Page 88 of Where We Met

Me: Now isn't soon enough.

Does that sound too desperate? I don't care, it's the truth.

His response is almost immediate.

Luke: <3

Ugh, cryptic much? My patience is waning. Instead of replying, we're already parked and ready to go.

When we get to the front of the building, it's filled with hundreds of students and even more family and friends. Our parents said they would meet us here before we go in. They want some pictures before the ceremony.

"There they are," Aubrey says as she spots them leaning against the brick wall.

I find my dad and Veronica and lean in for a hug.

"Hi, Dad," I say as he wraps his arms around me.

"Sweetpea. I'm so damn proud of you," he says then looks away and coughs.

Veronica hugs me next. "Good grief, Mitch. I told you we should've packed tissues. You're already tearing up."

I laugh. "Is it that shocking that I earned a bachelor's degree?"

"No, of course I knew you could do it. It's just scary how fast it all came and went. You're no longer my little girl."

Veronica smiles at us.

"I haven't been little for quite a while," I point out.

Before he has the chance to answer, the students are being told to get inside and in our places.

The girls and I wave to our parents and start toward the door. The folding chairs are lined up in neat rows all over the gymnasium floor for the graduating students. Thankfully, they got rid of any attempts at assigned seating. Me and the girls snatch some seats on the end of a row in the middle of the gym floor.

It takes another thirty-minutes before they get all the guests inside and seated in the bleachers.

Although, with Shannon sitting with us, thirty-minutes doesn't lack entertainment. She started playing a game called 'Find the Guys We've Hooked Up With.' We're didn't exactly sleep around, so it was very underwhelming.

She found two guys between the four of us.

"Okay, so it's not that many," Shannon says in her defense.

"That's because you somehow forgot we aren't whores who went around sleeping with so many guys that we could make a game out of it," Aubrey says.

I chuckle at Shannon's reaction.

"Welcome students, family, and friends," the dean begins.

Silence falls upon the room. For the next several hours, we all try to stay awake while they go A-Z throughout the graduating class. I was lucky enough to get it over with rather quickly having the last name Davis.

"And the final graduate of the class of 2023," I hear said in the background.

Thank God! It's over!

"Congratulations, class of twenty twenty-three."

Hoots and hollers erupt as we all stand up and celebrate.

People begin trying to run out of the gym, a true sign that these things take way too damn long.

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