Page 41 of What You Left Me

It’s the Winter Formal.

Brooke searches the crowd for her date. She can’t remember where she left him or why they’ve separated. Then again, he hasn’t been much of a date at all. Not that she’d expected much. Though she did expect more than a wilted corsage from the grocery store and one obligatory slow dance at the start of the night.

Cutting in and out of the bodies—there must be hundreds—she wonders how it is she managed to find people to befriend in a school so large the gym can barely be navigated. Sweat has become an unavoidable accessory.

Frustrated, she frees herself of trying. Wherever her date went is somewhere he’d rather be. Why bother sharing the night with her? Apparently that’s not why you ask Brooke Delgado to a dance. You ask her to get nice pictures and a healthy pat on the back from your friends. You ask her for the story, not for the company.

Apparently.

It’s exhausting caring this much. Brooke pulls her shoes off her feet and holds them in her hands. Piece by piece, her expectations shift. If the only company she has is herself, she doesn’t need to wear six-inch heels and pretend to have perfect posture. Her shoulders round forward as her bare feet strike the linoleum. Careful tears trickle down her cheeks. She will not let this ruin her night. She will give herself a few minutes to be bothered, then go back and force herself to have fun.

She wanders down a dark hallway, stopping and sitting when she finds a place far enough away that she can no longer hear the thrum of music pulsing from the gym. In this stillness a peace washes over her. Shelikesher own company.

It’s his loss. And her friends’ loss. They haven’t even tried to find her. Or bothered to notice that she’s looked sour and miserable most of the night.

“Brooke?”

Marty appears from around the corner. His white dress shirt is half untucked and his hair’s a little longer than usual. The dance-hall body heat means the gel no longer holds it out of his face, so a strand flops on his forehead. He seems effortless and relaxed. Handsomer than she ever realized. She’s so used to seeing him in baggy T-shirts and Cubs hats. But maybe she hasn’t been seeing him at all.

Has she been asleep on Martin McGee this whole time?

Quickly, she brushes the tears from her cheeks. “Oh. Hey there. I couldn’t find my date, so I figured I’d come grab some air.” She pastes on a smile. “How are you? Having fun? Who did you come with tonight?”

Marty positions himself against the locker alongside her. He mimics how she’s sitting, pulling his knees up for a place to rest his chin. “I hope you know how great you are,” he says.

It’s not what she’s expecting to hear. In fact, she remembers it’s not what she’ssupposedto hear. When they did this before, he told her he didn’t come with anyone and he wasn’t having much fun. They talked for hours.

Stunned, Brooke finds the tears do not subside. They grow stronger. “Marty,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

He places a cautious hand on her back. “Aw, man, please don’t cry over me. You don’t need to be sorry.I’msorry.”

“Of course I do. I took advantage of you.”

“Are you kidding me? Brooke.” He grabs her by the shoulders, begging for her eyes to meet his. “I needed you this night just as much as you needed me. Do you know why I was out here? Because Chris was making fun of me for never having a date to the dance. Usually that shit rolled off my shoulders, but for whatever reason, I was believing him this night. I was, like, you know what? He’s right. Nobody likes me like that. Then I stumbled out here, and you were crying, and I sat down and talked to you. I was just listening to you, thinking how could anyone be this shitty to Brooke Delgado? You know? Not trying to make a move on you. Not even thinking that was a possibility. Thenyoukissedme. It was surreal. You made me realize that people could like me.”

Brooke laughs a little.

“I’m not even kidding,” Marty says. “You really did. I saw that I didn’t have to stop being me to get someone to care about me or whatever. Because I know I can be a lot. I’m loud and annoying and I try too hard to be funny sometimes. But this night, I was just being myself, and it turned out we were perfect for each other. For the night, at least.”

“We really were,” Brooke says. She leans her head on his shoulder.

“It was a lightning in a bottle kind of night.”

“That we tried to make last for five months…”

Marty laughs. Brooke laughs. They both know it’s true.

“Yeah,” he says. “We really thought if we tried hard enough, we could make it happen again.”

“But this night,” Brooke says. “We got it right this night.”

“Just so you know, I don’t need you to kiss me for listening to you,” he tells her. “I do it because I care about you. And I always will.”

“Well, just so you know, I didn’t just kiss you for that reason. Not this night.”

“Oh, I know. I was just saying, you know, for the other five months of it.”

A weight lifts from Brooke’s shoulders. “But Petra?” she asks. She can feel his shoulders stiffen.