Dizzy on the Comedown

III.

If I stay, do you think that we can change your routine?

I know a trick I've always got a few up my sleeves.

This life is controlled confusion;

It's just the grand delusion.

— 

It took seven arguments with Felix, Rayhan and Esa for him to finally decide how to ask Naura to prom with him.

The answer was: he didn't.

They talked about dates before, and she told him the story of how Naraja promised to go with her in 10th grade. He knew she tried her best to sound neutral, but there was a tiny bit of disappointment that shows through her choice of words anyway.

"Well, I'd be happy to go with you," he tells her, on a drive home after another one of their hotel ballroom surveys.

"You'd be my last choice," she tells her, rolling her eyes as a joke.

"Being a last choice is good enough for me." 

Naura didn't laugh at that.

Instead, he saw her blinking back her tears in the reflection of the window she's facing, trying to hide from his sight.

He tried telling his reasons to Felix on why he doesn't think it's necessary to ask Naura to be his prom date officially, but the more he said it, the more he feels like it was himself that needs convincing instead of his friends.

"If she wants to go with me, she'll go with me," he repeats, the third time Rayhan announced to him that someone had asked Naura to prom for the past two weeks since promposals had become a thing in the class of 2019. 

He sounded non-chalant in his ears, but he still held his breath when Naura called him and told him that someone did the most grand promposal to her outside school, and didn't let go of it until she said 'I declined though. Soalnya kayak... we don't even know each other, Je. I don't want to go to prom with someone I can't joke around with. That'd be soooo boring.'

He almost told her to go with him, because he'll make sure she wouldn't get bored if she held into his arms and wore matching colors for their suit and dress and had the same flowers arrangement on his boutonniere and her corsage and— for fucks sake, just go with me.

He held back, though. Instead, he tells her, "Yeah, go with who you feel like going. Don't accept someone's promposal just because you felt bad about it."

A week before prom, she called him at 1 AM.

He ran as fast as he could to the parking lot of the bar he was in, making sure the call didn't turn into a missed one before he could pick up.

"Hey," he answers, "You good?"

"I wan't to be your prom date."

"What?" HJ asked her again, despite hearing her perfectly clear. He just wanted to hear that sentence from her once again. "What did you say?"

"I said," she took a deep breath. "I want to be your prom date."

He smiled to the distance, heart beating faster than it had ever been before. "Okay."

"Okay," she repeated him. "And you're not my last choice, you're my first. I'd be an asshole kalo gue jadiin lo last choice gue. I know how it feels to be one. And I know it's been months since you said it, but thanks for telling me you're happy enough to be my last choice. I... Look, Je, I'm not the best person out there to be loved because I don't know how to comprehend it after everything that I've been through, but thanks, okay? For being patient enough with me. You telling me you think you're happy enough to be my last choice makes me feel... worth to be loved."

HJ didn't know he was capable of smiling as wide as he did that night. 

"You are worth to be loved, though."

"Shut up and get your ass home. Why are you even in Swill tonight? It's Monday tomorrow."

He laughed at her rushed tone. She always sounds like that when she's embarassed. "No, I think I'll celebrate this one with my friends."

"Whatever, just don't do anything dumb."

"Yes ma'am."

He didn't ask her about the hoodie she wore over her beautiful dress when she hopped in his car the night prom ended.

He did get black out drunk to the thought of it in the after party, though.

It's tough trying to be selfless all the time for her.