Page 3 of The Birthday Girl

Outside the private dining suite, the caterers whispered in the hallway, their voices prickling her skin.

She glanced at the mirrors lining the walls, and her reflection stared back at her.

Tahlia’s lashes were flawless, her lips were glossy, and her brown skin glowed with rage.

Her hair, waist-length curls spilling in glossy waves, framed a face carved by both love and cruelty.

Her cheekbones were prominent, and her almond-shaped eyes carried entire wars in their depths.

Tahlia was a goddess. A beautiful Black woman built from ambition and survival, and people still tried to cut her down to nothing by plucking her apart piece by piece.

She smoothed her gown across her lap and adjusted the diamond cuff at her wrist, the sparkle catching the light. Rage gleamed back at her from her reflection, polished and righteous, but beneath it lay the calm she had summoned. The Konami Calm.

She would not give anyone the satisfaction of watching her unravel, and she would not give Tyriq the privilege of believing he had ruined her party. Tonight was still her night. Her birthday. And she would be damned if she allowed anyone to dim the shine she had built with her own two hands.

Tahlia crossed the room to the door, eased it open, and leaned into the hallway, her voice smooth as velvet when she said to her staff, “You may return.”

The caterers filed back inside, their gazes fixed anywhere but on her.

Pearl, the decorator, glanced around the room with feigned composure, pretending nothing had happened.

The background noise swelled again. Crystal tapped against crystal as glasses found their places on linen-draped tables, and just like that, everything resumed.

Tahlia held herself upright with the dignity of a queen in exile, chin level, not a hair out of place. She drifted through the final checks, listening to the chatter, while her mind prowled the edges of violence, of what-ifs and how-dares, of everything she could destroy with a single phone call.

It didn’t escape her notice how quickly the staff converted their nervous energy into flawless precision. They worked as if every fold, every plate, and every petal might tip the balance between triumph and disaster.

“Is the champagne cold? I said cold. Not chilled. Not lukewarm. Cold,” she said, sweeping her fingertip along the rim of a glass and listening for the pure ring that promised everything was as it should be.

“Yes, ma’am,” a young woman replied quickly, her voice trembling as she wheeled silver buckets of ice and bottles into the ballroom.

If she lied…

Tahlia narrowed her eyes, her nails pressing into her palms as she imagined mascara bleeding down the woman’s cheeks and bubbles slipping past her painted lips while she held her head inside the bucket of ice water.

Growing aroused by the thought, Tahlia turned away, and the staff averted their gazes, their whispers dissolving into silence.

She knew they thought she was overbearing, and maybe she was.

Her birthday came only once a year. Was it wrong to demand that the Dom Pérignon be precisely forty-three degrees?

No. It wasn’t. Tyriq might be a ruined piece of shit, but everything else had to be perfect.

She unclenched her fist and smoothed her dress again, her forced smile returning as she turned to the next staff member. “The flowers,” she said, pointing to the towers of roses at the center of each table. “They look… fine. They could be fresher. Next year, make sure they’re fresher.”

One of the servers gave her a polite smile that never reached her eyes, lips tight at the corners as she nodded and backed away. Her gaze flicked toward another server, and a barely perceptible eye roll was exchanged.

Tahlia wasn’t stupid, nor was she blind.

She caught every sidelong glance, every pursed lip, and every microscopic flinch.

More than once, their eyes had swept over her designer gown, worth more than their yearly salaries, then darted away as if the sight of her made them sick.

They saw a woman who held her shoulders too stiff, who laughed a beat too late at jokes, who could buy the building fifty times over but still couldn’t purchase the effortless grace that seemed to come naturally to everyone else.

By seven o’clock, the ballroom was glowing.

It could seat hundreds, but her guest list barely reached double digits.

She had invited her parents, her three siblings, her two best friends, and her boyfriend, and out of desperation, she extended invitations to the people who worked under her, though she doubted they would want to spend their evening there.

An hour later, her staff pressed against the walls, pretending not to notice the emptiness.

Tahlia took a sip of champagne, ignoring the knot of nerves tightening in her stomach.

This year would be different. They would show up for her.

Her loved ones wouldn’t leave her sitting alone in that ballroom. That was what she kept telling herself.

Eight-thirty passed. Then nine. The orchestra played to empty seats, the sound swelling in a room that was far too large for just one person.

She sipped more champagne, her expression smooth, her insides seething.

At ten-fifteen, her phone buzzed. It was a text from her mother.

We can’t make it, baby. Something came up. We’ll call tomorrow.

She stared at the screen until the words blurred, though her parents’ absence shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

They lived for charred meat cooked on cheap grills that tasted of lighter fluid, chased with Coors, and capped with blunts for dessert while Frankie Beverly and Maze rattled the speakers.

Her high-class lifestyle and polished parties were too uppity for them, and they never let her forget it.

Whenever she visited, they would laugh and say, “Here comes Ms. Bougie. Look at her prancing through here wearing that rich shit. This child don’ forgot where she came from.”

Tahlia would smile through clenched teeth, her spine as rigid as a mannequin's, while their words bounced off the invisible armor she had spent years perfecting.

“Y’all crazy,” she would reply, her Dallas drawl thickening on her tongue no matter how hard she had worked to erase it.

She often wondered if her mother believed those words, or if she repeated them as an incantation to feel better about never leaving the gutter. Perhaps it was her way of making peace with the fact that her daughter, despite every obstacle, had created a life her mother never could.

Her siblings’ hatred was no mystery. They were jealous.

While they remained bound to family gravity, orbiting the same neighborhoods, taking turns with the same men, and recycling the same hand-me-down resentments, she was making moves that mattered.

It was her name on deeds, on endorsed checks, and engraved on gallery walls.

The retard. The awkward one. The quiet bitch. She had outshone them all.

So why did their words still sting?

It was probably because, in a way, she envied them.

She envied their ability to laugh with their whole bodies and wear the same hoodie three days in a row, then love themselves in the mirror without question.

She envied the freedom of never needing perfection, because nothing they did was ever judged as exceptional.

Being ordinary was their protection, but it wasn’t a luxury she could never afford.

Tahlia had never believed she was better than them.

She knew she was better, but she never treated anyone as though she thought so.

Whenever they called, she answered. If they needed a light bill paid, she covered it.

If rent was due, she wired the money before the eviction notice was posted on the door, and when their cars broke down, she paid for the repairs without asking for repayment.

For birthdays, holidays, and graduations, she showed up with gifts they could never afford, smiling as if it were nothing, even when she knew they talked about her the moment she left.

She was there. Always there.

Fuck them. There were still people who loved being around her. She still had others. At least, that was what she told herself as she swallowed another sip of champagne and tried to believe it. They wouldn’t let her down the way her parents had. They couldn’t.

At eleven-thirty, another message came through. This one was from Sadie, her best friend of ten years, claiming she had the flu.

They had met in college, back when Tahlia was still learning how to walk into a room without cowering under stares.

She had been reserved, careful, always two steps ahead in her mind, while Sadie had been bold from the start.

Sneakers with cocktail dresses, laughter so loud it shook the walls, never once caring who disapproved.

For reasons Tahlia never understood, Sadie chose her as a friend.

From the beginning, they had been opposites. Where Tahlia planned, Sadie improvised. Where Tahlia calculated, Sadie leapt. Tahlia wanted everything crisp, flawless, and correct. Sadie thrived on chaos, spontaneity, and bending rules until they broke.

Sadie never had money or polish, but she had presence. Tahlia, meanwhile, had been refining her edges, teaching herself how to be taken seriously in rooms she refused to be excluded from.

Ten years later, Sadie still teased her for being too stiff, called her “Ms. Perfect,” and tried to drag her into messy joy. Sometimes Tahlia let her. Maybe that was why the message stung more than it should have. If anyone was supposed to stand beside her tonight, it was Sadie.

Fifteen minutes later, another message came. This one was from Alex, her other best friend, saying she had been invited to a last-minute dinner with her boss that she “couldn’t get out of.”