A Prom to Remember(24)

She snapped a picture with her phone and texted it to Kelsey, who immediately texted back a long line of exclamation points, followed by an “OMG, it’s perfect!”

Rather than replying right away, Jacinta stuck her head out the side of the curtain and caught her mom’s eye. She gestured her over and then yanked her by the arm into the dressing room.

“What do you think of this?” Jacinta whispered.

Her mom gave her a critical once-over.

“Not for Flora’s wedding but for the prom,” Jacinta added.

Her mom looked at real Jacinta and then Jacinta in the mirror, holding a hand to her chin.

“It’s on sale. Final clearance, actually. I need your opinion,” Jacinta continued when her mom had been silent for too long.

“Hmm,” her mom said. She peeked out the curtain, but Flora had yet to reappear from the back. “Yes. You have to buy it. You look perfectly lovely in it, Jacinta.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Her mom slipped Jacinta her credit card and her car keys.

“But do it fast. Go down the back steps over there and buy it in the front. Bring it out to the car and hide it in the trunk and meet me back up here. Best not to tell your sister right now. She probably has some superstition about someone else buying a dress while she’s trying on dresses.” Her mother rolled her eyes and Jacinta did, too. She couldn’t help a little giggle escaping, as her mother was her coconspirator even if it was just about rushing to conceal a dress from Flora.

She did exactly as her mom instructed. The more Jacinta thought about it the more she knew that this was the exact dress for her.

She snuck back upstairs and sat down as Flora emerged in her fourteenth dress.

The group wrapped up their afternoon at the bridal salon soon after that. Flora decided that she honestly liked the first dress the best and wanted to come back in a week to make sure, after giving herself a little time to think on it.

She had plenty of time, considering the wedding was still over a year away.

On the way home in the car, Jacinta checked her phone. She had a new text from Kelsey.




Jacinta gasped out loud, but luckily her mom and her sister were so busy talking in the front they didn’t even hear her.





Henry

Henry had made a terrible mistake. His mom had asked him if he wanted to go to Target with her Sunday evening. He said yes, because he wasn’t thinking. When he heard the word Target he was really hoping he could find the exact Star Wars T-shirt that he’d been wanting and convince her to buy it for him. Sure he had his own money, but if moms weren’t for buying their kids clothes then what was the point.

Unfortunately, it had already been an hour and he was more than ready to leave. It had taken him all of three minutes to find his novelty T-shirt, and now he had looked at everything from sports equipment to books, from kitchenware to office supplies. He was tired of wandering around in his dirty clothes from helping his dad in the yard that afternoon and he really wanted to get home to shower.

He was ready to go. His mom was not.

Apparently she needed to buy towels. Lots and lots of towels. And then the perfect shower curtain to go with those towels. He suggested perhaps that she select the shower curtain first and then the towels to match it, but apparently that was a bad idea. Some sort of interior design faux pas that he didn’t understand.

“This is for Flora Ramos’s engagement party next month! She wants a particular kind of towel, and I want to make sure it looks just right!” his mother said.

Henry got the heck out of that area, because if he knew his mom at all her next topic of conversation would be Jacinta Ramos and how she still couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to the prom with her. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was going with Amelia. He’d let his mom hold on to the Jacinta fantasy a little longer.

He was wandering back toward the electronics thinking maybe he could get his mom to also buy him some new earbuds when he saw a familiar face in front of him.

Oh man, this was going to be awkward.

It was Cameron. Cameron who used to be his friend. And there was no stepping around him.

“Hey,” Cam said.

“Hey, you work here?” Henry asked, gesturing toward his name tag and obvious red vest.

“Yup.”

“So you quit baseball to start a lucrative career as a Target employee?”

“Basically,” Cameron said.

“And how’s that going for you?”

“Not bad, not bad. I’m trying to save up some money for college. My stepfather claims he can pay for everything, but I would really rather not get involved with him.”

Cameron only ever referred to his mom’s husband as “my stepfather,” never by his first name and definitely never as “Dad.”

“How’s everything going with Landon?”

Cam laughed uncomfortably. “It’s going. Landon is…” He trailed off. “You don’t really care about this.”

Henry didn’t want to agree with him, but he also couldn’t disagree. He cared the amount anyone would care that his fellow human had to live with that jackass Landon Rittenbacher. Just thinking the name made Henry’s face wince in pain.

“You can admit it,” Cam said.

“No, actually I was thinking for the millionth time about how terrible it must be to have to share a house with Landon Rittenbacher.”