Chapter Three
Maggie
Birthdays had always been special to me.
It was the one day a year where I could bask in my slightly self-absorbed tendencies and force everyone around me to celebrate my existence.
But usually, if I wanted something really special, I had to plan it out myself. My mom tried. But her idea of a good time was a supermarket birthday cake and a few balloons.
My idea of a good time? Well, it looked something like the scene in front of me. And since Brody had come into the picture, I’d never had to worry about planning my own birthday.
He just got me in a way I didn’t think a person could. Hence, the perfect party.
“I don’t even know how you did this, but I love you for it,” I told him, staring out at Boston’s hottest restaurant now reserved solely for the occasion of my birthday party.
“Did I surprise you?” Brody leaned over to ask, wide, eager eyes pinned on me.
I stared into the dimly lit room filled with all the people I loved as the lights of the city glittered behind them. The looming arched windows set the backdrop of the city I loved so much, filling me with more emotion than I knew what to do with.
There was a table in the corner stacked with gift bags, a banner that read Happy Birthday, Maggie!, and balloons shaped like the number thirty floating all around the room.
“You did,” I confirmed with a laugh. “An impossible feat, might I add.”
“Go on,” he gestured toward the crowd. “Go be the birthday princess.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I bounded into the crowd, ready to throw myself into a night of dancing and socializing while a DJ filled the room with my favorite songs.
I had my obligatory conversations with all the guests I passed by before rushing over to the pair lingering at a candlelit table.
Even in a room full of friends, I couldn’t help but have my favorites I wanted to spend the night with.
“I can’t even believe you’re awake right now!” I wrapped my arms around Cassie when she stood up from her chair.
“Do you think I’d sleep through your birthday?” She laughed, swaying side to side as we hugged.
I saw her regularly—probably more than any normal person saw their sister-in-law—but before she was my brother’s wife, she was my best friend. And the thing about best friends? You never get tired of seeing them.
She let me go, letting me turn my sights on my older brother, ready to reward him with a dramatic squeeze of his own.
He still wasn’t much of a hugger—his wife and daughter being the only exceptions to that sentiment—making it all the more hilarious to force him into one.
“Happy birthday, Mags,” he said, giving me a sideways hug that he tried to make last longer than half a second.
“Did Lily not want to celebrate her aunt’s birthday?” I teased, wondering who had my niece, considering both her parents and grandmother were here.
“She’s with a babysitter,” Liam said through gritted teeth, taking a peek over at Cassie’s strained face. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“I told you, I’m fine,” Cassie attempted breezily. “People get babysitters all the time! I’m not freaking out about it!”
I knew Cassie well enough to say with confidence: she was totally freaking out.
“She’ll be fine, Cass,” I assured her, watching Brody approach us.
The crowd parted for him, and I swear, everyone in the room was probably halfway in love with him at first sight.
It wasn’t just that he was handsome—he was, with his dimples and puppy-dog eyes—but more than that, he embodied an easiness that few possessed.
He was the type of person to make you smile, even when it was the last thing you felt like doing.
Maybe that’s why Liam kept him around as a best friend. Brody was capable of balancing out my brother’s grumpiness like no one else I’d ever met.
“Who will be fine?” Brody slipped an arm around me, making my stomach feel like champagne bubbles from his proximity.
“Lily,” I told him at the same time Liam said, “New topic.”
Cassie exhaled and stepped closer against Liam’s side.
“Oh, yeah,” Brody nodded. “That kid’s a trooper, just like Uncle Brody. Last week, she ate an acorn. It was hilarious.”
“She what?”
“Shut up, Brody,” Liam growled, “before you give my wife a heart attack.”
“Don’t stress, Cassie,” Brody said. “It was just the little hat on top. Not the whole thing.”
Liam exhaled the weariest sigh while Cassie let out a whimper.
I pinched Brody’s arm, trying to convey that if he kept talking, we’d be revoked of our babysitting privileges.
And as much as kids freaked me out, I genuinely enjoyed spending time with Lily. I imagined it would be different, being stuck with a kid for twenty-four hours a day. Being an aunt was definitely more my speed.
Way less opportunity for me to screw her up that way.
“Let’s go sit down,” I suggested. “I might have to order one of everything on the menu if this is the only time in my life we’ll get to eat here.”
Liam and Cassie looked grateful for the suggestion, while Brody looked at me with an expression that asked, What did I say?
It wasn’t him. Liam and Cassie had just gotten neurotic since having a kid. Don’t get me wrong, they were fantastic parents—they just took that position very seriously.
Given each of their individual personalities, I couldn’t say I was entirely surprised by the development.
Brody and I, though? We didn’t have that type of lifestyle in us. We liked to have fun. Date nights and vacations. Staying up till the sun rose on days we didn’t have work. Spending Sunday afternoons drinking on the beach.
We were as far removed from the life Cassie and Liam were living as two people could possibly get, but that’s how we liked it.
I had enough responsibility in my work life without the added pressure of having to be a parent on top of it all.
“How’s your birthday been so far, Mags?” Cassie asked, sitting across from me at the table.
“You know,” I shrugged. “Work. Coffee. More work.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t take the day off!” Cassie exclaimed. “Turning thirty is a big deal!”
“How would you know?” I teased. “You’re still a baby.”
“Hey, I’m only six months younger than you,” Cassie protested with a laugh. “And anyway, I have wisdom beyond my years,” she said, batting her eyes dramatically.
Liam snorted.
“You’re right, Cass,” Brody nodded. “You give the best advice. Thanks for reminding me about renewing my registration, by the way. Apparently, it was like six months overdue.”
I rolled my eyes while Liam asked,
“How did you not already know that, man?”
This was the way we always were.
The four of us had become a unit over the last few years, in a way I’d never had before, and I couldn’t imagine ever living without it.
It was funny. You’d think setting my best friend up with my brother would make them both more distant, but actually, it sort of jump-started my relationship with my brother again.
I saw him more now than I had since we were kids. I don’t know what miracle Cassie had worked on him, but I wasn’t complaining.
And with Liam’s help, Cassie had made some insane progress of her own, though she still carried a few scars from childhood. There were some conditionings that took longer to escape from.
I saw it now, in the way her back went rigid every time her phone buzzed.
She was always expecting it to be some emergency text from the babysitter saying—I don’t know—that the house burned down?
That Lily, in all her three-year-old capability, ran away?
That an earthquake affecting only the area surrounding Liam and Cassie’s house destroyed their home?
If you could dream it, Cassie could worst-case-scenario catastrophize it.
I couldn’t say I didn’t understand where it was coming from.
She was still always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But Liam was helping her through it. And luckily, things had been calm for them the last few years. They were happy.
But old habits die hard, I guess.
“I should call the babysitter.” Cassie bit her lip, looking over to my brother.
“Nope,” he said, laying his hand on top of hers as she reached for her phone. “Everything’s fine, baby.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “You’re right.”
While they talked, I checked my phone again, the way I’d done all day.
It was stupid, waiting for a birthday text from my dad. He probably didn’t know it was today. It wasn’t his fault—dads were notorious for having bad memories. They forgot things all the time—birthdays, anniversaries, holidays. It didn’t mean they didn’t care.
Besides, he’d been gone for most of my birthdays, so the date wouldn’t really have stuck out in his brain. It was only the last few years we’d been back in contact, so it was too much to expect him to remember some random date.
Still, I felt that familiar pang of disappointment when I didn’t have any notification from him.
“Maggie!” my mother’s voice appeared right behind me.
I let out a shriek of surprise, shoving my phone away before she could see whose text thread I’d been in.
I’d made a point over the last few years that I’d been seeing him to never reference him in front of my mother. Liam barely tolerated the subject, but my mother would absolutely blow a gasket over it. She’d always been fragile when it came to him.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, standing up to give her the hug I knew she was coming over for.
“Look at my big girl,” she said, shaking me side to side. “Thirty years old! I can’t believe how fast time goes.”
“Mom—” I tried to pull away.
“Just you wait,” she pointed at Liam and Cassie, “one day they’re babies, the next they’re a fully grown woman. And no one warns you how fast it goes by.”
Cassie’s lip quivered, and I couldn’t help but laugh. My mom knew better than to pull on Cassie’s heartstrings in public.
“Look at everything you accomplished for yourself. A successful career, a loving partner. I’m so proud of you, Maggie.”
I wanted to ask her why. It wasn’t like she had anything to do with those things.
She hadn’t wanted me to be a lawyer. She cautioned me against dating one of Liam’s teammates. Everything I had, I’d done on my own.
But I wasn’t about to get into it with her. Not on my birthday.
Before I had to fumble for a way to interact with my mother in a way that didn’t make me lose my mind, Brody stepped in.
“You and me both, Diane,” he joked, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “This girl’s a gift to society.”
“And you,” my mom turned her attention on him, just like he must’ve known she would, “arranging all this? All the time it must’ve taken you—”
I mouthed a thank you at him for the escape he’d given me while my mom continued to talk his ear off. He winked, giving me the go-ahead to make a break for it before turning his full attention to her.
He was good that way. Always willing to take one for the team.
“I need you,” I said, pulling Cassie up from her chair.
“For what?”
“Don’t question the birthday girl, Cass,” I instructed. “Just do as she says.”
Cassie laughed, relenting as I pulled her toward the dance floor where the chorus of Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” was booming.
I laughed as Cassie tried and failed to dance like a normal person, but God help her, she tried.
“Just relax,” I said, grabbing her arms and moving her to the rhythm. “It’s supposed to be fun.”
“It is fun,” she lied badly. “I’m vibing.”
Friends from all of my different circles surrounded us, forming one big messy group of girls with nothing in common, but somehow we made it work.
I couldn’t believe Brody had done this. Gotten everyone here together like this, for me.
There were people here I hadn’t even thought he would think to invite, but not for the first time, he had gone above and beyond for me.
After a while, I heard his voice behind us saying to Cassie,
“Mind if I steal my girl?”
Cassie smiled at him, gesturing for him to go ahead, before slipping off into the crowd—no doubt to go find her husband, who was probably hiding in a corner somewhere.
“Having fun?” he murmured into my hair, joining in a dance with me as if it were as natural as breathing.
Cassie was my best friend, and always would be.
But Brody? We fit like puzzle pieces together, in a way I never thought I could with someone.
He understood me. Could predict what I wanted, needed—before I even knew it myself.
He was so much more than just my boyfriend.
He was my best friend.
“Any special birthday wishes?” His voice was low in my ear.
I smirked at him, shaking my head.
“Uh-uh,” I tsked. “You know the rule. If you say it out loud, it won’t come true.”
“Then think about it as hard as you can, because it’s time to blow out the candles.”
I spun in the direction he was staring, seeing a group of waiters carrying over the most elaborate cake I’d ever seen in my life.
The crowd gathered around me, filling the room with the chorus of “Happy Birthday” as I took in every detail of the night around me.
Friends. Family. Food. Love.
There was nothing more I could’ve asked for.
And when it was time to make that birthday wish, I had one thought echoing in my head:
I wish that everything could stay like this forever.
And then I blew the candles out.