Senior Prom 18

The crowd parted and there was Ranger, standing in the doorway, his eyes fixed on me. His hair was loose, just touching his shoulders, and he was wearing a black tux with a snowy white shirt. Ranger in a tux is the picture of perfection. He made Stan look like the poor cousin from Podunk.

He started across the room, his eyes holding me captive, and I moved out from behind the refreshment table and floated toward him, drawn as if by a magnet. I don't think my feet were even touching the floor as his force field sucked me in.

We met in the middle of the dance floor, and his arms went around me.

"Dance with me, Babe?" he asked as we started to move together, but the question was irrelevant since we were already dancing. His arms were steel bands holding me tight to his chest, and his breath whispered through my hair and tickled my ear.

"Stephanie," he said after a moment. "I'm sorry."

I looked up into his eyes and I could see he meant it, and what it cost him to say it. Batman didn't apologize.

I asked the question that had been plaguing me ever since he'd ordered me out of the gym, out of the building, out of his life. "Why?"

"It's hard to explain," he said.

"Try." I cupped his cheek in my hand and held his eyes.

"I will," he said, "but I need to be alone with you. I can't, here in the middle of this crowd. Can we just dance for now?"

I considered it. He'd been shitty and I felt awkward. But despite the agony he caused me this morning, I loved him. Whether I could forgive him or not depended on him—on what he was willing to give to keep us together. Otherwise I'd walk away. The thought made my heart ache, but that's the way it had to be.

He was watching me, reading my thoughts as we swirled around the dance floor, and he used his hand to draw my head onto his shoulder, my face into his neck. "I love you, Babe," he breathed into my ear, "and I'll do whatever it takes to keep you."

I inhaled, and the scent of him filled me, cutting clear to my heart. He flooded me, saturated me, drenched me, leaving me breathless, gasping for air.

I pulled my head away from his neck and sucked in oxygen, and his mouth found mine. It was hot, a fire banked inside his mouth, and the taste of him satisfied me as no one else ever had before or would again.

We weren't dancing anymore. We stood there, in the middle of the dance floor, as if we were the only two people in the room, in the universe, our mouths locked together in a mating of lips and tongues. Ranger was hard against me, and I plastered myself to him, need rearing up and pummeling me. The past, the future—none of it mattered anymore. All I knew was that we belonged together, no matter what.

"Stephanie Plum," my mother's voice penetrated the fog of passion that enveloped me. Ranger's lips released mine and I blinked back to awareness. "You stop that right now. Everyone's watching, and what you're doing isn't proper."

"Don't listen to her," Grandma chirped. "But you might want to go find a bed before you start doing the mambo right here in the middle of the dance floor."

"Sorry, Mom," I croaked, my voice froggy.

"Let's get out of here, Babe," Ranger rasped, his voice as bad as mine.

"But…" I looked over at the refreshment table and saw Mary Lou and Lenny standing with Stan. Mary Lou gave me a shooing gesture and she didn't have to wave twice. I turned back to Ranger and he swooped me out the door and into the Turbo, parked curbside right in front.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked as he rammed the car through the gears, accelerating so fast that I was pinned back in the seat.

"I'm imagining a dark lit place with a bed, but it's up to you. Your place or my place?"

"You owe me an explanation," I said, "and I need to hear it before I can decide." My hormones wanted us to go straight to Haywood and his bed, but my mind was aware enough to realize I had to know the why of his cruelty to me before I could be with him.

Ranger screeched the Porsche into a u-turn, flinging me up against the door, and swung down a side street toward downtown. In three minutes he was parked at the curb in front of the little sandwich shop where we first met, helping me out of the car. The café was deserted except for a tired-looking waitress in a faded pink uniform with a white collar and white cuffs on her short sleeves, wiping the counter with a damp rag.

"We're closing," she said.

Ranger escorted me to the back booth, the same one we sat in a lifetime ago. He seated me facing the mirrored wall and I watched as his reflection walked back to the waitress, reaching into its pocket and peeling bills off a thick roll.

By the time Ranger was settled across from me, the waitress, whose nametag proclaimed "Harriet," was back with two mugs of coffee, asking, "Pie?"

"Lemon meringue," I said, having already spotted it in the glass-fronted dessert case.

"Sir?" Harriet questioned.

"Nothing."

After Harriet bustled off, Ranger looked at me with steamy eyes and said, "I'll be having my pie later."

I shook off the desire that threatened to take me over and waited for him to convince me to go home with him.

TBC