“I never did.”
He squeezed my hand.
“I hoped you hadn’t.”
We sat there for hours.
We talked about everything.
Our parents.
Our classmates.
Our old teachers.
The songs we loved.
The stupid jokes we used to tell.
The life we thought we were going to have.
At one point, Michael smiled.
“Did you ever get married?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“Why?”
I smiled sadly.
“I guess I was waiting for someone.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“So was I.”
One Last Dance
Before I left that afternoon, I noticed a small radio beside his chair.
I turned it on.
An old song began playing.
It was the song we had danced to at prom.
Michael looked at me.
“You remember?”
“Every second.”
I stood up.
Then I held out my hand.
“Dance with me.”
He laughed.
“I can’t.”
“Neither can I.”
He looked confused.
I smiled.
“We’ll do it sitting down.”
He took my hand.
I gently moved his wheelchair closer.
We held each other’s hands.
Then we moved slowly to the music.
It wasn’t a real dance.
Not the kind we’d imagined when we were seventeen.
But somehow, it was more beautiful.
For the first time in forty-one years, I danced again.
When the song ended, Michael kissed my hand.
“I’m sorry it took so long.”
I smiled through my tears.
“You came back.”
He nodded.
“I always wanted to.”
I left that day carrying the boutonniere.
But I no longer saw it as a symbol of the night I lost him.
It had become a symbol of something else.
Hope.
Not the kind of hope that tells you everything will turn out exactly as planned.
But the kind that reminds you some stories don’t end when you think they do.
I spent forty-one years believing my life had stopped on prom night.
Now I understand that it didn’t.
It simply took a very long detour.
Michael and I never got the life everyone predicted for us.
We never married.
We never had the house with the white fence.
We never raised children together.
But we were given something neither of us expected.
One more conversation.
One more chance to say the things we had carried silently for decades.
And one final dance.
Before I left, Michael looked at me and smiled.
“Do you still think I’m an odd match for you?”
I laughed.
