The Birthday Girl

by Melissa de la Cruz

  He circled the backyard, having lost sight of the strange man. Luckily, no one stopped to make small talk. Well, they were mostly Ellie’s friends, and he’d already had a dozen casual conversations with most of them all weekend. He was running out of chitchat. There were too many people he didn’t recognize. His head hurt.

  * * *

  —

  What time was it? He saw Ellie by the bar and, without thinking, grabbed her phone out of her hand to check the time. She was deep in conversation with a friend from London, so didn’t notice a text had arrived on her home screen. Ellie tended to lose sight of anything in the presence of her old gay boyfriend, Blake Burberry. She swore nothing had ever happened between them, that Blake was gay, but Todd had his suspicions.

  Todd looked down and read the text.

  I’m not leaving. From a number he didn’t recognize. He went to the conversation and found the texts she’d sent, his heart sinking with every text bubble.

  Don’t do this.

  Don’t leave me.

  I need you.

  That was it. The rest of the conversation had been deleted, but she hadn’t had time to delete this.

  His heart began to pound. So he was right. Ellie was having an affair. She had to be. She was gorgeous, and they hadn’t had sex in weeks—months even. And even before then, it had been sporadic. He blamed the network, the stress, the humiliation. He’d lost his mojo, his juice, his will. He’d lost everything. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t perfect, maybe he hadn’t been the perfect husband all these years, and now he was flawed and sad and depressed and he’d let her down, that was for sure. Guilt pricked his conscience and he tried to shake it away. He didn’t want to think about what he’d done.

  But now his wife was fucking someone else.

  Maybe she was fucking that strange man, the one circling the party on the sidelines, who acted as if he were looking for something—or someone.

  Todd deleted the text in a fit of pique and crushed his napkin in his fist. He would find out. Call him out. Call them both out. He wouldn’t stand for this. Wouldn’t lose her without a fight.

  Part Two

  THE MAIN COURSE

  SEVENTEEN

  Dairy Queen(s)

  October 19

  Twenty-Four Years Ago

  9:00 P.M.

  It was the first time Leo had stood up to Mish, inviting Arnold to come with them to the club. She didn’t notice until then that she always went along with whatever Mish decreed. Arnold grinned. “The birthday girl says I can come with, so I’ll see you ladies there.”

  “You’re not coming with us right now?” asked Leo, a little deflated.

  “Naw, I got some more work to do, but I’ll catch you guys there, okay?” he said, looking apologetic. He pulled his baseball cap down low.

  “Yeah, we’ll see you, Arnold,” said Mish sarcastically, rolling her eyes to the heavens.

  Arnold saluted them and shuffled off, disappearing into the alley once again.

  “I can’t believe you said he could join us!” said Mish, as they stomped back to the car to fetch Brooks before going to the club.

  “Why can’t he? He’s nice,” said Leo. “What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s just . . .” Mish said, shrugging. “I mean, you can do so much better is all.”

  “Like your rich preppy boyfriend, you mean?” said Leo. She held her breath, thinking she had crossed a line, but Mish only nodded.

  “Exactly,” said Mish. “I mean you kissed him. Gross.”

  They walked the rest of the way back to the car in silence, but there was something new between them. Leo felt betrayed, and Mish was irritated.

  When they got to the car, Brooks was waking up. “Where’d you guys go?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “Out,” said Mish. She held up the little bottle. “For the club. Later.”

  “Sweet,” said Brooks. “I’m hungry. Is anyone else starving?”

  Mish looked at her watch. “Well, we still have a little time. Dairy Queen?”

  “Yum,” said Brooks. “Dairy Queen.”

  “We’re really showing Brooks a classy time, aren’t we?” said Leo in a snide tone. Her irritation with Mish had sobered her up.

  “Everyone goes to Dairy Queen,” said Mish.

  “That’s not true,” said Leo. “Only poor people do. Brooks, have you ever been?”

  Brooks looked sheepish. “I mean, I guess it’s kind of far from my house.”

  “See!” said Leo triumphantly.

  “Whatever!” huffed Mish.

  * * *

  —

  Dairy Queen was in a scarier part of the city, and even Leo and Mish didn’t know exactly where they were. Brooks had sobered up enough so that he drove them, but he lost a little of his bravado as they drove past boarded-up buildings and abandoned warehouses, the streets empty except for homeless people and junkies.

  Leo’s mother never cooked; she had that in common with Mish’s mom. On the rare occasions that she was home for dinner, she only made mashed potatoes from a box, which was the one thing she knew how to cook. When Leo was in elementary school, she was eligible for reduced lunch, and so she would always walk up to the cashier and give her a dime and say, “Reduced,” but then, so did Mish. Their elementary school was small and almost all the kids were on the government meal plan. There were days that school lunch was the only meal she ate. That was before her mom found a steady job at the restaurant.

  But now that they were in high school, they noticed that not everyone was on the reduced plan; in fact, most of the kids they went to school with were not. So now it mattered, and since it mattered, they chose not to eat in the cafeteria. Instead, they ate a lot of fast food, the cheaper the better. Maybe that was why she’d gained all that weight that the modeling lady told her to lose.

  “Drive through or eat in?” asked Brooks.

  “Drive,” said Leo.

  “Eat in,” said Mish. “You don’t want your car to stink.”

  “Right,” said Brooks.

  * * *

  —

  They walked inside, feeling self-conscious; the crowd was sleazy and poor, bordering on homeless, but at least they were with Brooks, who walked confidently to the counter. He paid for a few burgers and Blizzards and they slid into a booth to eat them. Mish squeezed in next to Brooks, but the table was so small that even if Leo was across from them, her knees were knocking against his. She pretended not to notice and so did he.

  Mish picked up her burger and took a huge bite. “Yum!”

  Leo’s stomach was loudly complaining, but she picked at hers, wanting Brooks to notice how different she was from his girlfriend, how she was that much more refined. So what if the only guy interested in her was the corner drug dealer. It didn’t mean Mish was better than her.

  She never asked for this, she didn’t want to be sitting underneath this fluorescent light, eating burgers made with prison-grade meat on her birthday. She thought longingly of home, and the Carvel cake, but it was only nine o’clock; there was no way her mom would be home.

  Mish and Brooks were doing that happy couple thing where he was feeding her fries and she was tucked underneath his arm, giggling, stealing kisses between bites. The sight of the two of them made her sick. She pushed her food away.

  “Not hungry?” asked Mish.

  “No, I lost my appetite,” said Leo.

  “Maybe you’re hungry for something else,” said Mish knowingly.

  “Like what?” Leo glared.

  “I don’t know, you’re the one who couldn’t wait to run off with Arnold,” said Mish.

  “Arnold? You guys were with Arnold?” said Brooks, disbelievingly. “That guy is a loser!”

  “Leo kissed him,” said Mish with a naughty smile.

  Leo’s cheeks burned but she didn’
t deny it. Even though it was barely a kiss, more like a brush of his lips against hers. It was nothing. She said so. “It was nothing.”

  Still, Brooks regarded her with new interest, and there was something like jealousy in his voice. “You and Arnold, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Leo. “He’s meeting us at the club.”

  “God, I hope not,” said Mish. She could be such a bitch sometimes.

  Leo felt something press against her knee. It was Brooks’s knee, which had knocked against hers the whole time they were sitting there, but this time, she didn’t fidget away, didn’t try to fold herself into a smaller space; she let his knee, then his thigh, slide against her knee and her thigh, so that they were pressed together, under the table.

  He looked up at her, a curious look in his eyes.

  Mish was in his arms, but he was looking right at Leo, and she knew what he was doing. He was picturing her kissing Arnold.

  She could see it in his eyes, could see what he was seeing.

  He was seeing her. He wanted her. She knew, she always knew when they wanted her. But what she didn’t know was what she would do about it.

  They finished their meal, and they went to the club.

  EIGHTEEN

  Dinner Is Served

  October 19

  The Present

  9:05 P.M.

  What’s with you?” Ellie asked impatiently. Todd had a weird look on his face but she ignored it for now; she had bigger problems than her husband’s unpredictable moods. Was he thinking about Montserrat? Or whatever floozy he was cheating on her with?

  He shook his head.

  “Can I have my phone back now?” she demanded.

  When he didn’t respond, she grabbed it out of his hand. He walked away without saying a word to her.

  She wanted to call out to him but changed her mind. Men. They were so annoying. If only she could go back in time, go back to before, she still remembered what it was like, being young, before puberty, before the catcalls and the comments and the leers and the groping hands. When she was just a kid, when she was still a person, before she became a girl. Then suddenly it all changed. She couldn’t simply wear tank tops and shorts or even sit the way she used to, spread out like a frog. Suddenly, there were all these rules to follow and she was terrible at rules. Oh, she distinctly remembered what being a teenager was like, more specifically a certain sixteenth birthday, even if she’d spent the rest of her life trying to forget. (But how could she forget the sight of blood on the floor, and the sound of screams. No. No. No. She had to forget. Damn him for texting her, for threatening to come to the party, for walking back into her life like nothing had happened.)

  She’d convinced Madison-and-Lex (Todd’s clever nickname for their party planner) that they could seat everyone in two long tables in the space between the dining and the living room, right in front of the indoor marble firepit with the newly installed chimney vent. Ellie had insisted on a formal sit-down dinner, and had almost demanded everyone wear white tie. Like at Mean Celine’s husband’s fortieth, at the Metropolitan Club in New York, or another friend’s eighteenth birthday bash for their eldest son, in their twelfth-century palazzo in Venice, complete with fireworks. But she had to be real; this was the desert, and the men were already sweating through their Mr. Turk button-downs and white pants, and the women’s colorful Pucci dresses were starting to stick to their thighs. Inside was not any better; even with the air conditioners going full blast, the floor-to-ceiling doors were left completely open for stylish effect. If she had asked them to wear white tie and tails, and ball gowns, everyone would think she was throwing a costume party.

  Still, it was gorgeous, and if it was a little crowded, who cared? They could squeeze. The two long tables were set with tall silver candelabras, and the skinny floral arrangements reached almost to the ceiling, the newest trend, instead of the usual fat and squat bouquets—so that you could actually talk to the person sitting across from you instead of trying to crane your neck over the centerpiece. Everything was white—from the flowers to the chairs, to the tablecloths and the napkins, crisp Italian linens embroidered with the Gulf House crest she’d paid a graphic designer to create (a rush order, she had paid a pretty penny to get them in time), and once the sun had set, you couldn’t tell the flowers were half-dead in the candlelight.

  “Where do we sit?”

  “Where do you want us?”

  “Who goes where?”

  Her friends crowded around her, gushing over the stunning table setting. “Anywhere! Anywhere!” she said, looking pointedly at Blake, who always insisted on place cards, even for small dinner parties, and had once sat Todd next to someone’s nanny, who had a place at a table with a ten-month-old baby. Blake had had a brief career as an ersatz reality television producer, and Todd as network president had rejected all his pilot pitches, so Blake doled out his revenge through his seating order. Todd refused ever to attend one of Blake’s events again.

  “You should sit at the head,” said Sanjay. “You’re the birthday girl.”

  “No, no, no,” said Ellie. “You sit there.” Now that the evening was in full swing, she was abashed at all the effort and expense it had taken to get to this point, and she wanted nothing more than to hide. She chose a seat in the middle of the row, between one half of the tangential couples they barely knew from the kids’ schools and an old friend from the garment trade.

  All weekend long, Ellie had wanted people to notice her, for her life to incite envy and admiration, but now that the party was under way, she felt too exposed, as if she had shown too much, had revealed too much of herself, her ambition, her desires. She had orchestrated this nine-course banquet, but now her heels hurt and she wished everyone would leave so her family could run out and grab burgers and shakes at McDonald’s.

  But whatever! They were sitting down to a nine-course meal, inspired by her favorite dishes from Nobu (granted a bit twenty-years-ago, but it was still her favorite restaurant). She had harangued her caterer to make sure she had the correct recipes until the poor woman almost had a nervous breakdown two days before the event.

  “Oh, how fun,” said the woman on her left—one of the moms from Glenwood—as a line of white-gloved attendants walked out of the kitchen, each one bearing a plate covered with a silver dome, and stood behind the chair of each guest. “Was this your idea?”

  Ellie nodded, watching as the attendants, with a dramatic flourish, leaned over and served everyone all at once, like a chorus line of backup dancers (which many of them were). Excited murmurs filled the room as the scent of white truffles filled the air. So many fucking truffles! Eighty dollars an ounce and she’d bought pounds of it! Ellie knew the price of everything (and the value of everything, ha). Another group of servers positioned themselves behind the guests once more and poured the wine. Only the best white Burgundy, a northern Chablis, chosen expressly for how hard it was to come by in the United States, and no, the servers whispered to anyone who asked, so sorry, there was no red wine to be had, no red wine at all. Never forget the Minotti couch.

  Ellie looked down at her plate, pleased, but found she couldn’t take a bite. She couldn’t eat. She was too full of anxiety and excitement and worry. Why hadn’t Harry called her back? He hadn’t even texted her back! What was going on with their deal? And where was the photographer from Vanity Fair? He was missing everything! She waved Madison over. “Has anyone from the magazine arrived?”

  “No, no one.” Madison had also acted as the publicist for the party, even though there wasn’t supposed to be any publicity since it was a private event. But in the interest of promoting the business, they still had to post everything on Instagram so that their customers would see how amazing Ellie’s lifestyle—her life—was. “What time were they supposed to be here?”

  “Now,” said Ellie with a frown. Maybe the editor had changed her mind? It happened. She had come so close
on so much good coverage—she was supposed to have a major actress on the cover of InStyle wearing a Wild & West dress, but at the last minute, they went with an actor in Ralph Lauren. Then there was the profile in the New York Times Style section, but that was killed because the writer had been an old friend and it was “against policy.” “So you can’t write about any of your old friends? What kind of bullshit is that?” she’d demanded. At a Golden Globes gifting suite last year, she had given a host of starlets wardrobes full of her clothes, with little notes to them, politely asking that if they post, they do so with the correct hashtags. But so far, only some girl no one had ever heard of, on a show no one watched, had posted a picture of herself wearing the free tank top. And the next day, all the Wild & West gift bags were listed on eBay. Bitches!

  Starlets, who needed them? she huffed.

  “Did you say something?” asked the mom—what was her name?—Chrissy? Kristi? Kristen? No, it was Kirsten. Kirsten, the part-time yoga teacher who was married to one of the founders of the largest video game company in the world.

  “No, nothing,” said Ellie. “How is your practice?”

  “Oh, it’s great,” said Kirsten, smiling because no one ever remembered what she did since her husband was the one who had the big job. “I’m going to a retreat in Baja later this month.”

  “I’ll come in and take a class sometime,” Ellie promised.

  “I’d love that! I only teach on Mondays at eleven,” said Kirsten.

  Ellie smiled. It’s not that she hated stay-at-home moms, she despised them. No, that wasn’t true—she liked them; some of her best friends were stay-at-home moms! It was the moms who pretended to work, who pretended to have something in common with her that she hated. Sorry but no, working one hour a week at a dinky yoga studio for free perks was not the same as running a multimillion-dollar company, fuck you very much. (She should really stop swearing; one of her dearest stay-at-home mom friends had a swear jar. Maybe she should get one, although when she suggested it to her family, Todd laughed and said if they did, they’d be broke by noon.) Why had she invited this insipid faux-spiritual yoga bimbo to her birthday party? Oh, right. Her daughter Zoe was kind to Giggy, who was getting terribly bullied at school. Okay, then.