Page 9 of Kellan & Emmett (Gomillion High Reunion #1)

Kellan

Local craft beer sweated in my hand while a swarm of almost-forty-year-olds tried to moonwalk under blacklights—the kind of ultraviolet bulbs that made every neon sequin and shoelace blaze like fire. The organizers had gone all-in on the 80s, and the rest of us were paying for it. I took another swallow, leaned against the wall, and told myself watching counted as participating.

Across the room, Emmett stood with a cluster of classmates, arms crossed. For a second I thought he’d hold his ground, but Meghan and Jamal hooked him by the elbows and hauled him toward the dance floor. He hung back at first—arms folded tight like he wasn’t sure he belonged out there—but Meghan and Jamal tugged until his steps gave way, and soon the resistance slipped into something almost like enjoyment.

God.

We used to joke about how he couldn’t dance worth a damn. Two left feet, no rhythm, every step offbeat. Watching him now, I should’ve laughed. Should’ve remembered all the times I teased him for stepping on my shoes when we messed around in his kitchen, music blaring from some busted radio.

But right now I couldn’t laugh. Couldn’t look away.

Then it happened—he paired off. Not for long, just a spin in the crowd with someone else. A woman we’d gone to school with, maybe, or maybe one of the guys, I couldn’t even tell in the blur of lights and bodies. Whoever it was, Emmett’s face lit up in a way I hadn’t seen in twenty years. Watching him, carefree in someone else’s orbit, I felt the twist low in my chest.

That laugh had nothing to do with me.

A whoop split the air, and before I knew it, Derrick’s big hand clamped around my wrist.

“Oh, hell no,”

I said, digging in just enough to make him work for it.

“Hell yes,”

he shot back, grinning as he hauled me into the crush of bodies.

“You can’t brood on the sidelines all night. They’re playing Electric Boogie—time for the Electric Slide. Tell me you remember this.”

Laughter erupted from the circle forming at the center, classmates lining up shoulder-to-shoulder, moving like muscle memory had never left.

Jamal bellowed the counts—“Four right! Four left! Back it up! Step-touch forward!”—and half the room still managed to trip over their own feet.

The crowd clapped in rhythm, off-key but enthusiastic. Someone whistled. Somebody else yelle.

“wrong foot!”

and the whole line dissolved into hysterics.

I tried to hold back, but the beat thudded through the floor, through me, until my mouth twitched traitorously upward. Damn it. Impossible not to grin when the whole room was laughing like we were seventeen again.

“Look at you,”

Derrick crowed, elbow jabbing my ribs.

“Still got the moves.”

“Moves?”

I wheezed.

“That was me trying not to fall on my ass.”

“Same thing,”

he shot back, grin wide as the disco ball’s fractured light.

The song bled into another, then another—bass rattling the bleachers, synth notes sharp enough to buzz my teeth.

People cheered, hands clapping, glasses clinking against each other.

Somebody shouted when Billie Jean kicked in, and the whole floor tried to moonwalk at once—badly.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun followed, Megan and Britt shrieking every word like they were back in their bedrooms with hairbrush microphones.

Then Footloose spun up, and Jamal nearly pulled a hamstring trying to match Kevin Bacon’s kicks.

You Spin Me Round capped it, the strobe lights turning the whole gym into a blur of neon and sequins.

For a while, I forgot everything—forgot the years, the silence, the things I should’ve said.

Just Britt tugging me by the hand, Derek clapping offbeat, Jamal howling with laughter.

For those songs, for those minutes, I was seventeen again.

Then it caught me.

Not sharp, or sudden.

Just that familiar pull deep in my knee, the one that whispered don’t push it.

A dull reminder of everything I’d lost the day my knee gave out for good.

Sweat trickled down my temple.

I shifted my weight, tried to shake it off, rode the beat for another verse.

The lights strobed pink and blue across the floor, Britt threw her head back in laughter, Jamal hollered out the wrong lyrics to Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

But the throb didn’t quit.

A dull ache crept upward, the kind of reminder that said enough.

My chest rose on a sharp breath as I clapped along, easing myself out of the line before anyone noticed.

That’s when my eyes landed on Emmett.

He’d drifted to the sidelines, drink in hand. And right there beside him—Leif Lawson. They stood close, heads bent together to trade words I couldn’t hear over the music. Comfortable. Familiar. Like they belonged in each other’s orbit.

Heat pricked behind my ribs. I told myself it was just the knee, the sweat, the noise, but the lie tasted bitter.

“Gonna sit one out,”

I muttered, though nobody heard me over the thump of the bass. They were too busy howling, spinning, clinking glasses.

I slipped free at the edge of the crowd, careful not to let my gaze snag on the far wall where I knew Emmett stood, shoulder to shoulder with Leif.

Didn’t need that image burned deeper.

The doors swung shut behind me, and night air wrapped around me, warm and heavy, touched with the sweetness of honeysuckle and the faint tang of cut grass.

I drew in a breath that reached all the way down, sharp and clean compared to the sweat and neon I’d left inside.

The music still chased me, muffled now, bass pulsing through brick like a distant heartbeat.

Each step across the lot sent a reminder sparking in my knee—not enough to stop me, but enough to whisper don’t forget.

The parking lot stretched out, cars lined in neat rows glinting under the security lights.

My shoes scuffed gravel as I cut across, past the chain-link fence that always rattled in the wind, toward the field.

Floodlights loomed tall but dark, casting the bleachers in silver shadow under the moon.

I slowed without meaning to.

For years, this had been my stage—the roar of a crowd, the smell of turf, the crash of helmets.

And above it all, always, Emmett. In the stands, hollering my name like I was unstoppable.

The ache in my chest beat harder than the one in my knee.

I climbed the first few steps and sat, elbows braced on my thighs, shoulders caving forward.

Not a collapse, not quite—but anyone looking would’ve seen it.

The kind of posture that said the weight wasn’t just in the body, but in whatever memory had followed it out here.

Once, these bleachers had held my biggest dreams.

Tonight, they just held me.