Page 5 of The Promposal

They hadn’t actually broken up, but sometimes it sort of felt like they had.

“Boys just do this,” Ella had said to me once. “When something scary like this happens in their life, they just kind of shut down emotionally. He’ll come around.”

It hadn’t happened yet.

One of the committee members had a question for my sister.

“Go on,” Ella told me. “I’ll catch up.”

As soon as I went out into the hallway, I felt an arm going through mine. I let out a sigh. I’d been trying to be a nicer person, like Ella. Less snarktastic. Which meant that Mindi now thought we were friends. Ish.

And my attempts at being kind were backfiring spectacularly.

Against me.

This was what I got for trying to improve myself. The saying was true. No good deed did go unpunished.

“Did I tell you what I figured out last night about Victor, my boyfriend?”

Since I was going for a kinder, gentler Mattie Lowe, I didn’t say what I wanted to. Which was, “Oh, Victor’s your boyfriend? I forgot because you hadn’t mentioned it in the last thirty seconds.” Instead I settled on, “What?”

“I realized what one of the best things about marrying Victor, my boyfriend, will be.”

No lie, when I had first met Victor, I seriously thought his name was Victor Myboyfriend. Because that was how Mindi always referred to him.

“You think you’re going to marry Victor?” I had to bite my tongue to keep from adding “my boyfriend” at the end of my sentence.

She nodded. “Definitely. And after Victor, my boyfriend, and I get married in a beautiful sunset beach ceremony, I’ll get to keep my initials.” At my blank expression, she continued, “Because both our last names start with aK.”

Taking my silence as consent to continue the conversation, she smiled at me. “He and I are going to have the cutest KorIndian babies.”

I was worried about getting a date to prom, and she was planning out her future wedding. We were not in the same headspace, and my brain filled up with unspoken insults. But I managed to keep all my sarcastic retorts to myself. Mindi wouldn’t get them, anyway. I’d be snarking up the wrong tree.

“I’m going this way!” she said. “Bye-ee!”

Must. Not. Mock.

A minute later, Ella arrived.

“The cavalry’s supposed to show up much earlier,” I told her.

She gave me a confused look and then held up her phone. “Now that I know the committee’s on track, the seamstress texted to let me know the alterations were going well.”

That made me smile. I had found the most perfect silver prom dress. The one I had known from a previous life. (Possibly. I was still fuzzy on the whole reincarnation thing and whether or not it existed.) My dress was like something out a movie, a big, full, fluffy skirt with a tight heart-shaped bodice covered in tiny crystals and sequins. And it was silver.

Yes, to match the dance.

“And I’ve confirmed our updos and mani-pedis.”

I blinked at her. “Was that English?”

“Can you please be a girl for five minutes?”

I twisted my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh. Thanks to having Ella in my life, I knew exactly what she meant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get my hair done, though. Last time I’d gone to a salon with her they’d given me extensions, which I’d had to pull out myself. In part because they annoyed me, and the other part was because Jake liked running his fingers through my hair while he kissed me.

I was a very big fan of this.

“Five minutes? I guess I can be a girl for five minutes,” I said in an exaggerated tone. “I mean, if we even go to the prom.”

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