Jeremy never thought she would say yes. Natalie, a cheerleader, student paper editor, and AP calculus student, was way out of his league. Jeremy, a soccer player (reliable sub), yearbook photographer, and pre-cal student, had never taken a risk in all of his sixteen years. He had definitely never taken a risk as far as girls were concerned. There were enough slightly awkward girls of median attractiveness and professed Christianity that had made their interest in him clear that he had not had to ask for a date that he was not fairly sure he could get or attempt any physical encounter in which he doubted his ability to acquit himself respectably.
But now, some strange passion had seized him in the spring of his junior year. The passion of physical attraction was not strange, but the passion to do something he wasn’t sure he could drove him crazy. Three weeks before, Jeremy had taken his bike to the sand pits where he and his friends used to ride everyday. He had not ridden there in months. He had not ridden a bike in the six weeks since he got his driver’s license. Still, when he looked at the five foot drop between the two banks of the dried creek bed, he knew he had to jump it. Dane had done it a couple of years before, but only a couple of other guys had tried since. It had not gone well for them.
Jeremy rolled the bike back a few yards. His legs, still springy from a season which had ended late in the playoffs, pumped the peddles in smooth, swift cycles. Before he knew it, he was airborne and time stopped for just a moment. Then he was on the other side, struggling to stay upright and out of a collision course with the tree. A few seconds of panic later, Jeremy had come to a stop. He had made it. That there was no one else around to see this last triumph of his boyhood did not matter. He walked taller for the rest of the day.
And into the next, when he happened to see Natalie walking toward him in the hall. She was obviously unhappy and deep into conversation with a friend. By the time they reach him, Jeremy could not help overhearing her say, “it’s UNBELIEVABLE that he’d ditch me on my last prom!” Jeremy could not help hearing because everyone in the area heard. And everyone in the area knew that she was talking about Ryan, who had graduated the year before but had not been a great boyfriend even before he left for college. Being a bright, sensible, attractive young woman did not seem to have helped Natalie realize what everyone else could clearly see: her boyfriend was a jerk.
Finding himself once again at the edge of the abyss, Jeremy took flight again. All the clocks stopped when he turned to Natalie, looked her in the eye, and said calmly but just a little too loud, “I’ll take you.” Somebody laughed, probably at him, but Jeremy did not take his eyes off of her. Strangely, she did not take her eyes off him either, but showed just a hint of her teeth through her smile when she said, “okay, sure.” And then his wheels hit the far bank, and Jeremy began to panic.
First, there was the tux. He needed one, and he did not think he would be able to rent one at this point. As it turned out there were tuxes but no shirts. He had to rustle one of those up from a Jos. A. Banks. Dinner was not problem. Being the head of the local tourism promotion board, his dad could get him in anywhere. Tonight that meant David’s, a small but very good Italian place where Jeremy had worked on and off parking cars or washing dishes when they needed help and he needed cash. They would treat him very well.
With Natalie, its probable that they would have gotten great treatment wherever they went. Because she had more or less given up on the night – not made plans to ride around with all of her friends in a limo – she had also given up on the dress, hair, and make-up. She and her mom had gone out at the last minute and gotten a black cocktail dress, and she pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail. The result was more simple, and more elegant, than any other woman they saw that night. What with his classic tuxedo and white dinner jacket, Jeremy looked pretty good himself. Looking like a couple of spies from 1967, they started to make Bond jokes.
They made a lot of jokes, actually. Jeremy knew that Natalie was smart, but he did not know how good she was at drawing the wit out of him too. Maybe because he did not expect the night to really lead to anything, Jeremy relaxed and played along with Natalie’s imagined narratives for the people eating around them. By the time they got to the actual prom, Natalie was pleasantly surprised to be having a conversation with someone who didn’t exactly disagree, but who did give his opinions instead of just trying to say what he thought she wanted to hear. They danced a couple of dances — including a terrifically hokey Electric Slide — but she found that she wanted to have it be just them for a while longer.
It was Jeremy’s suggestion that they go to his dad’s office. It sounded weird until he explained that his dad near the top of one of the taller buildings in town. There was a Starbucks in the ground floor where they got mochas for the elevator ride. 12 floors was not a long ride, nor was this a tall building. It’s not that big of a town, but in the tourism office’s waiting room there is a sofa from which a couple sitting on it can see out to the edge, where the planes take off and land at the airport.
They talked for a little while about where the best place for a plane to take them might be, eventually coming to agree on San Francisco. Then, without knowing how it happened, time stopped for Jeremy again. Natalie’s weight and warmth were pressing against him, and he felt her lips on his neck, right at the collar. He did not know where he was going to land, but Jeremy already knew that this was the best prom ever.