1
I’M THINKING ABOUT HIM.
Again.
In this moment that doesn’t have room for him. In a place he isn’t invited. And I have to be careful because memories are like rain.
A harmless drop here and there fall against my mind, then suddenly, I’m standing beneath a flood.
The top of the mortarboard in my hand is blank. Forest-green satin covers the cap without a single embellishment. Unlike the other hats belonging to the rest of my graduating class. Nothing to reflect the person wearing it. Nothing about its owner.
Would the top of my graduation cap have been empty if he was here?
I push the thought aside and take a deep breath as I move out of the walkway. A group of my fellow graduates pushes past me in the huge stadium, and somehow, I still manage to be in the way. My eyes go to the blue sky above me, already turning pink.
The sunsets here feel different than the ones in the Midwest. Brighter, as if the light is really golden.
“Oh my god,” one of the girls says in her California lilt. Everyone here talks different. I wish I was home. I wish . . .
Across the green grass of the football field, I see Tucker Albrey.
Not the him I was wishing for.
He weaves in and out of the chairs as he makes his way toward me. Sunglasses cover his eyes and his blond hair is messy from surfing earlier. Tucker looks like he belongs here. Hands tucked into the pockets of his fitted pants and his button-down open at the collar to reveal a peek at his tan chest. He’s effortlessly handsome. Almost as if he’s not from the same flat Indiana countryside we both grew up in. Like Southern California is his home.
It’s not.
Tucker grins and winks at a group that passes him. They giggle as one of them looks back over her shoulder, and not for the first time I’m grateful he doesn’t flirt with me. Tucker’s smile is a powerful weapon.
I give him a stern frown that I don’t really mean. He’s been like this since we were little. Somewhere between sincere and arrogant.
All the Albrey brothers are.
“What?” He lifts his shoulders in a careless shrug.
“My graduation is not a place for you to flirt.”
“Ellis Truman.” He puts a tanned hand over his heart. “If not now, when? If not me, who?”
I roll my eyes at him. “Look for your next victim elsewhere.”
“I am offended at your verbiage.” His arm wraps around my shoulders and I feel a deep sense of relief that he’s here. At least Tucker is with me. I’ve imagined this day a hundred times, but it was never like this. I’m grateful that one thing has survived the past year. Tucker.
He holds out his phone in front of us. “Show us your certificate of ‘High School Suffering Completion.’”
I do.
“Not in front of your face, stupid.”
With a sigh, I pull my diploma down so the camera can see me. Dark hair that’s never truly curly and never truly straight, freckles that seem unavoidable in the endless summers here, and washed-out blue eyes.
I don’t feel like smiling.
The group of shiny, tan blondes who just passed stands a few feet away. Polished and perfect.
“Now,” Tucker says, “all you have to do is look mildly happy.”
I give him a wide open-mouthed grin like I’m in the middle of saying Yay! I’m free!
Tucker snaps the photo and his arm drops as he grumbles, “You are the most difficult. . . . You know girls are supposed to like getting their pictures taken with hot guys?”
I laugh. Tucker is not a hot guy. Not to me, anyway. He’s practically my brother. My best and only friend in San Diego.
Before I can respond, a pair of arms wrap around me. “You did it!”
My shoulders go stiff and my body is taut as my aunt Courtney kisses my cheek with a loud smack. When she sees the lipstick there, she tries to wipe at it with a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” she mumbles. Most of her time with me is somewhere between being too friendly and too concerned.
I try to feel grateful for what she’s done for me this year. But all I can focus on are the things I’ve lost since coming to California.
Her fingers tuck a strand of brown hair behind her ear and she clears her throat. “You’re a graduate now.” The words are sweet but timid. “How does it feel?”
Like everything else, it feels wrong.
But that’s not the answer she’s looking for. I pull the corners of my mouth upward. “Fine, I guess.”
Her grin only falls a fraction when she looks down at the tassel in my hands. I run my fingers through the synthetic orange and white strings absently.
I hate these colors because they’re the wrong ones.
They’re supposed to be the blue and silver of Sylvan Lake High.
“You can hang it from the rearview mirror when you get a car.” My aunt looks back to me, adjusting the sunglasses perched at the edge of her nose. “Maybe the kids don’t do that anymore.”
As if I would know what the kids do. She seems to have missed the part where I have no friends here.
Tucker lets out a groan as he throws an arm around my shoulder. “Do not hang those disgusting colors from anywhere.” He takes my cap and holds it up. The dark green catches in the light and shines. “I still would have decorated this stupid hat, though. Dixon drew a penis on my cap in Sharpie last year.”
“Tucker,” my aunt says, pretending to be scandalized.
He hands it back to me. “To be fair, I drew boobs on the back of his robe when he graduated. He didn’t even notice till after the ceremony.”
The memory flashes in my mind. Dixon threw Tucker into the lake later that night and gave him a black eye. I can almost smell the summer grass as I remember something else.
Easton under a darkened sky. Looking up at the stars. Feet dangle off the edge of the dock and into the water. Skin so close to mine I can feel its heat.
The memory falls like rain and I close my eyes. It’s too sunny for that.
“Are you going to any grad parties?” Aunt Courtney has asked five times already, as if my answer is going to change. “That boy was talking about something happening on the beach?”
“A boy?” Tucker leans forward into the space between us. “A cute boy?”
I put my palm gently on his face and push him backward. “I’m not going to a party. I don’t even know those people.”
My aunt’s red lips press into a thin line.
“Are you busy, Tuck?” I ask. “We could go to the beach.” My aunt’s face is eager, so I add, “A different beach.”
I hear the hesitation in his voice before he answers. “Sure.”
He’s lying about not having plans. Tucker always has somewhere to go.
My phone chimes with an alert. @duckertucker has tagged you in a photo. I open it and see the two of us smiling in front of a blue sky. I’m holding up my diploma and wearing the most unflattering green gown.
But I look happy. More proof social media is a lie.
Three days ago, my feed was filled with pictures just like this from my old high school in Indiana. My former classmates wore blue gowns and smiles. Things I should have been wearing. Pictures that should have belonged to me.
“Dinner?” Aunt Courtney asks.
I envision sitting across from her at a chain restaurant as we eat and she tries to ask me all the things she thinks an adult, a parent, should ask. But she’s not my parent. Just my dad’s little sister who happened to have the misfortune of being the only grown-up stable enough to take custody of me. Until this past year, I only saw her at Christmas. An aunt you see once a year isn’t who you want to celebrate one of the most important milestones of your life with. “I’m not that hungry.”
“Oh.” Her face falls and then recovers quickly, just like my guilt. “Do you want some money?”
“I have some,” I tell her. It’s another thing I don’t let her do for me.
“Okay. Well. Not too late?” she says, but “too late” has no meaning. I haven’t stayed out past ten since I came to live with her.
Tucker is still typing in stabbing motions on his phone, and I wonder who he’s talking to. I crush the curiosity there because it feels a little too close to hope. “Hey.” I bump his hip with mine and he looks up, confused for a second.
“Sorry,” he apologizes as he pushes his phone into his pocket. “I was just texting . . .”
I want to ask; it’s on the tip of my tongue. They could be simple words. Small ones. But I’m too afraid that they will hold more than a question.
His mother? His family? Easton?
Tucker’s eyes change. Pity lines them and I swallow my frustration. I’ve always attracted sympathy, but it hurts worse coming from Tucker. He’s supposed to see me differently. He’s supposed to understand.
“Beach?”
I take a deep breath. “Yeah.”
It’s only two blocks away because in this San Diego beach town, everything is “not far.” Aunt Courtney waves goodbye as she walks back to the parking lot and I ignore my relief. It’s a shitty thing to feel for someone who has been nothing but kind to me.
I make my way toward the waves while Tucker goes to the ever-present food truck that sells burritos. The sound...
