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Graduation goes by in a blur of smiling faces and handshakes. I swear one minute the ceremony is starting and the next I’m climbing into my car, tossing my cap and gown into the passenger seat, getting ready to head to the graduation luncheon.
I didn’t speak to my parents’ during the ceremony, but at least they showed up. I honestly don’t expect to see them at lunch, and I can’t say I’m upset by it. They’d only end up making this day about my failures, about what I didn’t accomplish that I should have.
I mean, fuck, I just graduated with a degree in Sports Medicine. Most parents would be satisfied with that, happy even, but not my parents’. More specifically, not my father. If it was up to him I would’ve followed in his footsteps—attended an Ivy League school and took over the practice from him someday.
He never accepted that I would do anything but that, and had I not fought so hard to get a scholarship, he might have actually gotten his way. Because then it would’ve beenhisschool andhisway or no way at all. Hell, he likely would’ve cut me off financially altogether had he not been so worried about what other people might think.
So, me being me, I burnt through more money in the last four years than I did the eighteen leading up to it. I maxed out credit cards on shit I didn’t need and managed to drain the account he set up in my name to damn near zero. I wish I could say I was bigger than that type of behavior, that I wasn’t stomping my foot like a child, but that simply wouldn’t be true.
Just one of the many things I’m not proud of.
Catching my eyes in the rearview mirror, I take a long hard look at myself and wonder what Tess would think of me now.
She was always my voice of reason. She would have set me straight, told me to grow up and stop acting like a spoiled child, and I would have listened to her, too. But Tess isn’t around anymore and even if she were, she probably wouldn’t want a damn thing to do with me.
The women, the drinking, my clear taste for self-destruction is not likely something she would understand.
I ignore the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach and try to focus on the road. I’ve been thinking about Tess a lot more than usual over the past few weeks now, and it’s brought up a lot of unresolved feelings that I have.
Maybe it’s because of graduation and knowing that all of this is coming to an end. Maybe it’s because I’ll be moving to California in just a few days having just secured an athletic assistant position working with one of the medical trainers at USC. I think I always knew I’d end up back there one day, but a part of me always thought it would be with Tess by my side. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe that’s what has my insides in knots and my mind unable to focus on anything but the girl I left behind.
I know it sounds crazy, how someone can have such an effect on your life in such a short period of time. But in the almost year that Tess and I were together I learned a lot about myself and what I wanted out of life.
Truth be told, if it wasn’t for her I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to stand against my father and go after whatIwanted. Not that she did anything specifically to drive that decision, but just being around her made me want to be more than what he wanted for me.
I wanted to be my own man, to stand on my own two feet and pave my own life. Tess made that feel possible.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her, that I don’t wish things had ended up differently. There’s been a hollow feeling in my chest since the moment I let her go, and no amount of women or booze could ever fill it.
Which leads me to the real reason why I’m so nervous about facing this next phase in my life because I think I’m finally realizing that I don’t want a future without Tess. And that scares me more than I thought it could.
I try to push the thoughts away as best I can, slapping on a fake smile the second I enter the luncheon and working the room like I always do. But once the seed is planted it starts to fester, and by the end of the day, nothing has been able to distract me.
Not even my parents’ showing up at lunch, which was a total shock, or the fact that for the first time since as long as I can remember my father actually shook my hand and treated me somewhat as an equal. Nope, not even that could stop the constant wheels from turning in my head.
My parents’ left shortly after lunch, heading to Georgia to visit my mother’s sister before flying back home in few days. If I wasn’t already in a state of shock over the way they both behaved toward me, I certainly would’ve been watching them drive away in the same car together. I can’t ever remember a time that my father has gone to Savannah with my mother. Add on the fact that he got into the car sporting the closest thing to a smile I’ve seen in a very long time, tells me there is definitely something going on with the two of them.
By the time I return to my dorm room hours later, having had a few drinks with the guys, the buzz running through my veins has only intensified my earlier thoughts of Tess. It’s like once I open up and let the voices talk I can’t get them to stop. And one voice is louder than all the others, the one that’s been singing in my ears since the moment I looked out into the crowd at graduation and realized that the one person I wanted to see smiling back at me wasn’t there. The voice that tells me it’s time.
It’s time to get my girl back.
I know I have a lot to figure out and a huge move coming u,p but for the first time in nearly four years something finally feels right, and I’m going to chase that feeling no matter where it leads me.
***
Stepping out of the airport into the bright sunlight, I take my first breath of New York air in over four years. God, I’ve missed this place.
After throwing my bag into the trunk of the cab, I quickly climb in the back seat, rambling off the address to the driver that I got from Courtney when I called her this morning. Funny, she didn’t seem at all surprised to hear from me even though it had been nearly two years since the last time I checked in.
I try to keep my nerves at bay, but it’s nearly impossible to do that the further into the city we get. By the time we reach the dorms where Tess lives, I feel like I’m seconds away from bouncing right out of my damn skin.
I can’t remember a time I felt so nervous.
Okay, that’s not true. But it’s been years, and that night at Tess’ senior prom feels like a lifetime ago. Just another thing I’ve tried to bury that has always found its way back to the surface. Just goes to show that some things are just not meant to be forgotten.
After paying the driver, I quickly exit the car, grabbing my bag before closing the trunk and turning toward the large four-story brick building in front of me. I take a deep breath in and then slowly let it out, trying to convince my feet to just fucking move already.
One step, two steps, three steps. I count each one as I make my way toward the front door. I’ve almost reached the sidewalk that wraps around the building when a sound I haven’t heard in years whips around me, freezing me where I stand.
I’d know that laugh anywhere. The sweet airiness of it intoxicating as it dances around me.
I shift, my eyes seeking out the source, frantically searching until finally, finally after three long years, they land on the one thing they’ve never stopped looking for…Tess.
Just the sight of her has all the air rushing from my body in an instant. She looks exactly as I remember and yet so different at the same time. Her long brown hair is now cut to her shoulders and there’s a grown-up quality to her that wasn’t there when we were kids. It makes me realize just how much a person can change over the years.
My heart constricts as I watch the smile spread across her face. It’s the same smile I used to see my future in. The smile that used to make me weak in the knees. A smile that still does.
That is, until I follow her gaze to the man standing next to her—the man whose hand is wrapped around hers and looking down at her like she’s all he can see. I know that look because it’s how I used to look at her.
The realization of it all crashes over me, but before I have time to react, her blue eyes find mine and time seems to freeze me in the moment, paralyzing my ability to do anything but stare back at the love of my life, realizing that my worst fear may have just become my reality.
