I was sure her newest boyfriend, who was ten years younger than her, could console her.
So here we are, present day, graduation day. I’m waiting patiently for the m’s to roll around so I can grab my diploma and hear the one person that’ll be in the stands clap for me, my dad.
I glanced up in front of me to see Kyle looking back. He smiled.
“You look like you’re in your own little world back there. You ok?”
“Yeah, I’m just ready to be done with this.”
He turned more fully in his chair, putting his arms on the back of it.
“Come on. It’s graduation day. Shouldn’t you be happy?” he reasoned. I just shrugged. “You wanna do something tonight? My parents are throwing this lousy party for me, but I’m looking for an excuse to leave early.”
“I don’t want to be your excuse, Kyle.”
He paled, his brow bunched together.
“Ah, Mags, I didn’t mean it like that.” He sighed. “My party is from five to seven. I’ll have plenty of time to do something with you, I just didn’t want it to seem so much like a date, ya know,” he explained and looked at me bashfully. “In case you said no, again.”
“Oh.” I felt an inch and half tall. “Kyle, I-” I was this close to telling him no, once more. But I thought about it. I have always told him no. I haven’t been on a date in a year. Every since my life fell under my mom’s pointy heels. He was always sweet to me and he was probably leaving soon anyway for college. What could it hurt? “Ok. Yeah. We can do something.”
“Really?” he said shocked.
“Yeah. What time do you want to go?”
“Is your dad throwing you a party or something?”
“No.”
Ha. Yeah right.
“Oh. Uh, how about I text you? I’m sure it’s fine but I gotta ask my dad for the car. Mine’s in the shop.”
“Ok, let me give you my number,” I said and started to pull up my gown to reach my pocket.
“I have it.” I looked at him curiously and he grinned. “I asked Rebecca for it a couple weeks ago. I was gonna call you but I never, uh, got up the nerve.”
He looked a little embarrassed and I couldn’t help but giggle a little at his obvious hand-in-the-cookie-jar expression. He was nice looking. No movie star stud, just a normal, light brown hair, brown eyed nice guy. We’d hung out a lot over the years in our group of friends, but never alone.
“Well, maybe you should have.”
“Would you have talked to me?”
I didn’t want to lie and I didn’t want to give him false hope so I just smiled and shrugged, hoping to pull off a little flirt. It must have worked, he grinned wider.
“Ok, I’ll text you tonight.”
“Great,” my mouth said but my head was already dreading it.
Then I saw the people ahead of him start to stand one by one as their names were called.
“Kyle Jacobson.”
He looked back and grinned at me once more as he made his way on stage. There was still about eight people before me. I watched him make his way to the stage and saw his parents and a large group of others stand and applaud loudly for him, a couple whooping and hooting. He grabbed his diploma and then made a show of muscles. Everyone laughed as he bounded down the stairs. He was a crack up. Everyone liked him and voted him class clown in superlatives. He was popular but never really dated anyone. He was always nice to me, though. I used to hang out with that crowd, before everything happened.
After my mom left, my dad was lost. He went a little ‘nuts’. He quit going to work and got fired from a job he’d had for over fifteen years at the school board and now works at the wood mill for a quarter of what he made before. So, I had to get in the work release program and get a job because we had no extra money for anything other than food that I needed or wanted.
When I told my mom all this, when I explained how I had to get a job to help and how dad was so destroyed by what she’d done, she said it was good for us to experience a little bit of heartache and hard work for a change. That was it. That was the last straw.
That was the day I decided to never speak to her again.
“Maggie Masters.”
I heard my name and looked up. Everyone was looking and I realized that my name had been called more than once. I blushed and giggled nervously as I made my way up to the stage. I chuckled under my breath as I half expected the announcer to call out Mags or Magster or Maggsie. No one called me by my real name, hardly ever.
I took my diploma and turned to look for dad. He was sitting there. Just sitting there, not taking pictures, not clapping, not smiling, just watching stoically.
I frowned and made my way down to the end of the platform and was lifted into warm arms. Familiar warm arms.“Congratulations,” he whispered into my hair.
“Chad. Don’t.”
“Mags, come on.” He put me down but didn’t let me go as he looked at me pleadingly. “We graduated. Let’s celebrate. Can’t you let go of the past, just for today?”
I looked up to his black hair. The dark short locks that any girl would love to run her fingers through. His tan skin and brown eyes with his lean Friday night football arms that always held me like I mattered. Oh, how I missed him, but he was the one who left me.
“You certainly know how to let go of things,” I countered.
“Maggie.” He sighed exasperatingly, like I was being unreasonable and it made me fume even more. “Look. That was almost year ago. And you know I wouldn’t have broken up with you if you’d told me what was going on with your mom and all.”
“Oh. That makes me feel so much better,” I said and let the sarcasm drip.
“You know what I mean. We’d had that talk, a lot. I’m leaving, we both knew it when we started seeing each other. I thought we agreed it’d be easier if we calmed down a little and just were friends the last year of school. I didn’t date anyone else, you know that. It wasn’t because I didn’t want you.”
It was true. He hadn’t been on one date this whole school year that I’d known about. Him and his friends even made a pact to go to prom together as a group. There were a lot of angry girls over this pact as it appeared it caught on and almost the whole football team went stag.
“I know that. But you haven’t talked to me all year,” I said softly.
“Maggie. You wouldn’t return my phone calls. You avoided me at lunch and then started working after school. What else could I do?”
He was right. The only time I talked to him was to yell at him one month after he broke up with me and my mom left. Coincidentally, it was three days after she left that he decided to make the decision for the both of us. The decision that we’d talked about but not come to a conclusion to.
I told him he sucked for deciding that right then was the time to dump me. He said he was sorry, he was there for me. He tried to take it back, even tried to kiss me and hold me but I would have none of it.
I missed him. He was such a nice guy but his timing was just terrible and I was angry at him for it. I was angry that he still wanted to leave me here and go through with his plans. Everyone left me. I tried to summon a semblance of calm.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I just needed you and I wanted you to want to be there, but not for you to come back because I begged you to.”
“You didn’t beg me, silly girl,” he crooned and pulled me closer for another hug. He spoke into my hair. “I’m so sorry, Mags. I thought I was making things easier for you, for both of us by just trying to be friends instead. I knew how hard it was gonna be to leave you. Look at me.” He waited for me to look up, which I did with a sigh. “The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you. I’ve missed you.”
“Chad, you’re still leaving. Don’t, ok. I’m sorry for how I acted, but it doesn’t change anything does it? You’re still leaving. University of Florida football.”
“I know. I just hate that this year was wasted like this. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” I pulled from his embrace and boy, was it painful. “I gotta go.”
“Please write me. Or call me. Text. Something. I miss you. I never intended for us to just never speak to each other again. I want to know how you’re doing.”
“I will. I promise. Congrats on the UF scholarship. I always knew you’d get it.”
“Thanks, Mags. I still love you, ya know,” he whispered and kissed my cheek, so close to my lips and I fought for composure.
Then he was gone.
I turned to look at him once more and he was walking backwards, watching me. His black grad gown flapping at his sides and his diploma in hand. He waved sadly and then took off towards his truck. If possible, I felt worse than I already had.
~ ~ ~ ~
“It still boggles my mind how you can eat those things,” my dad said, as he’s said a hundred times before, but this time he sneered it instead of joking with me. “I mean, it’s pure sugar. Sugar and starch and bad for you carbs.”
“Are you saying I need to lose some weight, dad?”
We sat at the kitchen dinette. I say dinette because it barely fits two people. This is where we’ve been every since that ride home from graduation. It was an utterly silent ride except for one ‘congratulations’ muttered from dad. Nothing more. I’ve been sitting here for almost an hour now, checking my phone and waiting for Kyle to text me. I never thought I’d ever be waiting for Kyle but, I’d do anything to get out of this house tonight.