1.
She hadn't seen him panic moonwalk since he first kissed her a few months ago. "Jesus Miller. I'm just asking for a date to this thing. It's not real prom. It's just at a prom."
He shook his head from the kitchen stool he'd retreated to. "I don't do prom. Tell her Winston, tell her it's just not my thing."
"I'm not telling her anything, man. She's your roomfriend. Tell her yourself." Winston high-fived Jess on his way out of the kitchen. "I'm going to bed."
Jess zipped her bag and struggled with a long hanger-bag. He took it from her so she could change her pocketbook to the other shoulder, and then gave it back to her when she held out her hand. "Listen," said Jess. "We've been flat out since I started at school. You start work when I come home. I've had PD's and planning three straight weekends since Cece's wedding so that I can figure out how to teach high school. I miss my friends. I miss you. I'm just looking for a date with you, and this is what I've got. I'd like to see you when one of us isn't exhausted and disgusted by our clientele, you know?"
Nick knuckled his eyes and grimaced, "I just…oh god. Teenagers. I'm not good with 'em Jess. I become even older than I already am. I go straight to get off my lawn territory. And Prom is The Worst. It is, right?"
"I don't know, yeah! But wait a minute - did you even go to yours? No, no. I know: you either stayed home and made angry mix tapes or you went and giggled into a flask the whole night while Winston danced. Where's Winston, I'm gonna go ask him…" His eyes widened in panic, and she stopped when she saw he was really suffering.
"Jess. Are you kidding me? Going to prom would have involved asking someone to prom. Do you really think that teenage Nick had would have gotten it together to do that?" He pointed to himself with two thumbs and hung his head. "Broken! Remember? Super busted then!" She reached for his hand, ducking her eyes to meet his.
"Listen, I gotta go. You know where to find me tonight. I'll be the one enforcing Dance Rules and guarding the punch and getting all twirly and infected with teenage hormones. I might even wanna freak someone. Do some super-busting." She waggled her eyebrows at him.
He looked up fast, swallowing at the thought of it. "See you at 8. I gotta go get a shirt ironed."
2.
"Ahh I'm so sorry Nick," she said from behind the screen. Her red cardigan from this morning was flung over the top obscuring the T in a poster asking "How Do Bees Do It?" He could hear serious swishing and rustling behind it. "I swear if they ever ask me to help decorations for a Prom I'm chaperoning, the answer will be my retreating ass!"
"That is no punishment, Day. You have a world-class ass!" He backed up a step when whatever she was doing back there bumped the screen hard, a thumbtack flying out of the bees poster. "You OK in there?"
"Yeah. This zipper sucks. I think I got it now. Can you just hand me those shoes on my desk?" He circled, looking, and then found silver heels. He knocked on the screen, holding them out. Jess's head and a bare-looking shoulder appeared sideways from the screen. "Aw! You wore Suit!" she said, smiling.
"I did. Suit and I, we go way back. Suit gives me luck!"
She waggled her eyebrows at him and he heard what he'd said. "I didn't mean…get lucky...I mean, I do mean …but…" She rescued him by coming out from behind the screen, dressed for prom finally.
She wore something filmy and soft-to-the-touch, a dark, dark pink, a halter on top and a long skirt that was layered like petals somehow, and a big soft flower at her waistband. Her dark hair was pulled back on one side, like she wore once when she wore an invisible shirt under his hoodie, that day he almost kissed her, and he couldn't speak for a second because she looked so young and old at the same time. "Too much?" she asked, suddenly a little shy.
"Uh, no. No, you look, amazing!" he nodded and grinned. "Hallooo nurse!"
"Nick! I mean it! Ok for chaperoning?" He kept nodding and grinning. "Yes. Ok. I don't know anyone who can look that hot and that much like the 1975 Country Music Awards at the same time."
"Aw Nick, that's so nice! You look nice too! Wait, I have something for you!" She ran to her giant back at her desk and rummages, pulling out a clamshell-wrapped flower. "You have to wear it, alright? It's tradition. Don't say no."
"I won't say no." But he hated to hear those words from her. It made him want to take her face in his hands and kiss her silly, but he stayed still instead and let her pin her gigantic pin through the dark pink flower on his lapel. "It's an anemone. It matches my dress. Deal with it."
"I'm dealing. Are we done here? Is it time?"
"Yes! Are you ready?"
"Oh, no! Wait." He brought his own clamshell out from behind the pencil sharpener where he's hid it. "It's one of the wrist ones." Jess was looking a little bit dumbstruck, her gigantic eyes even bigger for a minute. "Here, lemme," He said, and puts the white peony on her wrist. "No pins. There. Now you're ready. Jess. Stop. You'll screw up your makeup. Let's go to promenade!" He said as Judy Garland, and offered his arm.
Her heels clicked loudly on the hall floor and they could hear the thump of the music get louder as they make their way. Nick started to speed talk: "Why do high school hallways always look so weird after school? How do you work here? Do you feel that feeling in your stomach all the time, that high school feeling like anything could happen – something important is going to happen, good or bad?"
She eyed him. "Was it that bad?"
Nick nodded. "For me, yeah. I didn't feel very…stable most of the time. I mean, with Walt you learn pretty quick to kind of, brace for the blow, you know? Be ready for it to get worse, fast. So, if you've got hormones that say go go go all the time and every other part of you is like, shut the fuck up hormones you're going to get us in trouble…well, you can imagine how awesome I was to be around. I was pretty fucked up."
"President Miller of Earth, taking calls on a Banana!"
"Almost."
"Nick?" she stopped walking and turned to him.
"Yes Jess?"
"Do I have your permission to bang you hard at some point this evening?"
"You're turned on by angry teenage Nick?"
She nodded.
He swallowed hard, and walked her backwards to the wall of lockers outside the auditorium. He could feel her bare back above the silk waist of her dress, and the thought of her breasts, bare and so close under the halter, made him hard. He bent down to her ear. "Do you feel safe?" he whispered.
She nodded, and bit her lip as he kissed below her ear and down her neck to her shoulder. "Do I have your permission to take this dress off you pretty soon?"
She breathed a hitchy breath as he bit her throat a gentle, wet bite. "Or you could leave it on…"
He looked at her with raised eyebrows and chuckled low in his throat. "Jessica Day!" He slid his hand behind one halter strap and smiled to find just the silky nipple he'd hoped for. She bit her lip and looked at his hand, and then up at him through lower lashes, and when the kids voices came loud through the opening door, she took a minute to come back to the here and now, where Nick had stepped away from her and was holding the door open for her. "Get your mind on the job, Day! Let's chaperone the shit out of this thing!"
3.
Three hours later, Nick had chased two sets of punch spikers off the refreshments bar, helped Jess deal with the two angry girls who'd realized they were dating the same guy (who Nick had had to physically lift the little guy away from their clawing fingernails, feeling like he was carrying a bag of light tent poles as he did, compared to the leaden drunks he usually had to carry, and advising the kid to "go home and get a grip on this, boy. There isn't enough of you to spread around like that…"), and had an actual decent conversation about Bears football with the lady gym teacher and Bob and Dwight from 10th grade history and algebra. Jess had come to rest at the table with him, laughing when Dwight said chaperoning a prom was like going to a dry wedding, and how hard it was to electric slide to "Get Lucky" when you weren't drunk, when a little bundle of three girls came up to them and, with their appointed spokesperson, asked, "You're Miss Day, right? You subbed our class last week?"
Nick watched Jess warm to them. "Yeah! You three were really on your game with Huck Finn! Isn't it an amazing read?"
"Yeah, but thanks for doing the accent, it was funny, and it really helped!" Spokesperson got nudged in the ribs by her friend. "Anyway we wanted to say that we really liked your dress. We think it's the coolest one here, and that's not something we ever say about a teacher's clothes. Where did you get it?
"Aw, that's so sweet! I had it made! I know this vintage fabric place and the lady's son is in design school and he sewed if for me from an old Butterick Pattern. Isn't it the coolest?"
The kids nodded, wreathed in smiles. One of them looked out of the corner of her eyes at Nick sitting close behind her with his arm on the back of her chair. Jess startled. "Oh, sorry! This is Nick, my, uh…best friend Nick!" Nick shot her a look, but put a grin on his face like he had the day she'd asked him to "not look like that" before he kissed her, and stuck out his hand to shake Spokeperson's. "You look really lovely tonight. All of you." Jess watched him, was watching him when he returned her gaze. "What?"
"Nothing. You just are really good with teenagers. And teachers. It's been really nice being with you tonight. Thanks for not suffering too much. And I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"I didn't know…I mean, introducing you, I didn't know what you wanted."
"It's ok, Jess. I get it." She was pretty sure he didn't, but was surprised when he shifted suddenly and said, "Let's get out of here for a minute."
Dwight saw them stand and said, "Jess, you've done enough tonight, we got the closing. Get out of here. It's almost over anyway, they're gonna turn the lights on in like 10 minutes."
"Thanks! She said, letting herself be towed across the floor to the exit. "Nick! Where are we going?" The lights in the auditorium did, at that moment, clunk on.
"Somewhere darker!" She couldn't read his face. He'd been serious a minute ago.
"You ok Nick?"
In response he pulled her quickly into the unlit corridor, and then, seeing what he was looking for, the backstage door. He opened it, and steered her backwards into the dark quiet of the leaned-up wooden set pieces making a tunnel against the cinder-block wall of the stage. Far away on the other side of the curtain, they heard the sound of teachers and students shuffling and chatting end-of-party noises. She found herself breathing hard in the still space, his intensity contagious, and then he kissed her before she could really find the outlines of him in the dark. His hands were everywhere, and in response she wrapped as much of herself as she could around his head, neck, shoulders, back, all of his gorgeousness under her hands and mouth, moaning back at the low groan he made when he found her tongue and when he bared one of her small, round breasts with his searching thumb.
She arched her back to press into him, and when their kisses grew more frantic, shoved off his jacket, and then grappled for his belt buckle. She was just getting it undone when he broke contact for to dip down and get a hand under her long petaled skirt, skimming all the way up to her hip and pausing for a second when he didn't find anything to stop him at the top. His widening eyes met hers. She smiled. "No panties. I told you you might get lucky tonight."
"Jesus, woman." Was all he could say, and he lifted her, bodily, kissing her until he found something to land her on – the wooden prow of a ship, she thought, maybe – and spread her out over the top of it, her legs still wrapped around his waist. "How to do I get in here?" he laughed at her skirt, and she was so, so glad to hear his laugh, as he lifted layer after layer of swishing fabric. She sat up and hauled at handfuls of skirt with one hand and his belt with the other, but he found her hot center with his hand first, and she gasped and pulled him forward to kiss him, hard. He broke the kiss but not the contact and rested his forehead on hers. "Jess," he breathed, his fingers in her silky wetness.
"Nick."
"I never asked you what you wanted. About us. About our Whatever this is. No. That's not what I mean. I mean, I never asked you what I wanted to ask."
She pressed against his fingers and kissed him to tell him it didn't matter, but he wanted to continue. "No, no, I mean, I want to be unbroken about this. I want to ask. Jess."
"Nick," she whispered for the second time.
"I like that you said I'm your best friend. I feel the same way." He was whispering, tumbling the words together, breathing them on her lips, his thumb on her most sensitive spot, and she almost couldn't bear it, when he said, "but I want to be more. I'm in love with you." He stopped and smiled, because it turned out with her that asking wasn't that hard after all. "I wanna be…will you let me be your…boyfriend?"
She grinned like a crazy person in answer, nodding, and kept eye contact as she undid first his pants button and then zipper, opening them to find him hard against her hand. She put both arms around his neck then and lifted herself up, and he held her in his arms and entered her, all at once, both of them closing their eyes at the feel of it, and then opening them to stare at each other. She smiled again, and said, gasping a little, "Boyfriend. That feels good to me. Does that feel good to you?"
It did. He laid her back again on the deck of the ship, and moved into her again, holding her face in his hands, to show her how much.