Page 66 of Mostly My Boss
Are you coming to my graduation?
Julia
* * *
Jules,
No.
Ethan
* * *
Ethan,
You’re an ass.
I DON’T forgive you.
Julia
* * *
Jules,
Never said I wasn’t.
I DON’T believe you.
Be ready.
Ethan
* * *
A few months after graduation
New York
Ethan
“Over here,” I told the cab driver. He’d barely pulled over before I hopped out onto a narrow street in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
I looked up at the last address she’d written me from. She’d gotten an entry-level job at one of the top-end sell and research brokerage firms. Enough that she could afford to rent in Park Slope.
She was probably making more money now than her father had ever conceived of in his lifetime and I knew she was sending what she wasn’t paying in rent back to her mother on the farm.
It hadn’t been enough. Her mother was drowning faster than Jules could keep up. In the years I’d been trying to help Ellen with her books, it had been painfully easy to see.
But that didn’t matter now. I’d already taken care of it. The Whitfords weren’t going to lose the farm or the house and Julia could be as angry as she wanted to be at me, but I didn’t care.
All that mattered now was what came next.
Standing outside the entrance to the brownstone, I thought of how this might go. What I was supposed to say. What she might say.
I told myself I hadn’t gone to her graduation because I knew my parents would be there. Either for her or because they anticipated I wouldn’t miss it, I didn’t know. Graduation meant nothing to me. Her years in school were just something she had to do. Something I had to let her do.
Before our future could start.
