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16
Wow,” Dad said, staring at Nick as he walked down the stairs, head held high. “Now I know why you didn’t want me to see the suit until you were ready to go to prom.”
“Right?” Nick said gleefully, jumping the last few steps. The dress shoes didn’t have any traction, and his feet almost slid out from underneath him. He managed to stay upright, playing it off like he’d done it on purpose. Spreading his arms away from his body, Nick turned in a slow circle, hoping the overhead light was catching the sequins on his suit. “Isn’t it awesome?”
“Ye-es?” Dad said. “You’ll certainly stand out, that’s for sure. I’ll admit, when you told me that it once belonged to a dead magician, I thought you were overselling it a bit. I was wrong.”
“It might even be haunted,” Nick said as he stopped turning. Suddenly realizing he was about to go to prom with the boy of his dreams, Nick asked nervously, “Do you really think I look all right? It’s not too much, is it?”
“Nah,” Dad said. “It’s you, through and through. And that’s a good thing.”
“Good,” Nick said, slightly relieved. “At least I’ll look devastatingly handsome, which will hopefully divert attention away from the fact that I still can’t dance very well.”
“I doubt Seth is going to care about that at all,” Dad said, “looking like you do.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dad said, eyes wet.
“Aw, Dad, come on. You don’t need to cry. I know I’m redefining couture, but it’s notthatbig of a deal.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dad said as he sniffled. “I’m … you look happy, Nicky. Which makes me happy.”
“I am,” Nick said. “We’ve earned a night where we get to go be stupid and not worry about someone trying to punch us in the throat or freeze our innards.” He paused. “Huh. Our lives are weird.”
“That might be an understatement, kid.” Dad lowered his phone. “You do deserve this. All of you do.”
“Which is why I convinced Seth to ignore the app, at least for tonight.” Nick had expected Seth to put up a bit of a fight, which is why he was surprised when Seth agreed almost immediately, saying that he wasn’t going to answer any call, no matter how serious. Tonight was about them and Jazz and Gibby.
“Good,” Dad said, taking a step back. “She’d love this, Nicky.”
Nick flushed happily. It was getting easier now to bring her up. It still hurt and probably always would, but it wasn’t like how it used to be. “I think so too. She’d say I looked kickass.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Dad took a deep breath before shaking his head. “Okay, let’s head out. I’ll need to take at least a hundred pictures when we get there, and I don’t want the restaurant to send the hit men after you.”
“Five pictures.”
“Ninety.”
“Ten.”
“Ninety-one.”
Nick glared at him. “I hope you’re never called to be a hostage negotiator because everyone will die, since you don’t know anything about negotiating.”
“Or do I know everything?” Dad said as he headed for the door. “Get your butt in gear.”
Grumbling, Nick followed Dad toward the door.
On the ride over to the Gray house, Nick played with his new phone. It wasn’t anything special, but so long as it got him online and could get him in touch with Dad, he really didn’t care.
He pulled up the Pyro Storm Twitter account, staring, dumbfounded, as the number of followers now approached almost half a million. The mentions were a mess, so he mostly ignored them, trying to keep his excitement in check at the verified celebrities who’d started retweeting Pyro Storm’s missives. Knowing this sort of popularity was part of the slippery slope of becoming evil itself (a social media influencer), Nick absolutely did not consider sliding into the DMs of one of the retweeters, the dude who played a superhero on the big screen with a costume so tight it was basically an advertisement for circumcisions. Nick already had a boyfriend, and he was a real superhero who also happened to wear a skintight costume. Granted, it didn’t give away whether Seth was circumcised or not (and Nick didnotpull up the many, many photos he found of Pyro Storm to look closely, no sir!) but that was okay. It’d be like a fun surprise when they got around to … doing stuff. Which they would, eventually, right? What if something happened tonight? What if Seth was ready for hand stuff or butt stuff and Nick hadn’t even prepared? What did onedowith another person’s penis, anyway?
“What are you looking at?” Dad asked.
“Nothing!” Nick cried, shoving his phone back into his pocket. “And I definitely wasn’t looking up the differences between circumcised and uncircumcised penises, if that’s what you were asking!”
“No,” Dad said slowly. “I wasn’t asking that at all. But now I think I need to. Nick, why were you looking up the differences between—”
