Page 125 of Across His Line

I laugh. “Nothing here is expensive.”

She looks at me. “Milkshakes with Oreos?”

I nod with a smile. “Yeah.”

So I order a cookies-and-cream milkshake, then the steak and eggs. Kylie looks so proud of me I think she might cry.

Kenzie tells a story about a girl on her floor who’s been leaving passive-aggressive notes on the microwave all semester, and how she finally figured out the girl was leaving them for herself. Paige does an impression of her chemistry professor that’s so mean and so accurate that I laugh until milkshake comes out my nose, which makes everybody else laugh, which makes me laugh harder, until the waitress comes over to ask if we’re okay.

We are. We’re fine. We’re so fine.

I sit there in Kylie’s black top with my steak and eggs and my milkshake, squeezed into a booth with four girls I didn’t know in August, and I look around the table and I think, I didn’t have this last year. On my last birthday, I went to school, came home, and Dylan pushed me around, gave me eighteen punches, and told me to get a job so I can move out.

This is more. I didn’t know I could have more.

Bianca opens the bakery box. It’s a real cake, small and round, chocolate, with TESS written across the top in pink frosting, crooked, and nineteen candles jammed in so close together they look like a little forest. She lights them with a lighter she borrowed from the cook. The whole diner sings. Not just our booth. The whole diner. An old man at the counter. The cook, through the window. Two girls in a booth by the door I’ve never seen before in my life.

I blow them out in one breath. My throat doesn’t even hurt anymore.

My phone buzzes against my leg at nine-forty, while Kylie’s cutting the cake into slices with a butter knife.

I look down at it, under the table.

Mom: Happy birthday baby!! Crazy day sorry. Call u tmrw love u.

I read it once. I read it again.

Crazy day. I don’t know what that means. I never know what that means with her. But it’s fine. She remembered. It’s nine-forty, and she remembered. Some years she doesn’t.

I type back thank you love you too, and I turn the phone face down on the seat next to me. I look up, and Kylie’s holding out a piece of cake to me on a napkin.

“Biggest piece,” she says. “Birthday rule.”

I take it.

We stay until they kick us out. Then we walk back to campus in a loose, loud line, the five of us, with Paige singing something and Kenzie complaining about the cold and Bianca carrying what’s left of the cake, and Kylie hooks her arm through mine and doesn’t let go the whole way.

It’s eleven-forty when we get back to Corvin.

Kylie peels off at the second floor to go find Nash, who’s at somebody’s room on two, and she hugs me so hard my back cracks and says happy birthday into my hair one more time, and I go up to the third floor by myself.

The third floor is quiet. Most people are out, or asleep, or pretending to study. The lights are on that dim night setting. Somebody’s whiteboard says FINALS ARE A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT in purple marker.

I’m at my door with my key out when his door opens. It sticks. He yanks it. It opens.

He comes out in gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, barefoot, with a water bottle in his hand and his hair still damp, like he showered a while ago and never bothered to do anything with it. He sees me and stops.

And I stop trying to get my door open.

I’m so used to seeing Rafferty Waleska with a scowl or with vicious words leaving his mouth, but right now, I see him in a different light. I don’t know if it’s the sugar high from my birthday cake or if I’m just in a good mood, but I see him. All of him.

His arms. The way his shoulders sit under his shirt. The way he stands, easy and loose, one hand on his doorknob. It isn’t the stairwell or the rink or the cafeteria. I’m not checking his eyes to see what color they are. I’m not looking for exits. I’m just looking at him.

I blink and remember where I am. I look down at my key.

“Good birthday?” he says.

“Yeah.” I look up quickly. “It was good.”