Page 28 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

“Happy birthday,” he grumbled at me.

“Thank you,” I replied, tracing him with my gaze even though he wouldn’t even look in my direction.

He walked over to a cupboard in the kitchen and opened it, revealing a handful of colorfully wrapped gifts. He shoveled them over to the table one by one and set them in the middle of the table, at which point Molly brought over my omelette and gave Taylor a kiss for good measure. I was grateful for her, because I knew she’d do whatever she could to lighten the tension.

“Pick out what you want in your omelette baby, and I’ll make it for you. Sheri, you too.”

Both Taylor and Sherelle grabbed two of the small glass bowls from the table and stacked ingredients in them, then Molly started to make them in two separate pans, clearing her own out of the second pan from the one she made mine in and then beginning theirs.

We all sat in silence at the table while Molly finished the remaining omelettes, then when everyone was served, Sherelle poured syrup over the tall stack of pancakes, then topped them with whipped cream and sprinkles and stuck a candle in the top. She lit it and presented it to me to blow, giggling.

“We sang the birthday song too early,” she said, removing the candle in order to dole out the pancakes.

After finishing my omelette and pancakes—quickly, because of the fact that we were all sitting in a painfully awkward silence—Molly pushed my gifts towards me to coax me into opening them. There were a few from Taylor, a couple from Molly, and even one from Sherelle. I started with Sherelle’s, delaying the inevitable, and it was the newest release of a game we liked to play together.

“It has a new battle royale game mode,” Sherelle said. “I can’t wait to kick your ass.”

I laughed at her. “Yeah. You wish.”

Molly got me a new jacket that I’d been looking at, and a new pair of baseball gloves, as the ones I’d been using were little more than two pieces of unsewn fabric after so much use. Taylor’s gifts were unbelievable, as expected. He got me a brand new digital camera for taking pictures to draw from, and a folding, metal-frame easel. The last gift was a photo album of the pictures we’d taken in the past ten years. He always took me with him on vacation every year, and we often had what he called ‘Brother Days’ where we would just go on a random adventure.

It made me feel lower than dirt.

Taylor had always taken such wonderful care of me, and yesterday I let him down. I hated that.

“Thank you,” I said. “All of you. These gifts are incredible.”

“Sheri and I actually have one more for you, but we’ll give it to you later at your dad’s,” Molly said. “Your dad wants us there at around two, right? The rest of the family will be there at four?”

“Well, you and Sheri will have to go separately. Tristan and I have a visit first,” Taylor replied.

“Right,” Molly said. “I almost forgot. Well that’s not a problem. We’ll clean up around here and, Tris, if you wanna leave a majority of your stuff, we’ll take it to your dad’s when we go.”

“Really? I’ll take you up on that. Thank you.”

Molly nodded and smiled at me. “Of course.”

I couldn’t help but smile back at her. Taylor was really lucky to have such an awesome girlfriend. It made me jealous all over again.

“If you’re done, you should go get ready to leave,” Taylor said, still not looking at me.

“Yeah. Okay.” I reached out for my plate, but Sherelle pushed my hand away and collected it, stacking it on top of her own before grabbing a few more empty dishes and standing up from the table. “Thanks,” I murmured, then stood up and trudged off.

After getting dressed and packing up my stuff for Molly and Sherelle to transfer back to my dad’s house, I met Taylor in the garage so we could leave. Since I’d driven and Molly would be driving to my dad’s house, we decided to take my car, but I let Taylor drive as he knew the way much better than me. He got into the driver’s seat and opened the garage, and we were off.

In a terrible, poisonous silence.

I was too nervous to even play some music using the aux cord, but given how long the trip was, I knew we would never be able to survive that way. So as scary as it was, I finally cleared my throat.

“I need you to say something or do something or… something,” I snapped. “I can’t take you being mad at me. I can’t deal with it.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Taylor said. “I’m frustrated. I knew that you had those nasty friends, and I assumed you had to be falling into their antics a little bit in order to be their friends, but I had no idea you werethatbad. I mean… I hated guys like you in high school. And you should have seen the look on Aria’s face. She was crushed. I just didn’t think you were that guy.”

“I’m not that guy,” I replied.

“You are that guy. I saw it with my own eyes. I heard what you said with my own ears.”

I stared at him with desperation. “I didn’t have a choice.”

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