Don't Hate the Player...Hate the Game(63)

“What did he say?” I questioned, softly.

“First, he said he’d bought me something that he wanted to give me. He said he’d had it for a month or so, but the right time hadn’t ever come up. Then he said he’d been thinking about our kiss. And that there were things he wanted to tell me. But he got another call and had to go.” She looked up at me with tears brimming in her eyes. “And then he was gone.”

Tell her now, you asshat! I drew in a deep breath, but Maddie brought her hand to my chest. “It’s okay, Noah. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I mean, whatever it was that I felt for Jake or what we had together—it’s in the past. So, let’s talk about something else, okay?”

What could I say? No, wait a minute, I need to tell you that Jake didn’t wanna just kiss you again, but he wanted to marry you. But I didn’t. The words just wouldn’t come, so I merely nodded my head and opened the door of the Jeep for her.

I drove home feeling like an absolute tool.

***

The next week flew by in a whirlwind of graduation activities. We didn’t have school—we were officially finished. GPA’s and class standings were tallied, and I wasn’t too surprised to find that Maddie was going to be the Valedictorian. Mom was thrilled that I’d managed to graduate with honors, but I was thrilled I was graduating period.

We spent the mornings marching in and out of the “god dome”, the mega-church in town where all the county high schools held their graduation ceremonies. We’d nicknamed it “the god dome” because it was roughly the size of the Georgia Dome. The Senior Advisors, Mrs. Clarke and Mr. Duncan, religiously timed us and made sure everything was going to come under an hour.

Maddie effortlessly gave her speech. And for one so shy, her voice echoed throughout the “god dome” flawlessly. I only hoped she could keep her nerve throughout the ceremony. Of course, there was one part she did falter on. That was when she mentioned Jake. Several of us had gotten permission to wear black armbands in memory of him. His parents planned on attending, and his mom was going to accept his diploma during a special part of the service.

In the end, the whole ceremony was a blur, and before I knew it, I was tossing my cap up with the rest of my classmates.

I waded through the crowd towards my family. Showing a unified front, my mother and father were sitting together. My family took up about three rows considering both Alex and I and one of my other cousins, Brittany, were graduating.

“Congratulations, Noah!” Mom shouted over the roar of the crowd. She hugged me to her and kissed me on the cheek.

My dad was grinning behind her. “Way to go, son,” he said, sounding like the proud—rather than prodigal father.

“Thanks,” I said.

Across the aisle, I saw Josh. He beamed and waved at me. I waved back.

“Ready to go eat?” Mom asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

At first, Mom had wanted to rent out a room at the country club to celebrate my graduation and my cousins. But Grammy wouldn’t hear of it. She’d been up since four am cooking, and we were all going to pile into her house like we did at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We partied long into the afternoon. My uncles had even allowed my dad to come, and I was glad to see him and my uncle Mark talking like old times over steaming plates of fried chicken, green beans, corn, and okra. It was a surreal feeling seeing him sitting there. He was still working overtime to make things right between us. Although I knew he wanted to desperately, he hadn’t pushed me about bringing my step-mother or introducing me to my half-sisters who were seven and five. That was just going to have to wait. I was quite ready to go there yet.

At four, Alex found me through the crowd. “It’s about time we left.”

I nodded as that familiar feeling of grief fueled dread entered the pit of my stomach. “Hey Mom, we’re going to the cemetery now.”

“Okay, sweetie.”

Mrs. Nelson had asked for all of Jake’s friends to meet at Rolling Gardens around four. She was going to have Jake’s cap and gown along with his diploma sealed into the mausoleum, and she wanted his friends to be there for it.

So Alex and I climbed into my Jeep and headed down the road. I couldn’t help shaking my head at how it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It should’ve been Alex and me riding along the highway with an inebriated post-graduation Jake. The corners of my lips curved up as I thought about how stoked he would’ve been to be finished with school. I could almost picture him standing up in the back, hanging precariously out the side of the Jeep and screaming at passing traffic like an idiot. But instead, the backseat was ominously quiet.

FUCK! It shouldn’t have to be this way. We should have had the radio blaring, been singing along at the top of our lungs, with our futures burning bright ahead of us. Instead, only Alex and I had futures left. Once again, the burning ache raged its way through my chest, causing me to rub my heart over my shirt. “I think I’d rather be shot than have to go do this,” I admitted.

“Yeah man, I know what you mean. I don’t know why there has to be so much shit in life you have to do when you don’t want to,” he mused.

“I guess the closer we get to being adults, the more we’ll have to do it,” I said.

“Maybe you’re right. It sure is a pisser though. I mean, your whole life you want to be older. Old enough to drive, to smoke, to drink, to graduate, and to go to college. Then when you finally make it, you find out it all kinda sucks!”