Page 114 of The Lessons

Now I wasn’t thinking about Ian at all. Nope. While my friends were busy doling out their advice, I had carefully tallied Ryan’s score, and he’d hit all four points.

Gifts: assuming pizza counted, check. Random—at least I thought they were random?attempts to make physical contact, check. Hard-on…yeah, a big check plus on that one. And as far as making excuses to be around me? All I could think about was how he’d looked at that soccer game and I could feel myself grow wet.

But that was mostly all before everything went to hell.

So now what? I needed some answers, now more than ever. Clearly, Ryan wasn’t leaving my unconscious. Or conscious, for that matter.

It was real.

Josh’s words had kept echoing in my mind last night when I’d tried to go to sleep. Somewhere deep down, something was trying to tell me Josh was right. What I’d—what Ryan and I’d—well, whatever you call it, it was real. Even this virgin heart knew it.

Intellectually, I knew Ryan wasn’t what I was looking for—his life didn’t exactly scream white picket fence. Yet for the first time, I entertained the idea of trading everything to be with him again. Everything I’d waited for, everything I’d ever wanted.

It didn’t feelbad.No, it felt familiar, and it felt…right.

Later that evening when I got home, there was a small envelope on the floor just inside my front door. Handwritten name and address. No return address. I ran my finger under the flap.

It was an invitation.

An invitation to Ryan’s graduation. The date was tomorrow.

For a moment, I considered throwing it into the recycle bin. I was still so messed up about him, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I found a home for the invitation on my refrigerator, underneath a Statue of Liberty magnet.

As I stared at the invite, I couldn’t help but think about how right Josh was. Why did I need to keep everyone at arm’s length? It’s not like it’d worked out very well for me.

I sat in bed in my pajamas flipping through the settings on my phone, remembering I had a tendency— Crap. Sure enough, I’d blocked his number. I stared at the screen for a moment, debating whether or not I should unblock him now. I mean, surely I’d had a good reason to block him in the first place. I tried to rack my brain. Something about him lying to me about his relationship with my therapist? Right. Somehow, that didn’t seem such a big deal now. I mean, if I was honest, I’d lied to him, too, about everything. Besides, with what Renee had told me, it seemed like the story was a bit more complicated than I’d first thought.

But that still didn’t answer the question of why he’d done it.

I got out of bed and wandered back into the kitchen. The invitation was exactly where I’d left it, with that stupid woman holding up that cone of fire, all smug and secure in her superiority, so sure of herself as she stood there alone…

Annnnnd…maybe I was talking about myself.

I took the invitation down and ran my fingers over the engraving.

Maybe I’d go.

Chapter Forty

Friday -Eighteen days P.R.A.

Natalie

I told myself I wasn’t going to his graduation to congratulate him or support him or even to check out how he looked in a cap and gown. I was going for one reason, and one reason only: to ask him why he’d done it. It was the one thing that was still bugging me after all these weeks. Why had he decided that helping Lisa was more important than whatever it was that we were doing? I needed to know. I needed that closure.

Okay, maybe I’d end up checking him out in his cap and gown, too, but it wasn’t the reason Iwent.

The ceremony was held in the evening at the University of San Francisco’s McLaren Complex, a modern building with a huge auditorium. I hadn’t realized that most of the doctoral candidates were grouped into a single graduation.

An usher handed me a program as I went inside. Eventually, I found a seat in the upper deck and settled in. I thought about texting him and letting him know I was there but decided to go for the surprise attack after the ceremony. I scanned the crowd for Ainsley’s platinum blond hair but didn’t have much luck.

I opened the program and searched it for Ryan’s name, my eyes coming to rest on the first page.

Valedictorian Speech - Ryan Andrews, Ph.D. Candidate, Psychology

What the hell? I mean, I knew he was smart, but how on Earth had he managed to do that, while working and interning at the same time?

A hush came over the crowd as the band started to play, and then a parade of people in caps and gowns started to file in. I craned my neck, trying to spot Ryan, but I was in one of the last rows, and it was hard to make out faces.

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