Plot Summary
The Prom Gut Punch
Wes Bennett1 attends prom with his friend Alex,3 both of them laughing about their shared romantic misery: Alex3 is hung up on a clueless guy named Adam, and Wes1 is blindsided by his lifelong feelings for his next-door neighbor, Liz Buxbaum.2 Under the enormous Mardi Gras baby decoration, something makes him glance toward the doors.
There she is. Liz,2 wearing the white dress she once sent him a photo of, has arrived with Michael Young,4 the boy she has loved since kindergarten. Wes's1 entire upper torso seizes. His heart races, his stomach churns, every muscle locks.
He watches her smile at Michael4 and the rest of the room blurs. A dull buzzing vibrates in his skull. He wants to punch Michael,4 though he knows it is irrational. Michael4 has not earned that smile. Wes1 saw her first. Liz2 has always been his secret, a hidden treasure only he recognized, and now someone else has spotted it.
This opening section establishes Wes's interiority as a pressure cooker of unspoken desire and possessive instinct. His physical reaction is visceral, almost medical: seized torso, racing heart, churning stomach. The narrative frames Liz not as a person with agency but as a discovered object, a 'secret' and 'treasure' that he alone previously valued, which reveals his underlying terror of being rendered irrelevant by her choice. His anger at Michael is displaced grief: he is not truly mad at the boy, but at the closing of a door he never had the courage to open. The Mardi Gras baby looms as an ironic symbol of celebration over a moment of private devastation, marking the distance between external festivity and internal collapse.
The Taylor Swift Trigger
Wes1 does his best to focus on Alex,3 who is funny and deserves his attention, especially when she rambles about Adam's Disney soundtrack habit. Then a Taylor Swift song, 'New Years Day,' fills the room. Wes1 holds out as long as he can, but the music breaks his resolve. He glances back at Liz,2 who remains oblivious to his existence.
He devours the sight of her: long, smooth copper hair that makes his fingers itch to tug it, the same strands he once wrapped around his fingers when she kissed him in his car. Her dress, the one she tried on because he told her white was her color, has been rewritten.
Now it belongs to Michael,4 archived forever in prom photos as the dress she wore with another boy. Wes1 watches their faces draw close, braces for a kiss that does not come, and instead suffers a worse blow: a long, full hug. His stomach lurches violently enough to make him worry he might be sick on his date.
Music here functions as an emotional tripwire, bypassing Wes's conscious efforts at composure and dragging him back into his obsession. The specificity of Taylor Swift, an artist culturally coded as the poet laureate of romantic longing, deepens the ache. The hug being worse than a potential kiss is a psychologically acute observation: a kiss can be impulsive, but a full embrace suggests intimacy, comfort, earned closeness. Wes's agony is compounded by his sense of dispossession. The dress, once sent to him in a private photo, has become public property in Michael's narrative, a small but complete erasure of the secret world Wes and Liz briefly shared.
That Look Returns
Masochistic, Wes1 shifts his gaze back to Liz2 and finds her looking directly at him. Her face is so expressive, so easy to read, and the blood slows in his veins as he registers her big green eyes, the tiny crease between her brows. She looks sad.
For a suspended moment, Wes1 dares to hope she might be feeling the same emptiness he carries. Then her expression changes. Liz2 raises an eyebrow, tilts her chin. To anyone else, it is just a look. But Wes1 knows it intimately from a lifetime of being on the receiving end: impassive, lacking warmth, slightly defiant.
It is the look that says she does not care what he thinks. He has not seen that expression in a long time, and its return cuts deeper than any prom date could. Alex,3 perceptive, asks if Liz2 is behind him. Wes1 turns them both around so he cannot see Buxbaum2 anymore and lies that she is not.
The return of the old, cold look functions as a regression to their pre-intimacy dynamic, a devastating signal that whatever closeness they briefly shared has been erased. The micro-expressions Wes reads (the crease between her brows, the chin tilt) reveal a shared history of nonverbal communication so deep it is almost a private language. His lie to Alex is a small but significant self-betrayal: he cannot bear to admit aloud what he has just witnessed because speaking it would make the loss permanent. The moment captures the particular cruelty of almost-love, where the slide backward into indifference feels more painful than never having advanced at all.
The Secret Area Surprise
Wes1 and Alex3 skip the after-prom party to hang out by the bonfire in the Secret Area, the shared backyard hideaway between Wes1 and Liz's2 houses. When they arrive, something is wrong: a fire already roars in the pit, twinkling lights are strung up, graham crackers and marshmallows float on the fountain.
On the ground lies a broken CD player and scattered batteries. Then Alex3 nudges Wes:1 Liz2 is there, crawling around in the dark on the far side of the space. When Wes1 calls her name, she freezes, stands, and turns with a terrifying fake clown grin.
She claims she followed her cat (who never goes outside) to find a dropped lucky penny. The lie is transparent and bizarre. She is wearing Wes's baseball sweatshirt, which makes coherent thought even harder for him. After more rambling about pennies being the best currency ever, she vaults the fence and flees.
Liz's behavior in the Secret Area is a masterclass in emotional avoidance dressed as absurdity. The elaborate setup (fire, lights, s'mores, CD player) reveals a planned romantic gesture that she lost the nerve to complete, while the penny metaphor (a valueless object suddenly recognized as precious) is a near-confession she cannot deliver directly. The sweatshirt, Wes's clothing on her body, is a claim of belonging she cannot yet verbalize. Her flight response, literally jumping the fence to escape, demonstrates that her feelings for Wes are so overwhelming they trigger a fight-or-flight reaction, with flight winning decisively. The bizarre clown grin is the mask over genuine terror.
Evidence in the Fountain
After driving Alex3 home early because neither can focus, Wes1 returns to the Secret Area to clean up and discovers the full scope of Liz's2 abandoned plan. In the fountain, among the soggy s'mores ingredients, floats a broken CD player.
The disc inside is labeled in Liz's2 handwriting: 'The Wes and Liz Soundtrack,' complete with a cover drawing of a heart made from tomato sauce. On the porch, taped above the doorbell, a note in her messy script reads: 'SEE YOU IN THE SECRET AREA. 'The evidence rewires his brain instantly. She had been waiting for him.
The whole bizarre penny charade was a scrambled, panicked attempt at something real. Excitement and desperation collide in his chest as he hears her car with its failing muffler pull up ten minutes later. He plants himself on the porch, coiled like a dog straining at a leash, and waits.
The discovered artifacts transform Wes's confusion into clarity. The CD, a mixtape of significant songs, is a classic romantic gesture that requires time, thought, and emotional investment; it is evidence of premeditated feeling, not impulse. The tomato sauce heart cover is specifically Liz: messy, homemade, unpolished, and entirely sincere. The note confirms intentionality, rewriting the earlier penny-cat absurdity as a failed first attempt. Wes's self-comparison to a dog on a leash captures his state of helpless anticipation, no longer in control of his own emotional trajectory, reduced by love to something instinctual and straining toward its object.
The Parking Lot Confrontation
Liz2 sits in her running car for twenty minutes, refusing to get out. Wes,1 after waiting like what he admits is a deranged stalker, finally walks over and knocks on her fogged-up window. She rolls it down a crack and claims she is just parking. He calls out the lie: he watched her park twenty minutes ago.
The faint scent of her perfume and chips drifts through the gap. When she finally exits the car, she asks what he needs with a rolled-eye, clipped tone, a throwback to their old antagonistic dynamic. Wes's1 patience disintegrates. He demands an explanation: the CD, the note, the penny rambling, the sweatshirt.
She deflects with sarcasm about lucky coins. He unleashes his frustration, voice too loud, accusing her of playing games. She won his precious Michael,4 but the second Wes1 looked at someone else, she ambushed him with mixed signals while wearing his clothes.
The twenty-minute car sit is a standoff between dread and desire. Liz's paralysis inside the vehicle, a sealed space she controls, contrasts with the vulnerability of facing Wes in the open. Her reversion to eye-rolls and clipped speech is a defensive regression to their old enemy dynamic, a safer script than the terrifying unknown of honest confession. Wes's outburst (too loud, too emotional, too late) is the sound of a careful boy finally losing control of his own protective machinery. His accusation cuts to the psychological heart: she only wanted him once he seemed unavailable, a pattern of desire structured by loss rather than presence.
The Penny Confession
Under the pressure of Wes's1 anger, Liz2 breaks. She stops deflecting and confesses she made the CD and staged the embarrassing scene because she realized Michael4 is not the person she cannot stop thinking about.
Being with Michael4 is not like eating hamburgers with Wes,1 or sneaking off to the Secret Area for s'mores and stargazing, or fighting over a parking spot. It took her too long to figure this out, and now, she says thickly, tears threatening, Wes1 has Alex.3 She tells him Alex3 is perfect and sweet and deserves someone like her, and then delivers the line that short-circuits him: she was wrong, he is the good thing.
Every nerve in Wes's1 body lights up. He tells her she is also wrong about Alex.3 Alex3 is not perfect, she is missing one essential thing: she is not Liz.2 The words stun Liz2 into wide-eyed silence.
Liz's confession hinges on specificity rather than grand declarations: hamburgers, s'mores, parking-spot fights. These small, mundane shared experiences form the texture of real intimacy, contrasting with the abstract idealization she projected onto Michael. Her tears signal not just emotion but release, the exhausting relief of finally dropping a performance. Her insistence that Wes deserves someone 'perfect and sweet' like Alex is steeped in self-deprecation, revealing she still views herself as the difficult, prickly girl from years of their antagonistic dynamic. Wes's counter-confession, that perfection is meaningless without her specific presence, reframes imperfection not as a flaw but as the signature of authentic love.
Enemies to Lovers Trope
Wes1 pulls Liz2 closer by the drawstrings of his sweatshirt she is wearing. Something about her in his clothing triggers a possessive Neanderthal reaction he knows she would mock. He explains why he pushed her toward Michael:4 she had loved the boy since kindergarten, and he did not want their kiss to get in the way of what she truly wanted, even if it destroyed him.
Liz's2 face transforms: the furrow vanishes, replaced by a stunning smile as she places her hands on his chest and confesses that what she really wanted was to go with him all along.
Wes1 admits the sight of her in that dress made him want to punch their good friend Michael.4 She looks absolutely delighted to have tortured him, calling it faint-worthy. Wes1 cups her face, unsteady hands on her skin, and kisses her with every emotion he has ever felt compressed into a single act of surrender.
The sweatshirt drawstring pull is a tactile, almost primal gesture that collapses the boundary between them, using his clothing as a literal tether. His explanation for pushing her toward Michael reveals a painful generosity: he was willing to sacrifice his own happiness for her perceived lifelong dream, a quiet martyrdom she never asked for. Her delight at his jealousy is psychologically revealing: she needs evidence that she matters, that her presence has the power to disrupt him. The kiss is described not as romance but as conflagration, a wildfire that consumes his carefully managed control, which is the true arc of the story: Wes's journey from guarded neighbor to man incinerated by feeling.
Interrupted by Family
The kiss escalates, wild and breathless, Liz2 kissing him like the rain scene from The Notebook. Wes1 lifts her onto the trunk of her car for better leverage, losing the ability to form coherent thoughts. He pulls back to joke that they could have been doing this for years if she were not such a pain, and she fires back that she did not like him until recently.
He declares their trope: enemies to lovers. She laughs, tells him to shut up and kiss her, and he does. Then a voice shatters the moment. Liz's father6 bellows from the dark, asking if she knows what time it is. Her stepmother Helena5 calls out that she tried to buy them an extra seven minutes.
Mortification and amusement collide as Liz's father6 orders her inside. Before she goes, Wes1 shouts toward the porch, desperate to formalize this before the magic breaks: can he ask her out? Helena5 says of course. Liz's father6 gives begrudging, cutoff permission. Both families have witnessed the shift.
The parental interruption serves a crucial structural function: it grounds the romantic fantasy in ordinary, embarrassing reality. The trope joke is meta without being alienating, a wink that acknowledges the genre conventions while still inhabiting them sincerely. Helena's admission of buying them seven extra minutes is a small, wonderful character beat that reveals she has been rooting for them from inside the house, a benevolent audience to the unfolding drama. Wes's desperate shouted question, needing to secure the relationship before the night ends, betrays his underlying fear that this is all a fragile Cinderella spell that could shatter at midnight. The public declaration, overheard by both families, makes the relationship real in a way private kisses cannot.
Donuts at 8 AM
Later that night, Liz2 lies in her dark bedroom, unable to sleep, when her phone lights up with a message from Wes.1 He asks if she is still awake. She admits she is too excited to sleep. He translates her words into teasing shorthand: she is too excited for him to sleep.
Their old, easy texting rhythm returns instantly, and Liz2 cradles her pillow, overwhelmed with happiness that Wes1 is back as her favorite person to talk to. Wes1 claims the thought of not seeing her until their date the following night makes him physically itch and proposes an 8 AM donut run to LaMars.
When she questions whether he can survive waiting 17 hours, he sends the line that undoes her: he has waited his whole life for her, so for God's sake, put him out of his misery and let him woo her with coffee and chocolate chips. Liz2 looks out her window toward his and realizes she has been wrong about him all along.
The late-night texting scene re-establishes their pre-romantic intimacy as the foundation upon which their new relationship is built. Wes's 'itch' joke is classic deflection through humor, but his pivot to sincerity, 'I've waited my whole life for you,' is the emotional climax of the entire novella. It transforms all the years of teasing, fighting, and pining into a single, devastating line of earned longing. Liz's realization that she has been wrong about him is not just about romance but about perception: she spent years categorizing him as an antagonist when he was, all along, the protagonist of her story. The donut invitation is a small, ordinary gesture made monumental by the emotional architecture supporting it.
Analysis
Better Than the Prom operates as a compressed study in the gap between public performance and private truth. The entire novella takes place over a single prom night, using the genre's most iconic setting as a backdrop for a story about how people perform desire for the wrong audience. Everyone arrives at prom with the person they think they should want: Liz2 with Michael,4 Wes1 with Alex.3 The actual romantic work happens in the margins, in the Secret Area behind their houses, in the twenty minutes Liz2 spends paralyzed in her car, in the text messages exchanged at 2 AM. The structure argues that love lives not in the big formal rituals but in the small, unpolished spaces between them. Psychologically, the story explores confirmation bias as romantic tragedy. Liz2 spent years interpreting every interaction with Wes1 through the frame of annoyance because she had already cast Michael4 in the lead role of her romantic narrative. Wes,1 conversely, interpreted every conversation as covert flirtation because he had been in love since second grade. The miracle is that they eventually saw the same reality at the same moment. The penny metaphor, however clumsy, captures the story's emotional thesis: some things are so familiar, so ordinary and constant, that you forget to notice their value until the prospect of loss forces recognition. The novella trusts that grand gestures are less convincing than specific ones (hamburgers, parking fights, a mixtape with a tomato-sauce heart) and that romantic heroes are not suave but terrified, hands trembling as they cup the face of someone they have waited a lifetime to kiss.
Review Summary
Better than the Prom received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with readers praising Wes Bennett's character and the romantic elements. Many expressed a desire for more content from Wes's perspective. Readers found the novella sweet, swoon-worthy, and emotionally satisfying despite its short length. Common themes in reviews included Wes's devotion to Liz, memorable quotes, and the overall charm of their relationship. Some readers felt it raised their standards for romance. A few critics found it unnecessary or lacking depth, but these were in the minority.
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Characters
Wes Bennett
Lovesick neighbor turned loverWes Bennett has been in love with his next-door neighbor Liz Buxbaum2 since second grade, when he first discovered he could make her cheeks flush with a single teasing word. He channels his feelings into their long-running antagonistic dynamic, pulling pigtails in the emotional sense because proximity is better than nothing. Underneath his cocky exterior, Wes is profoundly insecure about whether he deserves Liz's2 attention, especially against her idealized childhood crush Michael4. He is self-aware enough to recognize his own patterns (the territorial jealousy, the masochistic watching) but not enough to break them. His love language is acts of quiet observation: he knows her car's muffler sound, her pizza preferences, the exact expressions on her face and what they mean. When he finally confesses, the dam breaks completely: he is not a cool rom-com hero but a boy reduced to trembling hands and a voice too loud with feeling. His core wound is the fear of being invisible to the one person who has always been the most vivid thing in his world.
Liz Buxbaum
Oblivious neighbor who finally sees clearlyLiz Buxbaum spent years defining Wes Bennett1 as her annoying neighbor and Michael Young4 as her romantic destiny, a framework so entrenched she missed the evidence accumulating directly in front of her. She is expressive, dramatic, and terrible at emotional subterfuge: when she attempts to lie, she invents bizarre penny metaphors and claims her indoor cat escaped, transparent even to herself. Her journey is one of perceptual awakening, the slow, painful realization that the loud, teasing presence she took for granted is the person she cannot stop thinking about. She makes a mixtape with a tomato-sauce heart cover, stages a Secret Area rendezvous, and then panics when Wes1 arrives with another girl, demonstrating that courage and cowardice can coexist in the same gesture. Her confession, when it finally comes, is grounded in specific, unglamorous memories (hamburgers, parking fights) rather than abstract romance, revealing that she has finally learned to value what is real over what is idealized.
Alex
Wes's prom date and confidanteAlex is Wes's1 prom date and fellow sufferer in romantic frustration, hung up on a clueless boy named Adam who listens to Disney soundtracks in his car. She is perceptive enough to notice when Wes1 is distracted by Liz's2 presence and kind enough not to hold it against him. She functions as a narrative mirror: her unrequited situation parallels Wes's1, but she handles it with humor rather than inward collapse. When the Secret Area evening falls apart, she insists Wes1 drive her home early so he can focus on whatever is happening with Liz2, demonstrating generosity that exceeds what the situation requires. She is funny, warm, and undeserving of being the collateral damage in someone else's love story, a fact Wes1 acknowledges with guilt.
Michael Young
Liz's lifelong crush and prom dateMichael is the boy Liz2 has loved since kindergarten, the idealized romantic target she finally achieves only to discover that reality does not match the fantasy. He is described as a good guy, which makes Wes's1 irrational desire to punch him feel even more shameful. His function in the story is largely symbolic: he represents the dream Liz2 constructed before she understood her own heart.
Helena
Liz's perceptive stepmotherHelena is Liz's2 stepmother who, from somewhere in the dark during the climactic make-out scene, reveals she has been silently rooting for Wes1 and Liz2, buying them an extra seven minutes before Liz's father6 intervenes. Her cheerful, unbothered response to catching them kissing suggests she has long seen what they refused to see in each other.
Liz's Father
The interrupting parentLiz's father provides the comedic parental cockblock, shouting from the porch that his daughter needs to come inside and stop making out under the streetlight for the neighborhood's entertainment. His gruff, begrudging permission when Wes1 asks to date Liz2 reveals affection beneath the bluster.
Plot Devices
The Secret Area
Shared sanctuary between two housesThe Secret Area is a backyard hideaway between Wes1 and Liz's2 neighboring houses, equipped with a fire pit, twinkling lights, and a fountain. It functions as their private world, a liminal space that belongs to neither household but to their shared childhood. Throughout the story, it serves as the site of their most significant interactions: the aborted rendezvous Liz2 sets up with s'mores and a custom CD, and the discovery space where Wes1 pieces together her intentions from physical evidence. The space holds their history (s'mores, stargazing, hamburgers) and becomes the geography of their relationship's pivot from hidden to declared.
The Mixtape CD
Physical confession Liz could not verbalizeLiz2 creates a CD labeled 'The Wes and Liz Soundtrack' with a cover illustrated in tomato sauce as a heart. It represents the romantic gesture she prepared before losing her nerve. The CD is discovered by Wes1 after she flees, along with the broken player and scattered batteries, and functions as irrefutable evidence of her feelings, a confession in physical form that she could not deliver face-to-face. Its presence in the fountain, among ruined s'mores ingredients, captures the disaster of her aborted plan and the sincerity underlying it. The mixtape is a classic romantic trope updated for the characters' specific history.
Wes's Baseball Sweatshirt
Symbol of belonging and possessionLiz2 wears Wes's1 baseball sweatshirt during the Secret Area scene, a detail that undoes Wes's1 composure and triggers what he describes as a possessive, Neanderthal reaction. The sweatshirt functions as a visual claim, Liz2 wearing his identity on her body before she is willing to speak her feelings aloud. Later, Wes1 pulls her closer by the drawstrings of this same sweatshirt, using his own clothing as a tether to eliminate the physical distance between them. It represents the intimacy that already existed between them before either acknowledged it romantically.
The Lucky Penny Metaphor
Liz's coded confession of regretWhen caught in the Secret Area, Liz2 invents an elaborate lie about searching for a dropped lucky penny. The metaphor quickly becomes transparent: the penny is Wes1, an object she overlooked and undervalued until she lost it, only to realize too late that pennies are the best currency ever, better than all others combined. The metaphor is clumsy, desperate, and obvious, which is precisely the point: Liz2 is not a smooth operator, she is a girl frantically trying to communicate a truth she has only just understood herself. Wes1 immediately recognizes himself as the penny in the scenario, though she refuses to confirm it directly.
The Failing Muffler
Auditory signal of Liz's arrivalLiz's2 car has a failing muffler that makes its approach audible from a distance. Wes1 has learned the sound, listening for it so obsessively that he can track her comings and goings from his house. The muffler serves as a Pavlovian trigger throughout the story, announcing Liz's2 presence before she is visible. When Wes1 hears it returning home after finding the Secret Area evidence, the sound floods him with anticipation and desperation, marking the moment before their climactic confrontation.
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