Page 47 of Emmett
Emmett
“This would be so cute on you,” Mariah squeals, holding a suit jacket up to my chest.
My fingers trail over the white fabric, moving over the thick black buttons and matching silk piping. “Am I graduating from culinary school?” I tease. “I don’t know why I can’t just wear something comfortable.”
“Because you’re kind of the star of the show, hon,” she tells me as she puts the jacket back in its place. “Youhaveto be the hottest one there. Duh.”
With a laugh, I grab a pink silk jacket littered with slightly-darker pink flowers and hold it up to my chest. “This is the one.”
“I’m all for the ‘hot men wear pink’ movement,” she tells me, “but sweetie, that isnotyour color.”
She loops her arm around my elbow as we walk through Saks, just like we have been for the past hour and a half already with nothing to show for it. It takes another half hour for me to finally settle on a simple black suit and a deep red pocket square, much to Mariah’s annoyance. She decides on a sleek silk dress, black with a few large flowers printed on the fabric, and we finally make our way out of the store and to my car.
“I can’t believe you didn’t get Sarah a dress,” Mariah pouts as she folds her garment bag to rest it in the trunk.
“She’s not even one,” I tell her. “She’s not evengoing, and she doesn’t need a three hundred dollar dress.”
“You just bought me a nine hundred dollar one.”
“Are you planning on pooping in it?” I ask her with an arched brow. When she lets out a loud cackle, I join in her laughter. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
On the drive to her condo, I consider telling her about Nash. She doesn’t have any meaningful ties to Dad outside of Rowan, and I doubt she’d blab about my sex life while they braided each others’ hair and did whatever else it is that they do together. She would be a safe person to tell, if I had to tell someone.
I even think about asking her what she would do if she slept with a guy and he hadn’t picked up his goddamn phone in three weeks, which is completely stupid, because I’vebeenthe guy who didn’t answer the phone. Not answering is an answer; a loud and clear ‘I’m not interested.’
Stupid.
I keep my mouth shut when I drop her off, opting for a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug instead of spilling my guts all over the place. At least tomorrow will be busy enough that I won’t have time to think about Nash Montgomery, the fucking phantom.
Dad’s house is busy when I walk in, with party planners and vendors talking over each other in the kitchen in their efforts to iron out the final details and make sure that everything is going according to plan. I manage to slip through the chaos unseen, not forced to give my input on whether the champagne flutes should be crystal or glass with gold trim or if I want one ice sculpture or three. Option one or two down the lines of seventeen different clipboards, choosing between this, that or the other.
I stuff the new suit into my closet and pull my shirt over my head, leaving it on the floor before I grab my stash jar from the nightstand and head out the window. After packing the bowl of my pipe and taking a hit, I pull my phone from my pocket and shoot a quick text to Davis.
Me:We’re skipping this party and going to a club or something instead, right?
His response is almost immediate.
Davis:Not a fucking chance.
With a groan, I set my phone down and swap it for the lighter to take another hit. It isn’t that I’m not excited to graduate; I can’twaitto walk that stage and get my degree. It’s the party that comes afterward. The schmoozing, the pats on the back, everyone’s attention being focused on me. I could really do without all of that. I’d so much rather just come home, put on something comfortable and watch cartoons. I’d rather go to a busy nightclub. I’d rather do a lot of things.
The party isn’t really for me, at the end of the day, I guess; it’s for Dad, and I think after the past few months, he needs it. So I guess I can throw on my dumb ‘billionaire’s son’ suit and take all of the pats on the back that he needs me to so he can feel like everything that’s happened is behind us. I can give him that.
•
The auditorium is lined with rows upon rows of folding chairs, each of them filled with students in poly blend gownswith matching caps on their heads. At the stage rests a large podium in front of another several rows of chairs, those filled with professors who have already made speeches of their own while we all sat and listened to them.
There’s a quiet chatter among the swarms of people sitting in the stadium seats that surround the room on nearly all sides; the family and friends of everyone seated below them. Cheers erupt from different sections like a game of whack-a-mole every time a new name is called and their respective graduate walks across the stage.
My index finger picks at the raw skin on my thumb as I inch closer to the stage, watching my classmates move across it, shaking the hands of the people who helped them reach this point.
I can’t pinpoint my family in the crowd; there are just too many people and too many bright lights to make anyone out, but as the speaker calls out my name, I hear them screaming and cheering. Cursing tells me that Davis is here, whistling and shrieking tells me that Ro is, and a loud, booming cheer is Dad’s signal.
I dip my head to hide the grateful laughter bubbling out of me as I cross the stage to collect my degree. It’s the quickest thirty seconds of my life – years of hard work culminating all in one quick handshake, and I feel like my body is made of Jell-O the second that I reach the opposite side of the stage.
I did it. I actually did it.
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