Other Side

37 | Nice Ring to It

During the first college lecture Talia had ever attended, for a gen-ed sociology course forced on her by her advisor, the professor had merely skimmed the syllabus and jumped into a long-winded rant about the value of a bachelor's degree.

"I hate it when I hear students calling a degree just a piece of paper," Professor Reyes had seethed, commanding the attention of one-hundred-fifty daydreaming freshman with his theatrical hand movements. "It's so much more than that. You just have to believe it is."

But God, was it really just a piece of paper.

Talia stared down at the diploma frame that had just arrived in the mail, almost a month after commencement: a sweltering May afternoon in heels which had given her blisters her feet still hadn't recovered from. She couldn't bring herself to put the actual diploma into its expensive wood holder, as it looked just plain stupid.

This was apparently all that four years of lost sleep, endless career crises, insufferable group projects, and the most arcane of math classes had boiled down to.

Her mother was not in agreement.

"You and your brother are more annoying than each other," she had huffed as they drove home from Calvin's high school graduation, a couple weeks after Talia's own. "Can't you two ever let your father and me celebrate your accomplishments?"

"I don't think we have to go to Boston to celebrate them," Talia mumbled, stealing a glance at the crooked cap on Calvin's head, bothering her all afternoon. "I think I've already been four times in the last year."

One of those visits had been an all-expenses-paid trip for an interview with her dream consulting firm in Back Bay, a two-day ordeal full of simmering anxiety and horribly rehearsed answers that had ultimately won her a shiny new job post-graduation.

By choice or not, Talia was back in Beantown, just a month before she'd officially move there for work. She couldn't remember the last time all four of them had visited the East Coast together, feeling much like a child as she walked the streets of downtown Boston in between her parents. The tourist sites that had hordes of people swarming the uneven streets beckoned to none of them. Not to her, after having seen them all in the last year; not to her father, who had made his first eighteen years of memories here; and most certainly not her mother, who despised crowds.

"Man, if this place blows this much," Calvin complained, tugging at the collar of his T-shirt as the humidity consumed him, "what's Providence going to be like for four years?"

"You will not complain about your Brown acceptance," their father chided, holding up a finger. Talia was almost sure it was because of the thousands of dollars that were soon going to leave his bank account for an overpriced piece of paper. "Most students would kill to get into that school."

"Yeah, I died to get in, too, Dad," Calvin chuckled, pulling off his 49ers cap. It stuck out like a sore thumb between all the small vendors selling I Love Boston merchandise, but that team was a piece of home Talia wasn't leaving behind next month. "I don't think I know how to properly talk to a girl after being married to AP classes for the last three years."

"Oh, you'll never learn how to do that," their father said, stopping at the crosswalk. "Women are meant to stay enigmas, Cal."

Both Talia and her mother shot him a gaze, though deep down, she was sure neither of them disagreed. Women just had a certain je ne sais quoi to them that kept men coming, while knowing deep down most—hell, almost all—didn't deserve their affection.

Well, except for Zaid.

After one-and-a-half years of dating, Talia had deemed him more than worthy of her heart. Actually, the only enigmatic part of their relationship was how it had surpassed thousands of miles of land and ocean and come out even stronger, somehow surviving the crucible of long-distance.