21. Timothy
Chapter twenty-one
Timothy
Three browser tabs sit open on my phone, each one a different bakery, each one a different flavor of failure. Strawberry. Vanilla. Something called "deconstructed carrot" that I clicked on by accident.
The rink schedule printout curls at one corner where I keep folding and unfolding it.
I tap cancel on the dinner reservation for the second time this week. The app doesn't even ask if I'm sure. It just does it.
Doing nothing has somehow become the least insane option on a very short list.
The lodge kitchen table looks like I'm trying to reconstruct a crime scene.
I hear the front door and don't look up fast enough.
Jenna agreed to stop by for ten minutes before work because I told her I needed birthday advice.
I failed to mention the three bakery tabs, canceled dinner reservation, and rink schedule spread across the kitchen table.
"What did the reservation do to you this time," she says, not even bothering to glance my way yet.
I angle the phone screen down toward the table, as if that has ever worked on her in the history of our lives.
Too late. She's already leaning over my shoulder, reading upside down.
"Lemon cake, with powdered sugar," she reads aloud.
"That's for the team," I say, and I hear how stupid it sounds the second it clears my mouth.
"No hockey player in the recorded history of the sport has ever requested powdered sugar on a cake," she says.
I have no comeback. Just the low hum of being caught with my hand in the metaphorical cake box.
She swipes the phone half an inch closer before I can lock the screen, smug as a magician turning over the card you swore you'd hidden.
"This is for Bethany," she says. Not a question. A verdict.
I retreat toward the counter under the flimsy cover story of needing coffee I do not need.
Jenna follows, because of course she follows, sliding into the space between me and the doorway.
The coffee maker gurgles to life, filling a silence I don't have the tools to fill myself.
"What are you trying to prove?" she asks, and there is a shift in her voice from teasing to actually meaning it.
"I just want her birthday to go well," I say, reaching for a mug I have no immediate use for.
"Good intentions don't make you qualified," she says, and the warmth in her voice does absolutely nothing to soften the hit.
Great. Noted. Sentiment revoked.
"Is this really about her birthday," Jenna says, "or about what you promised her when she was thirteen?"
Sixteen-year-old me clearly believed in follow-through more than in consequences.
"I just wanted her to stop crying," I say. "I wanted to prove the empty party didn't mean what she thought it meant."
"She remembers being rescued after everyone else failed to show up," Jenna says.
The room goes very still.
Because here's the trap. If I throw some enormous gesture at Bethany now, I risk repeating the worst part of the story instead of fixing any of it.
"I could make sure people show up this time."
"She doesn't need a crowd," Jenna says. "She doesn't need proof that birthday parties can go right."
"Then what?"
"She needs someone to notice her."
I go quiet, turning that over in my head.
It sounds so obvious.
Jenna starts rattling off examples anyway. How people assume Bethany wants to run everything because she's good at running everything.
"You're matchmaking again," I say.
"I want you two together," she says, completely unbothered, stealing my untouched mug off the counter. "But that is not my primary focus today. I want her to have a great birthday."
We end up leaning against the counter shoulder to shoulder instead of squared off, some old sibling truce settling in without either of us calling for it.
"Fine," I say. "No crowd."
"Progress," she says, and there's real affection buried somewhere under all that dry delivery.
She grabs her bag off the chair and heads for the door.
"Don't screw this up," she says on her way out.
I delete the dinner reservation. The group message. The rink idea. One swipe at a time.
My thumb hovers over a blank note.
I title it "Bethany, accurately."
Then I start listing. She double-checks everyone else's coffee order before she'll say her own. The laugh she only lets out when she forgets she is in public.
The list gets more detailed than I expect. Proof of how much I've noticed without meaning to keep score.
I'm still planning her birthday, but now on a much smaller level.
And somewhere under it all sits the question I can't answer.
Whether she wants me there at all.
***
On Bethany's birthday, the lodge still looks aggressively normal. Every time I thought about hanging up balloons or a banner, I thought about the conversation I had with Jenna and decided against it.
Bethany comes in from the cold, cheeks pink, with her clipboard tucked under one arm and a plastic supply tote in the other. She stamps the snow off her boots.
Shane says "happy birthday" and she freezes for a moment before she gives him an obligatory smile.
My friends, individually, are terrible actors.
She sets down her tote and cross her arms the second she's through the door. Her eyes do a slow sweep of the corners, checking for balloons, for streamers, for whatever ambush she's convinced is waiting.
"What is going on here?" she asks.
"Nothing," I say with satisfaction.
I feel a small guilty thrill at how well I can read her.
"Your bootroom is … clean," she says.
"Yes," I say, so smoothly I almost buy it myself.
Her shoulders stay tight as she moves from room to room, discovering the guys completed every item on the routine chore list before she arrived.
I watch her shoulders relax bit by bit. And I feel weirdly, absurdly proud of engineering an absence instead of a presence.
Strangest heist I've ever run. The crime being that nothing happens at all.
Later, I stand by the back door with the wrapped envelope in my hand.
The lemon cake is hidden behind a carton of eggs in the lodge refrigerator, which is about as subtle as I managed.
I run my thumb over the crooked wrapping paper around the envelope. It's not perfect, but hopefully exactly what she wants.
When she finishes looking over the last item on her checklist, I nod toward the back door.
“Do you have a minute?”
Her eyes narrow, but she follows me onto the covered porch.
The rink stretches beyond the railing, smooth and pale under the winter light. I set two chairs near the wall where the wind cannot reach them as easily, with a folded blanket over the back of one.
She looks from the chairs to me.
“You planned this.”
“Barely.”
She sits, then half-rises to straighten another chair beside her.
"You don't have to do that," I say.
She blinks like the sentence won't parse. Her hands settle in her lap.
I hand her the gift.
She unwraps it slowly.
Two concert tickets slide into her lap.
For one second, she only stares at them.
“You remembered?”
“You mentioned the concert three times.”
“Once.”
“Three. You also pulled up the ticket page and complained about the fees.”
Her thumb moves carefully over the printed date.
“Just to be clear, I’m not volunteering to spend three hours in a room full of people screaming lyrics I don’t know.”
“These are for me and Jenna?”
"Yes."
"Thank you. For the gift and for the day."
"I wanted you to enjoy your birthday," I say. "Instead of managing everyone else's."
It comes out plainer than anything I've said all year. I hear it out loud and I'm honestly a little startled by how true and unclever it sounds.
I resist the urge to make a joke.
Her face does something complicated. Warm, then wary.
"Is this about turning twenty-four?" she asks, arms recrossing. "The old thing. From when we were kids?"
"Back then, I wanted to make you feel better," I say. "I want you to be happy now. That's a different thing."
“You want me to be happy,” she says. “But do you want me, or do you just like taking care of people?”
“Bethany, you don’t see yourself the way I do," I say. "This might be the least smooth confession on record," I say.
I rub the back of my neck. This is all coming out wrong.
“You hum when you think you’re alone. You flip to the back of every romance novel because you need to know the ending is safe before you let yourself enjoy the middle.”
Her arms loosen.
“You noticed all that?”
“I notice a lot of things about you. And I want you. This isn’t about keeping an old promise.”
She closes the distance between us. One small step. For half a second I'm certain I've read this all wrong.
Her hand finds my sleeve first, testing whether it's real before she commits to the rest of it.
The kiss is tentative, then not. Her fingers curl into my jacket like she's decided something. Our noses bump once, badly, and she laughs into it before it goes deeper.
When we finally pull back, I blurt, "I have a cake and a candle."
Like an absolute lunatic.
"You went off-script," she says, deadpan. "For a guy with no plan, you sure know how to improvise."
I lead her back to the kitchen, where I pull the small cake from the fridge.
“Lemon?”
“You always liked lemon.”
“How would you know that?”
I hesitate.
“I used to give Jenna my lemon bars to pass to you.”
Her eyes narrow.
“Those were from you?”
“Most of them.”
“I spent years thinking Jenna was unusually generous.”
“That should have been your first clue.”
I laugh, mostly at myself, and dig the half-crushed candle out of my jacket pocket. She watches me light it with a lighter that takes four tries, clearly delighted anyway.
Her hand sits loosely in mine.
"Make a wish, Bethany."
She blows out the candle.
"What did you wish for?" I ask.
"I can't tell you, or it won't come true," she says playfully.
“Okay. Hypothetically, if someone had a birthday candle to blow out today, what might she wish for?”
She smiles up at me. “Well, it might start with another kiss.”
She doesn't have to ask me twice.