His clothes were changed. Denim jeans, untied tennis shoes, an unbuttoned flannel. I loved him that way. I approached hesitantly. His head was buried in his hands and no one sat near him. The wide berth they gave Bryan should have been a warning, but this vulnerability drew me closer. I felt eyes on me. My skin had been buzzing all night long. They were watching us closely. Trying to figure the puzzle out. I was doing the same.

“Go over there,” Christina had urged, the odd man out. Britt and Akia argued I should leave him alone. That everyone was watching us and I didn’t need a target on my back. I already had one, as far as I was concerned. It didn’t matter.

“This is a shit show,” Britt mumbled.

“An epic one,” Akia echoed.

“So what?” Christina took my hand.

I ran my other sweaty palm over the silk of my dress. My curls were falling. The pictures were done, and I was coming undone. Any time I heard someone laugh I wondered if it was at my expense. Then I wondered why I cared. “He looks sad.” I hated the way my voice sounded, but I couldn’t change who I was.

“He does,” Christina said, squeezing my hand. “Go talk to him. No one is talking to him.”

“Because they are smart,” Britt scoffed.

“I want you to know, Sev, I think you’re brave,” Christina said, pulling my eye to her.

“No.”

“Yes. You went up to him and you asked him to be your escort. You didn’t chicken out like you said you wanted to a million times. You just did the damn thing. And tonight has been weird and crazy and I know it sucks in a lot of ways. But you did the thing you were scared of. Something I could never do. So now you need to do the other thing you are scared to do.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

I groaned, feeling Britt and Akia’s eyes on us. I didn’t look at them. Instead, I looked at Bryan again. His sad air and his pale skin. I cleared my throat and stood, running my hand over the wrinkles in my dress.

I walked across the gym without a word to my friends and sat next to him. I wrung my hands together and turned back, looking into Christina’s eyes. She motioned for me to speak, but I couldn’t. I shook my head back and forth, widened my eyes. Next to me, Bryan moved, pulled his hands through his hair, along his neck. Did he know the effect these simple movements had on people? The way our eyes followed his hands, his slow and sure wanderings?

“How are you?” I echoed his words from the river.

“Not good.” He didn’t need to say more. I’d heard the whispers. A romance I was unsure of, now confirmed. Something was going on between him and Aurora. It should have deterred me, but here I was. My lips still felt his. My body was lingering in the past.

“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t a lie. I could feel his grief, his body was so close, I wanted to touch him. To absorb his pain. “Do you want to dance?” It was absurd. The gossip was thick in the room, but I wanted to be selfish. I wanted to be closer to him. To touch him while I could. I knew, without a doubt, that when this night was over, we would go back to our normal. He would walk by me in the halls, and we wouldn’t speak. Maybe the looks would stop after this, with the eyes of the student body trained on us more than ever.

“Okay.” He stood up, surprising me. He turned when he reached the gym floor, his hand reaching for me.

If I never saw him again after graduation, this is what I would remember. His slender fingers, his pale wrist. I wanted to know what love was, so I took that hand.

We walked out to the dance floor. The hair at the back of my neck stood on end. Eyes and whispers echoed around me. It all quieted when his hands found my waist, when my own wanting fingers touched his neck.

“I want you to know that I’m sorry.” The words came out before I could stop them. I was sorry. I truly was. My own desires were nothing compared to the want for his happiness. For this melancholy air to leave his presence.

“For what?” His mouth was near my ear, his chin was up.

“For ruining whatever was going on with you and Aurora.”

“Severin, you didn’t kiss me. I kissed you. Whatever happens, this is my doing.” His voice was monotone, autopilot assurance. These were the things that kept me tethered to him. The things that made me wonder how Christina could be so infatuated with someone like Rodney. I liked Bryan because behind all of it – his popularity and his disarming smile – was a kindness.

“Whatever happens,” I repeated.

“Yes. Whatever happens between her and I.”

“You and Aurora. Yes. Do you love her?” It would be a silly question if it weren’t for the knowledge we both had. Their shared past. Their titles. Their likeness. Their beauty.

His hands tensed on my hips. “I’m eighteen.” It wasn’t an answer. We both knew that.

“So am I. I think we can be in love at this age. It’s not impossible. Some people find their soulmates in high school. It’s crazy and kind of cute.” I rambled on, feeling him shaking his head. A polite nodding. “Like my parents. And Britt’s parents, too. My sister didn’t meet her girlfriend here. Finding her soulmate in Burlingame High was out of the question, but stranger things have happened.” I needed to stop talking about random shit. The song was going to end soon, and I would find myself at home dissecting this moment and wondering why I spoke about who met in high school and the fact that my sister was gay. God. Why was I like this?

“Yeah. Maybe it’s possible for some.” I felt his grip on me lessen a little, and I thought I felt him shiver. I’d scared him, and maybe he was wondering how far this crush went. I caught the eyes of my friends around his shoulder. They were watching our every move. Or, Britt and Akia were. I saw Christina eyeing Rodney. He was sitting a few seats down on the bleachers from her, being loud and intolerable.

I wondered where Aurora had run off to. She left after the crowning ceremony.

They made sense in a way Bryan and I never would. We could try as hard as we wanted to rewrite the rules of high school, but the crowns we were taking weren’t changing things in the end.

It felt good. It was fun when it wasn’t terrifying. And everyone but the beautiful and chosen ones applauded us. We were a new kind of royalty. The kind you could relate to. The kind who didn’t wear name brands and drive flashy cars and jacked up trucks to school. Hell, I still walked to school or rode the bus. My father wasn’t budging on a vehicle at all. He worried way too much.

      My friends and I, we weren’t getting dates with the beautiful boys. We were basically the same people. If I weren’t dancing with Bryan, I would be sitting on the bleachers with them, cracking jokes and eyeing him from afar. I suddenly wanted to be with them, away from Bryan and all we could never be. The song wasn’t over, but I pulled away. I looked up into Bryan’s eyes, and I felt red, raw.

“Thank you for agreeing to be my escort. Thank you for walking me in and being so nice. Thank you for dancing with me, when that was the last thing you should do. It was selfish of me to ask.”

“It’s fine.” His eyes reached mine, then flittered away. “I mean, you’re welcome.” His face was pained and I hated my part in it.

“Have a nice night.” I walked away, back to my friends. Back to where I belonged. I barely felt his hand graze mine as I left him.