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No.
Scott knew his friends weren’t as financially stable as he was, and he didn’t expect a bunch of presents or anything like that. He didn’t need anything anyway and he always felt guilty if he spent a dime on himself. Helping his friends was different, and he was happy to do it. He didn’t think that wanting to go out and enjoy a nice dinner with them was asking a lot.
Hell, he’d already been expecting to pick up the tab, and it washisdamn birthday.
There was a chance—just a small one—that perhaps his friends were taking advantage of him.
Scott dismissed the thought and decided to get out of the house for a little while. He could do some quick grocery shopping and stop by the liquor store. It was still his birthday, and if he wasn’t going to hang out with his friends tonight, he was determined to have a fun night in.
And that meant vodka.
A lot of it.
He got a lemon cake mix, cream cheese frosting, and a frozen lasagna dinner that was on sale. He didn’t feel like cooking much and decided that the cake was going to be enough effort. He headed to the liquor store next, but he didn’t get out of his car.
There was a very familiar neon green truck parked in the aisle in front of him.
It looked like Rob’s, the same Rob who was supposed to be at home tending to a stomachache.
Certainly there was more than one neon green truck in the city.
Scott’s stomach twisted when he saw it was indeed Rob, laughing and joking around with another man. Scott’s stomach twisted harder because the other man was Mathias, the same friend whose dog grooming appointment had prevented him from coming out tonight.
They’d lied to him, Scott realized miserably, and he didn’t know what to do.
Rob certainly didn’t look sick, and judging by the size of the paper bag he’d purchased, he wasn’t worried about his stomach. Mathias didn’t seem concerned about missing a grooming with the way he carried on with Rob, the pair continuing to laugh and grin as they climbed into Rob’s truck.
Scott wanted to do something.
Honk the horn at them, scream, cuss.
He wanted to call them out for having so clearly lied to him, and he hated how much his chest hurt right now. He didn’t really have any friends after all. They had been using him for his money and that was it. They didn’t care about him or his birthday. They probably never did.
Motherfuckers.
Scott couldn’t bring himself to confront them, and he doubted that Rob or Mathias even noticed he was there. He waited until they left before heading inside the liquor store to buy the biggest bottle of vodka they had.
Some great birthday this was turning out to be.
He went home and immediately got into the vodka. He wanted to be angry, but he only felt despair. It was unfathomably painful to know his friends had only been using him, and he had no clue what to do with this betrayal. The vodka numbed him somewhat, but the knot in his stomach remained no matter how much he drank.
As the hour grew late, Scott tried to get the motivation to make the cake but he didn’t feel like it. He couldn’t believe he’d let himself be taken advantage of, and he’d never felt so weak…
No.
He wasn’t weak.
He’d come from nothing and made himself into a new man. He wanted to be better than this. He wanted to be the sort of person others actually valued being around and not blow off with lame excuses about their dog or whatever. He wanted this day to mean something, and he raced around the house covering all of the mirrors in a maniacal frenzy.
His family always covered mirrors when there was a death, and Scott was determined to make this a death of sorts for himself. He wasn’t going to be that weak doormat ever again, and he wanted to use his birthday as the birth of a brand-new Scott.
Well, metaphorically anyway.
After covering the mirrors, he sent a strongly worded text message to his so-called friends telling them to pay back what they owed him immediately and not to ask for another cent. He got a litany of frantic and confused replies in response and he ignored them. He preheated the oven, stuck in the frozen lasagna, and then he took his vodka and some Twinkies with him over to the couch.
He needed something on his stomach to help soak up the booze and a box of Twinkies seemed like a good idea. The last one was a bit squished, and he realized then he’d forgotten to make his cake. He scrambled into the kitchen to search his junk drawer for a candle. He found a yellow and a half-burned green one, deciding to grab them both.
Returning to the couch with the candles and a lighter, he sighed and sat down. He stuck the mismatched candles into the Twinkie and then lit them, mumbling, “Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me… This really fucking sucks, happy birthday to me.”
