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“I don’t want to go to Cathedral’s prom,” Dante said out of nowhere one day. We were in his room, his head on my stomach as we laid on his bed. He was looking at one of his new art books, and I was looking at him. I’ve never wanted to do anything else.
“I didn’t realize Cathedral had a prom. It’s not like you can bring your classmates as your date.”
“All the guys bring girls from Loretto as dates, and they make it into some formal event. I can’t stand it. I can’t bring a girl date to prom when I have a boyfriend! I heard the nuns from Loretto are the chaperones too. Imagine how awful that would be.”
I could imagine. All those repressed girls and repressed guys, all finally together in one room. And they try to say we’re the ones risking sin.
Not that Dante and I were much better than those Catholic school kids would be.
“Are you going to your prom this year?”
“I guess so,” I said. “Wanna come with me?”
Dante sat up and turned to look at me, so I sat up too.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “Why not? It would be a lot easier to get you into my prom than me getting into yours. Gina can get you in.”
Dante’s smile could light up the room on its own; the sun could have decided to take a break and it would still be bright as day in the room. “I get to go to prom with my boyfriend.”
What kind of luck did we have, to have been this fortunate. I wanted to kiss him, so I did. “And I get to go to prom with my boyfriend.” I think my smile might have matched Dante’s. Just might. I didn’t know if I could ever be that beautiful.
—
I told Gina the next day before class.
“I'm glad you finally asked him,” she said.
I just stared at her.
“What? Cassandra, Susie, and I have been making plans for weeks already. I had to turn down dates for this, Aristotle Mendoza,” she said with a finger wag at me.
“Why would you do that?”
“Well I couldn’t just let our genius plan go to waste, could I? You men are so slow. Cassandra was days away from asking Dante to prom for you.”
“Yeah but Gina, you could have accepted someone’s invitation. Cassandra could have taken Dante and I could go without a date. You know I wouldn’t have had a problem with that.”
Gina looked away, down the hall. Her face looked pink. She was wearing a blue sweater and the day was already getting warm. That girl was always about appearance over comfort.
“Just worry about getting your suits, Ari.”
—
Two weeks before prom, Gina walked up to me when I was at my locker before class. Susie was with her, and so was Cassandra.
“The nominees for prom king and queen are out,” Gina said.
“That’s nice,” I said. I had no real interest in that event; I didn’t even know if I’d still be at my own prom when they announced the winners. All I cared about was spending the night with Dante and my friends.
“Do you want to know if you know anyone who was nominated?”
I figured Gina cared, and she’s my friend, and she was also probably nominated, so I said, “Sure.”
Susie jumped in like it was her cue. “Well, Gina got nominated for prom queen.”
I nodded as I grabbed my English textbook, and I turned my head to look at her. “That’s great. Congrats, Gina.”
She thanked me with a smile and said, “That’s not all.”
Cassandra said, “Nominated for prom king, first candidate: Aristotle Mendoza.”
I slammed my locker closed, the loud bang echoing through the hall. Everyone walking through stopped for a second before continuing, side-eyeing me as they passed.
I looked for Susie to say it’s a joke; of the three of them, she’s always been the worst liar.
“What the fuck,” I said.
Dante grinned and kissed me into the mattress when I told him. “They’re finally seeing what I do.”
—
A week before prom, Cassandra reminded us we didn't have any plans for after the dance.
Dante and I looked at each other. That, we had figured out, dreamed and imagined and planned in our bedrooms, our own simple dates. If the girls could take care of getting Dante into prom and the clothes and everything, this was Dante’s and my realm, our own kingdom.
“How do you guys feel about leaving early?”
—
Gina insisted we meet at my house to take group prom photos.
“I want to have at least something to remember this by, especially now that I’ve only got a fake date,” she had said.
“You don’t have to do this, Gina. You can go with whoever you like. Dante can get in another way,” I had told her.
She’d given me a sad smile. Gina, sad? I couldn’t make any sense of it. What could Gina have to be sad about?
Dante was the first to arrive. I hadn’t expected anything else. If Dante didn’t love his parents and his brother so much, he’d probably live here if he could. Not that his parents would probably let him. Honestly, mine probably wouldn’t either. No matter how much Dante and I loved each other, our parents loved us more. But I was okay with that, and I knew Dante was too.
Dante wore a navy blue suit with black lapels, with a white shirt underneath and a hot pink tie to match Gina’s dress. While I had just borrowed my dad’s black suit, Dante refused to borrow Sam’s, insisting that his character just didn’t shine through enough. That was all I knew; Dante wouldn’t tell me anything about his suit. “You know the groom can’t see the bride before the wedding,” Dante had said.
I smiled and rolled my eyes, but I let him have his moment.
He looked stunning. He shone. He was the sun and the moon and the stars when he walked in. He was everything.
Dante looked me up and down with a smile before coming in to wrap his arms around me. “Hello,” he said, leaning down to kiss me. I tilted my head up to meet him, hands braced on his biceps.
“You look so handsome,” Dante said when we broke apart.
“So do you,” I said.
I wanted to kiss him more. I wanted to more than kiss him. I wanted to take him up to my room and kiss him and kiss him and I didn’t care if we’d be late to prom. But Gina and Cassanda and Susie would, and they’d be here soon. And our parents were here, and I didn’t want them knowing anything about that. So I held his hand instead, and we grinned like maniacs, and I made myself okay with that.
—
All of the parents wanted to take what felt like hundreds of pictures, and my face muscles hurt from smiling by the end of it. I took photos with almost everyone, but mostly I took photos with Dante.
Dante and I took our real prom photos right after he had arrived, before everyone else did. It seemed like both of our parents were tearing up, and that made me want to cry a little too. I focused on Dante’s smile instead, and I hoped that my mom would hang up our prom photo in the house.
—
This year’s prom theme was “Under the Sea,” but I didn’t get why there had to be a theme. There were a lot of blue streamers around the gymnasium and paper fish taped to the walls. There were tables covered in blue tablecloths along the sides of the gym and candles in the center of each. The center of the floor was open, and half the students were dancing to whatever the DJ had playing, some pop song. On the far side, opposite of the door, was a small stage that they brought in for this. The DJ was set up there, and there was a microphone front and center on the stage, ready for them to announce prom royalty. I didn’t know when they were doing that, even being nominated. I didn’t really plan on being here long enough for that.
The six of us found an empty table and dropped our bags. Gina and Susie went out to socialize, dragging Dante and Cassandra with them. I was fine with guarding the table with Cricket; some people came up to me to talk, some came to talk to Cricket. Mostly, I watched Dante: watched him make people fall in love with him, arm and arm with Gina and Cassandra, watched him smile and nod enthusiastically, watched him mesmerize my classmates with his tales. They were as helpless as I was to his charm. If we stayed here for the whole time, he’d take over the student body by the end of the night.
I didn’t have to see his eyes to know that they were sparkling like the night sky.
I liked that out of anyone who’d fallen under his spell, he chose me to be by his side.
—
We stayed for an hour and a half before we left. We all made at least one trip to the dance floor as the “correct” couples, though Gina, Susie, Cricket, and Dante were there more.
We snuck out a side door and ran off to my truck. Dante and I were in the cab, and the other four climbed into the bed.
I stopped us at the Charcoaler for a late dinner before taking off towards our real prom location. The others didn’t know where we were going, but three of the four in the backseat had been out to the desert at least once, so I trusted them to trust me. Dante and I held hands over the center seat.
—
When I parked in my spot in the desert, Dante and I got out, leaving the doors to my truck open, and I turned up the radio. My headlights provided the only light in the area other than the stars. We were lucky; it was a clear night and a full moon.
We sat in the back of my truck and talked, the six of us, as we got used to being out here. Our real prom. When a Madonna song came on, Gina, Susie, and Dante got up and danced. Then a Whitney Houston song came on next, and they dragged the rest of us off to dance. And then we kept dancing.
Eventually, we paired off into the right pairs: Susie and Cricket, me and Dante.
A few songs later, I saw Gina reach out a shy hand to Cassandra, not looking at her.
Cassandra took Gina’s hand, not looking back.
—
“I bet they’re announcing prom king and queen right now,” I say.
“I hope you won,” Dante replies. “If I was in charge of the voting committee, you would win.”
I laugh like I always do when Dante speaks. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Of course that’s how it works. The handsomest one always wins,” Dante says. “I could easily take over the voting committee. And I’m in love with you, so that works too.”
I look up to meet Dante’s eyes and laugh again. “You’re my boyfriend, I think we’re legally obligated to be in love with each other.”
We go back to dancing silently, content in our own world. I can hear the radio from my truck playing the faintest chords of “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner, and I think I could tell them all about what love is. How it’s the secret to everything, how I’m so lucky I’ve found it, how having it in your arms is the best feeling in the world. I can see Susie and Cricket dancing in their own space, and Gina and Cassandra dancing more hesitantly, like it’s something new, off in their own area.
“It would be kind of romantic,” Dante says. “The king running off with his lover, escaping all responsibilities and all performance to be with his true beloved.”
“If anyone between us is king, it’s you. I can be your lover who’s also a knight and the head of your guard.”
He laughs. “Of course. You and your fighting.”
“I would do anything to keep you safe,” I say, and it veers close to too many memories of the past, too many phantom bruises and broken bones.
“I love you,” Dante said. “I love you I love you I love you I love you.”
I ran my fingers through the short curls at the back of his neck and looked at the stars shining in his eyes. Dante and his tears. I loved everything about him.
“Thank you for doing this for me,” he said.
I smiled back up at him.
“Who says I did it for you? I wanted to go to prom with my boyfriend.”
Dante smiled back at me. I never wanted this night to end.
We kissed, the stars the only witnesses. Our friends were all off in their own worlds, Susie and Cricket, Gina and Cassandra. I wanted to write a new world where Dante and I could do this every day, to be in love and revel in it and show it to others, look at how much I love him. I vowed in my heart that I would make it. For Dante. He wrote himself into my world and into my heart, and without knowing it, I did the same to him.
“I love you,” I said.
We spent the rest of the night in each other’s arms.