Chapter 38 #2
She grins, kissing my nose, and the laugh that bubbles up from my chest feels like glitter. “Show me what you got, Harry.”
Sitting up, I twist around, rooting through my bags. I pull out a small cooler filled with Dr Pepper and ginger ale, a bag of Sophie’s jelly beans, already mixed, assorted other snacks, and two small cupcake boxes, one pink and one purple.
“Okay,” I say, handing the pink box to Sophie and keeping the purple one for myself.
“I really hate this, but I was on a tight timeline, and I didn’t have time to bake, so for the first time in eighteen years, I bought a cupcake from a store.
Well, two cupcakes, because we each need to have one.
The internet told me this store had the very best cupcakes in the entire city of Pittsburgh, but I have my doubts. ”
Sophie laughs. “Mine definitely won’t be as good, but you’re coming out ahead in this scenario because my cupcake baking skills leave a lot to be desired.”
Reaching over, I run a hand down her cheek. “Your cupcakes are perfect, just like you.”
She snorts, reaching over and flipping open my box, looking down at the cupcake I bought for myself that does actually look really fucking good. “Now that’s what a Funfetti cupcake should look like.”
I shake my head. “I beg to differ, and because I missed out on your cupcake this year, next year, you’re making me two.”
When Sophie smiles, it lights up the entire room. “You really do love me.”
I grin right back, flipping open the box in her hands to reveal the extremely sad excuse for a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting. Next year I’m totally upping my game to make up for this travesty in baked good form. “Baby, you have no fucking idea. On three?” I ask.
“On three,” she says, her smile widening to a grin.
“One.” At my count, we each take out our cupcake and toss the box to the side, removing the candle I stuck in each before the bakery boxed them up and licking off the frosting.
My cock immediately hardens at the way Sophie’s tongue looks licking up the candle, and I wonder for the millionth time how it’s possible I was in the presence of this extreme hotness for all these years and didn’t notice.
I’ll be spending the rest of my life making up for that unforgivable oversight, I swear to god.
“Two,” Sophie counts, and we both peel down the wrapper on one side.
“Three,” we say together, linking arms and taking a bite. It’s the same newlywed-like bite we’ve taken eighteen times now, but this is the first year I wonder what it would be like to link arms to take a bite of an actual wedding cake, and I find I like that thought. I like it a whole lot.
“I mean, it’s no Tyler Hansley cupcake,” Sophie says with her mouth full. “But it’s not bad.”
“This one sucks,” I declare, dropping it back into the box. “I never want a Funfetti cupcake you don’t make for the rest of my life.”
She laughs. “You are so, so obsessed with me.”
“Be absolutely sure I am. Completely, utterly obsessed.” Reaching behind me, I take a massive, wrapped present out of one of the bags and hand it to her.
“No way,” she squeals, seeing the pink wrapping paper covered in cupcakes. “It’s the same wrapping paper from our eighteenth birthday. How did you even find this?”
“Tracked it down a few weeks ago. I don’t know. Something about that birthday night felt important. Transformative, somehow. So does this one.” I shrug. “I liked the symmetry.”
Sophie studies me thoughtfully. “That night, you rubbed frosting off my face and then sucked the frosting off your finger and I almost spontaneously combusted. I probably should have known then that I would never be able to resist you. All that cocky hotness covering the gooiest center and softest heart of all.”
Lifting her hand, I kiss every one of her fingers, then do the same on the other hand. “We were always going to end up here, Soph. We were always going to be an us. We’re inevitable. Irresistible.” I grin at her. “Irresistibly us.”
Sophie grins back. “I love every inch of you,” she says, turning her attention to the present and tearing the wrapping paper to shreds in the way that never fails to make me laugh.
And then she freezes, her breath hitching as she stares down at it.
“Tyler,” she whispers, breath catching. “Oh, my god.”
I watch her take in the giant frame, divided into twenty-eight sections.
In each section is a picture of us, starting from the month we were born, all the way to last week.
And in every picture, I’m looking at her.
Twenty-eight pictures for twenty-seven years of friendship, my head turned her way in every single one.
“How did you find all these?” she asks incredulously, her eyes moving over the frame.
“My mom gave me that one a couple of months ago.” I point to a picture of us at age thirteen, sitting on the Sullivans’ living room couch, a giant bowl of popcorn between us and the DVD cover for When Harry Met Sally on the coffee table just inside the frame.
Her head is thrown back in laughter, and my eyes are fixed on her, looking at her like she hung the moon.
“I wondered if there were more like that, so I did a deep dive though all my pictures, then my parents’ and your parents’ too.
Maddy found the one of us from the Bahamas trip we all took when we were seventeen and we made that ill-advised parasailing decision, and Cam had the one from my first year in the league when you basically stormed the field after my first playoff win.
Amelia came in clutch with the one of us by Make Way for Ducklings from when we all went to visit the Wyles a few years ago, and Grandma had the one from Christmas the year we were sixteen. ”
Putting a finger under her chin, I lift her head until she’s looking at me, her eyes drenched in emotion, the love that lives there enough to sustain me for the rest of my days.
“I was always looking at you, Soph. Even when I didn’t know it or understand why.
You’ve been my best friend for my entire life, my favorite, most important person, and I know with absolute certainty that you were always, always, always meant to be mine. ”