PACKING AWAY MY glassware was our first mistake. Forgetting to buy Solo cups at the store was our second. Now, everyone is passing around a collection of liquor bottles and soda cans. We’re all sitting on the empty hardwood floor of my apartment, boxes of pizza in the middle of our circle and a cake Rowan won’t let me stick my finger into hiding in the fridge.
“To getting an A on that marketing final,” Shawn says, toasting a bottle of tequila in the air.
“To fashion school,” Leti adds, toasting a bottle of vodka.
“To drinking straight from the bottle,” Adam quips, toasting a bottle of whiskey.
I chuckle, and Rowan toasts a hard lemonade in the air. “To Dee.”
I smile and steal the tequila from Shawn, holding it out toward Adam. “To Adam, for being the only not-corny person here.”
He laughs and clinks his bottle to mine, and we both take big gulps.
“To everyone who bothered to work today,” Mike adds, and Rowan laughs and toasts her lemonade bottle to his beer bottle. Adam laughs too because he knows Mike is referring to him. For the most part today, Adam did a miraculous job of looking like he was helping without actually doing anything.
“How many pairs of shoes do you think you own?” asks Kit. She somehow ended up sitting next to Shawn, but he’s doing a remarkable job of not acknowledging the bombshell at his side, and Kit is doing a remarkable job of being extra bombshelly. I wonder what would happen if they accidentally rubbed elbows. Would they glare at each other and show their teeth, or would sparks fly and lead to a whole lot of clothing being ripped off right in the middle of this room?
“Easily a thousand,” Leti answers, “judging by how much those boxes weighed.”
“You should see my closet at home,” I say, and then I laugh and add, “and the basement, and the guest bedroom.”
Rowan nods. “It’s true. When I lived at home, I almost never needed to buy shoes because we’re the same size.”
“What size are you?” Kit asks.
“Seven and a half,” Rowan and I both answer.
“I’m a nine,” Kit replies. “Your feet are tiny.”
“Yours are just big because you’re tall and built like a freaking supermodel,” I point out, mostly for Shawn’s benefit.
Kit smiles but shakes her head at the compliment. “Everyone in my family is tall. My older brothers are huge. They’re all over six foot.”
“So are we,” Shawn says of himself and the rest of the guys.
“Yeah, but you,” Kit says, pushing her finger into his bicep, “are scrawny. You don’t look big at all.”
Shawn stiffens, and I nearly burst out laughing. Kit just smiles that warm-cold smile of hers, making me wonder what happened after they slept together in high school. It must not have been pretty.
“Are you ready for cake?” Rowan asks to diffuse the tension.
“I’m ready for presents,” I say, eyeing the stack piled in the corner of the room. It’s always so easy to tell which were wrapped by boys—loose edges of wrapping paper and extra tape everywhere.
“You know the drill,” Rowan says. When she pushes off the floor, I attempt to follow her to the kitchen, but she shoos me back out to the living room. “Don’t look.”
“I hope it’s vanilla,” Kit says, and I shake my head.
“It’s going to be chocolate with chocolate icing.”
The lights cut, and Rowan starts the birthday song. Everyone joins in, and in the dark, a lump forms in my throat. I’m going to miss them. Every single one of them. I try to clear my eyes before the candles illuminate my face.
“Dear Deeeeee,” everyone sings, “Happy birthdaaay to yooou.”
“Make a wish.” Rowan holds the cake in front of me, and I think about making one. I could wish to get accepted into fashion school. I could wish for the T-shirts to make me famous. I could wish for Joel to appear in my doorway. He’d tell me he still loves me and ask me not to go. When I realize that’s what I want most of all, I blow out the candles without wishing anything at all. Rowan smiles, my friends cheer, and I pretend to be the kind of girl who still believes in wishes and who still bothers to make them.
“We did buy plastic plates and silverware, right?” Rowan asks, and everyone looks at each other.
“Not it,” Adam calls, initiating a frenzy of not-it calling and nose touching. In the end, Mike and Shawn take a road trip to the grocery store. They return with plates and silverware, and when Rowan asks them why they didn’t get cups too, since we still need those, they simply shrug and tell her because she only told them to get plates and silverware.
“Alright,” I say, licking a fourth swipe of icing off my finger as she huffs at them, “someone give me a present.”
Rowan cuts the cake and begins handing out slices as Leti slides the pile of gifts in front of me. I open them at random, getting a gift card from Kit, a scented candle from Shawn, a kickass perfume from Leti, and a second scented candle from Mike, who I suspect brainstormed gift ideas with Shawn. Rowan and Adam give me a ridiculously expensive sewing machine that almost makes me cry, and then she gives me a second present which is a set of the coolest-looking pairs of scissors I’ve ever seen—with sparkly purple handles and lots of differently shaped edges.
“Who’s this one from?” I ask as I tear open the final gift. It doesn’t have a tag or a card, but it’s neatly wrapped in a plain dark purple paper, so I suspect it’s from one of the girls. When I glance at them, they both look just as curious as I do. I finish unwrapping a long poster-tube and open it up, pulling out a sturdy piece of paper and unrolling it.
A penciled image of myself stares back at me. She’s lying on her back with her hair lying in thick pools around her smooth face. The sky is dark and full of stars that the pale wall behind her tries to catch. She smiles at me, and the love in her eyes is so clear that my breath catches.
It’s a memory preserved on paper. And even though I’m smiling at myself now, I wasn’t smiling at myself when I was in that pool.
“Who drew this?” I ask, unable to tear my eyes from the sketch in front of me. When no one answers, I lift my gaze and demand to know, “Who brought this?”
“What is it?” Shawn asks, and I turn the sketch around for him to see. It steals everyone else’s breath just as it stole mine.
We all know who drew it.
“I just grabbed all the presents that were on the table,” Mike says.
“I thought it was one of yours,” Adam adds.
“Shit,” Shawn breathes.
I look back inside the tube—for a card or a note or anything—but there’s nothing else inside.
“Why would he do this?” I say to myself, angering when no one answers me. “Why the fuck would he do this?” I ask Rowan.
It’s been three weeks since he fucked me against a bathroom wall, four weeks since he yelled at me at his mom’s, over a fucking month since he told me he loved me, and now he sends me this drawing? Why, just to remind me of a time when I was actually fucking happy?
“Where does he live?” I snap, rolling the sketch back up and stuffing it into the tube.
“Dee,” Rowan says in that voice she sometimes uses to charm the viper inside me. “I think you should just—”
“Where. Does. He. Live?” I growl again, barely containing my calm. I’m saving my anger for Joel. Every fucking shred of it.
Again, no one answers me. They’re all sitting around me in a shell-shocked circle, staring at me like I’m a grenade with its pin pulled. I’m glancing at Rowan, at Leti, expecting them to tell me, and when they don’t, I look to Adam, Shawn, Mike. More looks, more silence. Betrayal courses through my veins like burning poison, and I’m about to tell every single one of them to go to hell, when Kit is the one who speaks.
“Adam and Shawn’s complex,” she says, and all eyes swing to her. “First floor . . . I can’t remember which number.”
I thank her and grab my keys off the counter with all intentions of busting down every single door on the first floor if that’s what it takes to find him.
I’m almost out the front door when Rowan shouts, “C!” I glance over my shoulder at her, and she gives me a worried but apologetic nod. “C. He’s in 1C.”
I close the door behind me.