My Best Friend Used Me, Now She Pays novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Commencement

Bea threw her graduation cap eighty-one feet.

I know because the athletic department was measuring.

It sailed across the Wright Valley quad in a high black arc, over the heads of two thousand people in folding chairs, and landed on the roof of the bookstore.

"Hammer thrower!" she bellowed to nobody. "I've been practicing!"

The crowd roared.

My father, in the fourth row in the one tie he owned, was crying openly and filming with his flip phone.

I held my diploma in both hands.

It said Bachelor of Science, Sports Rehabilitation, in a type so fancy it was hard to read.

Last time I had missed this ceremony, kneeling on Kyla's carpet with an ice pack on her thigh.

Three weeks had passed since the rec center, and the slide had come down, quietly, on a Saturday.

Nobody had said sorry.

I decided I could live with that.

"Nina!" Bea crashed into me and lifted me clean off the grass. "You did it! We did it! I'm crying, I don't want to talk about it."

"You threw your hat on a roof."

"It was a statement."

"Neen." My father had come up behind us with his phone still raised. "Say something for the camera."

"Hi, Dad."

"Say more."

"I love you," I said, and felt my throat close. "I'm sorry I didn't visit more."

"You visited plenty."

"Not enough."

"Then visit more." He shut the phone with a click. "Come on. I've got forty burgers and a lawn chair for the tall fella."

I turned.

Donal Connolly was standing at the edge of the crowd in a navy blazer I had never seen, hands in his pockets.

He looked solemn and wry all at once.

I had not touched him in three weeks.

I had handed him charts every day and said "Yes, Mr. Connolly" in front of patients because it made him wince.

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