Maya laughs, and the sound fills the room, warm and real. Cole flicks the ice onto the floor. I pull away long enough to strip the condoms off and knot them. Cole rolls onto his back, Maya curls against him, and I settle around her, my arm draped over her waist, my face buried in her hair.
The lamp stays on. The house settles. Somewhere under the refrigerator in the kitchen, a clove of garlic holds its ground.
Cole’s breathing slows first.
Then Maya’s.
I stay awake out of habit, listening to the house after everyone else has stopped moving. Maya breathes against Cole’s chest.
Four in.
Four hold.
Four out.
One cycle.
She exhales and settles deeper against him.
The count doesn’t restart. The quiet, for once, feels like peace.
Chapter 35
Cole
"If you touch my cap one more time, I will end you."
Maya swats my hand away. The mortarboard is sliding again, the third time in ten minutes, and she pulls a bobby pin from behind her ear and stabs it into the fabric at an angle that suggests the cap offended her personally.
"The cap is crooked," I say.
"It's supposed to be crooked. It's a statement."
"It's a fire hazard."
"Cole."
"During the walk, it's going to fall off."
"Then I'll pick it up and put it back on and the photographs will have character." She attacks the pin like it betrayed her. "Stop hovering."
The quad blazes around us, June heat pressing down on four hundred graduates trapped in polyester gowns while chairs bake in neat rows across the lawn and parents fan themselves in the stands. The podium waits under a tent the wind keeps trying to relocate, the canvas snapping hard enough to make the tassels around us twitch.
Maya sits one seat to my left, her knee bouncing under the gown every time she fights with that damn cap. Dante is rows behind us in the V section, and when I turn over my shoulder, I find him sitting straight, hands on his knees, his gown somehow obeying him the way his suits do.
He catches me looking and lifts one eyebrow.
I mouth:Her cap is crooked.
He mouths back:I know.
The rest of us are scattered through the alphabet. Talia is somewhere near the front with the A’s. A few rows behind her, Zoë sits with the B’s. Adrian and Clara are in the H section, close enough that I can hear Clara whisper something that makes Adrian choke on a laugh he converts into a cough. Genny has the L’s. Somewhere behind us, Declan and Gio are with the R’s.
"I can't believe Zoë altered her gown," Maya says, craning her neck toward the B section.
"You can't believe that? That's the most believable thing that's ever happened."
"Fair point. Is it—did she add darts?"
