February
Me: I GOT THE JOB!
Davis: Suck it, Davenport-Ridgeway.
Me: Haha, really?
Davis: Hey, what can I say? I’m a great friend.
March
Me: I’ve officially turned down the offer from D-R. Will be working at Goldman after graduation.
Davis: New York office?
Me: Yep…
Davis: Lord have mercy.
April
Me: You up?
Davis: Don’t do this to me, Olivia. I’m only human.
May
Davis: Hey, can you send me Charlie’s number?
Me: What the hell?
Davis: I saved him a seat.
Five innocuous words shouldn’t make me feel so completely beside myself, but they do. I saved him a seat. It’s presumptuous and thoughtful and so freaking sweet. It’s Davis Ridgeway in a nutshell.
I’m walking towards Wharton, full graduation cap and gown and hood, about to close out a major chapter in my life, and he’s here trying to track down my brother so that neither of them has to sit alone. The two most important men in my life—together.
I should have expected that by now. For nearly the last year, Davis has been a fixture in my life, albeit a distant one. A text conversation here and there. An occasional phone call after a particularly shitty day of classes or work. For every major milestone I’ve achieved, he’s been at the back of my mind as I wondered what he would think. Would he be impressed with me? Proud of me?
The answer was always yes.
He and I have nothing to hide now. I won’t be working at Davenport-Ridgeway and I won’t be living in an apartment full of company interns. When I move to the city in a few weeks, I’ve arranged for my own apartment. It’s not too far from Davis, but still far enough that I can feel independent. When I eventually tell him, I know he won’t be happy at first, but he’s going to come around to it—he always does—because we both know that making my own way is important to me. Maybe the most important thing to me.
The graduation itself is drawn-out and boring. Despite how much I love listening to “Pomp and Circumstance,” this feels smaller than the graduation spectacle that I first envisioned when I got the call telling me that I had been accepted to one of the country’s premier business schools. At some point, Wharton had stopped being the pinnacle of everything for me. I had worked so hard for it for so long that I almost forgot that there was a world beyond it. For the past year, all I’ve done is longed for the world beyond it.
After the ceremony, Davis and Charlie meet me and they both gift me a humongous bouquet of flowers. Those flowers are a blessing because they’re the only thing keeping me from pulling Davis into my arms and suffocating him with my lips right in front of my brother, my professors, and all of my classmates.
Davis insists on taking pictures of Charlie and me for a while. Formal ones, goofy ones—the whole gamut. He takes them on his own phone and then starts a group text with Charlie and me so that he can share them with us—and that’s how my brother and I, two kids who grew up in a trailer, end up on a group text with a billionaire’s son.
Later that evening, Charlie ends up paying for dinner, which I can tell is physically painful for Davis, who had his Amex out so fast that he could have made Aaron Burr eat his heart out. He was still no match for Charlie, who gave his card to the restaurant when he made the reservation months ago.
As the night comes to a close, the three of us walk together on the lively streets of Philadelphia, where the area around campus is thick with families celebrating graduation. Davis makes a few more offers to us—he’ll take us out for drinks if we want, or we can get a second dessert. Unaccustomed to this kind of thing, Charlie quickly declines because he doesn’t realize that a cocktail is nothing to Davis, even if it’s two hours of work to Charlie. I decide to tell him later.
“At least let me get you both a ride home. I’ll call an Uber. Charlie, what hotel are you staying in?” Davis inquires as he pulls up the Uber app on his phone.
“I’m on Olivia’s couch,” Charlie replies, gesturing over his shoulder in the general direction of my apartment, which is a few minutes away.
Somehow, this revelation is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. “You’re sleeping on her IKEA couch?”
“It’s not that bad,” my brother insists, nodding as if somehow that will transform my couch (which is objectively torturous) into a king-sized bed at the Ritz.
“And how did you know that I have an IKEA couch?” I chime in.
“I didn’t,” Davis replies grimly. “I guessed.”
“Pompous,” I murmur.
“Was I wrong?” he counters pointedly. “Anyway, Charlie, let me get you a room at my hotel. My treat.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Charlie objects, still not realizing that Davis doesn’t even look at his credit card statement before he pays it off.
Davis glances up from his phone. “Obviously, I don’t have to, but I want to. We’ll head back to your sister’s, you’ll grab your stuff, and we’ll ride back to the hotel together.”
“Just let him do it,” I encourage. “Trust me, it’s easier to let Davis buy things than it is to deny him. You’ll be saving yourself a night of headaches if you just let him do this.”
Charlie lifts both eyebrows. “Okay,” he agrees reluctantly. “Okay, sure. This is me accepting what I can only assume is an overpriced hotel room for one night of sleep.”
“And room service in the morning if you want it,” Davis adds.