Chapter Seven

“ARE YOU OKAY?” Taylor asked. She’d asked it a few times, but Joey hadn’t heard her until around ask number three.

“I can’t believe this,” Joey said. “I can’t believe he would do that.”

“He didn’t tell you?” Taylor sounded disbelieving. “I was sure he would give you the letter. I told him to tell you we could make plans together, but when I didn’t hear from you, I just assumed…”

“No, he, uh, didn’t tell me.” Tears filled Joey’s eyes.

Her entire marriage had been built on a lie. Dan didn’t trust her to make her own decision and didn’t trust that their relationship could survive long distance. He didn’t even give her the chance to have a conversation about it. What if she didn’t even want to go to London?

“Oh Joey, I’m so sorry,” Taylor said. “I should have asked, but you knew I was going to school there and never mentioned you’d applied, so I figured you decided to just stay here.”

Her words floated like a dialogue bubble above Joey’s head as she tried to make sense of everything. She knew she’d gotten in and hadn’t really made plans to go to London. Hadn’t she already chosen Dan by default? No, not default. She loved him. They were best friends and her first and only love.

But would a best friend keep a secret like that?

To be fair, she’d also kept a secret from him for years. Also involving Taylor. Sheesh, what was it with this girl?

Joey looked at Taylor and tried to picture them together in London. There were so many question marks, but maybe that was better than a life completely decided for her. And just because she made this one decision today didn’t mean she couldn’t still come back to Dan in a year and pick up where they left off, right? She owed it to herself to at least give it a try.

“Taylor, I’ll see you at graduation, okay?” she said, standing up and heading for the door. She could already hear her family approaching.

“Uh, okay,” said Taylor.

She probably said goodbye or something else as Joey opened the door and walked out, but her words fell away as Joey rejoined her family and encouraged them to pick up the pace.

She had a new graduation speech to write.

*

AS JOEY POSED for pictures with friends before the ceremony, she felt herself go through the motions. These pictures had been sitting in an album in her house for years and she knew how adorable she looked in them all. Except the one with that girl from her book club, Lori. Her eyes had been a bit too squinty in that one, so she made an effort to keep them open this time around.

“I’m really going to miss you,” Lori said, pulling her into a hug.

Joey laughed, remembering how emotional and dramatic everything had seemed the first time she’d lived this day. Even Lori, who she didn’t know all that well and was pretty sure she’d never see again, was hugging her longer than usual.

“Hey, can we maybe hang out some time this week?” Lori asked as the band began to play Pomp and Circumstance, their cue to line up.

“Oh, uh, sure,” Joey said, feeling bad because she knew it was a lie. It occurred to her she’d probably also said yes the first time around, then forgotten in the hubbub of everything that came later that night. Lori always seemed so nice, and she’d blown her off then and was apparently going to do it again. Oops.

As she walked through the processional, she deliberately did not search the stands for Dan. She had a sneaking suspicion she’d never be able to go through with her plan if she saw him. And at this moment, her conviction to go through with it was teetering precariously, so best not to risk it.

The ceremony went just as she remembered it and she reached into the pocket of her robe to find her new, handwritten speech folded up, ready to be unleashed onto the unsuspecting crowd. Well, onto about ten people who would actually care, but same thing.

She looked up at the desert sky and smiled at the few stars she could see. It had felt so important to her in the following years that Dan had proposed under the stars. Now, they would be witness to her bravest moment.

As the principal announced her as valedictorian, she stood and made her way to the lectern, pulled out that piece of paper, and laughed as Betty yelled, “Joey’s hot” from the stands, an inside sister joke they used to embarrass the other whenever possible.

“Faculty, family members, fellow graduates: we did it. We finished this chapter of our young lives and even though this feels like an ending, I know it’s actually a beginning. This is the beginning of our lives as adults and our chance to make our own decisions. I know so many of us are hoping to succeed, but I am hoping we all fail.”

Joey took a deep breath and allowed a confused laughter to reach her on the stage.

“That might sound funny, but it is with our failures that we learn the most. It is with our failures that we begin to appreciate success even more. Our failures make us human; make us better people. We hold our family and friends to more reasonable standards because we can give them the grace we also need, something we can only understand if we screw up every once in a while. And to truly love someone is to let them fail, love them anyway, and maybe even love them even more because of who they are and how they’ve failed you.”

Joey again steadied herself and smiled as she looked at her next paragraph, wondering if anyone who read Twilight in the coming years would look back on her speech and think how similar they were, but also preparing herself to deliver a very important message to one person in particular.

“Now isn’t the time to be sure of what we want to be in life. People have been asking us since we were little what we wanted to be when we grow up, but what eighteen-year-old knows the answer to that? Now is the time to go and try new things. Give one dream a try and if you fall on your face, go try another. You are young and limited only by the circumstances you choose to accept. And for anyone out there who is in a hurry to settle down when we should be anything but settled, I hope you find the patience and trust in your heart to know that asking someone else to abandon their dreams was never the right thing to do.”

Joey finally let herself find Dan, seated in the front row of the bleachers. He looked confused, and maybe hurt, but she’d gone too far to stop now. And besides, she was too angry with him to even consider having this conversation one on one. She finished her speech, thanking her family and friends for supporting her through her years of school, but leaving out her special thanks to Dan she’d originally included. One way or another, he’d gotten his own, personal message.

As she walked back to her seat, she locked eyes with Taylor Page, who seemed to be asking her a question with her expression. Joey pictured the packed suitcase in her car, reminded herself it was only a year, then winked at Taylor before sitting back down for the rest of the ceremony.

As the last name was called and caps were thrown into the air, Joey put the final part of her plan into motion. Pushing her way through the crowd, she walked straight to Taylor and grabbed her hand. Not caring that any number of kids could be looking their way, she kissed her, then whispered, “Ready to run?” in her ear.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Taylor said, before the two of them took off toward the parking lot, and all the beautiful question marks.