Page 51 of The Sun and Her Star

GSD (Those are my new initials. S is for Star, but you better never tell anyone. D is for Davis. It’s my mama’s last name.)

I fold the letter I’ve been re-reading every day for the last month. I tried to remind myself who the man I really loved was. I cling to it like a lifeline.

“They’re lining up,” Helena whispers in my ear.

I look up, and my eyes find Graham right away. He’s impossible to miss.

He’s like the Redwood of the human species. Taller and bigger, rarer, and more beautiful than everyone else.

I look down the row I’m seated at and see that everyone else’s eyes are trained on the stage. Helena is beaming at the stage, and even the ravages of cancer can’t erase the glow in her cheeks as she watches her son with pride. Her gray eyes sparkle as she watches the stage, waiting to catch a glimpse of him.

Even though she’s in the middle of aggressive cancer treatment, she insisted on being here. Despite the unusually hot June day, she’s wearing a blue UCLA sweater and a gold, wide-brimmed fedora.

Her frail, thin-skinned hand pats my knee every few minutes. I can’t tell if she’s checking to make sure I’m still there or comforting because somehow, she knows my heart is breaking.

She’s an incredible woman. We shared a long and teary embrace the first time I saw her again. Neither of us mentioned our first encounter, but our hug said things that no words ever could. Her embrace was full of gratitude and love. Mine conveyed the same. It’s because of her I have Graham in my life. I wish I’d been able to get to know her better. Her illness has made that hard. But every time we see each other, we share that same hug, and I know that I’m as special to her as she is to me.

His best friends, the rest of the “Horsemen” as the four of them are called after a picture of them at the Polo Club went viral, are there. They’ve been inseparable since high school. When I met them, I understood immediately why they were so drawn to each other. They were all born with exceptional, once-in-a-lifetime talent. Reece was born to swim. Omar has a golden foot, and Dave’s hands, ears, eyes, and brain all worked in perfect harmony to make the most beautiful sound anybody had heard in a long time. As for Graham, it’s his beauty and his natural charm. The rest of them are already celebrities, there’s omniscience about them that makes them all seem larger than life.

“He’s too beautiful to be locked in a classroom all day. Too charming to not use it.”

That was what his “agent” said when she overheard me asking Helena about Graham’s plans after graduation this morning.

Maybe she’s right. But, I don’t care. I hate her.

Like an errant rain cloud in an otherwise faultless blue sky, she’s the stain on what should be the making of beautiful memories. I look down to where she’s sitting. She’s watching me—her ice blue eyes are thoughtful. I want to give her the finger. Instead, I scowl at her.

Her eyes widen slightly before she turns up her stupidly perfect nose and looks back toward the stage.

When I walked into the restaurant where his graduation dinner was being held, Graham’s jaw hit the floor. His surprise morphed into happiness and he stood up and swept me up into a bear hug. For a second it gave me hope that the last year had really been about him working hard to take care of his family. Then, shestood up behind him, put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Graham, darling, aren’t you going to introduce us?”

His whole demeanor changed then. He flinched at her touch, and his eyes turned to stone when he said, “Apollo, this is Nanette, my agent,” and then he sat down. All night, she had one of her French manicured fingers resting on his arm or his leg or tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. He never shook her off. He let her touch him like she had a right to. He didn’t look in my direction again the rest of the night.

The jealousy that had embedded itself into my heart last night had been cold and creeping when I left the restaurant. Now, it flows like a river in my veins.

When the invitation to his graduation arrived a month ago, I’d been on the fence about going. I hadn’t seen him since we got back from London. Sometimes, I think I imagined the whole trip.

Everything we’d talked about—all of his promises—had fallen apart, one by one. I understood the need for him to delay initially. When he called to tell me about his mother, I’d wanted to go to him. But my mother was having an episode, and Tante Isabel couldn’t come up from Arizona to help for another two weeks.

But then, I got a text from him saying I shouldn’t come because things were hectic, and he was working a lot and didn’t have any weekends off.

Then, every time I tried to visit afterward, he had a reason why it wasn’t a good time.

I’d fretted, but I kept reminding myself that he was going through a hard time.

Two months ago, I broke down and opened an Instagram account. Graham had used his regularly, but I hated social media and swore I’d never open an account. But, I decided to see if he’d been posting.

When I got it set up, I searched for him and what I saw turned my stomach. It wasn’t whatheposted … those were mostly workout videos and a few personal pictures of him and his friends.

It was the ones he was tagged in. They were mostly events. Restaurant openings, even a few movie premiers. But in them, he was with this woman. Nanette. And they looked like a couple. And then, there were all of these pictures of him with his friends, with the hashtag #4Horsemen. Apparently, Graham was Hollywood’s newitpersonal trainer and up-and-coming Instagram personality.

I called him. I asked him directly to tell me what was going on. He explained it all away. She was his agent, and they went to events together to help raise his profile and bring him more high-dollar clients. He told me a story about how he and his friends had been photographed at a polo match, and someone posted it and gave them that hashtag. That too, apparently, was all about gaining new clients. The money he made paid for his mother’s care and paid his tuition.

My grandfather’s will was ironclad—nothing from my trust fund until I was twenty-five. That was seven years away. I couldn’t even offer to help him. So, I kept my mouth shut. My jealousy wasn’t more important than his mother.

He promised me as soon as life calmed down, things would get back to normal. He missed me. Loved me. We’d see each other soon.

I believed him.

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