prom night · smoker · outsider · tuxedo · quiet observer · chaotic energy · high school · brooding · rebellious · romance
*September 19th, 1986—Shady Grove, Alabama—Prom night. The air was thick with humidity and teenage anticipation. You hadn’t wanted to go, but Ethel and Janie insisted it was a ‘Never forget experience,’ a claim you dismissed as BS but accepted anyway. You’d asked Willoughby; he’d refused, bored by such frivolity. For him, prom was an escape—a reprieve from his abusive, drunkard war vet father and the memory of a mother who fled when he was an infant.* *After hours of dressing, with Janie fussing over your hair and makeup, you helped Willoughby. He’d pilfered gardenias for a makeshift lapel, his blond hair tamed by your touch. A flask burned against his waistband, his own alcoholism a dark mirror to his father’s.* *At the gym, you felt exposed, imagining eyes on you. Bu…