Adam smiled back unguardedly, letting Jared see all the layers and colors that made up their still new relationship.
“Hey,” Adam echoed. His expression changed, hardening, and Jared frowned back.
“What?”
“Let’s go back.”
“To prom?”
“Yeah,” Adam said with a laugh. “My mind is going crazy trying to figure out what’s going on. I hate missing things.”
“And there was me thinking you were staring dreamily into my eyes,” Jared teased. He squeezed Adam’s hand over the table and dug into his wallet for the money to cover the dessert and a decent tip.
They walked back to the Murano hand in hand, bow ties undone and draped around unbuttoned collars, sleeves of their shirts rolled to the elbows, both suit jackets carried in the crook of Jared’s elbow. When they arrived at the hotel, there was a police cruiser parked outside. The look on Adam’s face was pure glee.
“Great,” Jared said, squeezing Adam’s hand. “My boyfriend is a gossip whore.”
“Honey, if you hadn’t figured that out already, you’re seriously not paying attention.”
Jared laughed and they ducked into the grand ballroom.
If Adam was disappointed in the lack of armed officers cracking down on drunk teenagers, the sight of Chris and Clare dancing together was probably enough to make up for that. They were both wearing gold plastic crowns, telling Jared what he’d already suspected: they’d won prom king and queen. Clare and Adam had been crowned at homecoming, and Jared couldn’t help but suspect Adam had something to do with making sure Chris took the title at prom.
There was a truly spectacular bruise developing over Clare’s cheekbone and eye, but she didn’t seem to care. There was an almost serene expression on her face as she and Chris danced together in slow circles, her unblemished cheek on his shoulder, his hands on her ass.
“Come on,” Adam said, tugging Jared onto the dance floor.
Jared quickly tossed their jackets over a chair and let himself be led into one of the spotlights, then wrapped his arms around Adam’s waist. A few other kids moved back to give them space, and Jared chuckled to himself. In one year he’d gone from being an unknown entity in New Harbor to holding almost equal status as Adam.
As the final chords of the sappy ballad rung out through the speakers, Jared impulsively twisted Adam around and dipped him low, a classic Hollywood-movie-musical finish, and the perfect angle for him to press a firm, loving kiss to Adam’s mouth.
The move made people laugh, and clap, and whistle, and Jared didn’t care. They were still kissing when Adam righted himself and rose on his toes, finding a better angle to slip his tongue into Jared’s mouth. Jared decided to take a leaf from Chris’s book, and grabbed Adam’s ass. For leverage, of course.
The music changed and Jared dared to glance over at Clare. She was scowling at them, clearly annoyed her spotlight had been stolen. Jared flicked his middle finger up at her.
She mouthed back, “Fuck you.”
Jared grinned and turned back to look at Adam.
Against the odds, this senior year had turned out to be epic.
Also by Anna Martin
SIGNS
1. Blog
We live in an age of communication. This generation—my generation—has no recollection of a time when someone wasn’t immediately contactable, whether that’s by phone or text or e-mail, or WhatsApp or Snapchat.
My grandparents still think nothing of visiting unannounced, and fumble with arthritic fingers on increasingly small mobile devices. My parents ask me what’s the point in WhatsApp when text messages exist, why Instagram, they don’t get Snapchat… what’s Tumblr, why is it spelled wrong?
In this world of availability, how does a person who’s unable to communicate with the outside world find their place in it?
My name is Caleb. I’m deaf.
This is my blog.
Luc skimmed over the introduction while frowning. He’d found the link to the blog on the photographer’s Instagram page, after seeing a photograph that had raised the hairs on his arms and sent a shiver down his spine. Having never reacted to art that way before, he was drawn to find out more about the photographer. This outpouring of information was a surprise, and he wasn’t sure how to interpret his own goose-fleshed reaction.
Caleb had a solid following on Instagram, but seemed to post more in-depth commentary on his Tumblr page. Luc was proud of the fact that he’d been a Tumblr user for years, since the early inception of the site. He had thousands of posts and thousands of followers. That was important in exactly one place only. No one in the real world cared.
It looked like Caleb had done some work fiddling with the look of things on his blog, changing the color and layout and fitting it so it worked as a simple background for his images. Luc idly clicked the “follow” button and flipped back to Instagram. He wanted to know if Caleb would post any more of his pictures.
Back on Insta Luc found the photograph that had led him to Caleb’s page and quickly set up a post to share it.
Check this guy out, he wrote under the image. Awesome photographer.
Then he sent it out to his followers on both Instagram and Tumblr.
There were a few people out there who he was in fairly regular communication with. New York was the home of Tumblr, and the micro-blogging site seemed to fit with a particular slice of the city’s quirky, arty aesthetic. Luc had been one of those fortunate kids who had grown up surrounded by art in its various forms. His mother had thought nothing of dragging him along to a ballet or to the MoMA when he was younger. His sister was more likely to take him to a poetry jam in the village, but that was just Ilse.
Luc leaned back, stretching out on his bed, and glanced at the clock on his nightstand. It was a little after eleven—he should have been asleep ages ago if he had
