THE FIRST TWO days after learning about Joel’s birthday are spent gathering intel. The next three, collecting materials. The following two, running around like a chicken with my head cut off while cursing Joel’s name for not telling me about his stupid twenty-fourth birthday a few months sooner.
“MOTHERFUCKER,” I shout, raising my needle-pricked finger to my mouth to suck the hurt away.
Rowan ignores me and finishes hanging streamers from one of the card tables lining the walls of our living room. She stands up, brushes off her knees, and smiles wide. “Joel is going to flip.”
Leti spins a mini Ferris wheel on top of one of the tables. Mini liquor bottles occupy each car as party favors. “You should be a party planner,” he says, and I huff out a breath.
“Party planner. Shirt designer. Cape maker to the stars.” I lift a neon-green cape with black spikes running down the back of it off of my lap, silently praying Joel likes it.
Leti turns on music while Rowan finishes setting out snacks and I stand in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips making sure everything is ready to go. When someone knocks on the door, I take a deep breath before answering it.
“Holy shit,” Shawn says as he walks inside, the expressions on the rest of the guys’ faces echoing his sentiment.
“Do you think he’ll like it?” I ask, but Shawn doesn’t have a chance to answer before Adam squeals, “Are those capes?!”
He practically dives into the pile and pulls out one that looks just like the one he described last Saturday—it’s red with a golden A stitched into it, just like Alvin the Chipmunk’s shirt, and he beams like a little boy in a candy shop. Rowan helped me remember the capes all the guys described when they were joking at the buffet, and I did my best to create them. Adam’s looks like Alvin’s shirt, Shawn’s is black with the Batman symbol stitched onto the back, and Mike’s is camouflage with pockets stitched to the inside. He laughs when he finds the toy guns I stashed in the pockets, and I don’t try to stop the smile that blooms across my face.
“Leti, yours is in my bedroom,” I say, and Leti disappears down the hallway in an excited blur. He pouted when he saw I was making capes for the other guys but not for him, but really I just wanted to keep his hideous sherbet-and-magenta-sequined cape a surprise. He runs back out with it secured around his neck and strikes a flawless Superman pose. The rest of the guys are fastening their capes around their necks too when a knock sounds at the door.
“Close your eyes,” I demand with my hand on the knob.
“Do I have to?” Joel whines from the other side.
“YES!” the guys all yell, and I chuckle.
“Are they closed?” I ask.
When he tells me they are, I open the door and lead him inside, plopping a plastic crown on his head and telling him to open his eyes. He opens them to find three grown rock stars and a very giddy-looking Leti wearing homemade capes and little-boy smiles.
“Oh my God,” Joel says with a laugh that tells me he loves it. I hand him his cape, and he holds it up, laughing even harder. “This is fucking awesome.”
His gaze travels around the room, skimming over the Ferris wheel carrying liquor bottles, the one-person beer-pong table with stuffed prizes hanging on the wall behind it, the painted cardboard cutout of two rock stars with holes for people to put their faces in. There’s a table covered with red-and-white-striped bags of popcorn and mason jars full of candy. The star attraction is a cotton-candy maker, and the entire room is flooded with rainbow streamers and balloons.
When I was covertly prying intel out of Joel earlier this week in my attempt to get ideas for his birthday theme, I asked what his favorite childhood memory was and he told me about the time his grandma took him to the circus. I ran with it, throwing together an apartment-sized circus in a matter of days and never doubting it would be worth it.
His expression is utterly unreadable as he takes it all in, and I nibble at my bottom lip, worried that he doesn’t like it. But then he finally looks at me, and his soft smile melts away all my apprehension. “This is too much.”
I shake my head. It’s not too much. It feels like it isn’t enough—not after everything he’s been through, not after everything we’ve been through—but I’m guessing no amount of streamers in the world is going to fix that.
Joel scoops me into a big hug and whispers in my ear, “Thank you.”
“Happy birthday,” I say, burying my face in his neck and squeezing him back. I’ve barely seen him over the past two days since I’ve been too busy setting up and wanted to keep the details a surprise, and I’ve missed him too much to try to hide it.
Another knock at the door interrupts our moment, and the rest of the guests begin trickling in—Driver, some other roadies, a bartender from Mayhem, a few guys from other bands, and a couple of Joel’s friends from high school. I got all the names and numbers from Adam, Shawn, and Mike, and lucky for me, they were all names of guys. Girls show up too, but on the arms of dates, and pretty soon, my apartment is packed with people. Most of the guests don extra capes I made—I reserved a special one for Driver, complete with a giant pot leaf on the back and hidden pockets on the inside—and the guests who think they’re too cool for capes seem content to guzzle down beer and shots and munch on pizza and mozzarella sticks. The cotton-candy machine is a huge hit, and so are the candy table and the rock-star cutouts. Guys play the beer pong game and win stuffed animals for their dates, and Joel nuzzles his chin into the crook of my shoulder as we watch.
He’s laughing on my couch surrounded by a bunch of friends when I sneak to the kitchen to put the candles on his cake—vanilla ice cream with confetti sprinkles. I stick two tall candles at the sides and drape a mini carnival-style banner between them that says, “Happy Birthday Joel.”
“He’s so happy,” Rowan comments, and I stare out to the living room, watching him pick at his blue cotton candy as he laughs at something Adam said. “So are you,” Rowan adds, and I catch myself smiling. I wipe it from my face quickly, ignoring the knowing grin she gives me while I light the candles.
“Flick the switch,” I order, and she gives Leti the signal to cut the lights. The room plunges into darkness, lit only by the brightness of the candles as I walk the cake toward Joel and start singing “Happy Birthday.” Everyone joins in, some singing far more drunkenly than others, and I set the cake on the coffee table in front of him. “Make a wish.”
With the light of the flames flickering between us, Joel’s blue eyes find mine. They linger, neither one of us looking away, and a soft smile touches the corner of his mouth. He blows out the candles with one swift breath, and everyone cheers in the dark.
When the lights come back on, his eyes have already locked on me again, his smile making my cheeks blush. I escape back to the kitchen to grab plastic plates and a serving knife, and Rowan watches me with that annoying smirk on her face.
“Shut up,” I say as I pass her.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You thought something,” I argue.
“Yeah . . . I tend to do that. I’m pretty sure normal people think things.”
She chuckles, and I ignore her. “Grab the napkins.”
“Okay, Miss Bossy.”
As I leave the kitchen, I flick her off with the hand I’m using to hold the cake server, and she calls after me, “I’m thinking thingsss!”
“You’re stupiddd,” I sing back, and her giggle follows me to the living room.
I cut Joel a whopping slice of ice-cream cake before cutting tiny slivers for everyone else who wants one. By the time I’m done cutting, there’s no cake left and I realize I haven’t left any for myself, but then Joel is abruptly tugging me onto his lap and offering me some of his.
After cake, most of the party follows Adam outside for a smoke break, and I decide to make myself a margarita. I’m pouring ingredients into a mixing cup when Jenny, a girl who showed up with one of the guys Joel went to high school with, joins me in the kitchen to dump her plate and fork in the trash. She stands next to me, staring over the breakfast bar at Rowan and Mike playing on the hand-me-down Xbox Mike gave us as a housewarming present. They’re surrounded by a group of guys drooling over their kill counts.
“I never thought I’d see the day when Adam Everest and Joel Gibbon got serious girlfriends,” Jenny muses, and even though I’m not Joel’s girlfriend, I don’t correct her.
“Did you go to high school with them too?” I ask, putting the cap on my mixing cup. I begin shaking the margarita, and she nods.
“Yeah. I went to that school my whole life.”
“What were they like?” I pour a glass for Jenny after pouring one for myself.
“Adam was a heartbreaker even in elementary school.” She takes the glass I offer and laughs to herself. “We had class together in third grade, and I remember that his Valentine box was crammed full of cards on Valentine’s Day. He picked the girl who gave him the most candy with her card, and she became his little girlfriend for the week. I think that was the only girlfriend he ever had until she came along.” She nods toward Rowan, and a little smile sneaks onto my face.
“Shawn and Adam were almost always together, but they were so different. Adam spent most of his lunches in detention for skipping class or fooling around under the bleachers, but Shawn was always at the top of our class.”
“Really?” I say, curious even though I don’t find it hard to believe.
“Yeah. He was like this weird mix between a good boy and a bad boy. He always looked the part of a bad boy, but the teachers always loved him because he always pulled straight As.” She chuckles and says, “I had a friend back then who had such a crush on him. I mean, a lot of girls had crushes on him, but she reeeally liked him. I think she’s in a band now too.”
She trails off, thinking about her friend, and I say, “What about Mike?”
“I don’t remember Mike before middle school, but even then, he just kind of kept to himself. I played clarinet, and I remember he joined band for like . . . a month. Then he just walked out one practice and never came back.”
“It was too easy!” Mike shouts from the couch, surprising us with his superhuman hearing.
Jenny laughs. “I think he started the band with Adam and Shawn shortly after that. He dated a girl for most of high school,” she lowers her voice to a whisper, “but she was a total bitch.”
“What about Joel?” I ask.
“I think he moved to town halfway through our freshman year. Back then he didn’t have the mohawk. He just had a head full of messy blond hair, and the girls loved it. He had like this grunge bad-boy look.”
I wonder if she knows about Joel’s mom, that he probably didn’t look grungy by choice, but I don’t ask.
“He always spent classes doodling in a notebook instead of paying attention. A few teachers really got on his case because they said he was wasting his potential, but I think he always knew what he wanted to do with his life, you know? All those study halls he spent in the music room ended up being worth it.”
Last Tuesday night, Joel came over with an acoustic guitar since he said he was working on a song but wanted to see me. We spent the evening sitting together in my living room, him strumming his guitar and working out the notes, and me working on a paper for English class while trying not to jump his bones. There was just something about seeing him play that guitar, so deep in concentration, that made me squirm in my seat. When he finally put it down, I was on his lap in a matter of seconds, tugging his shirt over his head and kissing him senseless.
I’m lost in the memory when Joel walks back inside, and I take a big gulp of my margarita to try to get my head straight.
“You two are really cute together,” Jenny says. She pats my arm and walks away.
“What were you girls talking about?” Joel asks when he takes her spot.
“You,” I taunt.
A tipsy smile consumes his face, and he says, “About how hot I am?”
I laugh and say, “Nope. About what a nerd you were in high school.”
He follows me out to the living room, protesting the whole way. “I was not a nerd. If anything, Shawn was the nerd.”
“Hey!” Shawn says, and a bunch of us laugh. “I was not a nerd.”
“You were kind of a nerd,” Mike says, and Shawn glares at him.
“Didn’t you used to let Adam copy all of your assignments?” Jenny’s boyfriend asks, and Shawn scoffs.
“What else was I supposed to do? Let him fail?”
Patting Shawn on the back, Adam says, “You’re a good friend.”
Shawn scoffs and knocks Adam’s hand away. “Whatever. You still owe me thirty bucks for doing that history paper for you for Mr. Veit’s class.”
“Joel still owes me thirty bucks for when I took the fall for him denting my mom’s car with that skateboard,” Adam counters.
The boys start squabbling over who owes who what, and I break it up by bringing Joel one of his presents from the gift table. “This one is from Blake and Jenny.”
He opens gift after gift, getting T-shirts and albums and gift cards and expensive liquor. Rowan got him personalized guitar picks, Leti got him a kickass pair of shades, and the guys all chipped in to get him a special kind of Fender guitar that everyone oohs and aahs over. I give him my gifts last, trying not to fidget as he opens them.
When he pulls back shiny green wrapping paper to reveal a graphite pencil set, he smiles down at the box.
“I didn’t want you to be able to back out of our deal,” I say, only half joking.
“What deal?” Rowan asks.
“He’s going to draw me something for my birthday.”
“You draw?” she asks Joel, and he finally turns his smile up to me.
“Used to.”
“He was really good,” Adam offers, and I hand Joel my next present before anyone can ask any more questions he might not want to answer.
“Another one?” he asks, setting his pencil set carefully aside before taking the box I hand him and shaking it next to his ear.
“Just open it.”
Joel peels the wrapping paper away from the front of the box in one clean swipe, revealing the Hot Wheels Dragon race track that he got for his birthday when he was a kid—before his mom sold it to fund her alcohol addiction.
Adam and Shawn start gushing about the track, reminiscing in their own childhoods, but it’s all just white noise surrounding Joel’s blank expression. My heart plummets as he stares down at the set, unmoving and unsmiling.
I open my mouth to say something. To apologize. But then he looks up at me, and his eyes are bright and glassy. I barely have time to register the tears in his eyes before he sets the gift aside and walks right toward me, lifting me off the floor without breaking stride. He carries me all the way down the hall to my room, closing the door behind us, and then we’re just standing there, me with my feet off the floor and him with his face buried in my neck.
“Joel,” I say, prepared to apologize, but his body begins trembling with little sobs and I no longer know what to say. I wrap my arms tighter around him and press my cheek against his temple. “Hey,” I whisper, rubbing my hand over the buzzed hair next to his mohawk. I plant a kiss against his head and let him hold me.
Joel shakes his head, and I ask him what’s wrong. He just shakes it again, and then he takes me to the bed and sits down with his arms still around me. I stand in front of him, and he holds me close. His cheek presses against my stomach and his body shakes with barely audible sobs that have tears spilling over my cheeks and dripping onto his back.
“Hey,” I say again, rubbing my hand over his broad shoulders. “Come on, stop that. You’re going to mess up my makeup.”
Joel chuckles against my stomach, and I smile and lift a hand to wipe my eyes.
He takes a deep, shuddering breath and stands up to take my face in his hands. He holds my teary-eyed gaze for a moment before giving me a soft kiss. “Thank you,” he whispers.
I want to tell him it’s just a toy, that there’s nothing to thank me for. But I know it meant more to him than that, so instead of saying anything, I dry his tears. And when his thumbs wipe over my cheeks, I let him dry mine too.