Until You Feel At Home

Chapter One

Claire

Claire had a number of bad habits, and no desire to work on eliminating them. Almost all of her compulsions were making an appearance at her graduation. Her leg was bouncing enough to shake her entire row, and she had picked at her nailbeds until they were nearly bleeding. She couldn't identify what exactly was causing her stress. It could be any number of things. She was about to walk across the stage in front of hundreds of people to get the diploma she couldn't believe she had earned. There were storm clouds gathering overhead, and no line of defense between them and the crowd. Her mom was seated somewhere, but Claire had no idea where, and Pierce wasn't answering her texts checking in on him. She chalked the nerves up to a combination of everything all at once and decided to bounce and pick away. She even started biting at her lip. The holy trinity of anxiety.

She pulled her phone from the pocket of her dress and opened the messages between her and Pierce. Her barrage of texts were still not marked as 'read.' She had no doubts that her mom didn't save him a seat- she could care less where her ex ended up. But Claire cared. In fact, if there was anyone's presence she could do without- it was her moms. They'd barely spoken the last four years. One of them would make a courtesy phone call each weekend to exchange niceties and make sure the other was alive, but her mom had no real interest in what Claire was up to. She was playing the role of a good mother. Method acting. Claire always had an idea of what her mom was doing, but she wished she didn't.

It was always the same. Galavanting with a new man somewhere in the world. Her relationships didn't ever last more than a year and a half, and her choice in men ranged from amazing to abysmal. Despite the repeated bad experiences, her mother's affection was never too hard to win. It was a vicious cycle.

This was the first graduation Claire had gone to where her best friend was not seated right next to her. They were lucky enough to have last names so close in spelling that they were always together. But their class at Emerson College was over a thousand students, where high school was barely a hundred. Claire Townsend was roughly twenty seats away from Jodi Turner. She bent at the waist to look toward the redhead. Her burgundy locks were curled in a perfect frame around her rosy cheeks. It was strange seeing her without her glasses. She only wore contacts on special occasions. Jodi turned and caught her eye, grinning nervously in Claire's direction. Claire made the goofiest nervous expression she could think of, earning a chuckle from her friend. At least one of them was in a light hearted mood.

Claire looked down to her phone one more time and sighed. She text Pierce again. I hope you're okay. We're about to get started. And, like clockwork, the President of Emerson College tapped the microphone and began the ceremony.

The speeches from the President and Valedictorian took ages, but the procession flew by. Claire cheered for the friends of hers that got to accept their diploma, and waited patiently as she watched her peers file out of their seats. The closer it got to her row, the more her heart pounded in her chest. If anyone looked hard enough, she was sure they'd be able to see her pulse through her breast plate.

When she finally approached the staircase off to the side of the stage, and they called her by her full name, she held her breath and proceeded up the stairs. She grabbed her diploma, shook the many hands, and then took a half-second to peer out over the folding chairs set in perfect rows across the college's football field. Pierce's salt and pepper hair was nowhere to be found over the sea of heads and caps. She walked carefully back to her seat, and took deep breath after breath. Her nerves had settled a bit by the time the graduates were asked to rise from their seats.

"It is my pleasure to introduce our graduates: the 2024 Class of Emerson College. Congratulations." Claire wrapped her manicured hand around the tassel hanging from her cap and turned it to the other side. She waited for her classmates que, and sure enough, the caps started to fly. She tossed hers as high as she could and watched as it got lost in a sea of black squares. She desperately wanted to be relieved, but she had the distinct fear that the stage of her life she was about to enter was not going to live up to the fantasies she'd had since her freshman year.