51. Jae #2
The name lands between us like something dropped from a height.
I haven’t heard it in a crowd in almost two years.
The sound of it—in her mouth, in this context, with the sun beating down on the Blackthorn quad and my diploma still warm under my arm—feels like hearing a language I used to speak fluently and have since forgotten the grammar for.
Before I can deflect—before I can summon the particular practiced vagueness I’ve been using for months, the half-smile and the “sorry, you must have me confused with someone” that has worked on every barista and TA and random stranger who thought they recognized something—she has grabbed my arm.
Her fingers are tight, slightly trembling, and she’s already positioning us for a selfie, her body angled, her free hand adjusting her cap with the frantic precision of someone who understands that lighting matters.
“I love, love, LOVE your music,” she says, the words coming fast, tumbling over each other. “Can I get a picture? Please? My sister is going to lose her mind, she had your poster above her bed for like, a full year, please—”
I produce the smile. The performer one. The one that doesn’t reach my eyes, the one that was trained into muscle memory through approximately ten thousand hours of photo calls and fan meets and the particular cold arithmetic of public image.
My chin tilts to the approved angle. My eyes find the camera with the specific focus that makes them look engaged without being vulnerable.
My arm settles around her shoulders with the careful, measured pressure of someone who understands that touch is choreography.
She squeals. The camera fires three times in rapid succession, the shutter sound artificial and sharp, and then she’s calling to her friends—a cluster of caps and gowns near the fountain who turn, and I watch the recognition move through them like a wave, one face after another, the same widening eyes, the same hand-to-mouth gesture, the same particular velocity of disbelief.
They converge. Phones raised. Voices overlapping.
Someone shoves a graduation program toward me with a pen—“Can you sign it? Just your name, or—or Kai, whichever, I don’t care—” —and I take the pen and write Jae because that’s the name on the diploma under my arm and it’s the only one that feels like mine anymore.
Someone else is asking about a comeback, their voice pitched with the particular hopeful intensity of a fan who has been waiting for news and has decided that a graduation ceremony is the appropriate venue to extract it.
A girl in the back is crying—actually crying, tears tracking down her cheeks, her phone clutched to her chest like she’s protecting something fragile—and the sight of it does something to my sternum that I am not equipped to process at eleven-thirty on a Tuesday.
The crowd grows. Not large—eight, maybe ten people—but dense, phones at every angle, the particular press of bodies that happens when personal space becomes negotiable in the presence of something rare.
I am doing the math without meaning to. Distance to the nearest exit.
The weight of my phone in my pocket. The particular cold clarity of a man who has spent enough time in crowds to know exactly how quickly they can change shape.
Then Amiyah is there. Her body materializes between me and the nearest phone with the particular efficiency of someone who has assessed the geometry of the situation and identified the most direct solution.
Her smile is bright, fixed, the particular polished version she deploys for difficult rooms—symmetrical, camera-ready, the kind of smile that says I am fine and I am capable and I have everything under control while her eyes are doing something considerably more complex.
“Sorry, everyone,” she says, loud enough to cut through the noise, her voice carrying the particular melodic authority of someone who has argued in front of judges.
“We’re actually late for a thing that’s none of your business.
” Her hand finds mine. Her grip is tight, almost painful, her fingers lacing through mine with the particular insistence of someone who is not asking. “Jae, come on.”
She pulls. I let her. My body follows hers through the press of bodies, my free hand raised in a wave over my shoulder—the particular casual, backward gesture that I have performed approximately eight thousand times at airport security and red carpet exits and the loading dock behind venues where the crowd was too much and the handler’s hand was on my elbow exactly the way Amiyah’s is on mine now.
We walk quickly. Her pace is just shy of a jog, her hand still locked around mine, her shoulder occasionally brushing against my arm when the path narrows.
The crowd thins behind us. I can hear voices calling—someone saying “wait” and someone else saying “that was definitely him” and the particular fading dissonance of a moment that started as recognition and is ending as confusion.
My heart is hammering against my ribs with a force that feels disproportionate to the actual threat, which is the particular humiliation of a body that remembers fear long after the mind has decided there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Amiyah doesn’t look at me when she asks. Her eyes are forward, her jaw set, her pace unwavering, but her grip on my fingers tightens by one degree, and the question arrives sideways, like she’s afraid of what the answer might be if she looks at it directly.
“You okay?”
I take inventory. My breathing is slightly faster than baseline. My palms are damp. The diploma under my arm has acquired a crease from being clutched too tightly. The performer smile has dissolved, leaving my face feeling oddly empty, like a room after everyone has gone home.
“Yeah,” I say, and the surprise is genuine—the particular startled quality of a man who has just discovered that the thing he expected to feel and the thing he actually feels are not the same thing. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
She glances at me then. Just a flick, quick and assessing, her eyes scanning my face with the particular focused attention of someone reading for tells. Whatever she finds seems to satisfy her, because her pace slows by half a step, and her grip on my hand loosens from desperate to merely firm.
“It’s strange,” I say. The words come out before I’ve fully arranged them, which is not a habit I typically allow myself.
“The attention. It used to feel like oxygen. At eighteen, in those venues, with the lights and the—” I gesture vaguely with my free hand.
“It was the thing. The only thing. I needed it the way you need water. And now it just...” I trail off, hunting for the right shape.
“It just feels like noise. Loud, meaningless noise. And I don’t miss it.
At all. I thought I would. I expected to. But I don’t.”
Amiyah is quiet for a beat. Her thumb moves across my knuckles—a slow, deliberate stroke, the kind of touch that isn’t asking for anything, just acknowledging.
“Growth,” she says finally, and the word carries the particular dry warmth of someone who is trying very hard not to sound impressed and failing completely. “It’s disgusting. Stop it immediately.”
I laugh. The sound is real, startled out of my chest, and it bounces off the limestone buildings and comes back thinner, and for a second the weight in my ribs lightens by a degree I hadn’t thought possible.
We reach the edge of the quad where the paths fork—one toward the law building, one toward the east gardens, one toward the parking structure where both our cars are probably sitting in the particular patient neglect of vehicles that have been abandoned for ceremony.
I stop. Amiyah stops with me, her hand still in mine, her body angled toward me with the particular attentive set of someone waiting for information.
“I’m going to call my family,” I say. The words come out steadier than I expected. “I’ll find you in a little while. Text me where you end up.”
She reads my face. I watch her do it—the particular quick, comprehensive scan, her eyes moving across my features with the focused efficiency of someone who has learned to extract data from minimal input.
Whatever she finds seems to answer whatever question she was asking, because she nods.
Once. Clean. No hesitation, no push for details, no performance of concern that would require me to perform reassurance in return.
Just a nod, and the particular trust in it makes my throat tight in a way I am not going to examine right now.
“Don’t take too long,” she says. “I’ve got a champagne bottle with a stupid bow on it that isn’t going to open itself.”
She squeezes my hand—once, firm—and then she’s walking, her gown dragging at the hem, her cap tilted at its particular defiant angle, and I watch her go with the particular weighted attention of someone who is memorizing a sight he may not get to see again.
I walk until the noise of the celebration drops behind me.
The path narrows, gravel underfoot, the limestone buildings giving way to the softer geometry of the Elias Blackthorn Memorial Garden.
Empty benches. Dappled light through oak leaves.
The fountain somewhere in the distance, its sound reduced to a white-noise murmur that blends with the general background hum of a campus that is, for the moment, concentrated elsewhere.
I find a bench in a patch of sun and sit.
My phone is warm from my pocket. I hold it in my hands and look at it for a long moment, and the particular weight of what I’m about to do settles across my shoulders with the familiar pressure of something I have been carrying for much longer than today.
I call my mother first.