Blake stood and also walked back to the kitchen.
“Better than great,” she replied, taking my hand and squeezing it. “See? It’s all coming together.”
“Club Prom?” my dad asked. “Man. That brings back some memories.”
It was seven thirty a.m., the time my dad had taken to calling me to check in. Which was great for him, because in Greece, it was midafternoon. I, however, was always only (barely) waking up.
“You went to Club Prom?” I asked him now.
“Oh, yeah.” He was quiet for long enough for me to picture him on the boat, with a faraway look on his face, smiling. “Twice, actually. And both times with your mom.”
“Momwent?” I asked. “She never mentioned that.”
“Because it wasn’t a great night,” he replied with a sigh. “Either time.”
“What happened?”
Another pause, but this one felt different, like he wasn’t thinking as much as deciding how best to answer this. “Well, you know, she always felt out of place at the Club. Even though she knew a lot of people there. And when she was nervous, she...”
“... drank too much?” I finished for him.
“Well,” he said. “Yes.”
Even after all this time, it was hard for my dad to talk about my mom’s issues. He preferred to avoid the subject as much as possible, as if bringing it up did some disservice to her or her memory. This was in marked contrast to what I’d seen of Celeste, Mimi, and the rest of the family at the lake, for whom my mother’s problems were as much a part of her story as, well, I was. There were lots of ways to love someone, I guessed, both by remembering and forgetting.
“I wish you’d taken pictures,” I said now.
“I’m sure somebody did,” he replied. “All I remember is that even barefoot in a borrowed dress, your mom was gorgeous.”
“Until she got drunk,” I said.
Another pause, this one to let me know I’d crossed a line. “Anyway,” he said a moment later, “you must need something to wear. I left you a credit card, didn’t I?”
He had, for emergencies: it was tucked in a spare pair of sneakers in my closet. “I should be able to borrow something from Bailey, I think.”
