I used to believe the worst thing that could happen to my husband and me was missing our prom. Five years later, on the happiest night of my marriage, I learned how little I really knew about the people I’d trusted most.
The garment bag hung on my closet door like a promise.
Inside was the dress Terry and I had picked out three months earlier, back when the biggest worry in my life was whether the shoes would give me blisters by the second slow song.
I was 18, in love, and stupid enough to think nothing bad ever happened to girls like me.
Terry and I had been together since sophomore year.
By senior spring, everyone in our little town assumed we’d walk out of prom with plastic crowns on our heads as prom king and queen.
***
My then-boyfriend texted me days before prom, teasing me about “practicing our dance routine” in his kitchen with his mom’s dish towel as a partner.
