Eyes Open

Prom Comes From Promenade

Archer dumped a bag of coffee beans into the grinder and slammed the lid shut, then chucked the packaging on the floor. Of course he did this all with one exagerated frown on his face. He normally looked as if he were about to be thrown in front of a firing squad, but this was just ridiculous.

"You're being a baby, Archer."

He directed his furious glare on me as he plugged in the grinder.

"Shut up."

"What?" I said innocently. "I'm just stating the obvious."

"Obvious, my ass," he muttered, rolling his eyes.

He flipped on the grinder then, luckily for him, as I was about to start another round of protesting .

I honestly could not see what the big deal about this was. I knew Archer wasn't a fan of a lot of things, yet even I had no idea that he was so firmly against this. This was approaching a new level of ludicrous, even for him.

"Please?" I said once Archer switched off the grinder and dumped the freshly ground coffee beans into a new Mama Rosa's packaging.

"No."

"Please?"

"For the love of God - no!"

"Jesus, Archer, you really are a baby," I exclaimed, slipping off the counter. "It's just the prom. It's not like we're going to meet the damn pope or something."

"Yeah, you're right," Archer agreed sarcastically. "The fact that you're talking about prom means nothing at all."

The bells over the shop door jingled as a customer strolled in, forcing me to keep quiet while Archer fixed up the man's drink and bagged him a blueberry muffin.

I was on him as soon as the man strolled out into the early spring heat.

"This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime things, Archer!" I told him. "We'll never get this chance again!"

"All the more reason to avoid it," Archer said coolly.

I understood "once-in-a-lifetime" chances more than most. Ever since I had very nearly lost my life two Decembers ago, I became startlingly aware that you couldn't just idly sit by and watch your life fly past you. That wasn't really a life at all.

Archer didn't know about the deal I had made with Death to save his life - and I secretly hoped that he never would - but I knew that he knew the importance of certain things, things you just couldn't ignore. Whether you liked it or not, these things were just expected of you.

Yes, we were only talking about prom here, but prom was the quintessential high school experience, wasn't it?

I had agreed with Archer last year that we could forgo prom, since I still hadn't completely bounced back from my near fatal car accident a few months before.

But now I was perfectly healthy and more than a little annoyed that Archer was so dead set on not going to prom.

That was the problem about being with someone so hardheaded. Suggest something new and they immediately shot down the idea without even hearing it through.

I'd known for a long time that I was more or less in love with Archer Morales (it wasn't as if I had told him that) but this? This kind of made me want to smack him.

"You know what I don't understand?" Archer said, looking at me. "Why you even want to go to prom in the first place."

"We're a couple, aren't we?" I said.

His lips gave a small twitch, fighting back another frown.

"You know we are."

"Well, couples go to prom! That's what they do!"