Page 17 of Kellan & Emmett
The sound blurred around me. All I saw was that grin, those fuckingly hot lips, the same ones that had been pressed against mine twenty years ago, hot and sure and everything I’d wanted—right until he tore away and left me in the dark.
Kellan took the mic. “Guess disappearing pays off,” he said wryly, and the crowd roared with laughter. He added, quieter, “It’s good to be back.”
I hated how much I wanted to believe him.
The rest blurred—Best Sense of Humor,Least Changed,Most Changed, High School Sweethearts. Laughter, cheers, photo flashes. The kind of warmth that could almost fool a person into thinking the past was simpler than it was.
The final award wrapped with a cheer, glasses lifted. The DJ’s voice boomed over the speakers, announcing the dance floor would open in a few minutes.
Everyone stood, chairs scraping, voices rising. I lifted my glass too, but my eyes found him again.
And I couldn’t help remembering the morning after graduation—the endless ring of a phone that never picked up, the walk to his house where his dad met me at the door and said he wasn’t there, offering nothing more. I’d used every way a seventeen-year-old could think of back then, and still ended up with nothing but silence.
No award in the world could drown that out.
Chapter 9
Kellan
Local craft beer sweated in my hand while a swarm of almost-forty-year-olds tried to moonwalk under blacklights—the kind of ultraviolet bulbs that made every neon sequin and shoelace blaze like fire. The organizers had gone all-in on the 80s, and the rest of us were paying for it. I took another swallow, leaned against the wall, and told myself watching counted as participating.
Across the room, Emmett stood with a cluster of classmates, arms crossed. For a second I thought he’d hold his ground, but Meghan and Jamal hooked him by the elbows and hauled him toward the dance floor. He hung back at first—arms folded tight like he wasn’t sure he belonged out there—but Meghan and Jamal tugged until his steps gave way, and soon the resistance slipped into something almost like enjoyment.
God.
We used to joke about how he couldn’t dance worth a damn. Two left feet, no rhythm, every step offbeat. Watching him now, I should’ve laughed. Should’ve remembered all the times I teased him for stepping on my shoes when we messed around in his kitchen, music blaring from some busted radio.
But right now I couldn’t laugh. Couldn’t look away.
Then it happened—he paired off. Not for long, just a spin in the crowd with someone else. A woman we’d gone to school with, maybe, or maybe one of the guys, I couldn’t even tell in the blur of lights and bodies. Whoever it was, Emmett’s face lit up in a way I hadn’t seen in twenty years. Watching him, carefree in someone else’s orbit, I felt the twist low in my chest.
That laugh had nothing to do with me.
A whoop split the air, and before I knew it, Derrick’s big hand clamped around my wrist.
“Oh, hell no,” I said, digging in just enough to make him work for it.
“Hell yes,” he shot back, grinning as he hauled me into the crush of bodies. “You can’t brood on the sidelines all night. They’re playingElectric Boogie—time for the Electric Slide. Tell me you remember this.”
Laughter erupted from the circle forming at the center, classmates lining up shoulder-to-shoulder, moving like muscle memory had never left. Jamal bellowed the counts—“Four right! Four left! Back it up! Step-touch forward!”—and half the room still managed to trip over their own feet.
The crowd clapped in rhythm, off-key but enthusiastic. Someone whistled. Somebody else yelled “wrong foot!” and the whole line dissolved into hysterics.
I tried to hold back, but the beat thudded through the floor, through me, until my mouth twitched traitorously upward. Damn it. Impossible not to grin when the whole room was laughing like we were seventeen again.
“Look at you,” Derrick crowed, elbow jabbing my ribs. “Still got the moves.”
“Moves?” I wheezed. “That was me trying not to fall on my ass.”
“Same thing,” he shot back, grin wide as the disco ball’s fractured light.
The song bled into another, then another—bass rattling the bleachers, synth notes sharp enough to buzz my teeth. People cheered, hands clapping, glasses clinking against each other.
Somebody shouted whenBillie Jeankicked in, and the whole floor tried to moonwalk at once—badly.Girls Just Wanna Have Funfollowed, Megan and Britt shrieking every word like they were back in their bedrooms with hairbrush microphones. ThenFootloosespun up, and Jamal nearly pulled a hamstring trying to match Kevin Bacon’s kicks.You Spin Me Roundcapped it, the strobe lights turning the whole gym into a blur of neon and sequins.
For a while, I forgot everything—forgot the years, the silence, the things I should’ve said. Just Britt tugging me by the hand, Derek clapping offbeat, Jamal howling with laughter. For those songs, for those minutes, I was seventeen again.
Then it caught me. Not sharp, or sudden. Just that familiar pull deep in my knee, the one that whispereddon’t push it.Adull reminder of everything I’d lost the day my knee gave out for good. Sweat trickled down my temple. I shifted my weight, tried to shake it off, rode the beat for another verse. The lights strobed pink and blue across the floor, Britt threw her head back in laughter, Jamal hollered out the wrong lyrics toWake Me Up Before You Go-Go.
