“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve wanted to do this since sophomore year,” he said. “I didn’t, because I knew exactly what kind of attention it would bring, and I didn’t want any of that attention landing anywhere near your job.”
I sat with that for a long moment, feeling something cold settle low in my stomach.
“You’ve been holding back,” I said slowly, “because of me?”
“Some of it,” he said. “Not all of it. But some of it, yeah.”
His father, Foster, reacted the way I’d honestly expected him to — flatly refusing to attend once he understood the plan, calling it “an unnecessary spectacle” that would embarrass the whole family in a town this size.
Callum’s closest friend since middle school, Dominic, went quiet around the same time, apparently convinced Callum was chasing attention rather than actually meaning something real by it.
Even the school called, a week before the ceremony, gently suggesting Callum consider “a more traditional option” for his walk across the stage — a suggestion that landed considerably heavier, once I understood the full context, than it probably would have otherwise.
He turned every one of them down, the same steady way, every single time.
So there he was, walking down those stage steps in a bright red dress, in front of nearly six hundred people who had no idea what they were actually watching, or what it had actually cost him to wait this long to do it.
He didn’t walk toward his row of classmates. He didn’t walk toward the photographers stationed along the side aisle.
He walked straight up the center aisle, toward me, while the whispering trailed after him the whole way.
He stopped directly in front of my seat.
