Dear Readers: Back to Commencement Day at Veriton - a scene with Cloe and her college bestie!  Thanks so much for reading! :)

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Scene 5: Floater Fate

A.D. 2015

“It would be such a dream.”

As soon as she had said it, Cloe remembered that Miss Primor, the pristine platinum princess, had described the travel-writing summer prospect with those very words this morning.

Something about Prof’s fiancée had seeped into her bloodstream. A powerful, pervasive presence from which she couldn’t pull away…

“It would. It definitely was for me,” Tom cheerfully recalled, of his past summer spent writing for the same travel guide in Italy.

His voice brought her back down to earth—for now, at least. Earth was a pretty pleasant place right now, by the picturesque brick red facade of Pampelune, beneath the shade of the cafe’s big daffodil yellow umbrellas. The two friends sat at their favorite patio table sipping strawberry French sodas. It felt just like her freshman year.

So much had changed; so many things were just the same.

“And Greece would be perfect for you,” Tom noted. “The cradle of the classics and humanities… so much culture, such rich history…”

Cloe smiled, stirring the scarlet syrup sinking to the bottom of her glass, swirling the straw around the creamy foam on top.

“It’d be so much better than that Goldman Sachs legal intern gig,” he reckoned. “But no worries about that; you’ll get the Greece job.”

She sighed and humbly shook her head. “Now you’re sounding like Prof Mason. Always too confident in me.”

“You can’t really blame us—especially when it comes to anything involving writing. You were born to write.”

“Every literary agent in America begs to differ.”

“Screw that,” he huffed. “Half of them don’t even read what they receive, from people without connections in the publishing world.”

She raised a skeptic brow. “And the other half?”

Tom took a swig of soda. “Probably aren’t looking for the next literary classic. That’s a hard genre to market in these times.”

“But classics are timeless, by definition,” she contended. “So it looks like you can’t call my novel that.”

“Well excuse me, smart-ass, but I’ll call it whatever I want,” he retorted with a playful grin. “And remember it’s a trilogy, not just a novel. Anyway. Stop being so idiotically self-deprecating.”

She chuckled bashfully. “It isn’t idiotic if the world agrees…”

“False. The world is full of effing idiots,” Tom refuted. “Seriously, though—classic or not, whatever that means, it is really damn good.”

Cloe looked up to meet his gaze; the robin’s egg blue very nearly convinced her. Even if not, it brought a smile to her face. Like always.

Tom leaned back in his seat, lopsided grin still glued onto his lips. “Don’t you give my critical opinion any credit?”

“Of course I do,” she answered honestly. Of all the students she had met at Veriton, she respected Tom’s mind the most. A fellow philosophy major, he was extremely bright, in all the ways that Cloe most admired—ingenious intuitions, appreciation of the profound, reasoning based on valid logic rather than eloquent rubbish.

There was a lot of eloquent rubbish at Veriton, and throughout the world at large. Sometimes it was really extraordinarily eloquent, even elegant. Cloe tried to avoid it, but at times she found that even she was fooled, by the masquerade of brilliance over all the bullshit.

“A lot of credit,” she emphasized, to her dearest college friend. “That’s why it means so much to me that you enjoyed it.”

Tom truly had. He’d asked to read it as soon as it was finished, and she’d shared it with him gladly. He’d been delighted from the first page, and Cloe had been utterly astonished at his feedback—picking up on all of the complexities of her characters, the subtlest patterns in her writing, down to the carefully crafted cadence of each syllable.

“I really could not have asked for a better reader, Tom,” she expressed. “And I could never thank you enough.”

“You couldn’t ask for a bigger fan, either,” he chirped.

“Besides my mom,” she reminded him. Silvia had read the trilogy cover to cover, upside down, and every which way. She loved it like a grandchild, and Cloe loved her mother even more because of that.

“Ah, touché,” Tom conceded. “That’s a given, though. How is she, by the way? Is she here for your move-out?”

“Yeah. She’s doing well. Probably busy repacking my stuff so that nothing gets wrinkled—I tried to manage that myself yesterday, but just can’t manage anything as well as she does.”

“You’re doing it again…”

She laughed. “It’s not self-deprecating, it’s straight-up true!”

He rolled his eyes lightheartedly. “Whatever. How does it feel, anyway? Moving out today, while everybody else parades around in caps and gowns. Missing the ceremony.”

She pursed her lips, pensive for a moment. “It feels right,” she decisively declared. “I don’t think I would’ve belonged, out there on the lawn this morning. Or in the Acorn courtyard this afternoon.”

For Veriton undergraduates, Commencement Day comprised the morning exercises in the Yard, followed by diploma ceremonies and lunchtime schmooze sessions in the courtyards of each dormitory.

Acorn House was the residential hall in which Cloe had lived for the past three years. Each Veriton freshman was randomly assigned to one of twelve houses near the end of spring term, by a class-wide lottery system. But the housing process was not limited to a lottery. Before this phase—in fact, for most students, slowly and stealthily since the first day of college—classmates engaged in the high-stakes sociopolitical scheme known as ‘blocking.’ A roomie search gone mad.

Blocking. The crystallization of cliques. The ossification of posses. The alliance of acquaintances, against all hopes of actual friendship, amidst the great big Machiavellian mind game.

It really did prepare us for the real world, Cloe mused. Especially the few of us who lost.

She had not been part of a ‘block.’ She was a ‘floater.’ This was the official label for the friendless, after all the blocking blood was shed. ‘Blockmates’ entered the lottery as a group, so none had to fear being assigned to a house alone. That fate was reserved for the floaters.

Some were floaters by choice—Tom, for one. This did not seem to signify defeat, in Cloe’s mind. If only she had realized sooner that the ‘friends’ she’d had from freshman year were remote contacts at best, and enemies at worst, then she would have chosen the same.

But as it was, she had not chosen. The floater fate had chosen her.

The wisdom of hindsight made everything ugly, but very clear. She was not sure if that was better or worse than the often blissful, blinding blur of ongoing experience.

“I felt the same way,” Tom related, to her sentiment of not belonging in the graduate procession. “And today is even hotter than this time last year! It must be so gross, wearing one of those gowns.”

A recent memory of Charliese, helping her fiancé out of his sweaty robes, flashed across Cloe’s mind. “It’d be disgusting if you weren’t so darling”… Why did each word from that woman’s mouth resound with otherworldly charm?

It didn’t matter; there was no point in obsessing over it. “Yeah… but hey, what about Rina?” she asked. “How is she on her big day? And I hope she doesn’t mind that I stole you for a few minutes?”

Tom drummed his fingers steadily on his soda glass. “I haven’t seen Rina today,” he confessed.

Cloe’s spirits sank in guilt—she should’ve asked about it sooner. She had surmised that Tom was here today to see his sweetheart, so the thought hadn’t crossed her mind that the two might have split up.

He revealed that his relationship with Rina was in an extended, and possibly permanent, off-stage.

A deep rut of an off-stage, as Silvia had predicted earlier today. Cloe reminded herself, for the millionth time, that her mom was always right.

“I’m really sorry,” she sighed, once Tom had briefly told her how the breakup had gone down. “I just thought you must’ve come to campus today for her commencement… I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“No worries. Really. It was for the best, and we both knew it, and we’re both doing okay,” he assured her. “But yeah, you shouldn’t have assumed—what, you didn’t think I’d make the trip just for a teddy?”

Her apologetic frown melted into a smile, at that. “Did you really? You came all the way to Cambridge, just for that?”

Tom nodded, his own smile modest and shy. “To win the stupid bear and make sure he’s beside you when you graduate.”

Cloe’s heart swelled. She did not deserve a friend like this; nobody ever could, she thought. This was just too impossibly sweet. Especially since she knew that her mother was wrong about one thing: Tom really was not trying to get in her pants. Even despite his recent breakup. Somehow, Cloe just knew.

It wasn’t that they found each other unattractive. They were thoroughly pleasant-looking, to one another. In fact, both felt that in some other life, they might have made a happy couple—with all their shared interests, strikingly similar life experiences, compatible values and dreams. But in this life, they knew, that was not in their stars.

And for that, Cloe was not sorry. Tom was the perfect friend, to her. She had never been surer of that than now. She only hoped that she could come close to fulfilling such a role for him in turn.

She didn’t think she ever could. But all her life from this day forth, she knew she’d have to try.

“Thank you,” she murmured, clasping his hand across the table. “You’re a friend, Tom Colbeck. A real friend.”

That hadn’t come close to conveying what she felt for him right now, her genuine gratitude for everything he was. But that was how words worked. They fell short of their meaning, every time.

Cloe stirred her drink again, the syrup having settled to the base.

“And those are really, really rare…” she claimed, her eyes glinting in self-deprecating levity at her next words, “…for a fuck-up like me.”

He smiled in silent laughter. “Rare period,” he corrected her. “And thank you for not saying my real full name.”

She giggled, and proceeded to pronounce the name pretentiously. “Ishmael Thomas Colbeck…”

He groaned and grimaced, through his grin. “Never again.”

After a few more laughs and quips and sips of sugary fizz, she checked the time and saw that they soon had to say goodbye.

That meant there was a question, hanging in the air. She winced just at the thought; it was a dreaded question, one she hated asking every time. But she had to, whenever she saw him—ignoring it would be so much worse than the agony of inquiring.

Cloe paused before she asked. She always did. She clasped his hand again and looked him levelly in his springtime-colored eyes. Wishing the pause could last forever. But of course it never could. And so she sighed, the longest sigh, and then she asked.

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Hope you enjoyed their little chat! Anyone else love French soda?? hehe :)

Next scene takes us back to B.C., to see where our last Fate has landed on earth... And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)