“Thank you.” I smile and motion behind me. “Did you know about all this?”
She tilts her head. “I may have been asked permission to allow a certain pair of teens to wreck my living room with the world’s least accurate adaptation of Ophelia’s mad scene.”
“I resent that—we killed it,” Sammie says, squeezing my shoulder before leaving Mom and me alone in the foyer. The rest of my friends drift to the backyard with him.
“Your father is going to have a field day with this if he catches me crying so early. I told him he’d cave first.” She envelops me in an embrace, my chin sitting on her shoulder despite our near-identical height. “My sweet, loving Ophelia.”
Loving, not boy-crazy. I’ll take it.
“By the way, am I supposed to hate Talia?” she asks as she pulls away. “Is that my motherly obligation?”
I laugh. “No, Mom. You don’t have to hate her; we’re good.”
“Thank God.” She presses a hand to her chest. “She’s such a sweetheart.”
My stomach clenches. “Yeah, she really is.”
My eyes stay dry even when Dad comes in to see what’s taking us so long and gets emotional, teasing Mom for breaking before he even had the chance to see me.
The doorbell rings, and we’re forced to disband. I’m wiping under my dry eyes as I pull open the door. Lindsay is adjusting Wesley’s bow tie, so I have a moment to brace myself before she faces me.
She turns, looking almost surprised to see me here, at my own house. “Hi,” she says.
“Hey.” I take in their outfits. Linds’s dress is deep navy, slightly darker than Wesley’s suit, and it brings out the lighter hues in her eyes and hair. The subtle nod to oceanic colors isn’t lost on me. It’s also mermaid cut, because of course it is. They both look fantastic, her hair pushed to one side so it spills over her shoulder in waves, Wes’s glued in place by a shiny layer of hair spray. He fills out his suit, fabric bulging at the arms, and stands proudly, like for once he knows how good he looks.
Sammie calls my name, and I watch Lindsay’s eyes soften and lips droop as he walks up behind me.
“You guys look great,” Wesley says, the uncomfortable air in the foyer tangible. He pulls me into a tight hug, then gives Sammie what I can only describe as possibly the world’s most uncomfortable handshake.
“You guys too,” Sammie says, clearing his throat and looking at Lindsay for one second, but no longer. “I hear I owe you an apology, Wesley.” He shoves his hands in his pant pockets, letting the words settle.
“We can talk outside,” Wes says, his eye twitch betraying his confidence. Sammie nods, and they leave Lindsay still standing on the porch, fiddling with the delicate silver choker around her neck.
We’re both quiet for a minute before she speaks. “Are we dishing out apologies already? I thought we’d at least have to suffer through awkward small talk first.”
“It’s going to be a long night. Agatha probably would’ve written it up on an itinerary if she wasn’t so busy making sure her lipstick perfectly matched her shoes. But we can talk about the weather, if you’d like,” I joke. Lindsay steps inside and pulls me into a hug.
My first instinct is to push her away. Because even if we’re joking around, I’m not sure if I really forgive her for everything. But I guess if Talia could forgive me, show me and my broken-heart-induced jerkiness some empathy, maybe I could try with Lindsay.
I’m not a fool. I know that in a few months, once we’re both graduated and states apart, Linds and I probably won’t really be friends anymore. It’s one of the many truths I’ve been hiding from all year, something I didn’t want to face because it meant another thing would be changing.
But that’s months away. Things will start changing no matter what happens tonight or tomorrow or the day after. So I choose to hug her back.
“I’m scared I’m going to lose tonight,” she whimpers into my hair, sounding the most vulnerable I’ve heard her in all our years of friendship.
“You won’t,” I assure her. “And even if you do, Ags will burn the place down before anyone else gets a chance to wear that tiara.”
Her laughter vibrates against me. Once she lets me go, she runs her fingers over her hair, despite every strand still being perfectly in place. “I snapped at you, for basically no reason.”
“Not for nothing, but I was kinda a bitch too,” I admit.
“I was a bigger one.” She laughs, ever the competitor. “You and Sammie have just always been so tight. You got to see the parts of him he’d never show me, the parts that weren’t all Casanova and innuendos. You’re even going to college together. But with Wesley, I got to be that person. I got to see his art, see how funny he was, meet his family…” She looks up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “It’s so embarrassing and selfish and ugh. But when I realized he was showing you some of that person too, it hurt. And I’m really sorry I took it out on you instead of just, like, actually talking to him about it.”
“I’m sorry too, for telling Wes and Sammie what you told Ags and me,” I say. “I’ve also had a lot going on in the insecure-romance department.”
At that, she raises her brows. “Maybe we could talk about it? Sometime this week, you know, when it isn’t the biggest night of our lives.” She rolls her eyes as she says it, like she didn’t just whimper over potentially losing the title of prom queen. I don’t call her out on it though, at least not now.
“I’d like that,” I say, and as we join hands, I think maybe I am a little bit of a fool. Maybe I have hope for our friendship, for change to come and make us better for it.
We meet our friends in the backyard. Lindsay’s mom and Wesley’s parents must’ve come around through the back, because Miss Hawk is chatting with Mom over the cheese platters while Mr. and Mrs. Cho are fussing over Wesley’s hair. Linds beckons Wesley over to the table where Mom put the rest of the corsages and boutonnieres, recruiting Talia for help.
“Lilac suits you,” Zaq says as he sidles up to me. “Thanks for the roses,” he adds, shimmying his chest to draw attention to the jiggling Olympiad on his lapel.
“Thanks for asking everyone to pay me. You didn’t have to do that.”
He bows his head. “One artist to another, it was my moral obligation.”
No one has ever referred to my gardening as art before. Despite hating him a bit over the past week, I actually like Zaq. In another life, I could’ve really liked him. “I would’ve given you a Midas Touch if I wasn’t trying to coordinate the colors,” I admit, nodding to the yellow buds on the other side of the yard. He looks at them appraisingly. “By the way, I’m sorry for kissing your girlfriend.”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “You didn’t know we were together. I can’t really hold it against you. Plus, I get it. She’s a keeper.” I think he’s being an ass for a second, egging me on. But I watch him watch Talia adjust a bobby pin in Linds’s hair, and I know this isn’t a taunt; it’s solidarity.