I give my guitar one quick final strum as I hear someone coming onto the back porch. It’s not just anyone, though. It’s Cassie.

I don’t want her to hear me playing. It’s really fucking embarrassing how bad I am. Practice makes perfect, though, but it’s getting harder to keep practicing the more I keep hearing just how far from perfect I am.

“Don’t stop,” Cassie says, closing the screen door behind her. “Pretend I’m not even here.”

I watch her out of the corner of my eye as she sits down on the big white wicker chair next to mine. I can’t pretend she isn’t here.

“How was last night?” I pull my guitar into my lap again but I don’t start playing. I finger the frets but I don’t strum.

“Last night, last night, last night,” Cassie says, trailing off, looking out across her big backyard at the lake that sits behind the small row of houses on our street. “You wanna know the truth?”

“That why I asked,” I say, looking straight ahead.

It’s nighttime, and I haven’t seen her yet since the big dance happened last night. I was at work all day. It’s the end of spring, beginning of summer, and the heat hasn’t fallen yet. It’s a good time for us to work during the day on the new houses we’re erecting. In a few weeks, I’ll only work early in the morning, and I’ll be bumming around town the rest of the time. The heat gets intense here this time of year. But for now, I’m working days.

I expect Cassie had a fabulous time at the dance. I don’t know why she wouldn’t have. Can’t think of one damn reason she wouldn’t have had a fabulous time.

“It...kinda sucked,” she says, drawing one leg up underneath her.

“I highly doubt that,” I say, smirking over at her. “It wasn’t magical?”

My tone says that I know she probably didn’t have a great time. She’s too good for that shit. Prom queen or not, she’s more than that. Not that there’s anything wrong with being prom queen. She deserves it if she wants it. My issue is that this woman doesn’t need the outside validation from her whole graduating class.

She’s too good for that. Too good for needing that outside approval. Because I know that her inner strength is greater than all those fucking accolades that are constantly being heaped on her.

“No,” she says shakily, “definitely not magical.”

“What’s the matter, Cass?” I ask. I place the guitar carefully against the side of my chair and lean forward on my elbows.

“It just wasn’t what I wanted,” she says, looking over at me. “My date sucked, but like I told you before, everyone expected us to go together, so that’s what I had to do.”

My head is saying it’s silly. My head is saying it’s just one night and so-fucking-what if it wasn’t fun? It’s one night of your life. No need to build it up in your head like Cassie has obviously done.

But then...it doesn’t matter, because I don’t want Cassie to hurt, even if it’s over one night that wasn’t fucking perfect.

I want every night of her life to be perfect.

“What did you want, Cass?” I say, standing up and stretching my legs. I don’t know where the hell Mark is, and their parents are out. They’re both always at work events. Her dad does something something with insurance. Or law, maybe. I don’t really remember.

The night is falling over us quickly. I must have been out here for hours. Not much else to do. I guess I was just waiting for Cass this whole time, or something.

I cross the porch and hop down the few steps to the backyard, the sparse grass beneath my feet sinking in slightly. The ground is soft and slightly wet. I kind of want to take my shoes off, feel the blades of grass against my toes.

Looking back at Cassie, I watch a sadness pass over her face.

“What did I want?” she asks softly, her eyebrows rising.

“Don’t answer that,” I say, reaching out for her. She leans forward softly and puts her hand in mine.

I want this girl, and I’ve lied to myself about it. I can’t have her, though. It’s just not something you do. She is my friend’s sister. She’s too good for me. I can’t offer her anything. I have no prospects and no skills, no talent. She’s going to marry a doctor or some shit.

But then I stop myself, because all I want is to take her right here and now.

Would it really be all that much of a fucking tragedy if I pushed her up against the side of her house right now, pushed her skirt up, and did what I wanted? Would it really be all that bad?

Yeah, she’s off-limits.

But fuck that.

“Get over here, Cass,” I say, looking up at her. She looks like a damn angel. An angel I want to corrupt. She is sweet Cassie, and I just want to make her mine.

“I don’t know,” she says, taking a few steps down her porch. She raises an eyebrow and throws a smirk over to me. She says I don’t know, but the look in her eye says she very much knows.

She knows what’s about to happen as well as I do.

We walk out to the pier jutting out a few yards into the lake. A soft fog has descended on the ground around us, and as we wade through it, I feel my heart slamming inside my chest.

“So you had a bad time at the prom,” I say, slipping my fingers through hers. “Big fucking deal. You win the crown?”

“Yeah,” she sighs, “I won the crown. I knew I was going to. It’s stupid though. And you’re right, it doesn’t matter that I had a bad time.”

That’s not what I meant, though. It matters that she had a bad time.

“All I meant was that you’re gonna have bad nights throughout your life. It’s gonna happen. Not everything’s always gonna be perfect.”

We get to the end of the pier and I turn to face her, taking her softly by the shoulders. I watch her throat as she swallows thickly when I touch her. She’s so damn elegant. So damn beautiful.

“Did you dance?” I ask.

“Of course I did,” she says. I slip my hands onto her waist gently and draw her closer to me. She exhales shakily, putting her head on my shoulder. “That’s what you do at a dance. You, you know, dance.”

We begin rocking slowly. There’s no music, but I swear I can hear her heart beating inside her chest. I draw her in even closer. She nuzzles her head closer to my shoulder. I swallow hard.

She’s mine.

Then I hear the back door slam and her brother calls out to us.

“Hey,” he says curtly. “Jason, you almost ready to go?”

That’s right. That’s what I was waiting around for. A party. Another party at some asshole I don’t care about’s house. An anonymous place like all the others, anonymous people like all the others.

“You should go,” Cassie says, smiling up at me. I can’t tell what she wants, though. I can’t tell if she wants me to go or if the fucking last thing she wants is for me to go. “And thanks for that.”

“What, Cass?” I ask.

“For comforting me,” she says. “It was very nice of you.”

Nice was the last thing on my mind.

“Sure thing,” I say coolly.

Is that what she thought this was?

I watch as she walks back to her house, tipping a chin over her shoulder and smiling at me.

Nice. No one’s ever seen me as a nice guy, I don’t think. If she knew my true intentions, she wouldn’t think I was being so nice.

“You ready?” her brother asks from the back porch.

I start after Cassie, but I’m not following her.

I’m walking behind her, but we aren’t going to the same place. And I don’t know if we ever will.