“Tonight’s the night,” I told her. We sat alone, having just finished lunch.

Mrs. Blake said nothing, but smiled at me. It was her “I’m not really sure who you are, but you’re feeding me and you seem nice” smile. I wished—oh, how I wished that she were more lucid today.

“Yogurt was a big hit today, huh?” I tidied up her tray to put back on the cart in the hall.

“Good,” she said, nodding.

“Tonight is the dance. And your award. I know Marcus is so proud of you, even if he doesn’t say it.”

Her eyes widened a little at Marcus’s name, like she knew it should mean something to her. Sometimes it just took some prodding to get her into a good day. There were more bad days than good, now, but she was still remarkably calm compared to a lot of other early onset dementia patients. She wasn’t in the locked ward yet, which meant a lot.

On her good days, she could recall stuff from the distant past, but not what she’d had for breakfast.

“I don’t know if you remember, but Marcus took me to prom a long time ago.” I know, or I think, she had remembered before, but I couldn’t take any of her positive cognitions for granted. Beyond that, I didn’t know if she even knew about the post-prom nuclear fallout, but I had to assume she did.

I glanced at the clock over the door before sitting at her bedside again. I had a few minutes.

“I never meant to hurt him. I didn’t even know what was happening.” I bit my lip, keenly aware that it was wrong of me to unload on her like she was a silent psychotherapist, but I couldn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth. “I won’t say that I was as much a victim as he was, because I wasn’t. But it hurt me, too.”

Mostly, it was losing Marcus as a friend that hurt me.

“He asked me for a do-over. So tonight, I’m going to be proud to go to the dance with your son. I wasn’t proud enough about it before.”

“Dance?”

I exhaled. At least she was following what I was saying, sort of. “Yes, the dance. You know, I found my old prom dress in the back of my closet. It doesn’t fit anymore, big surprise.” My boobs weren’t as perky and my middle had thickened a little. “But I have a cute dress that I can wear. I hope he likes it.”

My lips curved. More like he would like taking it off me.

She blinked at me. A quick check of the clock told me that I had to move on with my rounds.

“Mrs. Blake, Marcus is accepting an award on your behalf tonight, which you totally deserve. You were the best teacher I ever had, did I ever tell you that? I probably didn’t, but I want you to know. God, I hated English lit. It was like I landed on an alien planet, but you were there to translate for me. I think because of that class, I read for fun now. Okay, not Shakespeare, but books. Not just magazines.”

Her cool hand covered mine when I said “Shakespeare.”

“I know—I have to go. But I just wanted you to know that. You must be very proud of Marcus, but he’s just as proud of you. And I am, too. Thank you.”

All of my verbal diarrhea could be distilled into “thank you.” Maybe I had English literature to thank for my ability to use way more words than necessary. If only I’d had the words back then…

I rose from the chair and did a few quick checks. She didn’t need anything else right now. “I’ll see you later, Mrs. Blake.”

When I got to the door, she cleared her throat and exhaled, like she was trying to say something. I turned back.

“F-fun, Serena.”

I matched her broad smile. “I will.”

* * *

My little black dress was more for New Year’s Eve than a grown-up prom, but that was what accessories were for. I found some dangly earrings and a pretty necklace, but most importantly—I pulled out my best “fuck me” heels. I would be limping tomorrow, but it was for a good cause.

I didn’t feel any nerves until after I’d curled my hair and done my makeup. Then I sat on the couch in my empty house and waited for Marcus, butterflies flapping in my stomach. Second-guessing everything.

Should I have gotten him a boutonniere or something? Would he show up in a limo? Maybe I should have done some “pre-drinking” before this party. No…

The doorbell startled me. I took a deep breath and teetered over to open the door.

Marcus’s grin faded.

Oh no. “What?”

“I almost expected your dad to answer,” he explained. The clear plastic box made a crackling noise in his grip.

My heart cracked a little, as it often did when I thought of my parents. But the fault lines were getting smaller, a bit at a time. “I know.” The silence in the house behind me was suffocating, and all of a sudden I couldn’t wait to grab my purse and lock the door behind me.

“No limo?” I joked at the sight of Marcus’s fancy foreign car.

He ushered me into the car. “I’m done with being a cliché.”

I gave him a sly look as he settled beside me and made the car purr. “So I guess that means I don’t have to put out tonight?”

His eyebrow rose, along with a corner of his mouth. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

I laughed, my fingers entwining with his near the gearshift. “In case I forget to tell you later, I had a great time tonight. Thanks.”

He made a sound in the back of his throat that I couldn’t quite interpret. “That’s for you,” he said, jerking his chin toward the cup holders.

Holding up the clear box, I asked him, “Should I…?”

“Please. I’d probably stab you or something.”

I pinned the corsage to my dress, close to my heart. The lily and tiny white roses looked like moonlight against my black dress in the dim car. “Thank you. It’s lovely.”

“Did I give you one before? Back then?” He frowned.

“I think so, but I can’t remember what it looked like.”

The next hour seemed to fly by—getting to the school, picking up our ridiculous name tags with our yearbook pictures on them, making our way through the crowd of people that I’d mostly forgotten. Thank god I hadn’t had to do any of the decorating. I’d said I had to work—which I had—but I would have come up with some kind of excuse.

I shifted back and forth on my heels, partly to relieve the stress on my feet and partly to the music blaring out of the loudspeakers.

Marcus kept his arm around my waist almost all the time, like he was afraid I’d run off if he let go. “At what point does old music become retro?”

“Twenty years?” Sadly, a lot of the music they were playing now was still on my computer. Maybe my taste was arrested after high school.

“We never had a slow dance, did we?” he asked after the music changed.

I shook my head. Ten years ago, we’d awkwardly shimmied around each other, in the strange mating dance of the American teenager. Shifting our bodies from side to side to songs with a deep bass and strong beat, hoping we didn’t look like complete idiots—which, let’s face it, we did. Everyone looked like idiots at school dances.

He laced his fingers through mine and pulled me fully into his arms. Without another word, his arms went around my waist and he began shifting his hips against mine. Automatically, my arms rose as I clasped my hands together behind his neck.

“Like this, right?” His voice was hoarse as he looked in my eyes.

I couldn’t find any words. Only my body could communicate with him. My breasts brushed against his chest, his navy suit so dark it almost passed for black. Instead of a casual hold on my waist, his hands splayed over my lower back and pulled me close.

“I wish—” He bent to touch his forehead to mine.

“Me too,” I whispered, my body hot at the feel of his arousal nudging against my belly. “Is this the do-over you wanted?”

“Not quite.”

My heart stuttered inside my chest.

There was still a tiny part of me that worried this was all some elaborate plan to get revenge on me, but I didn’t want to believe it. If he wanted to punish me, he wouldn’t have made love to me the way he had all week. At my house, at his hotel, one crazy encounter in his car. At one point I’d asked if he had to go back to Manhattan at all, but he just shrugged and bit my shoulder.

Then again, it would be vengeful and cruel to make me fall for him, then ditch me like… well, like a bad prom date.

Tentatively, I reached up to kiss him. His lips slanted over mine eagerly, hungrily. He couldn’t lie about wanting me like this, could he?

We stood in each other’s arms, our dancing slowing and our kisses speeding up, until Principal Lemmon tapped Marcus on the shoulder.

“Award time.”

Marcus squeezed me quickly before stepping away.

“I’ll be at the bottom of the stage,” I told him, seeing the tightness around his eyes and mouth as he followed Lemmon.

I looked around, taking in the crowd for the first time. Current students kept to their own side, and immature adults here for the Homecoming reunion pretended to mingle. If I had to guess, I would say that most of the “catching up” being done was in the form of bragging and passive-aggressive pity.

The award presentation went by quickly—more quickly than a song would, probably. Lemmon was smug and warm at the same time, beneficent in the school’s emeritus recognition. Blessedly, no mention was made of Mrs. Blake’s current condition, though I saw whispers spread across the room.

The principal turned the mic over to Marcus. The buzz underneath Lemmon’s speech disappeared for Marcus—who was now being projected on a twenty-foot screen behind him.

The room fell preternaturally quiet for a dance in a high school gymnasium. You could hear a bobby pin drop, as everyone waited to hear the sage words of the hottest motivational speaker around.

He leaned into the microphone. “On behalf of my mother, I would like to thank the school board for this award.”

We waited for more. After maybe twenty seconds, I realized with disappointment that maybe there wasn’t going to be any more. Marcus exhaled loudly into the mic, then he stepped away.

The DJ got less than ten seconds of play before Marcus turned back to the squealing mic, his hand on the back of his neck. The volume of the room dulled again as he continued.

“My mother loved teaching. She loved introducing young people to literature, loved talking about it and finding out what they—we—thought.” He chuckled. “She even loved grading all the shitty essays.” His gaze wandered over the audience below, stopping in one spot with laser focus.

I looked over to see Asshole Jock wearing a red face and a golf shirt with a popped collar.

“I guess the statute of limitations has probably run out on this, so it’s probably safe to tell you…” Marcus drawled, his voice louder as he leaned into the mic. “I helped her with a lot of that grading, and I was easier on you than she was. Some of you have me to thank for graduating high school English.”

Nervous laughter floated through the gym. My hand went over my mouth.

Knowing Marcus, he wasn’t joking.

“If you’ve read any of my books, you might know that my motto is ‘use or be used.’” He paused, his gaze tilting down to find me at the bottom left of the stage like some kind of groupie. His mouth twisted in a small smile before his lips flattened out near the mic again.

“I’ve learned this week that sometimes it’s not that simple. It’s not a black and white choice. The truth is, that all of our resources are finite. Our time, our strength, our memories. Our compassion.”

“When you use someone for your own selfish gain, you might think you’re taking something away from them, but it’s your resources that are used up first. It’s your integrity, your humanity that are being eroded. I used to think that giving someone else power over you was the worst thing you could do. Actually, it’s a gift—a generous gift of trust.”

He took a deep breath. The room was silent, but for a small group of clueless teenagers at the back. My eyes pricked with tears.

“If you want a motto for going forward in life, then make it this—don’t be an asshole.”

There was a rumble of whispers from the corner, in the jock’s direction. But… he was missing. I peered closer. Brandon and Miss Bubblemint were there, with their heads together. What the fuck? Had they been there the whole time?

“Yeah, I guess that’s it. Don’t be an asshole.”

It was at that moment that the image on the giant screen behind Marcus changed, from him standing on the stage to a grainy, de-saturated, close-up picture of… his teenaged ass.

Holy fuck.