The Night We Danced, The Promises We Made, and the Future We Faced Together

Promise this is the last one?” said Rod. “My jaw muscles can only take so much.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Sherry Hopkins, his girlfriend and prom date. “You smile more when Coach Whitman cancels track practice.”

“You’re not helping, Sherry,” he said while still smiling for the camera.

It was a momentous, but tedious moment, at least for parents. Rod was about to go to his senior prom. Finals were over. College applications had been submitted and acceptance letters had been received. The hardest, most stressful parts of high school were almost over. He and everyone else at Grovesberg High School had earned one night of fun and partying.

Despite the annoyance he felt from his parents’ wanting a picture from every possible angle, he still smiled and held his girlfriend close. He and Sherry had already been through this with her parents when he picked her up. He barely had any time to admire the beautiful black dress she’d bought or the fresh highlights she’d put in her hair. Both their parents still tried to make it about them.

“Don’t worry. The wait will be worth it,” she’d told him.

 “I sure hope so,” Rod replied.

“I know so. I promise!”

She sounded so certain. Then again, Sherry had always been the confident, self-assured type. That was part of what attracted him to her. She was actually the friend of a friend of his older sister, Dina. They’d crossed path a few times during their junior year. Then, right around the holidays during a big get-together with his sister’s friends, they found each other. Everything after that had been textbook teenage puppy love.

However, Rod hoped to push their relationship to the next level. Tonight was their senior prom, the last hurrah before they finalized their college plans. What happened tonight might very well decide whether they go their separate ways or see if they could be something more.

Looking at Sherry as the flash from his mother’s phone went off, he still wasn’t sure whether how deep his feelings went for her. When she looked at him with those intense, yet passionate eyes, it made him shudder in the best possible way. He smiled back at her, holding her a little closer and feeling that tone, fit body that had made her a track star last spring. He hoped to know that body more intimately before the night was over.

First, though, he had to escape his parents’ scrutiny. With the sun having just set, his mother finally relented.

“That’s the last one,” his mother said.

“You sure this time?” Rod asked half-jokingly.

“Positive!” she affirmed. “It’s time. You’re free to go, my youngest son.”

“You’re not going to get dramatic on me, are you? We already got that with Sherry’s mom.”

“And I’m not even the youngest,” Sherry added.

“I’m trying not to, but I can’t help it. My baby’s off to his senior prom and I can’t keep calling him a baby much longer.”

Rod rolled his eyes, but hugged his mother anyway, which earned him a look of approval from Sherry. She’d gone through the same thing with her mother, struggling to process the idea that her teenage kid wasn’t a kid anymore. She got over it enough to let them leave. Now, it was her mother’s turn.

After an extended hug, Rod rejoined Sherry and made their way to his car, which he had washed, gassed up, and ready for an eventful night. His dad had even put a prom poster on the back just under the rear window. He didn’t get as emotional as his mother, but the two beers he’d drank hinted that he felt it too.

“Have a great time, you two,” his father said.