We Could Be Dreamers

15

As prom draws nearer and nearer, I can feel my nerves starting to fray. 

Days slip by, and I'm cursing myself because I can't even ask a girl out. And—hell, asking a girl to go to prom with you doesn't even count as asking her out. But it's still really fucking hard, so. 

Finally, three days before prom, I think I'm ready to do it. 

We're sitting in the English classroom during lunch. It's halfway through the lunch period, and we've settled into silence, but it's the comfortable kind. Suddenly, Brooke turns to me, brown eyes glimmering, and pops an earbud out of her ear.

"You have to listen to this song," she says excitedly. 

"Um, okay," I reply, feeling my cheeks flush as she scoots across the couch and leans against me. 

She holds the earbud out towards me. I take it and place it in my ear. The song's one of those ukulele indie bedroom-pop ones, with the humming and gentle chords and slightly nonsensical lyrics. The kind of music Sam likes. 

Brooke is close enough to me that I can kind of feel the steady rhythm of her breathing. A curl of her light brown hair falls in my face, and I tuck it behind her ear instinctively. She has these really cute little crystal earrings in—three of them in each ear. Her eyes flicker up to me, waiting for a reaction, and there's this little smile on her face, and her lips are painted this really wicked almost black purple. 

"I, uh—yeah, I really like it," I grin, trying to slow down the way my heart is beating like fucking crazy. "Hey, um. Can I. Uh." Get a grip, you absolute waste of oxygen. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," she says.

My gaze flickers away from Brooke for a moment. I meet Jason's gaze and swallow as my heart rate somehow doubles and oh, there are the goddamn butterflies. He kind of nods a little, and I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment to try and think through this.

There's absolutely nothing stopping me from asking Brooke to go to prom with me, except my useless thoughts. 

"Would you maybe..." I bite my lip anxiously. The indie music fills my brain, swelling and expanding. This is a new kind of nervous, but it's actually kind of exhilarating. "Do you wanna go to prom with me?" I blurt out. 

"Of course," Brooke replies with an easy smile, like it's nothing at all. Like it's a no-brainer. Like oh, obviously she'll go to prom with me, and there's absolutely no reason that I was worrying about this for the past who knows how long. 

I laugh, relieved. "Um, okay. Yes. That—awesome!" I beam.

Honestly, considering how much I've been worrying about asking her, this was... kind of anticlimactic. 

No. Not anticlimactic. I mean, it's amazing. Brooke's going to prom with me. That's fucking incredible—especially considering what the Brooke situation was like just a few weeks ago. It's unbelievable. 

I guess I was just expecting the whole asking-her-to-prom thing to be a bit more... momentous, maybe? 

But that doesn't really matter, because I'm going to prom with Brooke and Brooke's going to prom with me and oh my god this is happening. 

Brooke starts chattering excitedly about matching outfits and corsages. I do my best to keep up and listen, but it's kind of hard to keep track of. I fall back into my smile-nod-agree-compliment pattern. 

Jason catches my eye and smiles, and I can feel the blush spreading across my face.