Boum — La

Her father glanced in the rearview mirror, and for a second, she thought she saw him smile too—as if he remembered, once, being fifteen, standing in a room full of noise and light, holding on to a moment before it slipped away.

“You came,” he said. His voice was lower than she remembered. He was holding a bottle of grenadine.

Sophie shrugged, pulling her cardigan tighter. “My parents will say no. They think ‘La Boum’ means noise, spilled drinks, and me coming home with a tattoo.” La Boum

Sophie leaned her head against the cool window. Outside, Adrien stood on his porch, waving.

She didn’t know how. Her feet felt like two foreign objects. But the song changed—something slow, something with a bass line that traveled up from the floorboards—and Adrien took her cup from her hand, set it on a shelf, and pulled her into the center of the room. Her father glanced in the rearview mirror, and

“Adrien?” her mother asked.

Then Adrien was beside her.

When she climbed into the car, her mother asked, “Did you have fun?”