This time I laugh fully.
“I loved watching you,” I murmur. “The way you play.”
Her expression softens. “Thank you. It’s a dream come true for me.”
The conversation drifts—music, school, Larisa’s future sign-making career.
Eventually, Erin says the thing I didn’t know I needed.
“I like you, Wren. No matter what happens with my brother, I want us to stay friends.”
My chest tightens painfully.
“Promise?” I whisper.
She squeezes my hand. “Promise. Now go catch your bus. And text me when you get home.”
I nod, wiping under my eyes. “I will.”
“Next time,” she says, touching my fingers lightly, “bring your cousin. We’ll make it a whole thing.”
Next time. Like there’s a future where I can have this—friendship with his sister, connection to his family—without him in it.
“Next time,” I echo.
Somehow, the phrase doesn’t hurt. It’s a scaffolding, thin, tentative, but steady.
As I step into the hallway, a cord inside me shifts.
Not healed. Not fixed. But not shattered anymore.
Tonight, I’ll walk onto campus. Let them stare. Let them whisper.
I’ll tutor Theo’s lab partner. I’ll text Erin about bringing Larisa to another concert. I’ll do my laundry and my problem sets and keep breathing.
One day at a time.
Just…beginning.
37
GRADUATION (KIERAN)
Graduation day arrives bright and merciless. The quad is packed—rows of folding chairs, families clustered in the shade, black gowns rippling in the heat. A commencement speaker drones optimistically from the podium: Future. Resilience. Community. The microphone squeals once, then settles. A cheer goes up for no reason other than the fact that this is happening whether we’re ready or not.
I sit when they tell me to sit.
I stand when they tell me to stand.
I clap at the right times.
The words wash over me. I don’t resist. I feel oddly at peace, pared back to clean edges, with nothing left to prove and nothing left to perform.
The past few months blur together the way semesters always do at the end, but this one carried a different weight. Textbooks. Finals. Meetings that ran too long. Paths across campus I learned to avoid instinctively.
And Wren.
It hurt in ways I don’t have language for, to see her and not have the right to go to her. Sometimes I’d catch hercrossing the quad with her backpack tight on one shoulder, eyes forward, posture closed and contained. She’d drawn the line and reinforced it.
