_notabear_ (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} _notabear_) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} heureuxlake,@ 2025-05-20 22:22:00 |
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Who: Riley + Open – texts to Sean and Patrick - mentions of Robert, Heather, Emilia, Dagny, Piper, Maria, Hannah, and Lachlan
What: Riley accidentally picked up the cap and gown she had sworn she didn’t need… might as well decorate it, right?
When: Tuesday, May 20, 2001 - afternoon
Where: Lakefront picnic tables and fire pits, Tarrytown
Warnings: Mild emotional vulnerability, references to more or less estranged parents
Completion Status:
Riley hadn’t meant to pick it up.
She’d told herself that weeks ago, when the reminder from the registrar came through. Just because she’d ordered the cap and gown didn’t mean she had to use it. Right? Maybe she’d take a picture in it later, maybe not. It wasn’t like anyone was coming. She didn’t need the ceremony. Didn’t need the spectacle. Didn’t need to sit among rows of cheering families just to feel alone in the middle of it, when she could just as well go celebrate right here in town with people she actually cared about.
But somehow, on her way home from running a few errands near campus, her feet carried her to the Tisch lobby. And somehow, her name had been on the list, her gown in a bag, the cap tucked under her arm. Like it was already decided. And now? Now she was sitting at one of the picnic tables by the lake. The sun was warm on her shoulders, and a half-smoked cigarette smoldered in the cracked ashtray beside her bag. The sky above was painfully blue. It didn’t feel like a day for big decisions. It felt like skipping class, like cutting through the town barefoot, like being sixteen and not knowing what the hell to do next.
The gown felt like a costume laid out beside her, it’s heavy folds catching the light. Too much. Too formal. Too final, with the hood lined with deep purple and white and trimmed with brown velvet.
But the cap – deep purple, square, blank – felt like something she could work with. She uncapped the silver marker and, with a steady hand, wrong along the curve: ”Guided by the ones who saw me through the darkroom.”
A slow breath escaped her lungs.
From her bag she pulled out the small photo prints she’d been collecting; the ones that had piled up in her wallet, the side pocket of her backpack, the envelope she’d tucked away ages ago.
A laughing profile of Sean holding Harper. Patrick’s warm smile when he thought no one was looking as he looked at Dagny. Robert in plaid and boots, blurry at the edge of the lake. Heather in full uniform, gripping an axe mid-laugh. Emilia’s green eyes in soft light. Dagny in her coat, coffee in hand. Piper asleep on the couch, one hand over her belly. Hannah and Maria mid dance-bounce. Lachlan, one she hadn’t even printed on purpose, just caught in a corner of the frame when she’d tested her light meter at the lake.
She started placing them around the words, trimming their edges, framing them in the soft gleam of silver wire. The tiny pewter camera charm she’d ordered on impulse weeks ago; she glued it in the corner, the weight of it grounding the design. The stole lay across her lap, plain white satin. She started adding stars, stitched one at a time, a quiet echo of the one inked into her forearm. When it was all one, she flipped the cap over and wrote one more thing under the brim, hidden unless you knew to look:
”You did this. No one else. Remember that.”
And for the first time all day, Riley felt something like certainty settle into her chest; maybe she didn’t want to miss this after all.
She stared at the cap for a while, not touching it. Letting the quiet settle. The little faces on it felt like an answer to a question she hadn’t dared ask herself. Do you want to be seen? Do you want to be celebrated?
Yeah. She was beginning to think that maybe she did.
Just not by the people who hadn’t really shown up. Not by the ones who would’ve come just for the photo op, or to comment on how she turned out okay despite everything.
Riley reached for her phone, her thumb hovering for a second before she opened a group thread labeled Brothers, Bears & Bullshit.
Text to Patrick & Sean: Hey. I know it’s short notice, and you don’t have to say yes, but… graduation’s the 23rd. And I kind of don’t want to walk alone after all. If you’re free.
She hesitated, then sent off a second one:
Text to Patrick & Sean: No pressure. I just realized this thing is kind of a big deal.
She hit send before she could second guess herself.
And then, with the sun warm on her skin and the breeze brushing her cheeks, she leaned back against the bench, and let herself want this.
Even if it still hurt. Even if it wasn’t perfect.
It was hers.