A Promise Kept

By Jeune Ecrivain.

Rated PG

Genre: Romance/Humor (Zack/Maddie)

Summary: Five years after "A Prom Story," Maddie dances with Zack at his prom as she promised. As a result, the two friends soon discover that the difference between 17 and 20 doesn't mean as much as the difference between 12 and 15.

Part I

"What are you doing out here?"

MadelineFitzpatrick looked up at the young man who had spoken these words. Standing over her as she sat in an armchair on a rather spacious balcony of the Tipton Hotel was Zack Martin. He had his hands shoved casually into the pocket of his black tuxedo pants, somehow without appearing so casual as to detract from the elegance of his formal attire. His blonde sugar-bowl hairstyle that he had worn for as long as she had known him allowed him to retain a certain boyishness despite the fact that he was now practically a man.

"I decided to sit out the dancing part of the night," she said, glancing through the glass center of the otherwise wooden doors that lead back into a large ballroom. "I don't really have anyone to dance with and it's not really my prom. I got bored."

Zack gave her a lopsided grin and claimed the armchair beside her own as his for the time being. "I guess even the eccentricities of London and Dublin can only keep you entertained for so long."

Maddie chuckled, thinking of the two now-grown kids of rival hotel tycoons. It was sort of a posh version of Romeo and Juliet. Dublin was the son of Ferdinand Stetson, the owner of the Tipton's main competitor. The young Stetson heir was spoiled, wealthy, and unabashedly shallow, which of course made him a perfect match for Tipton heiress London. "It's a match made in heaven, isn't it?" she quipped.

Zack nodded. "Even their names seem to go well together," he quipped back. "Honestly, next thing we know, the tabloids will be reporting that Paris Hilton is going out with some guy named Madrid or Lisbon or something like that."

Maddie giggled.

"Seriously," Zack said, though the small smile on his lips said otherwise, "these spoiled heirs and heiresses are all the same. Most people browse through a baby name book or their family tree when they're naming their kids. Hotel tycoons just look at a political map of Europe."

Maddie giggled harder.

"Heck, maybe they even put the Europe map on the wall, blindfold themselves, and do some kind of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey thing with it," Zack speculated. He then closed his eyes and held out his right index finger, waving it all around in front of him. "My daughter's name will be…" he mocked.

Maddie laughed out loud. "You didn't come out here just to make fun of hotel tycoons, did you?" she managed in between chuckles.

"Actually, no," he admitted. He rose to his feet and turned to face her. "I came to collect on an old debt."

Maddie arched her eyebrow. "What old debt?" she challenged him.

Zack smiled at her slyly. "I seem to remember a certain pretty, brownish-blonde girl promising me that she would dance with me at my prom if I danced with her at hers."

Maddie looked at him and smirked, though she allowed a little warmth to show through in her expression.

Zack held out his hand. "May I have this dance?" he asked, almost exactly as he had five years before.

In response, she placed her hand gracefully in his. He then pulled her gently to her feet, letting her strapless red dress fall into place as it adjusted to her change in pose. As if on cue, a new slow-dance song drifted out from within the ballroom. Interlocking her right hand with his, she let her other hand rest lightly upon his shoulder while he placed his own free hand on the small of her back. She looked him in the eye as they both began swaying to the music. "So you do remember that night," she remarked.

"Maddie, I was 12, not 2," he reminded her.

Maddie giggled once more.

"Besides," said Zack, "I never got to thank you. After our little talk, I knew despite my hopes that that dance was just between friends. But it still meant a lot to me that you cared enough to let me down easy."

"Zack, I told you," she insisted. "You were special to me. You still are."

"Same here," Zack nodded with a lopsided grin.

There was a certain unspoken truth to Maddie's statement. As Zack grew older, he and Maddie had become close friends. When Maddie had left for college, she had known then that she'd miss Zack the most. When she returned every summer to resume her job at the Tipton, Zack was the first person she wanted to see. He had become one of the people she just had to call if something really exciting happened. He had also become someone whom she could count on for words of encouragement when something went wrong.

As the song progressed, Maddie soon found herself resting her head on Zack's shoulder. She idly asked herself when she had become so unabashedly comfortable in his proximity. It then occurred to her that this sense of comfort and even subtle pleasure was often the kind of thing a girl might feel towards a longtime boyfriend. The idea startled her somewhat, as it put her on a train of thought she wasn't sure she wanted to be on. Once her mind had placed Zack in any semblance of a romantic context, she couldn't stop herself from imagining what it would be like to actually have Zack as something more than a friend. She found, much to her surprise, that the concept was deeply pleasing to her. Zack was smart, funny, kind, and he had indeed become rather attractive.

That last thought jolted her head off of his shoulder, and she found herself looking him in the eye again. He seemed mildly surprised by her movement, but he only smirked warmly at her as they continued to dance. He looked…dare she think it?…cute. Maddie was inwardly shocked by her own rapidly emerging feelings, feelings that she thought she'd never have for a guy three years her junior. It was as if fate had decided it was HER turn to have a crush on HIM.

As puzzlement began to show on Zack's face, she realized he was becoming suspicious. She was growing quite irritated at him for having grown into such a romantically appealing guy. Her brain told her it wasn't his fault, but her emotions would hear none of it. Wanting to somehow voice this irritation without giving herself away, she randomly thought of that time at her freshman prom when they'd danced together and suddenly remembered that the height difference between them had completely shifted. "When did you get to be taller than me?" she blurted.