She stood in the doorway to watch as Joey led me outside after I grabbed my jacket, and I tried not to be taken aback at the sight of a limousine parked against the curb in front of my house. Before we were even halfway down the driveway, the back door popped open, and Ellie stuck her head out.
“You look so hot tonight, Boo,” she catcalled as we approached. “On a scale from one to ten, damn.”
I scooted in beside her, waving to the small legion of people who’d shown up to celebrate me, which included Yosuke, Sam, and the Marmara gang that I’d begun to see more of in the couple weeks since I first opened myself up to the possibility of them. I won’t pretend we were best friends, but I found myself actually having fun with them.
Everybody seated inside was dressed relatively well; cocktail dresses and button-down shirts abounded. The Bistro had no dress code, but my party seemed to.
There was a clear distinction between the groups – my original friends and my new friends – in the limo on the way to the restaurant. For my sake, everybody tried their best to mesh in a way that was polite but not overly friendly. When we arrived at The Bistro, there was something of a mad dash inside to escape the awkwardness.
Rosetta pulled open the front door and grabbed me in a constricting hug, holding me tight against her. “Happy birthday,” she yelped with palpable excitement in her voice, pulling away and giving my guests a once-over. “Oh, don’t you all just look so nice. Julian has the back room all set up, so my bambino can take you back that way.”
As we entered our designated party space, which was covered in multicolor decorations hanging above loaded, decadent buffet tables, I paused to take it all in. More people were scattered around the room, people I’d met in the weeks I’d been hanging out with Joey. Although I barely knew them, they still showed up to celebrate with me.
The collection of people I almost knew came forward to greet the in-crowd, giving me hugs and hellos as if I were a natural member of their clique. Off to the side, my meager collection of close friends stood against the wall by the food tables, looking as out of place as I’d ever seen them. Ellie was even holding Josh’s hand, although he was pretty preoccupied with making stupid faces at a few of Joey’s friends from their school whose names I couldn’t quite remember. Yosuke stood next to them tapping away at his cell phone, and Sam was at his side, idly picking at her chipping nail polish.
I was on my way to them while the popular crowd socialized, when someone grabbed my hand and yanked me to a halt. “Come on, Ashley,” Katie giggled, pulling me in the opposite direction. “You never said hi to Michael, and he’s asking about you.” I wasn’t quite sure which one Michael was until he was standing in front of my face, giving me a hug and polluting my brain with his chit-chat.
The tables in the back room each sat six, and I got a little dose of reality when Joey and I went to set our belongings down at the middle-most one. A different group of people beat my closest friends to the punch in taking the seats around mine and Joey’s, leaving my group looking baffled a few feet away.
“Sorry guys,” Joey interrupted his friends as they draped jackets over chairs and set purses down, “but those seats are already taken.” With looks of utter disbelief, they grabbed their things again as my friends came forward to take their places at the table.
“Come on,” whined Dave, one of Joey’s friends from Corsica. “I wanted to sit and talk with you guys for a while.”
Ellie, claws out, snapped back at him, “Well, that’s just too god damn bad, now, isn’t it?” She remained unfazed when Dave sneered at her, and he went to make a rebuttal, but the victorious grin on her face was enough to shut him up before he did. He looked over to Joey in a silent request for backup, but my boyfriend pretended not to notice, commenting to Yosuke about something he’d said earlier that day in a text message. Having lost their only lifeline, Dave and his group marched to another table.
Julian and Rosetta gave us a little while to settle in before they came to organize the pandemonium that would be a hoard of hungry kids about to hit the buffet they’d set out for the occasion. They carefully uncovered all the warming trays, and it was like a slow, sensual tease each time. By the time all the wonderful, aromatic dishes were fully revealed, my appetite had increased probably tenfold in size. My stomach gurgled covetously as my table was granted first access to the bar, and I was more than ready to just grab a fork and dig right in.
I returned to my table with two plates and zero regrets.
Dinner came and went before I knew it, as did, I’m sure, my dress size. Ellie made fun of me a bit for pigging out, although she ate nearly as much as I did. I kindly reminded her that calories don’t exist on your birthday between bites of homemade, crusty Italian bread. Rosetta had taken it upon herself, as the head of the desserts at the restaurant, to make me not only a cake, but a slew of other pastries as well. I was more than stuffed already, but she’d gone through the effort and it all looked so delicious, so I found some more space in my stomach and crammed some of that in there as well.
In a really sweet surprise, a few people also brought me a couple gifts, but it was largely bittersweet. Most of them tucked cash or mall gift cards into envelopes, which was nice, but my actual friends took the time to get me real gifts, which I’d always found to be more meaningful. Any person can put some money into a card, but it took a genuine friendship to get someone an personal gift.
Sam, who shared my taste in music, bought my ticket for the Tragic Magic concert. Yosuke took an interest in my art when I showed him my sketchbook one night when we were all hanging out, and I complained that my drawing pencils were practically down to nubs. He gifted me with a set of really nice new ones, both graphite and color, and I swore I’d use them to draw him something as thanks. Ellie’s gift made me tear up a bit – she’d combed over her collection of photos of us throughout the years, printed copies of her favorites, and made me a little scrapbook that chronicled our entire friendship, from beginning to present. If I didn’t love how Mum had done my makeup, I’d have sat beside her covered in ugly mascara tears.
Joey went last, passing me a lilac-colored envelope with a smile on his face, asking politely that I not read the card aloud. My gift, he promised, would come later when he and I had a moment alone. Nervous, I tore open my card.
Ash,
I know that you and I haven’t been together for too long yet, but the time I’ve spent in your company has made me happier than I can put in words, happier than I ever knew I could be, and I believe you’re exactly what I needed in my life. You make me laugh more than anybody ever has. I trust you explicitly, enough to be my unfiltered self with you, because I’m sure you’d never judge. Being with you makes me want to become the greatest version of myself that I can possibly be, because you deserve to have the best of life, the best of me. Maybe it’s too soon to say it, but when you meet your match, you just sort of know. It’s crazy, I know, but I can’t put my feelings for you into any other words; I’ve tried, but they’re not enough.
I love you, Stellina. Happy birthday.
Joey
I’d been expecting something sentimental from him, but those-three-words swept me off my feet before I fully registered what I’d read. Nobody had ever told me that before, not that way. Of course, Mum said it, and Ellie did, too, from time to time, but it was nothing like the love of a boy who made it no secret that you were his entire world. Whatever I was feeling, it drove me from my chair and into his arms, holding him as close to me as I possibly could.
Was that what you were supposed to do when someone said that for the first time? Are you supposed to say it back to them? Because I feel like you’re supposed to say it back to them.
Of course I liked Joey a lot, but did I love him? Had enough time even passed for me to know something like that? He seemed so sure, and I felt almost bad sitting there with him questioning it, but he sat there looking at me with a smile, waiting for a decision I wasn’t sure on making. I leaned my fo
rehead against his and whispered to him, “You, too.” If he asked, I’d tell him it was in the name of keeping his message a secret like he’d asked me to, and it would pacify both him and my alternate, bickering personalities.
After a while more of hanging out, once the restaurant closed for the evening, Joey directed us back to the parking lot and into the vehicles we’d arrived in, telling my guests that anybody who was both interested and also already eighteen was welcome to meet us down at The Riot Room. It was one of our small city’s few clubs, but I’d heard it was the best of our somewhat limited selection, and I tried not to be a massive nerd about going out dancing for the first time in my life.
The atmosphere sucked me in from the very moment I stepped inside, and I didn’t know where to look first. The pulsating music was so loud that it shook the floor beneath my feet, and neon lights flashed at me from every direction. To the back was a cluster of booths, where most of our group headed so we could stash our stuff and establish something of a home base. The entire right wall was a bar, the strobe lights bouncing vibrantly off top-shelf liquor.
Without hesitation, I grabbed Ellie’s wrist in one hand and Joey’s in the other, and I dragged them with me to the dance floor, disappearing into the ocean of people.
The night passed me by in a blur. The DJ spun music on a continual loop, making it kind of hard to tell when one song ended and another began. When my feet began to scream at me in protest, I simply left my high heels with the small cluster of people at our table and returned to the floor barefoot. Joey took a break every now and again to go chat, but Ellie stuck by me the entire night, and both of us let loose our inner party animals in the name of dancing and singing the night away.
Never before had I felt so free, and although they usually butted heads, both sides of me enjoyed the time out. In the past, I dreaded my birthday because we tried so hard to seem like a normal family for my sake, but the illusion was shattered long ago, and birthdays and holidays only served as a reminder of that. With Mum being sick and Roger being Roger, the night typically consisted of a stale, mostly silent air at dinner, followed by an ice cream cake from the grocery store in town. Roger would dismiss himself to go drink, leaving either in complete silence or yelling loud obscenities. Mum would pass me gifts in colorful wrapping to try to patch the wound, and I would bring my new things to my bedroom and stay there until I fell asleep.
Suffice to say, eighteen was easily the best birthday I’d ever had.
It didn’t feel like we’d been there all that long when the DJ took a break from spinning to announce last call. Some of the kids from my party opted to stay until the lights came back on, but my group of closest friends decided to hop back in the limo and get out of there, exhausted from the festivities. Our herd thinned one by one as people were dropped off at home, and once it was just Joey and I, he asked the driver to cruise for a while so we could have some time to ourselves for what I realized was the first time that day.
I looked at my boyfriend skeptically as the middle-aged man in the front seat rolled up the partition window. “Do you have more party left in you? Because I do not.” I reclined backward, lying down on the long seat. “I just want to relax.”
Joey slid himself onto the seat beside me where Ellie had, until recently, been sitting, propping his head up with his arm against the top of the seat so he could look down at me. “Definitely not,” he told me, “but there’s still one last part of your birthday before you go home.” From his pants pocket, he pulled a small, velvet box. “You read my note, but you never got my gift.”
Sitting back upright, I took it from him, looking him in the eye before I opened it. “I assumed that, after the surely expensive party, the sweet note was my gift.”
He shook his head. “No, my parents said not to worry about the food, and the driver is a friend of my father’s, so he charged me half price for the limo. But this is just from me. I hope you don’t think all of this is creepy, Ash. It isn’t supposed to be creepy.” He was suddenly a bundle of anxious nerves. “Tell me if you think it’s creepy, because now that you’re about to see it, I can imagine how it might seem creepy. It isn’t supposed to be, and I hope you don’t think it’s creepy.”
I leaned in and silenced his babbling with a kiss before he could say the word “creepy” one more time.
Almost nervous for what could be inside, seeing how it was making him act, I popped the top open on the box to end the suspense for both of us, and lying on the cushy padding was a stunning little necklace. Hanging from a thin, silver chain was a small star pendant crafted in silver, with small purple rhinestones – my favorite color – forming something of a border around the edge of the charm. “Oh my gosh, Joey, this is beautiful,” I murmured softly.
“Flip it over to the back; I had it engraved.” He went ahead and flipped it for me, and as I held the box a little closer so I could see what had been transcribed, he spoke the words aloud as I read them. “Ti amo, Stellina.”
My knowledge of Italian was rudimentary at best, but it wasn’t so poor that I didn’t know the charm proclaimed that he loved me. He’d written it in my birthday card, but now, I had a constant reminder that I could keep with me all the time. Rendered somewhat breathless and unable to react in another way, I settled for scooting as close to him as I could, cupping his face gently in my hands. “And you want to know something? Ti amo – “ I paused, trying to remember if I’d ever learned the last part of what I wanted to say, settling eventually for narrowing my eyes and finishing my statement in English when my mind came up blank, “ – too.”
He tried his best to stifle a laugh, but his goofy smile was hard to hide as he whispered, “Close enough.” In one swift move, he closed the gap between us and kissed what little breath I’d managed to recover right back out of me again.
Once we realized how late it’d gotten and the driver dropped me off back at home, I stumbled sleepily into my house, eager to change and get into bed. Too tired to care that Mum was already in bed and Roger was once again out cold on the sofa, I shambled up the stairs, heading to my bedroom quietly so as not to wake either of them.
The oversized, brightly wrapped parcel sitting atop my covers caught my eye the moment I turned on my bedroom light. Before I could open it, I noticed a piece of loose-leaf paper rested on top, and I grabbed it before opening my gift.
To my wonderful, not-so-little little girl,
You are one of the most incredible people on this earth. Daily, you display strength I only wish I had. You’re a brave young thing, and you have never once let anything hold you back. I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you as much as I’ve wanted during the most trying years of your life, but I hope you never doubt that I love you very much, even if I’m not always coherent enough to say it. You are sweet and caring and loving, and so many other wonderful things, and I thank God every day for blessing me with an angel like yourself.
I do hope that you enjoy your presents, Love. May your canvas always be as beautiful as your soul.
Love you forever and always,
Mum
With wet eyes, I added her note to the pile of cards that I’d set on my dresser with the intent to organize in the morning when I wasn’t so tired. Tearing off the balloon-themed wrapping paper, I smiled to myself when I made sense of her last line. In addition to the shopping and pampering that morning, she’d also bought me a couple canvases, as well as a small collection of oil paints to replace the ones I told her I was running low on as we chatted over breakfast that day.
I tucked away her gift and swore I’d paint her something as a token of my appreciation first thing when I woke up in the morning. I thought over what I’d paint for her as I rubbed on some deodorant, pulled on the nearest thing that bore any semblance to pajamas, and climbed into bed. Exhausted from the day, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillows.
Chapter Fifteen
The five weeks between my birthday and the days leading up to the concert seemed to co
me and go in the blink of an eye, now that I had opened the great big can of worms that was social grace. My days in school were spent laughing with Ben and his clique, and save for Joey as my one constant, my afternoons and evenings were all spent with a plethora of different people.
So many faces that I didn’t recognize at the beginning of the school year quickly became familiar to me – friendly, even. It felt like each day yielded a new greeting in the hallways, a new partner when the day’s lesson in class called for them, a new place to sit in the cafeteria at lunch. My cell phone that seldom rang before all of this needed to be silenced before I fell asleep every night, lest the constant texts wake me up. I found myself painting and drawing and reading a lot less, delegating that time instead to going to the mall, to the movies, to parties, and everything in between. I was Marmara’s newest commodity, and I kind of enjoyed all the attention.
Still, there was nothing I could do to erase the traces of the life I was leaving behind, and I learned quickly that I needed to establish some ground rules with my new congregation of friends. One night, Ben and Jenna wanted to surprise Joey at work and go in during his break, and they swung by my house to collect me first, without giving me any warning in advance. Thankfully enough, it was still early and Roger had yet to come home from work, and the night went off without a hitch, but it was the only reminder I needed to establish that people needed to call or text me before they showed up. I cited it as a personal preference, “in case I was busy or wasn’t home at the time”, and I’d gained the social traction for people to believe that.
Although my outer shell had hardened to it, becoming accustomed to my new life and all the possibilities it held, my core was still somewhat soft, and I still wasn’t ready for people to experience those parts of me. Girls like the one they were getting to know didn’t come from abusive homes with alcoholic fathers and sick mothers. Joey was the only one to know me that intimately, the only one I trusted enough to expose my gooey insides, trusting that he wouldn’t poke or prod around too much in there, and he had yet to let me down.
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