Thirty-Three
SENIOR YEAR
Noah insisted on still taking me to the homecoming dance. I told him he didn’t have to, that I understood if his heart wasn’t in it. But he interpreted that as I’m disgusted by you and never want to see to you again, and the only way I could convince him otherwise was to say we were still on.
In all honesty, disgust is the last thing I feel. For him, or for Joel. Our friendships might’ve started under less-than-truthful circumstances, but it doesn’t mean they’re not real. I’d be lying if I said Joel’s confession didn’t bring up more questions, but at the very least, I understand his motivation.
Which is why I pick up the phone and call him the minute the digital alarm clock on my nightstand reads 5:50—exactly fifteen minutes from the time I last texted him.
It rings long enough that I’m mentally preparing a voice mail message, but then there’s a click. “Mace? What’s up?”
“I texted you and you didn’t answer. I got nervous.”
Joel chuckles. “I saw your text, and I’m fine. No running off to Buford tonight, I promise. But I’m not coming to the dance.”
“Please, Joel? I hate knowing that you’re going to be home by yourself.”
“I won’t be by myself. I’ll be with my parents and my brothers.”
I sigh. “You know, I never got to dance with you last year. I was hoping to make up for it tonight.”
The line goes quiet. Then he says: “Is it okay if I come over for a minute? There’s something I want to tell you anyway.”
I can only imagine what he’s referring to, and Noah will be here to pick me up in half an hour, but I tell Joel of course he can stop by.
When the doorbell rings ten minutes later, I’m one step away from being ready. My dress is still hanging in its plastic bag on my closet door, but my hair, makeup, and nails are all dialed up to homecoming level. So I’m not all that embarrassed to answer the door in my bathrobe and slippers.
I open it to find Joel standing outside, holding two yellow roses. Before I can do anything more than smile, my mother walks into the foyer, saying, “Macy? Who’s at the—” She stops short when she sees Joel. I haven’t told her anything about what happened on the basketball court, and my instincts to usher Joel to safety before she can start in on him kick into high gear.
“Joel,” she says, the pitch of her voice surprised but casual as she eyes the flowers. “You know Macy already has a date for homecoming, right? You were supposed to take her last year.”
Too late. I open my mouth, but Joel steps into the foyer, wiping his feet on the welcome mat. “I know, Mrs. Atwood. She’s going with my ex-boyfriend.” He sucks in a breath. “I’m gay.” My mother’s eyes bulge, and I’m pretty sure my expression is almost the same as hers, but for different reasons. Joel exhales, sheepishly holding out one of the roses to my mom. “Sorry,” he says. “I haven’t told my parents yet, and that was practice.”
She reaches for the flower, her mouth opening and closing without a sound. Finally she says, “You’re gay?” Her gaze switches to me. “And so is Noah?” I nod, deciding I’ll correct her terminology later. The stunned look on her face turns to confusion. Guess her personality radar didn’t pick up on that little nugget. “How did you end up with gay dates two years in a row?”
“Luck?” I say, and she turns to Joel, twisting the flower between her fingers. My mother is almost never at a loss for words, and I have to hold back a snicker as a high, nervous laugh skitters from her throat.
“Well. Congratulations.” Her eyes dart from Joel to me and back. “Is that the right thing to say? I’ve never had anyone come out to me before.”
Joel considers it. “That works. And I really am sorry for what I put Macy through last year.”
She nods, pressing the flower to her nose. “If Macy forgives you, then so do I.” She steps back toward the kitchen. “Good luck telling your parents. And thank you for telling me.”
I nod toward the stairs. “Come up to my room.” We jog up the stairs, and I close the door behind us, giving Joel a push on the arm. “Definitely didn’t see that coming. You were amazing.”
“Glad you thought so. My heart feels like it’s gonna beat right out of my chest and take off down the road.”
I sit on the edge of my bed. “Are you really planning to tell your parents?”
Joel stares at the remaining flower in his hand. “I have to, Mace. Maybe not tonight, but soon. Denying it won’t make it go away. And . . . the more I say it out loud, the more I think I’m learning to be okay with that.”
“Noah would be really proud of you.” I tap the comforter, not wanting to be too pushy with what I say next. “I’m not the only one who’d like to dance with you tonight, you know.”
“About that.” Joel steps forward, holding out the flower. “This is for you. I bought you a yellow rose corsage last year, but . . . obviously I never gave it to you. So I brought two flowers to make up for this year and last, only . . .” He swings around to look at the door. “I ended up giving the other one to your mom. Sorry. It felt like a good move.”
“It was.” I laugh, brushing the silky petals over my lips.
Joel pulls his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans and sets it on top of my dresser. He presses the screen a few times, and then a familiar song starts to play.
The song.
My spine straightens, and the flower drops to my lap. “How did you know about this song?”
Joel freezes, looking almost frightened by my reaction. “What about it?”
“Last year, when I walked out of homecoming. Ben followed me outside and asked me to dance with him. This was the song that was playing.”
“Oh.” Joel fumbles with the phone, and a different melody starts up. “Weird coincidence, I swear. Is this better?”
“Better for what?”
He holds out his hand. “May I have this dance?”
I study him to see if he’s pulling my leg, but his eyes are so earnest and the set of his mouth betrays the tiniest bit of nerves. It’s so sweet that I can’t say no. So I take his hand, and we start the first dance of the night, right there in my bedroom.
“You don’t have to wear that,” Joel says, nodding toward my dresser, where the locket he gave me is laid out next to my earrings and bracelet for tonight.
“But I like it.”
“I know.” He shakes his head. “Only, it was never mine to give. That’s one of the things I wanted to tell you before the dance tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“So, remember how I said Meredith knows about me? It’s because I told her. The night that they gave my dad the welcome-home celebration, that was the night I planned to come out. I pulled her aside before the game because I was sick of everyone thinking I had something to do with the fire. I promised her that I hadn’t been anywhere near her house that night. And then I blurted it out.”
“How did she react?”
“She hugged me. Which I didn’t expect, but it gave me the boost I needed to feel like I could tell everyone else. I made her promise not to say anything until I gave the okay. But then my dad got onstage at halftime, and we all know what happened after that.” He grimaces. “I thought she’d kept her word, until you came into the library that day and mentioned the ‘shitty thing’ I’d done the night of the blackout.”
I pull back and look up at him, a cold sensation brewing in my veins. “Wait. When you said you’d made a bad decision—you meant coming out to Meredith?”
“Yeah. I thought she’d blabbed and it was blowing up in my face. But what you said right after made me realize that you must’ve been referring to some other shitty thing.” He jerks his head in the direction of the necklace. “That was the only other thing I could think of. Because I didn’t buy it for you. I didn’t even pick it out. I found it near the football field that morning when I was waiting to meet with you and you never showed.” He hangs his head. “The rest was all bullshit I made up on the spot.”
I stop dancing, retracting my arms from around his neck. “So you didn’t kiss me when the power went out?”
“Kiss you? Mace, I got within an inch of telling you I was gay. Why would I kiss you?”
“Because someone did. And then walked away without a word before the lights came up. That was the shitty thing I meant.”
“Oh.” He draws the word out, like he’s giving himself an extra second to make sense of this. “So it was never about me finding some kid’s necklace on the ground and passing it off as my gift to you, or the fact that it was only one of about a thousand lies I told you?”
“Joel, whatever lies you told me, yes, they hurt my feelings. But they’re water under the bridge, okay? Clean slate. I’ve had enough experience with grudges to know that it’s not the route I want to take.” I pause. “There’s not more, is there?”
He scratches his head. “No. That covers it. But I want you to know, Mace. The idea behind the necklace was real at least. I did want things to be good between us again, and I’m sorry I screwed it up a second time.”
“You could make it up to me by coming to the dance,” I say with a hopeful bat of my eyelashes. Joel immediately starts to squirm and stutter, so I don’t drag out the torture. “Kidding, Joel. I’m kidding. It was worth a shot.”
A knock sounds then, and my mother pokes her head into the room. “Hey. Door open when friends are in your bedroom, please. Gay or not.” She winks. “And can you see if Noah is running on schedule? I want to make sure we have plenty of time for pictures.”
Joel retrieves his cell phone as she makes her way downstairs. “I should get going. If I do end up talking to my parents tonight, I have to figure out how to do it.”
I pull him into a hug and wish him luck. Before he can go, I tug at his hand, hoping he won’t think I’m prying. “So,” I say. “What about Noah?”
“Noah’s made some pretty stupid decisions. But then again, so have I.” He releases my hand and puts his in the pocket of his jeans. “I have to figure out where we go from here.”
I so want to point out that he seemed to know exactly where he wanted things to go when he kissed Noah on the basketball court, but it’s not my call. So I bite my tongue and we say good-bye.
Once he’s gone, I take my heart locket from my dresser and sink into the armchair in the corner of my bedroom. I flick it open and stare at the empty center. In a way, Jadie was right when she compared Joel to the fable about the painted clock. Only, I was never the downfall that Joel was so afraid of; it was Noah.
As my palm closes around the heart, I feel like it has lost some of its meaning. I wanted to think of it as Joel’s promise to start over, the same way I was hoping for that kiss in the dark to be the beginning of something special.
I close my eyes, letting myself relive that moment for the first time in a long time. Letting my insides flutter and the warmth spread from my head to my toes. When I open my eyes, I grab my phone and send a text to Joel. Something he said isn’t sitting right, and I need him to clear it up.
As I wait for his answer, I lose myself in the memory again. And just for a minute, I let myself wonder if an abandoned locket on the football field might mean something totally different from what I originally thought.
Something that, up until now, I haven’t allowed myself to hope for.