It’s a bit much, but it is Broadway, after all.

Becky and Andy are going to the junior prom dressed as Bonnie and Clyde. Connor is back at work and sold Becky a bag of cast-off material for five dollars, and she’s made a wild sort of flapper dress. All fringe and beads.

Andy procured a realistic-looking toy submachine gun from somewhere, but his dad confiscated it, saying that it looked too real and could get him shot.

Good thing Clyde’s dad never told him that, Andy grumbles.

Yeah, Becky replies, eyes blazing. How awful that all those people wouldn’t have been murdered.

Andy leans in to kiss her cheek, and Becky slaps him away. You think he’d know better by now.

I wave Becky and Andy off with a sharp realization that I’ll never go to a prom with Gabriel. Hell, I can’t even introduce him to my family.

Not that I would introduce him to my parents, anyhow. I like him too much for that.

But I would have liked to take him to prom. Would have liked to see him in a tux. Danced with him to crappy slow songs and fed him meatballs off toothpicks. Drank spiked punch while the teachers milled together in the corner under the guise of supervising.

I would have liked to take him to after-parties and ducked into a side rooms to kiss until we couldn’t see straight.

I would have liked to be allowed to have what Becky and Andy are allowed to have.

Time feels heavy, like it’s pressing down and I can’t stop the questions from pouring out.

Where are you when you aren’t here? I ask Gabriel as we huddle in a dark corner at the edge of the bar. Where do you go?

Our cheeks are next to each other so we can hear over the music, and he doesn’t pull back when he answers.

I work, he says as though the words are painful.

And then?

And then I work some more. Sometimes I sleep.

Yeah, but…

He shuts me up by moving his lips up to my ear to whisper, And I think about you. But really, Michael, the only thing that matters is the time we’re together.

And when I’m with him, it’s easy to believe, but I know that five minutes later, I’ll be doubting everything again.

We talk about today and next week and next month and next year, and then I have to stop Gabriel to say, I don’t even know what the hell I’m going to do after graduation. My parents assume I’ll go to college, but I don’t know what I want.

I know what I want, he says, eyes lidded and dark. Maybe that’s enough for both of us.

And then he pulls me to him, and I wonder if it might be.

“Time (Clock of the Heart)” by Culture Club comes on, and we sway together, Boy George’s voice circling around us, until Gabriel stops and nudges me to the wall, then steps away, forms his hands into a square and mimes taking a photo.