I tapped my foot and stared at the triangle of skin between James Knox\u2019s brows and the top of his sunglasses\u2014red-framed today. \u201cWhat\u2019s your answer?\u201d I clenched my arms across my waist. \u201cYou\u2019ve kept me hanging for a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
He dropped his head, sighed, faced me. \u201cYeah, I\u2019ll be your escort for Homecoming Court.\u201d<\/p>\n
I blinked at him, stunned that he\u2019d said yes. This had to be the third or fourth time I\u2019d bugged him about it. \u201cOkay.\u201d I pressed my lips together in a thin line, spun on my heel, and walked away.<\/p>\n
What was James\u2019 problem? If I hadn\u2019t been so stubborn, sticking to my first choice, I could have spared myself the humiliation. Jackie had been right, as always. I was breaking my own heart. Okay, that was melodramatic\u2014I didn\u2019t know what I felt for James. Whenever he pressed for more than friendship, I skittered away. Now that I\u2019d made a step in his direction, he backed up. All I knew was that he\u2019d let me into the person inside through his songs and sometimes when he slowed his ten-speed and chatted with me while I walked home from school. And that mattered to me. He mattered.<\/p>\n
Homecoming Court, 1976, w\/ James Knox<\/p><\/div>\n
A couple days later the yearbook photographer positioned the five Homecoming candidates and their escorts on the white sunned cement in front of the auditorium. I saw what I had to do\u2014place my hand in the crook of James\u2019 arm. Tension fizzed through my veins like warm Mountain Dew. Why did I have to touch him? He already thought I was chasing him.<\/p>\n
At the last moment I laid my fingers on the folds of his barely proffered jacket sleeve. As soon as the camera clicked, I dropped my hand and stepped away. While James cracked everybody up wrestling out of his suit coat, I slipped back to class.<\/p>\n
If I didn\u2019t need an escort, I\u2019d tell James to forget it. I was stuck. In more ways than I cared to admit.<\/p>\n
If he annoyed me by taking seven days to say yes, I irked him taking twice that long to land a convertible for our lap around the football field on Homecoming night. I couldn\u2019t imagine a dealership loaning a sports car to a seventeen-year-old girl. Much to my relief, James borrowed a beautiful boat of a car, a 1960\u2019s Bonneville, from a buddy of his dad\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Homecoming night James rang our doorbell.<\/p>\n
I made one last attempt to smoosh down the poufy hairdo Susan Sigler\u2019s sister, Gail, had given me. I sucked in a breath, wishing for Dr. Who\u2019s TARDIS to skip the next ten minutes, and opened the door.<\/p>\n
James thrust a corsage into my hands. \u201cHi,\u201d we blurted at the same time.<\/p>\n
I motioned him in and introduced my family who huddled around the TV on half of our enclosed front porch.<\/p>\n
My extra-large stepfather, our German shepherd sprawled across his lap and the cat curled around his neck, grunted a greeting from his recliner. Eleven-year-old R.J. stared from the sofa, still sporting dirt rings around his neck from a day of banana biking. Mom filled the air with chatter and smiles and the fairy-dust of flashbulbs.<\/p>\n