"You're absolutely right—"
I am?
"I'm a bad liar."
I feel like I should know where she's getting at, but...
"And since it takes one to know one—"
Kitty McKenna, do you even have a single working brain cell at this point?
How can I not have seen that coming?
"I'm on your side, Kitty," she says sincerely. "And you know Konstantin is, too—"
Well, thatistrue...
"So can you please just tell me the truth?"
Two weeks later, and the answer to Eve's question, the answer I stubbornly, shamefully didn't give her, is staring back at my face.
It's graduation day, and while Iamhappy that I'm finally done with college, and I can start working and paying off my student loan—
This is a happy occasion. Yes, I happen to be enrolled in a university that awards its best thesis recipients on stage during graduation, with the winner walking up alongside their family or someone special to them. It's a unique privilege that the other students love, and I am happy for them, absolutely.
It's just that from where I'm sitting, in the middle of a sea of folding chairs arranged in rows across the gymnasium floor, I can see every other graduate flanked by parents, siblings, partners, best friends. The girl two seats down has her entire family taking up half a row, her mother already crying, and the ceremony hasn't even started yet. The guy behind me keeps turning around to wave at someone in the balcony. Everyone has their person.
And I have my cap and gown, which I ironed this morning with the kind of care that probably should've been a sign, and a clutch purse that's too small to hold anything except my phone and a single tissue, and my hands folded over both because I don't know what else to do with them.
That's her, Mom.
She, like, had to have a hole drilled in her head or something.
Poor girl.
They say she's lost her parents early, too, and she's spent most of her life in foster care.
The looks of pity and not-exactly-subtle whispers.
They've been going on nonstop, and this is the one thing in my life that I just don't want Dr. Collington to see. Everyone knows,myselfincluded, that he's way, wayoutof my league, and I'm not even talking about how beautiful he is, and how ordinary I am. I mean, sure, that's a major factor, too, but there are other factors, equally important ones, like how he's born with a silver spoon worth billions, he's one of the world's best neurosurgeons, and oh, I can go on and on and on, but I won't because I already feel pathetic as it is, and I don't want to go up the stage later on with eyes balled out and ruined mascara.
So...refocus, Kitty.
This is a happy occasion, and I'll treat it as one.
It's sad that I'm on my own, but I'm still alive, and after last year's surgery, that's a fact I won't ever take for granted.
Life is good.
Not perfect.
But good.
Is there a tiny part of me that wishes he's here?
Well, yes, obviously.
But I also did hear he has an emergency operation scheduled today, so it's not like I can change my mind at the last minute and call him.