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“You’re making us late.”
Those were the only words I was able to utter before Rin dove back in, capturing my lips again.
I was supposed to be mad. I had to be mad. Otherwise, I would just be a happy guy kissing my boyfriend on a Friday afternoon and what’s the point in that?
My plan to get us out of the house wouldn’t work if we both thought the day ahead was less important than the inch of space where our lips met. But his pleasurable assault felt too good to deny. So, I just smiled against his mouth, threading my fingers further into the strands of his hair.
The thick fabric of my graduation gown crumpled under my back and dug into my shoulder blades. But with the sensation of Rin’s tongue sliding into my mouth, I didn’t even care.
Rin pulled back and started kissing behind my ear while his hand cupped the back of my neck. His large calloused palm settled warm against me but his billowing gown sleeve hung around my chest like a scarf. All the kisses and fabric were starting to tickle and I giggled (in a manly way, of course).
I don’t know when giggles became sexy but Rin groaned after mine, letting his forehead drop onto my chest.
“No, you’re making us late.”
He lifted his head, sighing as he traced his thumb along the side of my cheek and asked, “why do you have to look so good in a suit?”
“Me? You’re the one looking like a sexy news reporter, mafia boss, CEO. But I didn’t attack you.”
“No, you just licked me and expected me to be chill.”
Rin didn’t wait to hear me explain my insanely feral act, leaning in to drag his tongue down my throat. His fingers tugged at my collar incessantly until they started wiggling my tie loose.
“Boys! It’s time to go!”
The sound of Mrs. Hamada yelling from the first floor was an irritating but important interruption. Even though Rin looked sexy as sin and tasted that way too, both of us would regret it if we missed our high school graduation ceremony.
Rin pulled me off the bed, heaving noisily just to tease me. It only took a minute for us to fluff out my crushed gown, fix our hair, and readjust my tie. I’d chosen blue to match the color of our gowns and Rin was gentle as he fixed the knot for the second time that day.
“You look incredible,” he murmured, his lips upturned at the corners. I was used to seeing a smile on his face, one appeared just about every time we were together. But this smile had a shaky note that surprised me.
We’d gone through so much life together. Every single milestone: from school dances to failed tests were spent by each other’s side. I thought doing everything together would have numbed us to crying on a day like this.
Then a single tear slid down his cheek and I realized that Rin was proud. Sad but proud. His look of pride settled comfortably in my chest so I placed my hand there, wanting to keep it for as long as I could.
“Come on,” I grinned, tugging him by the hand.
I expected to see the Hamada’s bustling about the house, anxious to grab their shoes and bags so we could leave the house. Instead, Mrs Hamada stood at the bottom of the stairs with her phone in hand, a wide smile already set in place.
“I thought you said it’s time to go?” Rin asked with crossed arms.
“I scheduled some picture time,” she explained, directing us with her open palm. “Come. Smile.”
The next 10 minutes were prom all over again. Like the last time she delayed us before we went to an important high school event, Mrs. Hamada conducted a photo shoot.
We were sat on the second and third steps so my arms could rest over his shoulders. Then we were photographed side by side holding hands like newlyweds. Finally, she got the shot where one of us had our hands around the other in classic prom fashion. I appreciated the fact that she took photos where each of us was the big spoon, even if everyone in our life had already assumed one or the other.
The second her android shuttered and the last photo was taken, she switched into true mom mode. One moment she was cooing over grad poses and the next, she was barking at us to grab our shoes and be outside yesterday. If I wasn’t so familiar with her, um, passionate way of showing love, I might have been concerned.
Five minutes into the drive, Rin’s phone started ringing with a facetime call. He lifted the screen up so both our faces were in frame just in time for Tyler’s stubbled jaw to appear.
“I knew you guys would be together,” he smirked. I guess he also knew we wouldn’t complain about his accurate assumption because Tyler moved on. The camera switched and suddenly, we saw Colby.
Colby decked in a classic matte black suit. Colby frowning like the cousin forced to dress up for a random wedding.
“You look adorable!”
My enthusiastic compliment only made Colby pout further.
“Jennie’s going to break up with me.”
“Jennie loves you, dude. And you look good.” Rin pursed his lips, really looking at Colby’s form through his phone screen. “I mean you would look good if you weren’t slouching like that. Is the crotch too tight?”
The three of us laughed so hard that Mr Hamada eyed us through the rearview mirror, curious about the ruckus.
“You guys better laugh it up while you can. I’m never doing this again.”
Even though Tyler was head and shoulders taller than him, Colby managed to wrestle the phone out of his hand. Colby let us see his pout when he abruptly canceled the call.
I couldn’t understand how he was so upset when, like the rest of us, Jennie expressed her interest in seeing him in an actual suit. Not just a button up shirt and dark looking jeans like he usually wore for special occasions.
It was funny to look back and realize that he and Jennie had been dating almost as long as Rin and I. But a year and a half had passed in the blink of an eye.
I never believed all those people who talked about your high school years flying by but it was true. Sure, most of them said it because of sad dissatisfaction with their own lives but I knew what they meant. Each day I’d spent with Rin felt like the best, longest day of my life. But looking back, I would have guessed that everything went by in a week.
The first 6 months of dating in secret felt especially long since I was perpetually paranoid that the way I styled my hair or the way I said my name made it so obvious that we were dating. Keeping everyone but our parents and best friends Colby and Tyler in the dark was tough, but after what happened with Stephanie and James, we thought rubbing our happiness in their faces would be too much.
“I can’t believe we’re not sitting next to each other during the ceremony,” Rin put his hand on mine, frowning at our interlocked fingers. “I wanted to kiss you while we threw our caps.”
“It’s organized by name,” I reminded him with a smile. “Unless you can make S come after H in the alphabet, we’re getting separated.”
Rin groaned pitifully, dropping his forehead onto my shoulder.
“And I’m recording everything to send to your grandma in Japan. She can’t see you guys kissing because I haven’t told her yet, remember?”
His second groan was much louder than the first. I started combing through his hair with my fingers, hoping the drag of my fingertips against the back of his head helped. I always knew what was coming when his Obaachan got brought up.
“So can you tell her soon? I don’t want her to be surprised when El and I visit.”
Mrs Hamada sighed, removing her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose.
“Rin, we must stay realistic. Your grandmother is very old.”
“And I’m very gay.”
“That’s not strange. I’m happy too, son.”
Mr Hamada’s joke was told with his typically lack of expression which made it funnier. I laughed loudly, smacking my free hand over my mouth when no one laughed with me.
“You can’t say that joke every time, dad,” Rin huffed, starting to look exacerbated (which was a very adorable look, might I add). “Saying it the day I came out was bad enough. Please don’t make it a thing.”
The senior’s Hamada’s little shrug made me think that he wasn’t feeling guilty in the slightest.
“Your boyfriend laughed.”
—————
” . . . to our teachers who tried to make calculus more interesting than TikTok. The key word is tried.”
There was a steady wave of chuckles that passed through the stadium. An impressive feat considering the fact that graduation speeches were notoriously unfunny. Stephanie was doing a pretty good job though. Her voice was confident and clear and she continually looked around the crowd of graduates, making enough eye contact so that the speech seemed personal. If she hadn’t told Jennie who told Colby who told the rest of us in the group chat, I never would have known she was nervous.
Stephanie was giving a speech because she was the most ‘well-rounded student’: a title awarded by faculty vote. Our complicated friendship ended almost as soon as it began but I was happy for her. Through the ‘Jennie to Colby to group chat’ grapevine, I’d also learned that she was going to school abroad so I could only wish her the best.
“I’ll never forget the memories I made and the people I met along the way.”
Those were the exact words she said when she made eye contact with me.
A year and a half ago, a day after I received what would probably be the best confession of my life, I showed Rin the message I drafted to Stephanie. It was a disgustingly long paragraph that included the word sorry about 11 times but it helped explain everything that I did.
Rin hurt her as a boyfriend but I hurt her as a friend so I knew that I needed to apologize myself. With a positive peer-review (a peck and two smacks on the bum from my boyfriend), I sent it and never got a response. I accepted the fact that this girl might hate me for the rest of my life.
Yet, when she found my eyes in the crowd, she smiled. A true genuine smile that turned her eyes into little crescents. And I smiled right back.
Our graduating class was small so the college football stadium they rented felt entirely excessive. Looking out in the seats, I saw that bleachers were more empty than they were full. Last month, each kid was literally just given a link to just generate tickets for the ceremony and pass them out to anyone willing to come.
My white extended family only spoke when someone died so it was just my parents watching for me in the seats. And to me, their presence was more than enough.
The boy in front of me moved. My breath stopped in my throat. My eyes were glued to the duct tape ramp in front of me. A robotic voice called my name.
“Elliot Samuels.”
My family was small but the cheers were loud. Colby and Tyler had jumped out of their seats. Most of the grade clapped because our school was pretty tiny and we all knew each other. And Rin screamed so hard, I worried he would lose his voice. But I saw him, sitting with the rest of the H last namers, cheering me on. I slowly reached for the diploma because I could barely believe this was real and smiled.
Smiled hard enough for my cheeks to hurt.
Turns out it’s not just high school that’s a blur. The graduation ceremony is a blur too. Before we knew it, the caps were thrown, the ground was bathed in blue, and everyone struggled to find the fabric square belonging to them because we were done.
We were high school graduates. Officially.
The plan was to get our group down to a buffet and gorge ourselves in the name of education, but I’d been holding in a shit for almost an hour and a half by that point. So after muscling through some more photos, I scurried off to the bathroom.
It was when I left the toilets, having to weave through the lingering crowd, that I ran into James. He was one of 7 people I said “excuse me, sorry,” to, but instead shifting out of the way, he turned around to look at me.
“Congratulations.”
I blinked at him stupidly until he pointed at the diploma still in my hand.
“Ah, you too.” I tried to come up with something to say. A casual type of small talk that was engaging without implying any type of interest but nothing came to mind. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“You’re happy right?” he asked, making me stop my desperate exit. “With him? You made the right choice?”
“James-“
“Sorry, that was super weird to ask.”
James stepped back, making it easier for me to relax. I considered walking away. Technically, I didn’t owe him anything. Instead, I tried to stop imagining the day ahead and give my full attention to a man from my past.
Looking at my ex now, I saw things I previously didn’t. We hadn’t dated for long in the grand scheme of things. A couple of months compared to a lifetime is small. But James’s expression was raw when he looked at me, reminding me that the feelings he had weren’t small at all.
“I did love you, you know?” he chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. “So . . . good luck.”
I don’t know how I could make it better. Being in the gay dating scene for less than 2 years did not give me enough experience to handle this shit. So I settled for what felt the most honest.
“Thank you.”
The rest of our family and friends were gone when I jogged into the parking lot. It was just Rin, leaning against his first and only car, waiting for me with a smile on his face. I would tell him about my conversation with James soon. Maybe after he’s done driving but before we get our first plates so the food can help cheer him up.
I’d explain what happened and, in typical Rin fashion, he’d probably make the conversation deep by asking me what my answer would have been.
Do you regret it? Picking me?
Sure it was one of the most audacious questions for an ex to ever ask but maybe James was the only one who could’ve asked it.
What if I’d chosen differently? What if I had chosen to stay with James? Abandoned the risk of the unknown and settled for the known? Did everything in my power to keep things the same? To keep things perfect?
What if I had forced Rin to be my best friend and only my best friend?
When I was finally within arms reach, Rin tugged me toward him, burrowing his face into my shoulder.
“You took so long,” he complained, forcing a laugh out of me.
“That was like ten minutes.”
I pulled back to see his face but Rin refused to meet my eyes. His gaze was downturned, accentuating his long dark lashes and flushed cheeks. Wait, flushed?
” . . . maybe I just wanted an excuse to touch you.”
He pulled me back in, sliding his hands around my gown and digging his fingers in like he could feel my skin. From this close, I could already smell him but I inhaled anyway. Cinnamon, musk and pine surrounded me and I melted further into him, wanting to sink into his scent.
Yes, I made the right choice. There was not a cell in my body that wanted anything other than what we had right here. I’m happy that I chose Rin and I will choose Rin again and again for the rest of my life.
Rin’s hold lessened, the universal sign that he was ready to go but I held on. I just wanted to be with us a little longer. The us that was 18 years old, just out of high school, prepared to spend the next year traveling the world and exploring foreign countries while we explored one another.
The us that could hug as long as we wanted without fear of letting go.
“Now you’re making us late,” Rin joked, pinching my butt obnoxiously. “They’ll think we stopped to have sex if we take too long.”
“Okay, I’m done,” I laughed, raising my hands in surrender. With one more smack to my ass, Rin jogged around to slip into the driver’s seat. I settled into the passenger side just in time to take his offered hand.
“Where’s Colby and Tyler? Didn’t they drive your car here?”
“They got tired of waiting,” he explained, releasing my hand just long enough to put the car into gear. “Everyone else went ahead so we’re driving alone.”
His words, which explained getting left behind, were at odds with the giddy smile on his face. I realized that I was smiling too.
“Good,” I told him. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
———————————
I’m honestly pleased with how this turned out.
I’m in a very grateful mood right now so thank you all so much. I hope you enjoyed reading. Stay tuned for the bonus chapters that are most certainly coming.
Also, I don’t have the energy to phrase this in a cute way but here it is:
When I eventually finish writing James’s book, I’ll let you know.
Please vote, comment, share, follow, anything else you can do with this book and I will see you next time! Bye!
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