Chapter 5
“Happy birthday to you!”
My eyes snap open under faux lashes, the kind you can see while wearing them, luscious and black. I gasp. Not only at the sparkler sizzling from the chocolate lava cake on the huge square table before me—bright and alive—but at the memory of this precise moment.
I’ve been here before.
And I’m here again, in the heart of West Hollywood, at a posh Japanese sushi hotspot overlooking the Sunset Strip.
Unanimously picked by my friends as the venue for my twenty-first birthday.
A black stretch limo scooped us up at the sorority house like the dollops of youth and vitality that we were.
How come no one takes limousines anymore? Limos need to come back.
I take in the restaurant, the scene flickering around me like a favorite movie I haven’t seen in too long. It’s exclusive, design-forward, thrumming, exactly how I remember it. I can feel the energy in my chest, buzzing under the sequins.
My gaze drops, and I smile to see the hot pink strapless number adhered to my frame. It’s still stashed in the back of our walk-in closet at home, a relic of this precious night.
This dress is so crazy short, I think. And I love it so much.
Then I cover my mouth, agape at the sight of the slim bronzed thighs of a twenty-one-year-old.
Somebody else’s, surely? Nope. These are them, all right—the very same legs that have carried me through so much.
Down the aisle, into meetings, onto that fated pickleball court.
I run my thumb over the scar from a mole removed from my right quad in childhood.
Touch the knees that don’t creak yet if I dare jump without a stretch.
Marvel that they’ve never felt the shooting pangs of pregnancy-induced sciatica.
Gawking, I pinch the skin, unable to create lumps or texture no matter how hard I squeeze.
Legs without ripples. It’s almost boring.
But it worked. I’m officially young again. Or so it appears.
I tally the faces populating our private room, marked by metallic wall art and gleaming woods.
The gorgeous girls all wear white, angel-like in the dim lighting.
Remnants of a sushi feast litter the table in half-eaten rainbows and bowls of edamame husks.
Waiters swoop in to clear the plates as the serenading proceeds.
“Happy birthday to Sutton . . . Happy birthday to you!”
“Make a wish!” they cry in the practiced harmony of a sisterhood, hands clapping, eyes dancing to the beat of the live DJ’s music booming from the heart of the restaurant.
Eighteen girls, I count quickly, heart tightening. Surrounded by the most wonderful women, both then and “now.” How did I get so lucky?
“What does Sutton Lancaster even wish for, anyway?” says a voice.
My eyes dance up to Eve’s wide smile, dimples cutting into her olive cheeks. Athlete strong and classically beautiful, she’s at USC on a soccer scholarship. Two kids. San Diego. Corporate attorney. Married a Navy Seal. “The girl who has . . . everything,” she sings.
Courtney sits next to her, chestnut hair, straight nose, dancer’s poise. A broadcast journalism major. My pulse leaps in pride at still knowing her. Emmy-winning journalist. Newly married. Now pregnant. Currently running for US Senate.
And finally, I feel that familiar squeeze of my hand, not needing to angle my gaze to see that it’s Quinn. Always here, at my side, usually on the left. I pivot to take her in, smiling.
“Well, what are you going to wish for?” she whispers.
Her voice is perky, missing that bitter edge that so often marks it in present day—clear and funny, always, but brought down a few keys in full adulthood.
She has the same raven hair and naturally pouty lips at twenty-one as forty, but I crush her hand back and swallow when I read her eyes.
I see youthful hope, joy, and confidence.
I am comforted by their spark but saddened that it takes me one second to note what the years have done to my friend.
What Alan has done to her.
Then again, what have the years done to me?
I force myself to keep smiling, daunted by the challenge of making a new wish so soon. Only one thought comes to mind: I hope to make the most of this whole balloon experiment and understand what it possibly means.
I blow out the flame. “You know I can’t tell you my wish,” I whisper back to Quinn. “But I can promise, it’s nothing I’ve ever wished before.”
Applause and squeals swell from the table as five more lava cakes appear with vanilla ice cream. It’s then I hear a voice to my right, and I freeze, watching what’s left of the birthday sparkler swirl and then disappear.
“I just have a feeling something great is going to happen tonight,” coos Camila.
I swallow.
Somewhere, over the rainbow . . .
No, no, no. Not now.
I hear it anyway, though—I can’t not hear it. Camila’s daughter’s voice echoing through the chapel during her funeral service, the cry of a girl missing her mom, her dark hair in a low ponytail because Camila was no longer there to plait-and-bow it into a masterpiece.
Somewhere . . .
Here again, next to me.
I gulp, determined to keep the small room from spinning.
Camila is sitting beside me. Blood flowing, heart beating, alive.
Unable to help myself, I turn, hurling my arms around her neck in a noose of affection. “Cam,” I say into her golden-brown hair. “I miss you.” I don’t mean to speak the words or seize her face—but I do both with obvious zest.
“Miss me?” She grips my wrists. “I’m right here. I sleep in the bunk below you, dork. Can’t get rid of me, honestly.”
Don’t say that, Camila.
Don’t ever say that.
I’d never want to get rid of you.
Her eyes dazzle. Round and dark against her light-brown skin.
She is the class-and-sass combo defined.
The temper of her Mexican mother, she says, but the stately elegance of her Scandinavian father.
They met in Nicaragua, back in the eighties, on his spring break from San Diego State.
It was the only origin story that could possibly suit her. Her dress is snakeskin, her heels high.
“Just sentimental, I guess.” I wave a hand, which I see is neatly manicured in hot pink. “You know. Birthdays!”
“Where to next?” Eve’s voice bounces across the room like a soccer ball. “Limo on Sunset? Night is our oyster, birthday girl!” She sips the start of a second pink cocktail.
“The outdoor lounge looks amazing,” shouts Quinn, nodding toward the second-story terrace on the other side of the wall from us. “I say we start here?”
From the vibey veranda hums a dance mix of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful.” I smile. This was such a song of the year.
My year.
Our year.
I close my eyes, and I’m mentally back there, allowing myself to slide into the memory of the original March 15th that changed everything. Though how could I have possibly known it?
“Perfect, yes!” I shouted to Quinn, to everyone, the first time living this night. “Outdoor patio it is!” We finished dessert, Camila paid the bill, and we trailed out the door to the spring balm of a Los Angeles night.
On that same terrace nineteen years ago—the one just outside from us now—fire lamps blazed and bodies hummed.
White blooms spilled from pots, interspersed with sleek couches and marble ottomans.
I linked my arm into Quinn’s as we wove our way to the balcony’s overhang, losing a trail of girls to the dance floor along the way.
Below us flowed Sunset Boulevard and beyond sparkled all of LA.
We paused in the pocket of quiet together, two best friends, leaning on the banister and taking in the view.
Downtown glittered, far off to the left, and closer flashed giant billboards, busy hotels, pink and orange lights. The evening did feel magical. Special.
I just have a feeling something great is going to happen tonight.
“You think you’ll do it?” Quinn asked wistfully. “Shoot for the moon? Stay here? Act? Take this city by storm?”
I smiled.
Who knew?
I’d chosen to double major in theater and communications, unable to shake my dad’s insistence on some kind of backup plan.
Unexpectedly, I’d fallen in love with costume and set design in my theater studies, though—and wondered if my passions and degrees could somehow, someday braid together to mean something.
But first, I had to try acting, didn’t I?
At the time, I assumed I would. Meeting Reid rewrote my plans; as almost newlyweds, we sensed the need for stability, salaries.
Our future together was everything, so acting drifted away from me with the stars, leaving me grounded.
“I have a feeling I’ll stay in LA,” I answered Quinn finally, shrugging. “I have a year to decide, right?” One more year of college.
Quinn leaned her head on my shoulder. “I can picture you on a billboard.” She pointed. “That one. Maybe in a little more clothing, though. I mean—if you want. I support you either way.”
I cackled at the male underwear model, the severity of his Calvin Klein gaze and miniature state of his boxer briefs—but also couldn’t help admiring the artful cut of both his abs and his jaw.
What was it like for a guy to be plastered all over LA—maybe the country—in twenty feet of undress?
Did he love it? Laugh? So intense, his expression.
“Thank you for tonight,” I said to Quinn, into the silence. “This is just magical.”
“You deserve it all.” She hip-bumped me. “Ready to dance?”
“Born ready.”
We spun to face the scene, our white-clad throng of girlfriends unmissable, hands in the air, intoxicated with mostly each other. Quinn disappeared into the crowd, and I was attempting to trail her when a body appeared—aggressively, suddenly, male, and right in my way.
“Oh—ow!” I halted, stammering, pressing into his weight, and nearly rolling an ankle.
“I am so sorry,” the voice asserted, gravelly.
I looked up, rendered immobile, the eye contact hot and abrupt. Gulping, I registered blue eyes, dark-blond hair, the slightest cleft chin. The hint of nine-o’-clock stubble.
Whoa, I thought. Handsome.
I noted that he wore a black suit.
Handsome and fancy.
“I am so sorry,” he insisted again, tossing back one thumb like a hitchhiker toward a group of fellow suits laughing into their cocktails. “That was so rude. And—well, they’re drunk. But—I’m not. Are you okay?”
At his touch, I felt my whole body relax into wax despite the restriction of my sequined dress. “Yes. I’m fine. No worries.”
“They pushed me into you on a bet,” he explained, cheeks reddening.
“A bet?”
He explained that his friends had insisted I must be out for my bachelorette party—but he said no way.
If it were my bachelorette party, I’d be the one in white and my friends would be wearing pink.
Not the other way around. Plus, no sash; a bachelorette needed a sash.
Maybe even a crown. He refused to guess my age out of politeness, but admitted I looked young to be getting married. This was LA, after all.
Lastly, he pointed out, I was not wearing a ring.
I remember tracing my ring finger, thrilled that he’d noticed. Then I tossed up both hands.
“Well, you win!” I winked. “Go tell them. It’s my birthday.”
“Aww. Happy birthday!” He didn’t budge toward his buddies, though. Instead, he asked if he could buy me a birthday drink.
“I suppose,” I decided. “Two questions first?”
He confirmed that winning the bet would earn him cash to take me out on a date.
And he told me his name was Reid.
“Sutton!” Quinn yaps, jabbing me with a finger, back to attention, out of the night I met Reid. “What do you think? Stay here on the rooftop or go hit the town?”
“Ouch!” I touch the rib she just poked. It’s too bony. Yep, still twenty-one—for the second time.
We’re still at the table, debating our next party move.
But I’m not done reminiscing about Reid’s young hand taking mine and his soft kiss on my cheek at the end of the evening.
I can still see the note I scribbled for him on the napkin along with my phone number, because he’d left his phone in the car.
Best bachelorette party ever, I wrote. Xx!
We talked and danced and locked into each other like clasps.
I’d never kiss another man after that night—I’d never need or want to.
He was it for me. That night I forgot the other guy—Holden—who’d just broken my heart, because Reid opened it up again.
My dreams, as I’d known them, changed, irreversibly. That night became my whole life.
But now—back in this private room for my twenty-first birthday, round two, almost twenty years later—I hear myself respond as if outside my own will.
There won’t be a rooftop meeting in this world.
“We have a limo!” I squeal. “I say let’s take it down Sunset and see where the night goes!
” Even as I say it, my gaze dances in the direction of the patio.
Would Reid be there now, if I went searching?
I imagine so and sense a pang in my heart but also a fresh unfolding, especially at the smiles of the lively girlfriends around me.
I shimmy my shoulders, releasing the curiosity—and it’s as if a velvet curtain drops down between me and that rooftop, between me and Reid, between me and the road previously taken.
A brand-new show will go on. “Let’s take a picture before we go,” I insist, reaching below my seat to retrieve my white Louis Vuitton Speedy.
I forgot about this bag! What a gem. Mental note to use it more. Before the twins try to steal it. I root in the bag for my iPhone, but my nails scrape against something round and plastic instead. Something dotted, with holes.
I peer down at—deep breath—the pickleball.
I shove it beneath a small makeup case before anyone can take notice.
Realization dawns then, quite dumbly, that I won’t be finding an iPhone anytime soon.
Not for a few more years at least. My fingers touch metal, and I laugh out loud, brushing the surface of my Canon digital camera, shiny and black, all the rage.
I flag down a waiter and ask if he’d mind taking our picture.
He snaps one of the group—and then one of me, Quinn, and Camila. Three best friends. I’d get the photos printed, as always. The second one still hangs, framed, in my closet. And now, we’re back as we should be, together, ready to live the night.