Birthday(52)

This new Taco Bell is all black and chrome, all open space rather than the frosted glass partitions I remember from the old one. Everything’s changing, me along with it. I take my place in line and watch a kid I recognize from school pressing quesadillas.

I’ve stood still for so long—my whole life. My feet planted right where Dad wanted them to be, all in the hope that if I did everything right then everything would turn out all right. To me, the universe was a simple machine where a person put in effort and compliance and got out peace and happiness. But then there was Morgan’s suicide attempt, and then the divorce, and now I understand that effort and outcome have nothing much to do with each other.

Morgan’s mom, Donna, was one of the nicest people I ever knew. Now she’s dead. Morgan worked harder than I ever did at football, and I think he really used to love it, but forcing himself into that role almost killed him. I think Mom might have spent my whole life trying to hold our family together against the tectonic force of Dad’s ego, and now she’s god knows where. It’s all chaos, and the rain soaks everybody, and if you think about it too hard, it’s almost too cruel to bear.

But what were the odds two families as different as mine and Morgan’s would have weaved together the way they did, if only for the time they did? What were the odds of that snowstorm seventeen years ago? Of two families trapped in the hospital? Maybe that’s what life is about: surviving what you can’t control and clinging to the good things the winds whip up.

Grabbing my tacos, I find a sunlit corner booth and I open my laptop when a text from Morgan comes in.

Hey, it reads. Happy birthday! I know we didn’t make solid plans, but what’s your current sitch? No rush, but obviously I have to see you before midnight. There’s something I want to tell you. In person.

Something he wants to tell me? I immediately worry that something’s wrong, but it doesn’t feel like that’s the case, and I’ve learned to trust my gut where he’s concerned. I eat a taco and stare out the glass window. A crow hops on the pavement, chasing away sparrows in its search of food. I swallow even though I don’t feel hungry anymore.

I want to be a good friend. I want to be trusted, and to know what’s wrong. I start to text Morgan back when the restaurant door opens and familiar voices bubble through it.

“And she still has a flip phone,” Tina, one of the cheerleaders, says with a cruel laugh as she walks toward the register. “Can you imagine? Come on.”

The other girls laugh. I look up with a wince to find Susan and her friends. She notices me and confusion passes over her face, then anger. I wave and force a smile. She crosses the dining room through shafts of golden afternoon light, every inch the beauty who swept me off my feet two years ago. Without even a hello, she sits across from me, adjusting her ponytail.

“What the hell, Eric?” she says, her voice low. “What are you even doing here?”

I look down at my hands and pick the callus on one of my fingertips, caught in my own lie. “Practice ended early?”

“Seriously?” she says. She folds her hands and looks down at them, then back up at me with a hard stare. “Could you at least do me the favor of lying well? I know you weren’t at practice. We dropped by the field so Adria could grab something from Nate. I’d hoped that you’d at least have the decency to give me a good excuse.” She rubs the bridge of her nose and shakes her head. “You could have just said, ‘It’s my birthday and I didn’t want to go.’”

“Well,” I say meekly. I brush a few crumbs off the table as my gaze drifts out to the parking lot and the street beyond. “It is my birthday, and I didn’t want to go…”

“And if you hadn’t lied that would be fine. More or less,” Susan says. She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “What’s up with you, Eric?”

I sigh.

“I don’t want to play football anymore,” I say, almost embarrassed to admit it, especially to her, because we both know what it means—no football equals no scholarships, and no scholarship means we’re not going to college together. Her lips twist in understanding.

“Okay.” There’s a moment where her voice tightens and cracks, and she rubs her eyes once. Her lips thin into a line. I’m afraid she might cry. But then she breathes in sharply and nods slowly. “I get it.”

“You do?” I ask sheepishly.

“This isn’t working,” she says. Her voice sounds dull. She buries the lower half of her face in folded arms and looks down at the table.

“What’s not working?” I say nervously.

“Us. Together.” She winces.

“Wait. Are you breaking up with me?” I say.

“I guess maybe I am,” Susan replies.

My fingers comb through my hair and I let out a long, sputtering, tired breath. I think of Mom and Dad suddenly, and all their screaming matches over the years. My head fills with images of Mom packing a suitcase, tears streaming down her face while Dad stomps after her. There were the knock-down, drag-out fights and silences that I could only escape from with music. Something in me keeps waiting for one of us to scream and I feel like I should at least be mad at her for doing this on my birthday of all days, but I can’t build up the anger. I don’t want to make her stay in something she doesn’t want to be in, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think I want to be in this either.