Page 106 of Catching My Dreams

“I don’t need everyone in here looking at me while I awkwardly smile down at some cake,” Ella said with a barely suppressed shudder. She never knew where to look or what to do while everyone sang off-key around her.

Choreographed cheer routines she could do. Getting sung to in a public spectacle, not so much.

“Uh, about that…” Chris said, but it was too late.

Their waiter emerged from the doors leading to the kitchen, holding a piece of cake with a lit candle shoved into it, and started singing.

Ella couldn’t help it. She looked at Riley and Chris, who were wearing matching grimaces, and she burst out laughing. Her birthday had been far from perfect, from her tense phone call with her parents to her having to watch and cheer from the sidelines at another one of Noah’s games, but this moment came close to making her forget about the boy who’d broken her heart more than once.

She’d been unable to fake happiness while she and her grandmother had their nails painted a shade of mint green. Or while they shared a piece of chocolate cake at their favorite café and she tried to ignore the fact that Noah had promised he’d be there too. But she didn’t have to fake her smile now.

She didn’t even care that the whole restaurant was peering over their shoulders and straining their necks to look at her. She didn’t even care that their waiter had the face of a model but the voice of a dying cat. The looks on her friend’s faces were priceless, and the way Asher had smacked his hand over his face was too hilarious not to giggle at.

It was perfectly imperfect, and though Ella was full from the pasta she’d barely been able to finish, she ate the slice of vanilla cake with enthusiasm. She’d lost Noah, and she wouldn’t be getting over him any time soon, but she had these three incredible people.

It was enough. They were enough.

Her heart still felt like it had been put into a meat grinder, but with them by her side, Ella would find a way to be okay. Not that day. Maybe not in a month or even two. But eventually.

She might have been hiding out in Riley’s pool house, too afraid of being caught alone in her house by Brett, and she might not have gotten a good night’s sleep in two weeks, but she hadn’t broken. She wasn’t exactly okay, but she was surviving.

And she would keep surviving until the day it didn’t hurt so much. Until the day she wouldn’t miss Noah anymore.

“I’m so sorry,” Riley groaned once Ella had polished off the slice of cake with a little help from all of them.

“It’s okay,” she assured the lavender-haired woman. “Your face when they started singing made it totally worth it.”

Riley chuckled before sending a half-hearted glare to her boyfriend. “Thanks for telling us, by the way.”

Asher lifted his hands. “Hey, don’t blame me. When did you even tell the waiter it was Ella’s birthday?”

“While Ella was in the bathroom,” Riley replied. “You were on the phone with your mom, and I guess you didn’t hear us tell him.”

Asher sighed and responded with a quip that Ella didn’t hear. Her eyes caught on someone sitting at a table on the other side of the restaurant.

Brett’s angry gaze met hers, and then he was gone. It was over so quickly that Ella had to wonder if what she’d seen was real.

She’d barely had time to react to his presence, her muscles scarcely having tensed before he’d vanished again. She swallowed, her eyes still locked on the empty table he’d been sitting at. This was the first time she’d seen him since the motel—dreams included—and it had her palms sweating and her pulse racing.

“Ella?” Asher asked, his raised voice breaking through her daze. He looked over his shoulder, trying to find whatever held her attention, but he couldn’t find it. “What’s wrong?”

She forced a smile, but the corners of her lips wavered. “Nothing.”

“Why don’t we get going?” Riley suggested, sending her own look over her shoulder.

She looked as jittery as Ella felt when she turned back to face her and Chris, and Ella could see it in her face—Riley had sensed Brett’s presence. Maybe she still did.

“Good idea,” Ella agreed, already standing up and picking up the box set of Jane Austen novels.

The others grabbed the rest of her gifts, and they left the restaurant. Chris and Asher must have caught on to the fact that something was wrong because they kept glancing around until they reached Asher’s hatchback, which was thankfully parked not far from the restaurant and a few spots from Chris’s car.

“You okay?” Chris asked Ella, handing her the gift bag he’d been carrying.

“I’m good.”

His frown said he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t press further. He nodded and gave her a hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Ella smiled, and it felt stronger than her previous attempt. “See you tomorrow. Thanks again for the mug. It’s perfect.”

---