Graduation

I gulped down the last of my lemonade, ice cubes gently clanking as I continued to melt in the sticky Boston summer air. Maggie and I had been politely laughing at the jokes of various well-meaning parents for about thirty minutes, while we waited for the rest of our high school friends to arrive. None of us had seen each other for ages, and it seemed fitting to do a small post college graduation reunion at Maggie’s brother’s high school graduation party. All of us had already done our graduation partying at our respective universities and on a variety of globe-trotting trips, but we had agreed to return home to Boston and see each other before starting at our medical schools, PhD programs, and consulting jobs. 

I gazed idly past the other guests on the patio toward Maggie’s warmly lit house. Everywhere I looked seemed to hold a reminder of our giddy, reckless youth. There was the liquor cabinet we raided to get irresponsibly drunk for the first time, the back garden door we always snuck out through to go to underwhelming parties, the balcony where we would smoke cigarettes to cosplay as adults, and the high kitchen counters where we would perch late at night to nurse our first heartbreaks. Four years and several degrees later, it felt like we had lived through immeasurable pain and countless joys. We had gone separate ways in college, growing up and apart from each other, guarding our hard-earned friendships through FaceTime calls and occasional cross-country visits. We all managed to find our own versions of academic and professional success by graduation, returning now to Boston on a victory lap. 

I had grown into who I always wanted to be, someone my younger self would hardly recognize. Gone was the girl who was so afraid of the sting of rejection that she would never ask, only wait to be asked. Who would never say “I love you” first even when she knew as much as anything that she felt it to be true, humming in her chest. Who could not bear to end a relationship that had been passionless for months because she was terrified of the vulnerability that comes with being alone. After a vicious break up, I learned to live in that vulnerability. I learned that the embarrassment of rejection means nothing in the face of the richness of human connection that only honesty can bring. I learned how to fall again, and again, and again, and how to get up every time. I was confident now, I knew my worth, I was unafraid to ask for what I wanted. 

Maggie’s youngest sister Emmy shrieked from the garden. She was only nine and could still find endless entertainment chasing her school friend Charlie around the carefully manicured hedges. I stood up, grabbing my glass and making my chair scrape across the patio stones.

“Anyone want more lemonade?” I gestured with my cup at the rest of the table. Hearing only murmurs of no thank you, I strode toward the sliding glass doors, desperately excited for the reprieve of the aggressively air-conditioned kitchen. The house’s front doorbell sounded just as the patio door slammed behind me.

“Chloe, can you let them in?” Maggie shouted at me, her voice muffled through the glass. I grinned, setting my cup down on the marble countertop, nearly skipping to welcome my old friends.

I flung open the front door and my breath hitched. It was not a gaggle of young women waiting there for me but an unfamiliar man, with salt and pepper stubble and an even buzz cut, wearing Steve Jobs glasses and athletic wear I recognized from Wirecutter’s “Best of” lists. He looked like the founder of a biotech start up. Like a Boston Symphony Orchestra Board of Trustees member. Like tenured faculty at a Greater Boston area college. And he was tall. So tall that even at 5’8” I had to tilt my head a little to meet his gaze that flicked down over my narrow frame, assessed by his steely grey eyes so quickly I nearly missed it. I felt self-conscious now in my ankle length but paper thin, clinging summer dress. I was hyper-aware that I had chosen that morning, seeing the sweltering forecast, not to wear anything underneath. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a ring.

“I’m here to pick up Charlie Adamson.” His quiet baritone broke my stunned silence. “I’m James, Charlie’s dad,” he offered for further explanation after I missed a beat.

I recovered promptly, offering a smile and extending a handshake, “Of course. I’m Chloe, Maggie’s friend from back in high school.” His rough fingertips grazed the smooth back of my hands, sending a flutter to my heart and between my legs.

He followed me through the house as I led him to the back patio. Conscious of his gaze, I would have tried to walk with a seductive sway in my hips if I had anything back there that would move. Instead, feeling more like a teenager than I had in years, I focused on not tripping over my own feet and hoped that I was giving “poised runway model” rather than “lanky newborn colt.” After Maggie’s mom convinced him to stay for drinks, I watched for the next hour as nearly every other mom at the party flirted with him. I certainly didn’t blame them. His quiet but commanding demeanor, so intense when he would fix his sharp and level gaze on you, softened only occasionally by his lopsided smile. It was all enough to leave these middle-aged women swooning and me fantasizing about him holding me down, putting his mouth on my soaking pussy, and ordering me to beg to finish. Even when my friends finally arrived and got into reminiscing about high school, I stayed distracted by his low tones floating across the patio through fragments of dialogue. When I glanced over for the umpteenth time, he caught my gaze and held it just for a moment before dropping it and turning back to his conversation. I shivered in the muggy heat.

When I saw him murmur an excuse to the woman he was talking to and slip inside the house, I counted twenty seconds and then followed him in, mumbling to my friends something about more lemonade. I found him waiting for the guest bathroom that was near the front door, tucked away to the side of the cavernous atrium. I formed a line behind him.

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