What Senior Prom Taught Me

I stared at the entrance to Shores, the automatic door holding open for me invitingly. I sighed, stepping over the threshold. It was no use prolonging the inevitable. I was going to have to go to work, which means I was going to have to face Dean. The possibility of quitting did cross my mind, but it was also my family’s grocery store so I basically was going to end up seeing the boy whether I wanted to or not. My plan was to avoid him—as much as I possibly could—which was going to be a feat in it’s self. The grocery store was about 5 aisles and the produce section, so there weren’t many places to go. I steeled myself as I punched in. Perhaps this would be the day that I find out I would be a great fugitive. Maybe Dean got black out drunk and conveniently forgot that anything had transpired between us, but I was hoping that I would be able to not have to chat with him to find out.

Spending my entire shift pretty much tiptoeing around the store, I was shocked and kind of proud that I spent the whole day managing to avoid Dean. I was finishing up the last task of my day, organizing the carts. I was in the midst of giving myself a proverbial pat on the back when I felt a presence behind me.

“Hey,” the presence greeted me, causing my hair on the back of my neck to stand on end.

I turned to find myself face-to-face with Dean, resisting the urge to smack myself in the face. One look at him made it obvious as to why it was so easy to avoid him the whole day. He stood between the two entrance doors in what was clearly some kind of sports practice uniform.

“You weren’t here today,” I stated more than questioned as a greeting.

“I to switch with Brian last minute.”

I nodded in response, realizing I had seen Brian in the break room earlier that day when he usually wasn’t there on Sundays.

“But my mom asked me to come grab some groceries on my way home from practice.”

“Practice?”

“Lacrosse practice?”

“I didn’t know you played a sport!”

“Really? I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned it,” Dean’s sentence trailed off and he cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Hey,” he began again with a slight nervous lilt in his voice. “About Friday.”

“Oh my god! I completely forgot to thank you for the invite!” I chirped, hoping to stop the conversation in its tracks. “My friends had a really awesome time. One of them even gave someone her number, so mission accomplished.”

“That’s awesome! But…I wanted to talk about what happened between us.”

I internally cursed Dean and his ability to stay on topic. Clearly he was less intrigued by the possible hooking up of two of our friends. There was no way around the conversation. I guess I had always known that it would have to come up at some point, but our deathbeds seemed like the appropriate time to me.

“Oh that!” I flipped a wrist, trying my hardest to keep casual. “It’s no big deal, we were both drunk.”

Dean blinked a few times before replying, “Oh, right, yeah. Of course! I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t, um, being too forward or anything.”

“Oh! Uh, no. You were totally fine. Silly drunken mistake is all.”

“Definitely!” Dean said a little too loudly and a little too enthusiastically. “Uh, I better go get these groceries,” he pointed the door. “See ya later,” he entered the second set of doors and disappeared into the Shores before I could return the salutations.

I returned to my task. The conversation went slightly better than I had expected, but I also wasn’t really sure what I was expecting. I had never drunkenly hooked up with a casual friend before, so I didn’t know what that territory looked like. The air was cleared, but it didn’t feel any less awkward. I felt slightly better in that way one feels a slight relief when the essay part of the SATs was finished. The hardest part of the test was done, but you still had nine hours of multiple choice questions ahead of you. I knew work was going to continue to be kind of awkward for a while, but at least both Dean and I seemed to sit on the same page.