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I smiled up at him. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot.”
He covered his heart. “It’s my pleasure.”
Mom snapped a picture. Tiffany came over to position us for photos, tickling me in the process until I broke into laughter. “Stay still,” she complained, but snickered.
My smile faded when I locked eyes with Manning. He stood on the front patio, arms crossed, his expression pinched. The line of his jaw as taut as the veins in his neck.
From behind, Corbin put an arm around the front of my shoulders, kissed my cheek, and turned me away.
At dinner, Corbin told stories from college that made everyone at the table laugh. Between bruschetta and gnocchi, he laced his hand with mine and leaned in. “Having fun?”
“Yes,” I said honestly. Mona, Vickie and the rest of my friends didn’t hide their envy. Even Val, who’d turned down a few boys to come alone, asked if I wanted to trade dates. Corbin wasn’t just handsome but funny. He drew everyone’s attention at the table, but his attention was all mine, and my friends noticed.
His skills carried onto the dance floor. Corbin and his brothers had attended ballroom dancing classes to surprise his mom for his parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary a few years ago, so he effortlessly took the lead during slow and fast dances. Some of my friends cut in, and after Corbin, their dates felt clumsy, grabbing at me. Corbin always came back for me.
After, we took over an entire floor of the hotel. Val, Vickie, Mona and I had our own room, but everyone congregated in a suite someone had rented. The boys pushed all the furniture to the perimeter of the room. Corbin played bartender while we danced, Val and I karaoke-ing to Shania Twain.
“Doing all right?” Corbin asked when I stopped by the kitchenette-turned-bar for a breather. “Have you ever had three drinks in a row?”
I laughed, pushing his shoulder, but I was the one to take a step back. “I’m fine. Did you say three?”
I was definitely buzzed—and more relaxed than I’d been in months. I hadn’t planned to drink tonight, maybe a few sips before the sleepover, but part of me just wanted to let loose for a night. I’d thought getting accepted to school would get my dad off my back, but it was still non-stop with college crap. He and I were going over dorms and playing phone tag with my new roommate’s parents and Mom took me shopping at Target practically every week. Dad had created a college summer reading list and had even taken off work early one day to drive me to the campus bookstore. The last couple weeks, we’d been getting into the really important things, like my class schedule. He wanted me to choose a major, and business was at the top of the list. He didn’t want to talk about electives like drama. Not until I’d decided on a major, even though everything I’d read said I didn’t need to right away.
Tonight wasn’t the time to stress. I took a long sip of orange juice and rum, watching Mona drunk-dance in the middle of the room. She didn’t seem to notice the song skipping until her date opened the tray and took the CD out.
“Hey!” she said, swaying.
He blew on the disc, wiping it on his dress shirt. “Just keep dancing.”
“But you stopped the music.”
“I’m surprised you even noticed. You’re more smashed than a pumpkin.”
She giggled as he put the CD back in and hit play on “1979.”
“I can’t believe I almost didn’t come tonight,” I told Corbin. “This is the best night I’ve—” I was about to say ever had, but that would be a lie. No night would ever compare to the ones I’d spent with Manning, especially the one under the stars. “The best I’ve had in a long time,” I finished.
He smiled widely, as happy as I’d ever seen him. “Yeah? I’m so glad. My prom was shit.”
Corbin and his friends had gone solo. From what he’d told me, they’d arrived at the dance, swooped in on some other guys’ dates, and spent the night drinking and gambling.
A girl reached between us for a handle of vodka, her cranberry juice making my nose wrinkle. “Why didn’t you guys take dates?”
“I didn’t want to. If I couldn’t bring the girl I wanted, none of them got to have a date.” He shifted as the girl grabbed a stack of Solo cups and took them into one of the bedrooms. “In case it isn’t clear, that girl was you.”
I laughed a little. Corbin had always been charming, but he’d had a lot more girls to practice on since leaving high school. “You didn’t even ask me.”
He hesitated. “I was going to. I told Tiffany. She said your dad would neuter me if I tried, and you know something? I believe her. I mean, you’re almost in college and your dad was still looking at me tonight like he wanted to put me underground.”
