Disappointment washed over me and the smile I hadn’t known was plastered on my face was now turned into a scowl of disappointment. Not with Chase, but with myself, for thinking he would wait for me like I had for him. Of course he was seeing someone who loved him. He deserved to be loved and appreciated, like it seemed this Tabitha person did.
I tucked the phone back in my pocket, the notion of leaving a comment on the photo long gone from my head, and I brought myself back to my parents and Melissa, who were still going on about the adventure she was about to take, starting in Spain.
My mom turned to me and I righted a shining smile on my face, masking anything that my heart was feeling right now. While I looked cool, calm, and collected, I was dying inside, ready to break down at any moment, but now was not that moment. In this moment I had to suck it up and brace for the rest of the day until I got in my car to drive alone back to Atlanta. Until then, I would make the best with what I had, and that was with the people in front of me.
“Should we get lunch now?”
Chase
The chair was uncomfortable and I couldn’t seem to sit up or slouch far enough to make the next few hours of sitting here in this stadium manageable. I pulled out my phone, looking down at the time, commencement starting in just twenty minutes, and I still hadn’t heard anything from my mother about where she and Tabitha were going to be sitting at.
I shot off another text, waiting to see the three little dots pop up on my screen, but nothing. I searched across the crowds of people filling the seats around the student body of Georgia State, but none of them resembled anything like my mother or sister. My phone vibrated in my hand and I looked to see a message from my mother.
Backstage. The dean caught your father while we were on our way to our seats.
I groaned inwardly. Of course the dean would stop my father, most likely stalling commencement just a little longer than it needed to be. My phone buzzed again.
He wants your father to give a speech.
That was all the message said and I knew all the words in between it. This would be great for my father’s career, giving a speech for a local college, especially one where his son was graduating. I got to sit in the audience with a degree in English - Creative Writing, and my father got to stand on stage and say how proud he was of everyone in the stadium.
Not like that had ever been something he had told me.
I never volunteered up any information about my schooling to him, especially since the first Christmas I went home. I was so excited to tell my parents about getting a position on the school paper, but they wanted to hear nothing about it, unless it involved interviewing for local politics. So, I decided not to offer up how I had used my time at school.
I didn’t respond to my mother’s text, instead I pulled out my earphones just as the dean was entering the stage. He started a speech and then handed it off to my father and I popped in the earbuds, drowning out a sound I heard on the television far too often.
I pulled up the Duke University website, their commencement ceremony having started just ten minutes ago, with a live feed that had a five-minute delay, which meant I hadn’t missed much. Erica had posted weeks ago that she was going to be giving a speech during her graduation, but upon finding out that it was the same day as mine, I came prepared to watch it, no matter what.
Erica’s voice filled my ears, while my father stood on the stage before me, talking to my fellow classmates. She spoke of journeys and the importance of them and I thought of the journey I took to get me here, an end almost in sight.
After today, I was moving into my own apartment for the first time out of school housing and once the guys graduated this summer, we would be launching our company full-time. We had started a small publishing company a few months ago, just getting it off the ground. I was graduating on time, but Max, Greg, and Jack were all planned to graduate after summer class and had been taking around seven classes a semester. We all wanted to start this new step in our lives sooner, rather than later.
I hadn’t realized how the time had passed with listening to Erica, not until the applause that was filling my ear soon became real around me and the stadium cheered for my father. I pulled out the earphones, but not before catching one more glimpse of Erica.
Somewhere in the mix of it, I got a few texts from Max, another just coming in.
Far left, second row in the third balcony.
I looked around the stadium as the dean took over the ceremony once more, preparing us to walk across the stage. I spotted Max, Jack, and Greg all standing and waving at me. I laughed, wondering how long they had been trying to get my attention. I held my phone up, snapping a photo of all three of them, and sent it to Max, showing them just how crazy they looked.
Max responded with a selfie of them all and I prepped my phone to take my own selfie to send back. I had my mouth formed into a half smile, my top lip snarled up to the left and my bottom lips jutting downward with my tongue sticking out and teeth bared. I looked stir crazy and I was. I just wanted to get this walk across the stage over with and move on from college into the real world.
I opened up my Facebook app and posted the photo I had just sent them with the only caption that would come to mind right now, “On to bigger and better things!” and then I tucked my phone back into my pant pocket and waited for our row to be called next.
Excitement bubbled inside of me that this was finally it. I looked toward the stage when we were told to stand and I saw my father still standing next to the dean, shaking people’s hands as they passed him. He was handing them the blank piece of paper that the school put together to give to graduates until they received their real diploma in the mail.
I was two people away from crossing the stage when I looked over at my father, who had pulled out his cell phone and was talking in hushed tones. He turned toward the dean and they shared acknowledgements and he exited stage left. But in that moment, he didn’t just leave the stage. When he took that call and left me to shake the dean’s hand and not his, he made a choice. My father was once again choosing to walk out of my life. He’d had the perfect opportunity to be there for me in a huge milestone in my life, but instead he took a call and reported to his job instead of being there for his son.
I took the fake paper from the dean, who leaned in to pat me on the back.
“I can’t wait to see how you succeed your father.” The smile he gave me told every indication that he thought I was going to follow in my father’s steps, but that was the furthest thing I was about to do.
I walked off the stage, making a beeline for the nearest exit, not wanting to stay for the rest of the ceremony. I pulled out my phone when I reached a back hallway, looking around to see if I could find my father. Instead the phone in my pocket vibrated again and I took it out to see a message from my mother.
Your father got a call for an emergency at city hall with the mayor about a new bill.
I tightened my grip on the phone and pushed forward to the nearest exit of the stadium, not responding to my mother. I pushed open a set of doors that led to the front entrance.
