Work Text:
President Holt is halfway through his closing remarks when Jake nudges her arm with his elbow, making their black graduation gowns rustle against each other.
“Hey Ames,” he says into her ear, his voice low, barely above a whisper. “This is it, huh?”
She has half the mind to shush him – they’re at an official ceremony after all, seated among thousands of other students. There’s a different quality to his voice though, a gravity and vulnerability she hasn’t yet heard from him in their four years of friendship.
“I can’t believe we’re actually graduating,” he continues.
She doesn’t have to look at him to know he’s smiling, wearing the soft, easy grin reserved for the quietest of moments. He sounds awed and proud and grateful all at once. But also sad– and really she gets it.
It’s overwhelming, all of this.
“I can’t believe–” Jake pauses, swallows thickly and clears his throat. “I can’t believe that in just two days, you’re–”
Amy reaches for his hand instinctively and gives it a light squeeze. It’s not something they’ve ever done before, but he’s starting to get choked up and it won’t be long until she starts crying too. She chews on the inside of her cheek, trying to fight her own tears from falling.
He sniffles but doesn’t look away from the stage. She keeps facing forward as well, sure that she’ll devolve into sobs if she tries to look him straight in the eye.
The crowd around them laughs at something President Holt says, a quip about oatmeal that neither of them catches.
“Let me drive you to the airport,” Jake says finally, several moments later.
“But my brother–” Her parents had already arranged for David to see her off. Knowing him, he’d already scheduled the day by the nanosecond. Any last minute change would have him tattling after her, complaining endlessly about how she’d inconvenienced him so.
“Please? ” Jake asks again, broken, nearly desperate. It’s a question and a prayer, almost.
“Yeah, okay,” she nods. To heck with the golden child. “My flight leaves at noon.”
They’d first met in the fall of their freshman year.
Amy can still remember it with perfect clarity: how Jake rushed into the lecture hall, hair unruly and plaid shirt rumpled. He looked like he’d just woken up, or maybe never slept. Perhaps he’d pulled an all nighter in prep for their big exam. ( She had gotten the recommended eight hours of sleep, naturally, and had gotten up with more than enough time to have a balanced breakfast and to go over her review sheets.)
“Sorry Dr. Kev.” His voice was just loud enough for Amy to hear from her seat in the front row. “I realized I was all out of scantrons, so I went to stop by the store on the way here but – I kid you not – the line was out the door and around the sidewalk! Any chance you have any extras?”
“No, Jacob, unfortunately–”
“I have an extra scantron! ”
Two heads snapped toward her, surprised. She’d surprised herself too, actually. It wasn’t like her to speak out of line or to tear her focus away from a test.
Jake broke into a grin, relief palpable. “Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I’ll pay you back, I swear.”
She waved him off then and would’ve forgotten about his promise if he hadn’t shown up to class the next day, a huge smile on his face and a giant pack of sour gummies in his hands.
“What was your name again?” he asked. Her stomach flipped for a reason she couldn’t have named at the time.
JFK is bustling when they get there, locals and tourists all scrambling to get where they need to go. The two of them are over three hours early, of course, because Amy had insisted that Jake pick her up well in advance of her flight.
“Geez, Ames. What did you pack in here?” He asks, giving an exaggerated huff as he drags her roller bag toward the check-in counter. “I didn’t realize the LAPD had interns bring dead bodies of their own to investigate.”
“Ha-ha. I just figured I’d take as many things as possible instead of buying everything when I get there, y’know?”
“Smort. Save that money to pay off student debt and whatnot, yup.”
He steps aside and waits, drums his fingers restlessly against the side of the counter as she hands off her luggage to the agent.
Amy watches him out of the corner of her eye, emotions starting to build in her again. Last night, she’d tried to write an outline of what she wanted to say to him. Tried. She’d gotten practically nowhere, just grasped at words and gone in circles.
She turns back to Jake a few minutes later, boarding pass prepared, heart not ready in the slightest. Her gaze flits to the security screening line ahead, and she opens her mouth to speak.
“Nope . Nope, nope, nope,” he cuts in quickly, already knowing what’s on her mind. “There’s no way you’re getting in that line right now. We are going to go get overpriced airport coffee – my treat, of course, I insist – and we’re going to sit and people-watch for, at the very least, another hour. Wouldn’t you rather hang out with your best friend than sit in a gross, crowded waiting area?”
Amy lets out a shaky breath but agrees.
There’s a part of her that wants to rip the bandaid and get it all over with. There’s a larger selfish part of her that just wants to hold onto Jake for as long as he’ll let her.
They’d become best friends in the summer before their sophomore year. (They were probably best friends long before, although neither of them had admitted that out loud.)
It’s one of Amy’s fondest memories, despite the bundle of nerves she’d been then. Her hands were all clammy, her stomach in knots – all because she’d happened to develop the smallest, most ridiculous, most inconvenient crush on Jake and was thus prone to overthinking everything about everything.
“What if they don’t like me?” she asked him, brows scrunched up and eyes wide with worry as they made their way to his favorite pizzeria.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Jake scoffed, slinging an arm around her and leading her inside. “Gina, Diaz, and Boyle are going to love you. I promise.”
She followed along, heart thrumming in her chest while she listened to Jake’s enthusiastic introductions. (There wasn’t anything she didn’t already know. He’d gushed about Gina’s dance troupe and Rosa’s motorcycles and Charles’ hot chocolate at least once every ten hours.)
“Man, ” Jake sighed happily, once he was done going around the group. “I’m just so stoked my super cool high school best friends are finally getting to meet my equally super cool college best friend! Seriously, with Sal behind the counter over there, I officially have all my favorite people in one place!”
Amy’s cheeks glowed beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting, affection and godforsaken schoolgirl giddiness surging through her. She quickly tucked her hair behind her ears then turned to Jake’s friends, hoping to put her research to good use.
“So, Gina, I hear Dance-y Reagan has a big competition coming up?”
Jake hums, looking at the screen of departure times on the wall. “I guess you should probably head in now, huh, Ames?”
They had already downed a cup of coffee each and created elaborate backstories for at least a dozen random travelers. The line for screening is only growing longer and longer, and they both know it’s better for her to go sooner rather than later.
Jake stands up and stretches his arms out, motioning for her to come over. There’s a smile on his face but a sad sort of resignation in his eyes, and that’s what gets her.
Amy crumples into him at once, burying her head into his shoulder, soaking his hoodie with the tears she’d been biting back since he picked her up outside her apartment.
“Hey, hey...” he chides, smoothing a hand up and down her back. “This isn’t goodbye, you know that. You’ll only be gone for like a year, two years tops if you end up really loving the LAPD. I’m going to come visit as soon as I can. Literally the minute I get home, I’m going to look up flights over. You’re going to have to prep a couch or something for me to crash on, and then once I get there you’re going to have to figure out how to kick me out because I’ll never want to–”
“I love you .”
Her voice comes out muffled, barely coherent. Jake hears her all the same, his whole body stiffening against her.
For a second, Amy thinks she’s ruined everything with a single loaded phrase. This wasn’t something she’d planned on saying, even if she’d thought about it roughly a million times over, even if she knew it was true in every sense of the word.
“I...”
He pauses, and she waits with bated breath.
He holds her tighter still, pressing his lips to the side of her head. “I love you too, Ames.”
They’d almost kissed in the spring of their junior year.
Amy doesn’t recall that night quite as much, just knows that there was alcohol and dancing and Jake’s warm brown eyes.
Her new apartment is quiet and empty when she gets to it. Technically , it’s perfect – a blank canvas waiting to be filled, an organizational puzzle waiting to be solved.
But it isn’t home.
And it’s all she can do not to hop in a cab and get on the first plane back to New York.
Her phone rings, interrupting any further thought of throwing her postbac career away.
“Ames! ” His voice is a cold oasis in the middle of the desert. “Are you at your new place? How was the flight? Did you get to watch any good movies on the plane? You’ll never guess who I spotted at the airport right after we said goodbye!”
She smiles fondly, listening to him ramble on about a celebrity whose name she can’t quite place. He’s too excited to notice how quiet she is, and she has just enough time to unzip her carry-on and dig out the jacket he gave her. (“I know you always get so cold,” he’d said, shrugging out of his blue hoodie. “Take it– you can give it back to me the next time we see each other.”)
She clutches the soft cotton to her face, breathes in the familiar scent of fresh laundry and sticky-sweet orange soda and Jake. Longing twists through her, and another tear rolls down her cheek.
“Amy,” he says suddenly, seriously– as if somehow he knows.
“Yeah? ” she asks, her voice cracking ever so slightly.
“I miss you already,” he sighs. “I’m so, so proud of you, Ames. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
She coughs, wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I miss you too, Jake. I miss you too.”