thought prom night would be perfect.
Instead, my mother locked my bedroom door.
Downstairs, my best friend waited in a navy suit, holding a corsage that meant “remembering.” Upstairs, my mom’s hands shook as she said there was one truth I had to hear before I left with him. A secret about Noah. A secret about her.

She told me about the day my father left, when I stopped eating lunch and stopped talking to her. Noah had found her crying in the school parking lot and asked if I was broken. When she said no, he answered, “Good. Because I don’t know how to fix people. I only know how to stay.” That was when she begged him to look after me, and he said “okay” like it was the simplest thing in the world.

For six years, she had watched me defend him, wait for him, rearrange my life for him, and secretly feared I felt obligated. That night, she finally saw what I had always known: I wasn’t going to prom because of a pinkie promise. I was going because, at eighteen, I chose him. No one was saving the other. We were just two people who stayed—and kept staying—when it mattered most.