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“Your two friends knew what they were doing,” I told him, sliding my hands over the suit just to feel the fabric and the way it clung to his body. Fuck, he looked good. I was tempted to just have him fuck me in this and forget about dinner—but I was hungry.
As if to punctuate that point, my stomach rumbled. Pike chuckled. “Shall we?”
He stepped back and offered me his arm, and I wrapped my arm around his, feeling… well, it was ridiculous, but feeling almost like this was my prom, or some other romantic cliché night that I had never gotten as a teenager.
The night of my prom, I’d gone with Michelle. Neither of us had wanted to go out with any guys, even though I knew that there were plenty of guys who would be delighted to ask out Michelle and I knew of a couple who had been trying to find an opportunity to ask me. I hadn’t wanted to go out with anyone. None of them had been Pike. And Michelle was too shy, she hadn’t wanted to go out with someone for the first time to prom, she’d felt it was too much pressure.
But now I had this, and y’know what? This was even better. This wasn’t going as an awkward teenager to a dance with a bunch of chaperones who were glaring at us and bored and strong-armed into it, with cheap decorations and punch that was, at some point, badly spiked so it tasted awful.
This was the two of us going out for a night on the town. And I loved it.
“What are you thinking about?” Pike asked as he opened the door for me and led us to his car.
“Prom,” I answered honestly.
“Oh God.” He pulled a face. “I remember my prom. I wanted to ditch it but Amber wanted to show up and show off her latest outfit so I went for like half an hour and then your brother and I ditched. She wasn’t happy with me.” He grinned. “What made you think about it?”
“I was just thinking about how… when I was a teen and I was being an idiot and daydreaming about you, I imagined you’d take me to prom and I’d have the coolest prom date, bar none. But when the time came, I ended up going with Michelle as my date and I was glad that I wasn’t going with you or any other guy. It would’ve been… disappointing, I think. If you’re already with someone then it’s fun, but if you’re going out for the first time… yeah. It was more fun to go with a friend.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because it wouldn’t have been the fairytale that I’d hoped it would be. But if you’re just with a friend, or if you’ve been with a person for a while, then there’s no… there’s no buildup of all these hopes, there’s no pressure, and so it’s just fun. Who cares if there are parents breaking apart couples that dance too closely? You’re not a part of a couple. Or you’ve been together a while and you’re just going to go make out under the bleachers later so whatever. It’s just fun, that way.”
“Makes sense,” Pike conceded, smiling. We got into the car. “And what about tonight?”
“Well we’re not teenagers anymore and thank God for that.”
Pike laughed. “I have to agree. People who are nostalgic about being teenagers clearly don’t remember it right. Being a teenager is fucking miserable. God.”
“Oh, c’mon, you were the king of high school! Everyone wanted to be you!”
Pike shrugged as we pulled out onto the road. “Yeah, sure. And it was fun. I had fun. But I also had a bad home life with parents who didn’t care about me and ignored me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to get away, because it felt like everyone had this expected view of me, and of who they thought I was.
“I’m not saying it was all bad. It wasn’t. I have a lot of really fond memories. Especially with Morgan. But I wouldn’t go back, no way, and I wouldn’t say those are the best years of my life. I think those are just beginning.”
He glanced over at me, smiling warmly, and I felt my stomach melting in response. He thought the best years were ahead of him—could that include me? That he wanted those years to be the two of us?
I wanted to ask—his smile seemed to suggest that was what he meant—but I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to ruin this night if that wasn’t quite what he was getting at.
“I wouldn’t go back to being a teenager either. In case you couldn’t tell.”
Pike winked at me. “I like you better as an adult now, definitely. There’s all kinds of things that we can do now that we couldn’t do back then.”
