I pictured it a hundred times.
Him in his uniform. Me in that dress. The whole gym watching us walk in.
Then, three days before prom, my phone rang, and I knew from the first second of silence that it was bad.
“They’re not releasing us in time,” Logan said, and I could hear how much it cost him to say it. “Hailey, I’m so sorry. I tried everything. I can’t make it home.”
I told him it was okay.
I told him I understood, that his country came first, that I was proud of him.
Then I hung up and cried until I couldn’t breathe.
I decided I wasn’t going to go.
There was no version of that night I could stand to live through without him.
My mom laid the blue dress across my bed anyway, “just in case,” and for three days it hung there, beautiful and useless, like a promise that didn’t get kept.
