“I spent forty years wondering if he had changed his mind.” New tears came to my eyes. “I questioned everything. The way he looked at me. The promises. The life we had planned. I never danced with anyone else. I never got married. I just kept waiting.”
Rebecca didn’t argue.
Instead, he said quietly, “My grandmother couldn’t undo those forty years.” Me neither. But I can tell you this,” she said, smiling in tears, “he never stopped trying to come back.
***
That same afternoon, at home, I opened the cedar box for the last time.
Carefully, I placed the boutonnière next to the bouquet.
For forty years, they had been waiting for each other.
Me too.
The next day, Tori returned to the cafeteria with his backpack bouncing over his shoulders.
He smiled. “They’re together, right?”
“They are,” I whispered.
He watched me closely for a moment.
“My mom said you never danced again.”
“That’s right.”
Tori was thoughtful for a moment. Then he laid out his little hand.
For a long time, I just looked at her.
Afterwards, I took his hand.
She climbed on my shoes.
The music came dimly from the gym, where students rehearsed for the spring concert.
We waved to the rhythm of the music between the empty tables of the cafeteria.
Tori stepped on my foot twice. I laughed so much that I had to stop dancing.
It was the first time in forty years that laughing didn’t make me feel like I was leaving Michael behind.
When the music was over, Tori hugged me tightly.
“It was the best dance of all!”
I thought about the bouquet. Then, in the boutonnière.
And then, in the girl whose family existed because an eighteen-year-old could not pass by someone who needed it.
