"I haven't celebrated a birthday since," I tell her quietly. "Mine or anyone's, if I can help it. The whole month just sits on me. I get through it and then it's March and I can breathe again."
"I'm sorry." Her voice is thick, cracked at the edges. "I didn't know. I wouldn't have pushed if I'd known."
"You have nothing to be sorry about."
"I'm still sorry."
"Don't be sorry. I should have told you sooner." I look at her, this crying, beautiful person holding onto my arms like she's afraid I'll disappear, and guilt moves through me.
"I'm the one who's sorry."
I pull her to me, holding her so close it's probably too rough, but I need to feel her alive against me.
"For what?" she asks.
"For making your birthday a sad thing. February sixteenth should be a good day. It's the day you happened." I press my lips to her hair. "I just made it heavy."
She pulls back, smiling through the tears, and I love her so much I'm weak with it.
"You didn't make it heavy," she whispers, but she's lying to make me feel better, and we both know it.
She stays close, her hands moving to cup my face.
”Your mom sounds like she was incredible."
"She was."
"And she loved birthdays."
"More than anyone I've ever known."
"And the last thing she did on this earth was throw you, her only baby, the biggest one."
I hadn't thought of it that way. In eleven years, I'd thought of February sixteenth as the day she died. The day the house went so quiet. The day my father broke down crying and I realized I had no idea how to help him because I was drowning, too.
I had never once thought of it as the day after she'd spent all her remaining energy making sure her son felt celebrated. That she had chosen to use the last of what she hadon me. That she had gone to sleep happy and full and proud, and hadn't woken up in pain, hadn't suffered, hadn't been scared. That she'd had a calm, good death after a day she'd loved.
"You don't have to celebrate," she murmurs, not pushing anymore. "I understand now. We don't have to do anything."
I want to make her happy. I want to say fuck it, throw a party, let her fill my house with people and noise and cake. But I can't. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
February sixteenth is both the day of my mother's death and Lily's birthday. I can't change either of those things. I can't make the grief smaller or the love bigger or the calendar into something it isn't.
But I can hold them both. I can stand in a room where February sixteenth means loss on one side and Lily on the other and let them exist together without one canceling the other out.
"Cake at midnight?" I offer quietly. "Just us. When the fifteenth becomes the sixteenth."
Her face lights up, bright and wet and a little broken still.
"Cake at midnight," she agrees.
The thing that terrifies me isn't loving like my father. I've already accepted that. I've already made my peace with being a Holt man, with loving once and completely and without any hope of recovery. That part doesn't scare me anymore.
The thing that terrifies me is that I already love her the way my father loved my mother, in a way that won't end just because she isn't here anymore.
I'm going to spend the rest of my life knowing exactlywhat that absence feels like, because my dad has been showing me for eleven years.
I let myself hold her and be held and pretend that March isn't coming, that acceptance letters aren't coming, that the calendar doesn't exist. And I add March to the list of months I hate.
