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Deirdre mounts the stairs, pausing at the top one as the woman at the podium beams and says, “Deirdre Titone.”
Pride flares in my chest, and I clap loud and fucking hard, slamming the leather surface of my gloves together as my wife walks across the stage. She looks a little shy at first under all those lights as she takes her degree certificate and shakes an old man’s hand. I’ve hired a pro photographer, so I don’t worry about trying to take photos of my own. I just keep on clapping and watching her, so fucking proud I want to smack the back of the head of the guy next to me and say, That’s my fucking wife.
I’m such a dopey, excited husband that I actually end up doing it. Not the smacking part. But I do lean over and tell first the guy on my right, then the woman on my left, that that right there, that beautiful little Songbird on the stage right now, is married to me.
She pauses while shaking the man’s hand, looking out over the audience for the photo-op the way all the other students have done. Her eyes are darting around. Looking for me.
I stand up so she can see me, not caring whose view I block. Her gaze comes home, right to me, and her smile turns big and brilliant. Her shyness disappears, her chin rising, and it’s like it’s just me and her in the room. Kind of like when I used to watch her violin concerts.
Only she actually knows I’m in the audience this time.
Eventually the woman at the podium announces the next name, and Deirdre breaks eye contact and moves on, shaking two more sets of wrinkled hands before heading off the stage into a hall beyond for her school graduation photos.
I watch her disappear through that door, knowing Curse is stationed nearby and that she’s safe. I sit down again, grinning, still feeling so fucking proud I don’t know what to do with myself.
She really knuckled down to get back on track after our wedding and the events that followed. She completed all her spring exams and then worked her cute little ass off in her final year, with some gentle (or sometimes not-so-gentle) encouragement from her husband, of course.
She doesn’t know it yet, but as soon as this is done I’m whisking her away to Europe. The honeymoon we never got to have. There’s been too much shit to focus on here over the last year and a half, and we both just wanted to stay on home turf for a while.
But what am I waiting around here for now? I’m not going to sit on my ass for another thirty minutes until the lady on the stage reads the very last Z name. I stand once more, ignoring the mumbles of discontent as I slide past the other audience members in my row and head out the door.
It’s time for me to go and get my wife.
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