Chapter 122 CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
Chapter 122 CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
AVERY
The morning was a usual Saturday at first.
That was the strange part.
Pale light pushing through the curtains in that thin, washed-out way it always did when the sky couldn’t decide whether to commit to sun. Somewhere downstairs, a cabinet closed. Water ran for a second and stopped. The house made all its familiar small sounds.I stared at the ceiling for a long time before I moved.
My body felt heavy in that specific way sleep didn’t always fix… like I had spent the night carrying something and only noticed the weight once I woke up. I pushed the blanket off eventually, sat up, and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until little bursts of color showed up behind my lids. Then I got out of bed anyway.
I went through the motions because the motions were easy and thinking was not. Washed my face. Brushed my teeth. Pulled my hair into messy bun. In the mirror, I looked like myself and not like myself at the same time, which had become a regular feature of my life and somehow still managed to unsettle me on mornings like this. I leaned on the sink for a second longer than necessary, fingers gripping porcelain, and breathed out slowly through my mouth.
It didn’t help much.
Because once the quiet settled in properly, once there was no more water running and no more busy little tasks to hide behind, the day stopped being a usual Saturday.
It became the morning of my eighteenth birthday.
I stood there with that knowledge sitting in my chest.
Eighteen.
It should have sounded bigger than it felt.
All my life, people had talked about it like a doorway… independence, adulthood, the official start of whatever came next. A number with celebration built into it. A night you were supposed to remember for the right reasons.
All I could think about was that she should have been turning eighteen with me.
Emery.
I looked away from the mirror because looking at my own face on this date felt like looking at an absence with skin on. We had always been paired by the calendar. Same day. Same countdown. Same stupid arguments about whether we were going to do one cake or two, whether we wanted dinner out or movie night in, whether turning another year older meant anything or whether it was just an excuse to eat frosting with our hands.
This was supposed to be ours.
Not mine in a quiet room with my hands braced on a bathroom sink, trying to convince myself to go downstairs and act normal.
Not mine as a day I had to survive carefully so nobody else’s kindness accidentally split me open.
Ours.
I swallowed hard and wiped my hands on the towel.
I could already predict the shape of the day if I let other people steer it. Skyler would text too many times. Leo would say something gentle and carefully worded. Jace would be excited in the pure way only little kids could manage, which would be both the best and worst part because his joy never came with pity and somehow that made it harder to hold. Someone would say happy birthday with too much softness in it. Someone would watch my face after they said it.
I didn’t want a celebration.
I wanted the hours to pass.
I wanted to get through breakfast without counting all the ways the house felt incomplete. I wanted to not imagine what she would have worn, or how she would have dragged me out of my own mood, or the exact face she would have made if she caught me trying to pretend this day was nothing. I wanted the grief to be quieter than it was. I wanted to stop feeling eighteen and abandoned in the same breath.
The truth was ugly and simple:
Turning eighteen without her didn’t feel like becoming an adult.
It felt like evidence.
Proof that time kept moving after the worst thing, whether you were ready or not. Proof that I could wake up, wash my face, put my hair up, and keep occupying space in a world that had already continued without her. Proof that I was still here to accumulate birthdays she would never reach.
I switched off the bathroom light and left my room.
Then I stepped into the hallway and started the first morning of eighteen the only way I knew how:
One careful step at a time, with her absence walking beside me.
I turned the corner into the living room and—
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
The sound hit me all at once.
Jace launched the words the loudest, both hands thrown up like he had been waiting through the entire night just to use them. Skyler was right beside him with a ridiculous party hat already on her head and her phone half-raised, clearly torn between recording and attacking me with affection. Leo stood a little behind them holding a small cake with uneven frosting and one slightly tilted candle, looking proud and nervous in equal measure. Rosa was in the kitchen doorway, smiling with her arms folded like she had supervised the whole operation and was satisfied with the result.
For a second I just froze.
Then I forced my face into something bright.
“Oh my God,” I said, and even managed a laugh. “You guys are insane.”
“Insane and effective,” Skyler declared. “You should see your face.”
Jace barreled into me before I could prepare for impact. I staggered back a step and caught him automatically, my arms wrapping around his small shoulders as he squeezed like he could physically compress the whole day into the hug.
“You’re eighteen!” he announced against my stomach. “That’s huge. That’s almost old.”
“Wow,” I said into his hair. “Thank you. Extremely flattering.”
He pulled back just enough to look up at me, eyes bright. “Did you know? Did you know we were doing this?”
“I had no idea,” I told him, and that part at least was true.
Leo carefully set the cake on the table like it might collapse under too much confidence. “We kept it small. Skyler wanted fireworks.”
“I still want fireworks,” Skyler said. “I was overruled by people with no vision.”
Rosa came over and kissed the side of my head, quick and warm. “Sit. Eat. Open things. You can pretend to be annoyed later.”
So I sat.
I smiled when they sang, even though the sound of it made something in my chest pull tight enough to hurt. I leaned forward when Leo told me to make a wish, and I blew out the candle like a girl who had one ready. I didn’t. Not one I could say out loud. The only wish in my head was impossible, and impossible wishes had a way of turning birthday candles into cruel little jokes.
Still, I clapped softly when Jace cheered like I had performed a miracle by extinguishing fire.
The cake was chocolate. I loved it for that. Skyler talked with her mouth full. Leo tried to cut even slices and failed. Jace got frosting on his chin within thirty seconds and refused to acknowledge it until Rosa wiped it off with the firm authority of someone who had raised enough children to stop asking first.
I laughed in the right places.
I let them put a paper crown on my head for one photograph and only threatened Skyler mildly when she said she was making it her official lock screen. I drank the juice Jace brought me like it was champagne. I said thank you so many times the words started to feel separate from my mouth.
If any of them noticed that my smiles landed half a second late, they were kind enough not to corner me about it.