“Cows,” Gennie cried. “It’s cows!”
Shay lifted the black-and-white beaded earrings from the box and held them up. “I have never seen anything more perfect in my whole life,” she said, a grin splitting her face. “And they’re wearing little flower crowns. I can’t believe how adorable this is.”
Gennie ran a finger over the beads. She was proud of herself and I loved that. The hours we’d dedicated to hunting down the right gift had been worth it.
She asked, “Remember when I asked if you only liked fruit and fish for earrings?”
“Suddenly it makes sense,” Shay said, laughing. She met my gaze, her eyes soft yet serious. “Thank you. This has been the best birthday. I can’t believe you did all of this for me.”
“You deserve it,” I said.
She deserved everything, even if I couldn’t be the one to give it to her.
chapternineteen
Shay
Students will be able to study the geopolitics of pantries.
I didn’t wantto leave and I couldn’t figure out why.
I had lesson plans to write for next week and a call from my mother to return but none of that was enough to get me moving. Any time in the past hour would’ve been great to make my exit. We’d shared hefty wedges of a truly delightful birthday cake while Gennie worked at charming me into attending the Harvest Festival with her and Noah this weekend. Now she was tucked away in bed after a hard-fought bath and Noah was busy insisting I wasn’t to help him with the dinner dishes.
Though I knew Gennie had been hiding something this afternoon, I hadn’t expected this wonderful little event. My heart was still overflowing from the pure joy of it. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so many good things all at once.
Birthdays were strange occasions for me. As a young kid, I’d had a few typical parties—as typical as anything was within my mother’s Upper East Side set or London’s in-crowd—but those events had always been far divorced from any emotional significance. By the time I landed in my first boarding school, I had expected nothing from a birthday. Maybe a call from my mother if she wasn’t in a remote war zone.
Later, when I came to live with Lollie, my relationship with this day turned sour. I was suddenly aware that birthdays were family events loaded with traditions and customs I’d never known. It was more comfortable to distance myself from such things than embrace them.
It drove Jaime crazy, of course. Jaime loved throwing parties of all sort. But I never let her throw me a birthday party. The idea made me squirm and I always talked her down to something simpler, something smaller. Dinner out with the girls. Cocktails at one of the posh new spots. That was enough.
Now, after this evening with Noah and Gennie, with my chest bursting from all these precious little touches, I wasn’t so sour. And I wasn’t ready to leave.
There was often a gravity associated with my visits to Noah and Gennie’s house. There was always a moment when the energy shifted—either within me or from Noah or some other source—and it was time to go. It made sense.
What goes up must come down.
I couldn’t get my hands around that moment tonight. It wasn’t there.
So, I lingered. I tidied the kitchen table while Noah packed away the leftovers. I organized his refrigerator, including the full shelf of jam experiments, while he repeatedly muttered, “You really don’t have to do that.” I wiped down the island despite the grumbly growls coming from him. And now, I felt it necessary to towel-dry the dishes after he washed them.
We hadn’t talked much since that incident at the bar last weekend. Once the initial saltiness passed, the embarrassment hit and I didn’t know what to say to him. I wanted to apologize for being a pain in the ass and crying all over his truck. He hadn’t signed up for that.
That left me back in that weird spot where it seemed as though we were shouting at each other from across a canyon, close enough to misunderstand everything yet too far apart to make the jump and close the gap.
“Where does this go?” I asked, holding up the salad bowl.
“Put it down,” he replied. “It’s your birthday and my house. For fuck’s sake, Shay, you’re not doing the dishes.”
“I want to help.” I set the bowl on the island and started drying another dish. “Thank you. Again. This was amazing. And very unexpected.”
“I can’t very well forget my wife’s birthday, can I?”
Noah did not want me to rattle off a bullet-pointed list of the reasons why this was far more than remembering my birthday. He’d sooner pick me up and toss me in my car than allow me to acknowledge that he recreated the meal Lollie prepared for most special days or Jaime’s signature birthday cake. And I couldn’t even start on the earrings. My god. I was absolutely tickled.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said easily.
He shrugged. “It was no problem.”
