All We Can Do Is Wait(26)



There in the mirror, Skyler saw someone elegant, someone ready for a beautiful night. “Wow! Not bad, huh?”

“Not bad at all,” Kate said, fixing a stray strand of hair and hiking Skyler’s top up just a bit. “We could also still just go have dinner, even with you dressed like that.”

“Kate . . .”

“I know, I know. I just hope . . . I hope you’ll be careful tonight. With him.”

“Ew! Kate!”

“Not like that. Well, yes, like that. But just . . . Don’t let him control the night, O.K.? I know it’s his prom, but it’s your night too. And you look too good to be told what to do.”

“O.K.”

Skyler heard a car pull up outside and then the doorbell ring, and she felt a shiver of excitement. She couldn’t wait to see Danny’s face when he saw how good she looked, some mix of awe and love and lust that would bode well for a magical, memorable night.

But when he walked in, Danny took one look at Skyler—posed expectantly and sort of embarrassingly, halfway up the stairs, waiting for him—and his face changed, becoming tense and angry.

“Are you going to wear something over that?” he asked with a scary, strained tightness in his voice.

It was the end of May and seventy-five degrees outside, so Skyler had not thought about wearing a wrap or anything, and she certainly didn’t have anything to match the dress. “No,” she said cautiously, walking the rest of the way down the stairs. “I was just gonna go like this.”

Danny laughed a little, incredulously, taking a step toward her. From the smell of him, Skyler could tell he’d already been drinking, probably with his friends in the limo, which was waiting outside. “Baby, what if it falls down or, like, rides up?”

Skyler put her hand on Danny’s arm, trying to reassure him, to calm him down. “It’s not going to, I promise. It’s fine.”

He pulled his arm away, a violent yank, and stepped in even closer. “You’re not going to my prom to show your tits to everybody,” he said in a low voice. The lewdness of that word, “tits,” mingling with the sourness of Danny’s breath, startled Skyler, and her stomach plunged. Danny put a hand around her arm, tight, and she was about to try to wriggle free when she heard Kate’s voice at the top of the stairs.

“Hey,” Kate said warily but loudly. Danny backed off, shooting his gaze up at Kate with a menacing look. Then Skyler’s grandmother, either not picking up on the tension or wanting to defuse it somehow, said, “You look so handsome, Danny. And Skyler looks so pretty. I want a picture!”

She made them pose on the stairs, Skyler with her back to Danny, his arms around her waist. She could feel his heart beating; his breathing was deep. He was still worked up, but he didn’t say anything else. He posed for the pictures, put the white corsage he’d brought around Skyler’s wrist, and took her hand and led her out to the limo, where the Meghans and the Ashleys and the Timmys and the Tommys were waiting. They all gave a little whoop when they saw Skyler, Ashley Costello saying, “You look fucking hot!” and Tommy Keegan passing Skyler a half-empty fifth of vodka as she settled into the car.

Danny was stony and silent the whole ride to the hotel in Natick where the prom was being held. When they got there, she quickly lost sight of him.

“Have you seen Danny?” she asked Meghan Murphy at one point. Meghan was one of the nicer girls in Danny’s friend group, but she still had a hard edge to her, a chip-on-her-shoulder iciness.

Meghan gave Skyler a pitying look and said, “Drinking in the bathroom, probably.”

“Oh,” Skyler said, trying to hide her disappointment. “Right. Sure.”

“It’s what they always do at these things,” Meghan yelled over the loud music. “It’s not like they dance or nothing.”

Of course they didn’t dance. What had possessed Skyler to think that she and Danny might dance all night? Especially after the fight over the dress? She felt dumb, like a silly puppy dog who had eagerly followed Danny to the dance only to be ignored.

Meghan leaned in close, smelling like hair spray and sweat, and said, “Doesn’t mean we can’t have fun!” She waved to Skyler to follow her, and they went into the women’s room, where Meghan produced another little bottle of vodka. She took a swig and handed it to Skyler, an eyebrow raised. “If they can do it, we can do it!” Skyler was already a little woozy from the couple of pulls she’d taken in the limo, but whatever. She felt newly indignant about the whole night. She was going to force herself to have fun. Meghan whooped and clapped as Skyler took a big swig then coughed, her throat burning.

They heard the beginnings of a favorite song, “We Found Love,” coming on and tore out of the bathroom to join the mass of kids waiting to jump up and down at the drop. It was a different kind of fun than Skyler had expected, but it was fun nonetheless—reckless and messy.

She spent most of the evening dancing with Meghan and the girls, feeling warm and happy from the vodka, careful to adjust her dress whenever it seemed to slip just a little.

But toward the end of the night, when Danny had finally emerged from the bathroom, pretty far gone and seemingly forgetting to still be mad about the dress, Skyler convinced him to slow dance with her, resting her head on his chest as they swayed to “XO” by Beyoncé, that great, swelling song about deep, eternal, magical love. Danny had softened, kissing her forehead as they danced, holding her gently as they rocked back and forth.

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