Harley shrugged and smiled back with those full lips and mischievous blue eyes. “Saying somebody gives a good rim job is a compliment in my book.”
Harley distracted us from our impending doom as we slowly made our way to the front of the line. When it was our turn to have our picture taken underneath the arch of black and silver star-shaped balloons, Harley stood behind me with his hands around my waist and gave the camera a lazy grin. I, on the other hand, stood stick-straight, held my breath, and smiled through clenched teeth. I didn’t even look at the camera. I couldn’t. Because just beyond it, walking through the front doors wearing a scowl, was my worst fucking nightmare.
Or should I say, Knightmare?
Seven
“Smile!”
Before my eyes had a chance to recover from the flash, Juliet was hauling me away by the arm, telling the guys we had to pee and would meet them inside.
“I’m gonna drag Harley to the back of the dance floor,” she whispered in the hallway outside the ladies’ room. “You go talk to Knight, and for the love of God try not to get eaten.”
I nodded aggressively, psyching myself up to face him.
Spinning around, Juliet and I walked back into the lobby. With a shove, Juliet thrust me toward the sign-in table, where I stood, stilettos rooted to the ground, and gaped. Knight didn’t look like a tattooed skinhead psychopath. He looked like a…knight. He was wearing his U.S.M.C. dress blues—royal-blue slacks, a navy-blue blazer fastened with a white belt and brass buttons all the way to the neck, and a white hat with a black brim shadowing his eyes. He looked regal and handsome and nothing like the savage asshole I’d come to know and sometimes love.
Coach Johnson leaped to his feet to shake Knight’s hand…right next to the sign-in sheet where I had already written Harley motherfucking James as my plus one.
Ohhhhh shit.
I won’t be able to get him in.
He’s gonna see Harley’s name on the sheet.
We’re all gonna die!
I was about to turn and run, grab my two best friends and head for the hills, when Coach Johnson and Knight let out a guttural, “Oohrah!” in unison.
The coach slapped his fellow serviceman on the shoulder and gestured toward the lobby with an outstretched arm. Knight stepped past him with a nod, locking eyes with me immediately.
I searched his features, frantically trying to gauge his mood, but that damn hat shielded his face. Had he seen Harley’s name? Had Coach Johnson just let him in, no questions asked? More importantly, did he think I looked pretty?
Forcing a smile, I swallowed my fear and held my ground as Knight approached. “Hey,” I said, my voice rising an octave at the end for no reason. “You look so handsome in your uniform. I almost didn’t recognize you. Not that you don’t normally look handsome, just…”
I had to lift my head slightly to maintain eye contact as Knight walked toward me. He stopped a foot away from my face, close enough for me to see the corner of his mouth twitch upward.
I was safe.
“This is the closest thing to a fucking tux I can stand.” His words were sharp, but his eyes were soft. “You look good, Punk.”
I glanced down at my flowing, floor-length, dark blue dress and smiled. “Hey, we match.”
As my eyes roamed back up, I noticed for the first time that Knight had something in his hand.
Lifting the clear plastic container, he offered it to me with a grunt.
“Knight…” My breath caught when I saw what was inside. A single white rose framed with black tulle and silver ribbon. A colorless corsage from my colorless boy.
“Figured your punk ass would be wearing black.” He shrugged. “I like the blue though.”
I blushed, using the corsage as an excuse not to look at him. I slipped it onto my bony wrist using the elastic band attached to the back. Lifting it to my nose, I inhaled the sweet fragrance and smiled. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
I turned away, seeking a trash can for the plastic container, and noticed a familiar pompadoured figure standing at the top of the central staircase.
Fuck.
Harley had his back to us and appeared to be talking to a group of goth kids, but the sighting definitely got my ass in gear. I backed up against the wall beside the staircase, which just so happened to be the end of the line for pictures, and waved Knight over.
“Hey!” I chirped as he approached with suspicion in his icy eyes. “We, ah…should get our picture taken, since we match and all.”
Standing that close to Knight without being able to rip his clothes off was physically uncomfortable. As much as I hated him, as many times as he’d hurt me, as desperately as my head and heart tried to convince me to stay away, my body was simply too weak to resist the pull. We didn’t just have chemistry, we had magnetism. A negative charge and a positive charge so strong that the only thing to ever successfully keep us apart was an ocean. And now here he was, on the wrong side of the sea, wearing that damn uniform and making me forget that the tears I’d cried over him could fill an ocean of their own.
When the bulb flashed and our awkward smiles fell, I glanced back at the top of the stairs. The space was empty.
“I’m…ah…I’m gonna run to the restroom real quick. Be right back!” I blurted, darting away before Knight could protest or try to follow me. I sprinted to a hallway on the far-right side of the lobby that not only had restrooms, but an elevator. Ducking inside, I hit the door close button and exhaled in relief when it shut without Knight’s arm shooting out to block it.
I got off on the second floor and followed the sound of thumping bass into the Egyptian Ballroom.
Inside the house lights were off, sconces illuminated the hieroglyphs carved into the massive columns lining each wall, and horny teenagers dry humped each other on the scarab-themed carpet. I knew that unlike Harley, Knight would give me about thirty seconds before he came looking for me, so I tore through the room, scanning the crowd for a baby-faced blond. Instead, I found Juliet and Goth Girl pouting with their arms folded across their chests over by the DJ booth.
“Hey!” I panted. “Where are the guys? Where’s Harley? He’s not looking for me, is he?”
“Fuck the guys,” Goth Girl slurred, taking a drink from a beverage I knew with one-hundred percent certainty was spiked.
Juliet leveled me with an annoyed, albeit glassy-eyed gaze. “What she said.”
“What happened?” I yelled as Outkast rapped about hushing that fuss and moving to the back of the bus.
“JayShawn is off dancing with some asshole in a pink tux.” Goth Girl hissed.
“And Steven left with some bitch who said she could score him an eight ball,” Juliet added.
“Wait. He just…left?” I cried. “What the fuck? He just left you at prom?!” Glancing back and forth between my scorned friends, I asked, “What about Harley?”
Juliet shrugged and flicked her chin in the direction of a shadowy corner beside the DJ booth. “He’s over there, talking to the Phish-heads.”
Phish-head was what we called the stoner hippie kids at our school. The ones who played hacky sack and wore moccasins and said dude every other word. I looked in the direction of Juliet’s gaze and saw them, huddled in a circle, a familiar mop of blond hair sticking up out of the middle.
I should have turned around. I should have been satisfied that he wasn’t looking for me, and I should have hightailed it back to Knight. But something about that hippie cluster didn’t sit right with me. Harley was a friendly guy, but not that friendly.
Tip-toeing over to the congregation, I peeked in between two scraggly-haired losers in tuxedos just in time to see Harley taking twenty-dollar bills from five anxious palms, replacing each one with a little white pill.
“Oh my God,” I groaned.