Page 23

23

SCARLETT

L ook, I don’t expect a message from her. I don’t even want one.

That’s what I tell myself, and it’s true. But it doesn’t do anything to make the heavy, sad feeling in my chest go away. It’s been lodged there ever since my gaze snagged on the last text I got from my mom.

I had my text history open to send Harper a message, and my eyes just happened to zero in on the thread with my mom at the bottom of my screen.

I saw the thumbs-up emoji. Her only response to my news that I was accepted to Brumehill. The last thing she sent me.

Maybe it’s because my birthday is coming up. Seeing that message just reminded me that I shouldn’t expect any happy birthday texts from her. I can’t even remember the last time I got one.

My mom’s made it clear with her actions for most of my life that she has no real interest in having a relationship with me.

I got over it a long time ago. It started when I was eight years old, when she met her current husband. Before that, I still lived with my dad, but I’d see my mom pretty regularly. We always had fun, and I always looked forward to her visits and phone calls.

But when she met Ken, her current husband, well, I guess she decided I was nothing but baggage at that point. Someone—something, really—that was only going to make it harder for her to move forward with her new life.

Shame nibbles at me. I wish I were strong enough to really not care, and not just act like I don’t.

“Why the long face?”

I look up to see Lane walking in from the backyard through the sliding door in the kitchen.

“What long face?” I fib. “I’m cool.”

“Hm.” Lane inclines his head like he’s skeptical, but he shrugs it off a second later. Guess I’m a good liar. “By the way, when’s your birthday?”

“My birthday?” I ask. Does Lane have some ESP thing going on that he hasn’t told me about? Did he pick it up like a cold from the fortune teller I dragged him to?

He sits down on the opposite couch cushion. A muscle between my thighs tugs when I feel the movement from his weight on my butt and the back of my legs.

“Yeah, you know, the day you were born? It’s a new concept people never really talked about before, but it’s getting popular. People are actually counting how many years since that date and assigning themselves a number they’re calling age . Sometimes they even celebrate it. Weird, right?”

I blow out a laugh and roll my eyes at him. “Yeah, totally weird.”

“Well? When is it?”

“Why?” I ask.

“Just out of curiosity. It popped into my head that I know everyone’s birthday in the house but yours.”

I run my tongue against the bottom of my inner lip. “February 20 th ,” I answer.

Lane’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s soon!”

“Yeah, but it’s no big deal. I’m not really into doing anything for it.”

Now Lane’s eyebrows settle low, pinching above his eyes. “What? Why?”

I shrug, trying to ignore the unsettled feeling in my chest. “I don’t know. No one’s ever made a big deal out of it before, so I never really saw a reason to do so myself. It’s just a day like any other, right?”

I’m trying to sound blasé and chipper, but a glance at Lane’s face tells me it’s not infectious. His lips are tugged downward, the hard lines of his features stark with disapproval.

“So don’t go making some big thing out of it around here. No surprise parties, okay?”

Lane shakes his head. “No, I’m not throwing you a surprise party. I’m throwing you a very obvious party that you’ll see coming a mile away. Because from this moment on, I don’t want you to think for even a second that another birthday of yours is going to pass without anyone noticing. I don’t want you to ever be surprised that there are people out there who care about you enough to celebrate your birthday. You can take that as a given, starting now.”

I’ve never been more at a loss for words.

All I can do is blink my eyelids at Lane while my mouth hangs open. My chest feels tight with emotion when I pull in a breath.

“You … you don’t have to do that,” I tell him.

“When you care about someone, you don’t celebrate their birthday because you have to, you do it because you want to. The second I tell the guys that your birthday’s coming up, you won’t be able to avoid having a party if you tried.”

My heart clenches. There’s a sudden prickly sort of pressure on the bridge of my nose. I blink my eyes tight a couple times to keep any moisture from gathering.

“I mean, if you think the guys will insist …”

“They will. And so do I.”

A crinkly tearing sound fills the air as I rip open my next present.

“Oh, Jamie!” I exclaim as I take the small gift card out of the deceptively large box. “This is great! My room’s been totally empty since I moved in.”

Jamie got me a gift card to a plant shop in town. With some leafy green plants hanging around, maybe my room will start to feel more like my home and less like a long-term hotel stay.

Though, after opening a bunch of presents so far today and seeing how genuinely excited the guys were to have this party for me, this place is already starting to feel a lot more like home than …

Than anywhere I’ve ever lived, I realize.

I’m feeling more at home here with a guy I had a fling with a year and a half ago and his hockey teammates who I just met, than I did growing up with my dad, or any of the rare times I stayed with my mom and her real family, or when I lived with Caleb.

I force my brain to make a U-turn away from that train of thought. Way to take a nice realization and spin it into something negative, Scarlett.

I’m living somewhere where I’m gradually starting to feel at home, and I’m having a great day. I’m just going to take those two facts as the positives they are.

The roommates of course are all here: Lane, Sebastian, Rhys, and Tuck. Hudson, their big, burly goalie who has a bunch of sick tattoos, is also over with his girlfriend, Summer. Tuck’s girlfriend Olivia and Rhys’s girlfriend—as well as Lane’s sister—Maddie are here, too. Three other guys from the team, Jamie, who I know, along with Carter and Kiran. And, of course, Harper.

It's funny. Throughout my life, I’ve always had tons of people who I considered friends. I’ve always been social and up for a good time, so I’ve always had groups of people around me who I’d hang out with.

But somehow, none of them coalesced to ever make me feel like my birthday was any kind of big deal.

Looking back, I guess they were all more like acquaintances who were nearby. Convenient to party and pass the time with, but not people who actually cared enough to organize anything for me, or to go out of their way to put in an effort. Even though I always made a point myself of picking up a present for someone if I knew their birthday was coming up, as little money as I had.

The one exception would be Demi, but lately we’re not talking that much. She’s up to her neck with her senior year in Chicago, along with grad school applications. I don’t blame her for being busy, but I hope once things get a little less hectic for her, we’ll keep in touch more.

Next, Harper hands me her present. I unwrap it to find a book.

“ Blinding Mirrors by TK Chilton,” I read the title. “Oh! I’ve heard about him.” He’s supposed to be a major sensation in literary fiction right now.

I’m not surprised Harper, an English major who’s always in the middle of reading something, got me a book. She respects my love of mafia romance, but she’s been nudging me to expand my reading horizons.

She nods enthusiastically. “It’s so good. It’s, like, the best book I’ve read in forever. I can’t get enough of Chilton.”

Sebastian’s expression twists as he glances at Harper, like there’s a bad taste in his mouth.

“Here, Scarlett,” he says, handing me his present. I rip the paper to find another book called Dust Country , by the same author.

Sebastian folds his arms over his chest and says, seemingly more to Harper than to me, “It’s by far his best work.”

Harper snorts. “Are you kidding? Dust Country is fine, but it’s his weakest effort. It lacks the originality of his other works.”

Like Sebastian, Harper’s eyes are on me as she says this, but it certainly seems like her words are pointed toward someone else.

Sebastian blows a raspberry on his lips. “Yeah, that’s what all the trite literary magazine and blog reviews are saying. It’s only less original ,” he makes mocking quote signs with his fingers around those words, “if you can’t see beyond the surface level. Make sure you read Dust Country first, Scarlett. You get a better sense of the writer Chilton really is.”

Harper’s left nostril ticks. “I agree, Scarlett. Save the best for last.”

I roll my lips to keep from laughing. Harper and Sebastian have the interesting talent of being able to have an entire argument without even directly addressing each other. I’ve seen it more than once already.

Then Lane steps forward to hand me his gift, the last one I haven’t opened yet. There’s a slanted grin on his face that makes my chest do a weird flipping thing.

His present feels heavy in my hand. When I pull off the wrapping, my eyes widen. It’s a charcuterie spread, from DiGiordano’s in Burlington.

It’s a gourmet food store. Harper and I drove down to Burlington a couple days ago to check out the city, and the store caught my eye, so we walked in.

Everything in there was mouthwatering, but eye-wateringly expensive. I can’t imagine how much this spread cost.

“Lane,” I say his name with a mix of gratitude and admonishment. “I can tell you spent way too much on this.”

He shrugs, that slanted grin notching higher. “Nah. Top-quality stuff for a top-quality roommate,” he adds with a cheesy grin. “Besides, I remember how much you like charcuterie boards.”

He does? I mentioned it in, like, one conversation when we were in Chicago together.

Warmth spreads through me, and a strange feeling lodges at the bottom of my throat. It’s stupid to be getting this emotional over assorted meats and cheeses, but I can’t help it.

A girlish smile plays at the edges of my lips as my eyes lock with Lane’s, and for a second, the room around us seems to stand still.

Offering me a room within an hour of us meeting again. Throwing me this party. Getting growly and protective when I go out to a club. Showing that he seems to remember everything about the summer we spent together that already feels like a lifetime ago.

It’s still so damn hard to square with the way things ended between us.

Could it just be that he’s interested in us picking up our fling now that we’re close and it’s convenient?

Would it be the worst idea in the world? Could I keep my emotions in check like he’s obviously able to?

“Dang, it’s really starting to come down out there.” The comment from Tuck standing by the back sliding door pulls me out of my thoughts.

I break my eye contact with Lane and glance toward him. It started snowing a couple hours ago, and it’s gradually gotten heavier and heavier. The snow is really sticking to the cold ground, and a couple inches have already piled up since everyone came over for my party.

“Enough for a snowball fight?” Lane asks.

Tuck whips his gaze to Lane, eyes lighting up like a little kid’s. “Snowball fight! Let’s go!”

Instantly, the guys start to tug on their jackets and pile out to the backyard that’s now covered with snow.

We end up in a four-on-four snowball melee, with myself, Lane, Rhys, and Maddie on one side and Tuck, Olivia, Hudson, and Summer on the other. As we launch clumped snow at each other and laugh, I get the strangest tickling feeling in my chest at how this team arrangement almost makes it seem like Lane and I are a couple.

Meanwhile, Jamie, Carter, and Kiran have brushed off some lawn chairs and are sitting around chatting while Sebastian and Harper are arguing again on the deck, both their arms folded over their chests, sour expressions on their faces, and not even looking at each other as they duel with their words that I only hear as a faint murmur.

The snowball fight peters out when Maddie trips, Rhys goes to help her up, and then she pulls him into the snow with her and they start kissing.

Lane makes a disgusted noise in his throat and averts his gaze as his little sister has her face eaten by his best friend, and there’s no way I can stifle a big belly laugh at the whole thing.

I distract Lane by pulling him to the side and making the world’s worst snowman with him. The three balls that make him up are jagged and irregular, they don’t set right so it looks like the poor guy is in bad need of a visit to a chiropractor, and Lane somehow manages to make his face look completely ridiculous when he presses in two eyes and carves a smile.

But when I step back and look at our creation, I can’t help but feel a pang of affection.

The wind picks up and starts to blow the snow diagonally, so we all go back inside.

“I’m hungry,” Tuck says. “Who’s in the mood for pizza?”

My stomach rumbles at the word. Everyone else agrees, and even though we just came back inside, suddenly we’re all heading out the front door to brave the wind since we don’t want to make a delivery person drive in this weather.

Outside, everything is dressed in snow. Only the one main road has been plowed yet, so the overwhelming, dazzling blanket of white is everywhere. The sun has set, but the heavy flakes that are still falling magnify the soothing orange glow of the streetlamps to fill the air with a light that feels magical.

We walk to Marco’s Pizza. The place is packed when we get there. The contrast between the busy and bustling warm interior and the frosty winter wonderland outside gives me a thrill in my chest from how picturesque it all feels.

We all squeeze into a massive circular booth in the corner of the store that’s miraculously available. After a couple minutes, Lane pulls out his phone and sends a text message. Immediately, all the other guys on the team glance down at their phones.

They all lift their heads and do a weird sort of eight-way eye-contact thing. I quirk an eyebrow questioningly.

Then, they all scooch out of the booth and stand in front of the table. They open their mouths to take a deep breath, and since all their eyes are trained on me as they do so, it hits me.

I bury my face in my hands, stomach plummeting in embarrassment before they even belt out the first word.

But belt it out they do.

“Happy birthday to you,” the eight hockey players sing at the top of their lungs, filling the interior of the restaurant with the deep and very, very off-tune sound of their voices. Soon, every pair of eyes in the premises is pointing squarely at me.

I groan in my hands but can’t even hear the vibration of my own embarrassed lament over the boom of the guys’ voices.

“Happy birthday, dear Scarlett,” they trill, “Happy birthday to you!”

The restaurant erupts with applause when their singing mercifully ends. I remove my face from my hands, knowing that it’s so red that one of the chefs in the back might mistake it for a ripe tomato and put me into a sauce.

The guys tease me about it for the rest of the night, but underneath the mortification, there’s a kind of glowing feeling at everything Lane’s done to make me feel noticed, seen, and appreciated on this day.

Later on, when everyone’s gone home, I prop my arm on my windowsill that looks onto the backyard and gaze at the snowman Lane and I made hours ago, lit by the faint, mellow light spilling from the nearest streetlamp.

A smile pulls on my lips, because it’s hard to deny that today was my best birthday ever.