Page 32 of Little Pieces of Light

The pairs moved to the front of the stage: Tucker and me, the Joker and Harley Quinn, Coraline and Wybie, and then Rhett and Aria as Gomez and Wednesday. I had to suppress a smile as some faces in the audience were clearly disturbed by the father/daughter pairing.

“It’s okay, Em,” Tucker said in my ear, his breath reeking of liquor. “I came on too strong. I get that. But we’re perfect together, and you know it.”

“No. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Come on, babe. The election is in a few days. Let’s not do any crazy shit until then.”

“Tucker, it’s over ,” I said, but my words were drowned out by the DJ moving to stand behind us.

“And now we have…Ken and Barbie!”

Tucker fist pumped and pointed at his friends. I smiled my pretty smile and waited for it to be over, so I could go home to my bed and cry forever.

We started to get off the stage when someone from the crowd shouted, “Wait! What about Barbenheimer?”

“Barbenheimer!” someone echoed.

Others took up the call, and soon enough, a guy in a suit and an old-timey hat was being pushed to the stage.

Xander…

He’d put in contacts and his hair was tucked under the hat, revealing more of his handsome face than usual. Just like I’d suggested.

“Hold on, Barbie,” the DJ said. “Looks like we have another contender. Oppenheimer, come on up!”

Tucker glared murderous daggers but restrained himself from making a scene and stepped aside as Xander joined me. Xander looked like a deer in headlights, clearly uncomfortable with the attention.

“For your consideration,” the DJ bellowed, “Barbenheimer!”

The crowd went wild—mostly girls who were really seeing Xander for the first time. To me, his glasses didn’t make him less attractive, but now his handsomeness was plainly obvious — beautiful angular features, those eyes, and even his clothes. Six feet of lean hotness in a plain suit.

I felt a certain happiness that the crowd loved him, but my heart cracked again too. It was tradition for the winners to dance together, like newlyweds at their wedding. A wild laugh nearly burst out of me. Or maybe it was a sob.

“The audience has spoken! Barbenheimer it is!” The DJ returned to his booth. “And for this special couple, their own special song.”

The rest of the hopefuls left the stage, Tucker dragged off by Rhett and Orion and pacified with the flask. For now.

“What is happening right now?” Xander asked me.

“I’m Barbie, you’re Oppenheimer. Barbenheimer. The two movies came out on the same day, so it became a thing for people to see both.”

“My costume isn’t J. Robert Oppenheimer. I’m dressed as my dad. This is the suit and hat he wore when he gave his dissertation at MIT.”

“They don’t know that, and now we’re the Best Couple.” I took his hand, that wild, reckless energy still coursing through my veins. “Come on. It’s time for our dance. It’s tradition.”

I led him to the center of the dance floor. A spotlight fell on us as Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” played over the sound system.

I moved to put my arms around his neck, but Xander took my right hand in his left, the old-fashioned way.

My left went around his shoulder while his other hand found my waist. From the edge of the dance floor, Tucker and Rhett were talking with heads bowed, eyes on us, while my friends whispered and murmured.

But then, at the sensation of being held by Xander, the entire world faded out, and all that remained was his hand holding mine, his arm around me, his nearness. The out-of-control feeling didn’t go away but mellowed from something hot and fiery into something molten and warm.

“I’m sorry,” Xander said, his gaze darting over the crowd watching us. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

My eyes filled again. “Do you mean this dance? Or when you touched my face the other day? Or the way you’re looking at me right now?”

“Emery…”

His expression was a mix of pain and want. Desire. I could see it plain as day because I felt it too.

“I broke up with Tucker,” I blurted.

Xander’s eyes flared. “You did? When?”

“Just now. My dad will kill me, and I’m terrified and happy and maybe going a little bit crazy all at the same time.”

Xander stared at me, a hundred thoughts behind his eyes.

Tell me I did the right thing. Tell me that you’re happy too…

“Em, you have to be careful. Your father—”

“Isn’t here right now,” I said. “Please, Xander. Let’s have this dance.”

Looking torn, he gave me a single nod, and that was enough.

I rested my cheek on Xander’s chest with my head tucked under his chin.

I fit perfectly there. He pulled our joined hands in, laid our clasped fingers over his heart.

His arm tightened around me, and our bodies pressed together, touching in a hundred places.

And I wanted to stay there, always.

“Emery.” Xander’s voice was soft, his mouth by my ear. “Why are you crying?”

I shook my head against his chest, my shoulders shaking. “Because this feels so perfect. Like how it’s supposed to be, and we’ve been pretending we’re just friends.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“You haven’t called or texted or said hello at school…”

“Because I…I thought it would be best to give you some space,” he said. “And…Emery, we should stay friends. Because I—”

“You want to stay neutral,” I said. “You don’t believe in love.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“You’re right, it’s not. Love is messy and complicated and doesn’t always work out in some neat equation.”

Xander turned me slowly, held me tighter. I could feel his heart thump against my cheek, fast and hard. “Why are you saying all this?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” I said. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, but I know how I do feel, and it’s all bursting out of me. Since you came back, everything changed. I feel like I’ve been waiting for you all this time…”

“Emery, don’t,” he said in a low warning tone. “Please, don’t.”

I lifted my head from the warm dark of Xander’s embrace to the glaring light of the dance floor and the hundreds of pairs of eyes on us—then to his stricken expression as he shook his head at me.

He doesn’t want this…

With a muffled cry, I slipped out of his arms and ran off the dance floor, pushing wildly through the crowd. I sprinted through the festival, turning corners around booths and food trucks until I found a quiet place behind a small wagon filled with hay. I sagged against it and caught my breath.

Moments later, Xander turned the corner.

“You should go,” I said. “If Tucker finds you here, he’ll kill you.”

“I don’t care. We need to have this out.” He tossed his hat aside and ran his hand over his eyes. “Look, I’m sorry, but we can’t do this.”

“We can’t do what?” I said, crossing my arms, shaking, holding myself together. “I need to hear you say it.”

“You know what,” he said, his voice low and quavering. “There is only one way this ends. Me at MIT, and you in California. Because I am going to help make that happen for you, Emery, if it’s the last fucking thing I do.”

“I thought…the other day, in my room…”

“That was a mistake,” Xander said, even if his eyes were telling me—screaming at me—that it wasn’t.

“That’s not true,” I said. “I was there. I—”

“Emery, look…” Xander shoved his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “We got caught up in a moment when we were ten years old and romanticized it. We made it into something it’s not.”

His words hit me straight in the heart like a hammer. “Is that what we did?”

“Yes. So now we have all this…built-up expectation, maybe, when the fact is, we were just kids.”

“That is the fact . But the feelings? They all meant nothing?”

“Not nothing,” Xander said in a pained whisper. “They just can’t mean everything.”

I stared, willing back tears. A desperate, panicky feeling lit me up from the inside, because the best thing in my airless, closed-up life was slipping away.

He read the despair on my face and shook his head. “Fuck, Emery, I’m so sorry, but—”

“For what, Xander? You’ve figured it all out with your facts and logic and equations—”

“That’s right because I have to keep you safe,” he said, his voice rising now. “And me too. I told myself I would never get into this situation—”

“Oh, I see,” I shot back. “I’m a situation .”

“No, you don’t see—”

“But you can hold me like that and nearly kiss me—”

“I refuse to lose one more person I love!” Xander shouted, then froze, his eyes wide. “Never mind. Forget it.”

Too late. A sudden feeling of warmth and shock flooded me, making me stumble back. My heart felt full and on the verge of shattering, both at the same time.

“Don’t you think I know how impossible it is?” I whispered. “I do. And I’m scared too, but—”

“There is no ‘but,’ Emery,” Xander said. “There are no exceptions to the rule. I am going to MIT. I am going to finish what my father started. And you have to go to California. You have to follow your dreams and get as far away from that psychopath as you can.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t… be something to each other. Even far apart.”

“How?” he demanded. “People leave, Emery. And they don’t come back, even when they say they will.”

“It wouldn’t be like that, I promise…”

The word made him wince. “I’ve heard that before.”

His cold tone hurt; he sounded like my dad. Tears threatened. “So that’s it then? There’s nothing else to talk about?”

“I said everything I wanted to say in those letters, and you never answered me back—”

“I never got the letters!” I cried, fresh tears spilling over.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m saying, I have…

limits.” He shook his head, hands on his hips.

“I lost my mom, and I’m losing my dad now too.

Slowly, but it’s happening.” Xander’s handsome face was etched with so much pain, his voice heavy with it.

“I shouldn’t be kissing you, Emery. I should be trying to save you. ”

“Save me?”

“Yes. To keep that light of yours from going out. I don’t want to hurt you. The last thing on this fucking planet I want to do is hurt you. But it will only get worse. For both of us.”