I may not say those words out loud until he decides he wants to talk to me again, but I’m done. Even if he calls. Even if he shows up with flowers. Even if he says he’s sorry. We’re done.
He didn’t even wish me a happy birthday.
As I walk to my car, angry tears begin streaming down my face against my will. It’s not just that my relationship is over, it’s that my entrance into adulthood feels like a kick to the stomach. I know being an adult is harder than being a kid, but does it really have to start like this?
The worst part is, this is the first birthday I had planned on spending entirely separate from my parents and Abby. My genius thought process was that since I’m turning eighteen and becoming an adult, I should start a fresh new birthday tradition, leaving my old one in my childhood.
Now I have no new tradition–unless you count celebrating alone and buying yourself a cupcake on the way home from school.
As if that isn’t awful enough, this is a year where my birthday happens to fall during Thanksgiving week–and because of the new plans I made, that means my parents and Abby made plans of their own.
My parents have gone on a cruise in the Mediterranean. Abby and her dad left for Thanksgiving break early tospend the full week with her grandma in Arkansas. It’s just me and my misery left here in Larkspur.
That’s just fantastic.I was supposed to spend not just tonight, but the entire week with Bennett and his family.Now I’m completely alone.
It’s so fantastically awful that a bitter laugh bursts out of me in the middle of the parking lot. Embarrassed, I look around to see if anyone heard me. But I spent so long trying to call Bennett and waiting for him to call me back, I’m one of the last people to leave the school parking lot for the day.
I get into my car–my aunt’s old Volkswagen bug, baby blue with tan leather seats–and slam the door behind me. The charm chain Abby made for me swings wildly from my rearview mirror.
I rest my head on the steering wheel, trying to compose myself, but feeling utterly empty and defeated. I sigh, turning the key and bringing the engine roaring to life. I put the car in drive, and when I look up, I find Griffin standing across the parking lot, eyebrows drawn together in concern.
We do actually have an elective class together this semester, but we don’t acknowledge one another–I don’t know if it’s worse or better than when we didn’t see each other at all.
He’s even taller now than he was when I first met him.
Has it really only been three years? It feels like a lifetime ago.
He’s got to be pushing 6’3” at this point. It seemed like overnight the lanky boy with the boyish grin turned into…well, a man. His shoulders are broad, his jawline more defined. Not to mention the biceps constantly trying furiously to break free from the sleeves of his t-shirt.
Not that I’ve been looking.
Hastily looking away, I pull out of the parking lot without a second glance at him. I don’t want to think about how much of that he saw–I’m too busy thinking about how the most anticipated birthday week ever has turned into an utter catastrophe.
***
Griffin
November, Age 18
My heart dropped into my stomach when I opened Instagram this evening. The first photo on my feed was a picture of a cupcake with asingle candle on it.
The caption read,“18 today. Happy birthday to me.”with a pink heart emoji. No smiling face, no friends and family, no presents–just a basic cupcake that was obviously bought last-minute from the grocery store, and a candle that seems left over from the ones pictured on her cake last year.
To anyone else, this might seem like a normal, lowkey way to end a birthday. But I know better.
I could tell something was wrong when I saw Eleanor in the parking lot. I’ve never seen her unhappy on her birthday, even last year when Mr. Hawkins sprung a surprise chemistry test on us.
I desperately wanted to sprint across that lot and ask her what was wrong and how I could fix it. She looked like she needed to be held, and even though we haven’t been friends in nearly two years at this point, I wanted to be the one who was there for her.
So much has changed since that God awful day. My parents got divorced last year after my mom freaked out and decided she wasted her youth on me and dad.
I don’t think my dad saw it coming–he'd been divorced before after getting married really young, but the way he described my mom, it was like no other woman had ever existed to him. They had a whirlwind romance, and have been happily in love ever since.
Or at least I though they were.
I used to ask my mom why they never had more kids.“Because we got it right the first time, my sweet boy,”she’d always say, sealing it with a kiss on my forehead. Hearing her say that never got old. My chest would always puff out, so proud to have been so good and right that they didn’t need anything else. That illusion was shattered the day she stormed out.
I don’t think she meant for me to hear, but I swear the whole damn neighborhood heard as she yelled, “I never wanted any of this!” She might not have directly said“I never wanted you or Griffin,”but the message was loud and clear.
