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I make my way down the pier, anticipation pulsating in the pit of my stomach like a low brass note. His eyes never leaving mine once.
"Happy Birthday, Kingsley," I say, when I reach him, so softly, I almost think he can't hear me.
"You look so beautiful, Luna," his voice catches my name.
"You too."
His head tilts back and he laughs. "Shall we eat? I'm starving."
The meal is simple, delicious. We talk comfortably the whole time, telling stories of past birthdays.
I tell him how one time, my mother saved up for months, and we bought a giant wedding cake, and that's all we ate for months. Chipping away at a three-tiered cake, keeping the top tier in the freezer to take out the next year. But by that time, we were sosick of wedding cake that we made cake pops out of it, and gave them to our neighbors.
He tells me how his brothers never let any of them be alone on their birthdays. And how his first year working full time at Baxter, his brothers were scattered all over the world at different colleges and schools, he’d sat in his office alone. Suddenly the lights went out in his office and three men stormed into his office with balaclavas and threw a burlap bag over his head and carried him kicking and screaming out to a van, and drove him around for an hour before letting him out outside the Whitehall Gardens, where his brothers were waiting. With a birthday cake and a six-pack. They'd only gotten to spend an hour together, but it had been together. He takes out his wallet and in a zipped compartment, he pulls out a flattened beer bottle label. He turns it over in his hands, lost in the memory. "It was one of the best days ever, not just best birthdays."
Knowing he's not with them today suddenly makes me sad for him.
He catches the look in my eye and smiles. "Today is even better."
The shift in the air burns against my cheeks and I get up to grab the dessert from the fridge.
"It's just a strawberry shortcake. Luna's version." I stick a single candle in and carry it over to him. "You have to make a wish."
He closes his eyes for a second, mouthing something, and then blows out the candle.
"Did it come true?" I ask, nosy.
"Maybe I'll let you know one day."
I hand him a fork and pick up one for myself, aiming it at the cake.
He pulls the plate closer to him. "Um, where'syourplate?"
"Areyouwashing the dishes?"
"Hell no. It'smybirthday."
I tug on the plate, moving it back to the middle of the table. "So, one dirty plate it is. Each your dessert, and don’t think I'm not counting how many strawberries you've eaten."
His chuckle battles with the fire for what warms up the cottage more.
And we eat, and I wish I could know if he was remembering the first bowl of fruit that we shared.
"I have to go back tonight. To London,” he says, when the cake is half eaten.
"Okay."
"I don't want to. But I need to get back to the Jubilee next week. Everyone's worked really hard on it. I can't miss it."
"You don't have to explain, Kingsley. I didn't think you'd be here this long."
"If I could stay I would. But will you come? To the jubilee? You worked on it, too."
"I don't know, Kingsley. I don't know that I'll be welcome there. Considering..."
"Considering that you tried to protect me and Alex, and took the blame for everything. None of it actually being your fault?"
It's the first we've talked about it in the whole time he's been here. And it feels like a poison dart in the chest of my sanctuary.
