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“There must be a new boy at the tobacco store,” he said, struggling to keep his smile up as he watched me. “Or why else would you be standing here all day?”
He left the door open for me with his kind tone, with his soft gaze, with the slightly worried brush of his fingers on my shoulder. He could sense something was wrong, something was off. I knew he wanted to help.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t.
I shrugged and forced a laugh. “Is it really so obvious?”
It was a lie. Another lie. The guilt wormed in deeper as Mason hesitated, then patted me on the back with a small smile.
I stirred back to life after that, trying as best as I could to appear normal. I did my assigned tasks. I chatted with Mason and Rian in the kitchen. I asked them questions, showed them art. Pretended everything was fine. Just fine. But I knew: there was no boy. Of course there was no boy. There was only a man.
A week later I woke up eighteen. I imagined the day a million times over before that morning. A creak of the mattress when dawn was just a pale line over the smoking chimneys. The comforter sliding slowly down my arm. Fingers working beneath a t-shirt that was his, fingers brushing against a waist that was his, smoothing against a stomach that was his, caressing breasts that were his, his, his. A whisper, hot and desperate and lustful in my ear, “Happy birthday, Aurnia.”
If the bed creaked it was only because I dragged myself out of it with a heaviness in my bones. If I was wearing his t-shirt it was only because I’d lost the energy to do laundry over the days since he’d left. If my nipples peaked and hardened, it was only because I touched myself in the long, hot shower imagining his voice in my ear. Happy fucking birthday to me.
Dublin Ink was much the same as it always was. I had expected as much. It wasn’t like Mason or Rian knew it was my birthday. I was sure it was on some piece of paperwork in some file folder in some messy cabinet in the tattoo parlour. But Mason didn’t “do” paperwork and Rian simply didn’t have the focus for it. My birthday would pass like any other day. I thought it was going to be like a doorway opening. Conor could finally see me as an adult. He could take me without shame or guilt. I could step up to him on equal footing and demand what I wanted, what my body wanted.
It was nothing like that at all. All doors remained closed. All keys thrown away.
At least my work at the shop distracted me from thinking of my birthday and, consequently, thinking of Conor. At the end of the day, the closest thing I got to a gift was Mason asking if I could run to the supply store across town before closing up. It was half an hour away on bus and that meant at least an hour of not being in Conor’s apartment. An hour of not being in his apartment without him.
My headphones were still blaring The Untouchablesat full volume when I unlocked the front door of the darkened parlour with two bags of supplies slung over my shoulders. Better to drown myself in badass rock music than my own miserable self-pity. The plan was to drop the bags off in the storeroom, grab a bottle of Moscato from Mason’s Miss Last Night stash, and hunt around for where Rian hid (misplaced?) his mushrooms. It wasn’t really a party of one when booze and drugs were involved, now was it?
The sudden chorus of “Surprise!” and the blinding flash of light sent the bags spilling from my arms. With a bellowing war cry, I held up my pepper spray as I blinked rapidly and tried to orient myself to the attack. I flinched when a big arm came around my shoulders. I was tugged into a tall, warm side. I went to jam my elbow into the nearest ribs, but a burst of laughter stopped me. I looked up at Mason, who grinned down at me before rubbing his knuckles against the top of my head.
“Happy birthday, crazy girl,” he said, tugging the pepper spray from my shaking hands.
He tossed it to Rian, who sniffed it before tossing it over his shoulder with a shrug. He walked over and came to the other side of me.
“We kind of thought you might like to celebrate your birthday,” he said. “But if you’d like to fight all of these people instead, that might be fun, too.”
“Um, I brought cupcakes, if that factors into your decision,” said a man stepping forward with a tray of delicately frosted baked goods. I stared at him and my mouth fell open when I realised who it was.
“You’re—you’re Declan Gallagher,” I stuttered.
A winning smile I’d seen a hundred times from the ring on the TV filled the man’s face. He inched forward as if still wary that I might attack him and held up the tray.
“Red velvet,” he said. “Homemade.”
“Bullshite,” Mason coughed into his arm as I took one, still stupidly staring.
Declan Fucking Gallagher glared up at Mason.
“Well, they are!” he argued. “They were made in my home, weren’t they?”
“By your chef.”
I looked between the two of them, still dumbstruck as I took a bite.
“That’s not the point,” Declan said.
“Sure it is.”
Declan’s famous temper came to play as he angrily threw up his arms, nearly sending one of the cupcakes rolling.
“What do you want me to say then?” he growled. “Chef-made?”
Mason considered this with a tilt of his head to the left and the right and then said, “Yeah, sure. I’m good with that.”
