Page 56 of The Promposal

I hung up my phone, and her text arrived. The recital was from one o’clock to three thirty. And it was an hour away. Realization struck me, hard. “What did I just do?”

“What’s going on?” Ella asked, removing the cucumbers from her eyes, too.

“Kenyetta’s dad had to cancel on her recital today. I told her I would come, but it’s right when we’re supposed to be decorating for prom.”

Ella’s eyes lit up, as if this was exciting. “That’s great! I mean, that’s not great. For Kenyetta. But great that you can be there for her. Support her. You should definitely go.”

She was acting really strange. But since I’d jumped to such a wrong conclusion with Jake I wasn’t eager to go there again. I chalked it up to prom stress.

“But what about decorating? What about us getting ready together?”

“Don’t worry about setting up. Because you’ve made everybody so excited about having a dance that was just for us we have a massive group of decorating volunteers. There’s so many people signed up that it will go really quickly. And you should be home by four thirty or five, and that’s still plenty of time for us to get ready and head over.”

That relieved most of my guilt. Especially since I knew that Ella would do such a phenomenal job of telling everybody else what to do.

“I’ll have to take the car. How are you going to get over to Victor’s house?”

“Oh.” Was that a blush I saw on Ella’s cheeks? “Deacon volunteered to help out, too. He was planning on coming by to pick me up.”

“Just you, huh?” I teased. “Isn’t it bad luck for him to see you before the prom?”

She blinked rapidly, as if she’d misspoken. “Obviously he would have taken both of us. But now I guess he’ll just be taking me. And that luck thing is for weddings. Not dances.”

I knew the thing with Trent still hurt, but I was glad to see that she could be excited about someone new. I guessed what she said was true. That she spent a long time getting over him so that when the actual ending came, it didn’t hurt quite as much.

“I better get ready,” I said. I went into my bathroom and washed the mask off my face and didn’t bother with any makeup. I grabbed some lunch to go (half a bag of Lay’s sour cream and onion chips) and got on the road.

As predicted, about an hour later, I pulled up to a small theater. I wondered what other kind of productions they held as I went in and bought a ticket and took a program.

I grabbed an empty seat in the middle of the theater. I skimmed the program for Kenyetta’s name and saw that she was performing four different times, one of them as a soloist.

The lights over the audience went down, and the stage lights came on. There was an introduction from the ballet instructor talking about the kids and their progress. She finished her speech, and the curtain raised to begin the show. The first group contained a bunch of three-year-olds in pink tutus and pigtails, and it was one of the cutest things I’d ever seen.

Then things took a turn for the boring. It was probably different if you were the parent and it was your child, but I was slowly losing the will to live.

Finally, it was Kenyetta’s turn. She danced with three other girls in some complicated routine where they held hands and did really fancy footwork. I’d seen her dance around plenty of times in tutoring, but I had no idea she was this good.

Not just good. Phenomenal.

It made me sad that her dad couldn’t be here to see her.

About twenty minutes later, Kenyetta walked onto the stage for her solo. She wore a red leotard and a matching gauzy thigh-length skirt. She struck a pose, and the music started. And it took all my willpower not to stand up in my chair and chant her name. She flew from one end of the stage to the other. There was so much elegance, power, and grace in her movements. Such beauty. Artistry.

I knew that someday I’d be watching this girl performing professionally.

When her dance ended, I did jump to my feet and yell “Brava! Brava!” as loudly as I could. And I wasn’t the only one in the audience who did. She curtsied gracefully and waved to the crowd with a huge smile. I wondered if she could see me, but I figured she couldn’t because of the lights.

She had her two other numbers, where she was every bit as good as she already had been. The show finished, and all the ballerinas came onstage to take their final bows and soak up all the applause. My voice felt a little hoarse from all the cheering I was doing.

People approached the stage and handed the girls bouquets of flowers. I groaned. I didn’t know about the flowers thing, or I would have stopped and picked some up for her on the way.

Guess I had to hope me being here would be good enough.

I made my way into the aisle and watched Kenyetta as she exited the stage. I waved both of my hands over my head and called her name. She ran up the aisle toward me, throwing her arms around my waist.

“You were so good! Seriously, so, so good. And you know I’d tell you if you were terrible. But you are gifted. So talented. You are going to be an amazing ballerina someday. And you’re right. You totally shouldn’t worry about math. Just keep dancing!”

I probably shouldn’t have said the math thing, but I was so excited for her and how amazing she was at ballet.

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