Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
GAGE
Gage arrived just past seven.
He had planned to go to the restaurant they’d agreed on, but her text had made him change direction.
BEA: Come here first please.
He stepped into the lobby of Mayfield Hall, its marble floors and tall white columns exactly as he remembered. The place hadn’t changed. It was still the most lux student residence on campus—arched windows, crown molding, an air of quiet legacy dressed up as modern refinement.
The elevator climbed to the top floor. The hallway was silent. Familiar.
He knocked once.
The door opened. Georgina grinned, then stepped back to let him in.
And for a moment, he didn’t speak.
The furniture had been pushed to the walls.
In the center of the room, two folding tables stood side by side, draped in clashing cartoon tablecloths—bright yellows and reds, one with balloons.
Uneven streamers clung to the ceiling, held up by clear hooks and a few desperate strips of tape.
A rainbow of balloons floated at different heights, their ribbons tangled around lamp bases and door handles.
Along the far wall, a glitter-covered banner stretched proudly, one edge sagging just a little under its own weight:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GAGE (the pre-corporate party)
The lighting was warm and slightly too low. The music was undignified, the kind he’d heard his peers listen to in middle school.
One of the folding tables was covered on one side in homemade party food.
Chicken nuggets with toothpicks stuck in them.
Pizza bagels beside a bowl of honey mustard.
Cheese puffs spilling out of a too-small bowl.
Rainbow fruit skewers leaning like dominos.
Juice boxes arranged in a lopsided pyramid.
Goldfish crackers. Gummy bears in mismatched plastic cups.
He didn’t recognize the scent. The mess. The warmth. But somehow, it felt like something he should have remembered.
And in the center of it all, standing near a cookie-decorating table already dusted in sugar and flour, stood Bea. Barefoot. In jeans, her cardigan slipping off one shoulder. Her hair was pulled up loosely, a few strands falling out.
She looked up, saw him, and grinned. “Hey,” she said, still fiddling with something at the table. “One sec. You’re late. Birthday-boy protocol says you get a penalty. I’ll have to think of one.”
Georgie pushed him inside. His feet moved until he was in the middle of the room.
Behind him, Georgina picked up a juice box, sipping it like it was something far more expensive. She put on a cone-shaped party hat bedazzled with pom-poms and rhinestones.
“Welcome to your party, Gage,” Georgie said brightly.
He finally noticed Nate, leaning against the kitchen counter. He didn’t speak, just raised his brows slightly, mouth set in the flat line of a man who’d been tricked into party planning and now had tomato sauce on his sleeve to prove it.
He wore the world’s tiniest party hat. Gage had no idea who had convinced him to wear that, or how.
Gage gave him a look. “You knew?”
“They drafted me.”
“Volunteered?”
“Volun-told.”
Georgina smirked. “We used him for his muscles.”
“I moved furniture,” Nate said flatly, grabbing a chicken nugget from the table. “I was compensated in Oreos.”
Bea stepped toward him. She had sugar on her cheek, her eyes warm, and she was holding a party crown like it was the only thing that mattered.
“Happy birthday,” she said softly. “No entertaining. No business. Just us.”
“This is…” He searched for a word that didn’t feel like surrender.
She reached up and affixed the glittery crown to his head, brushing his hair lightly with her fingers. “Perfect,” she said with a little smile.
Later, after too many carbs had been eaten and the playlist had wandered into absurdity, they’d somehow all ended up around the table—four adults, sleeves pushed up, dignity optional.
There was frosting on the floor. And the windowsill. And somehow, in Nate’s hair, though he hadn’t moved in fifteen minutes.
The icing tubes had been passed back and forth, half of them clogged, the rest sticky with fingerprints. There were bowls of sprinkles, crushed Oreos, and something Bea insisted was edible glitter, though Georgina had doubts.
Bea leaned on one elbow, giggling as she tried to pipe a smiley face onto a crooked balloon-shaped cookie. “Okay, this is harder than I remember.”
“That’s because you’re trying to make it cute,” Georgina said, smearing pink icing in broad, unapologetic strokes. “You’re supposed to go feral.”
“You would say that,” Nate replied, without looking up.
His cookie was a perfectly even circle of white with two blue dots in the center. Not fun. Not festive. Professional.
“That looks like a surveillance drone,” Bea said, peering over.
Nate didn’t look up. “It’s a balloon.”
Georgina snorted. “You’ve never seen a balloon in your life.”
“I’ve studied diagrams.”
Bea nearly choked on her laugh.
Across the table, Gage added a line of green frosting to the edge of his cookie, hand steady, expression impassive. His looked like it belonged in a gallery window. Modern, minimal, absolutely intentional.
Georgina made a face. “Of course yours is perfect.”
“It’s symmetrical.”
Gage’s thumb brushed the edge of the cookie Bea had made—purple icing smeared, a puffy pink heart, half collapsed. He didn’t eat it. He just moved it a little closer to his plate, next to his perfect one, like a matched set.
“Did anyone here actually do this as a kid?” Bea asked, starting with a fresh cookie. “Like, real sugar-cookie birthdays?”
“Mine weren’t like this,” Georgie replied. “My birthdays were always sophisticated. My mother made sure there was a gift table with a color palette. We had a harpist once.”
Bea blinked. “A harpist?”
“Mm-hmm.” Georgina grinned. “But one year, my dress got muddy and I screamed, and that was the last time we were allowed outdoor games.”
“What was the best one?” Bea asked.
Georgina paused. Her smile turned wistful. “I had a pool party once. I was five. My cousin threw my cake into the deep end.”
“Wasn’t that me?” Gage asked.
She grinned. “Yes.”
Bea laughed so hard she dropped her icing tube.
“Nate?” Georgina prompted.
Nate tapped his cookie thoughtfully. “There was one year,” he said. “I was twelve. My sister and I stayed with our grandmother. She forgot it was my birthday.”
Georgina made a quiet noise. “Ouch.”
He shrugged. “She let us eat cereal for dinner and stay up late watching cartoons.”
Bea’s voice was soft. “So you got childhood for your birthday.”
“Briefly,” Nate said. He adjusted the point of his party hat, like it was the one detail he could still control.
Bea turned to Gage. “What about you?”
“I don’t remember ever decorating anything,” he replied. “My birthdays were…events. Dinner. Champagne, before I was allowed to drink it. Someone always gave me a pen I didn’t need.”
“That sounds…”
“Fun?” he asked, one corner of his mouth tipping up.
Georgina touched his arm lightly. “You were the main attraction. Not the guest of honor.”
He didn’t deny it.
“What about you?” Georgie asked. “You’re the only one here with actual frosting memories.”
Bea smiled, surveying her catastrophe of a cookie—purple icing, green stars, red gummy worms along the edge.
“It was always kind of a mess. Twenty kids running around. Umma would make kimbap and Papa would make churros. Claire always tried to steal the party bags before the games even started.”
“Sounds chaotic,” Nate said.
“It was,” Bea said, but a smile stole her face. “Screaming and snacks everywhere. Someone always cried.”
She looked around the room—at the frosting, the glitter, the sugar-stained countertop. At them.
No one said anything for a while. Only the soft sound of icing tubes and paper plates shifting. The pop of a balloon.
Bea leaned her elbow on the table and smiled at all of them. “You know what? You’re all getting extra sprinkles tonight. Retroactive birthday reparations.”
“I’d prefer the Cheetos,” Nate said.
“Put them on your cookie,” Georgina instructed like a pro.
Later, once the sky deepened and the music shifted into summer throwbacks, Georgina announced, “Alright. Game time. Charades. Winner gets the last cupcake. Loser eats Nate’s.”
“I’ll take death,” Nate said.
“Not an option,” Georgie said, pointing a perfectly manicured nail at him.
Bea passed around slips of paper. “Birthday-themed. And yes, Gage, this counts as part of the evening.”
“I’m not performing.”
“Not yet,” she said sweetly. “We’ll make you guess.”
Georgina grinned. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”
They played in a loose circle on the outdoor rug on the balcony, barefoot and slightly sugared-up. Georgina went first—dramatically miming something with wild arm movements and suspicious hair flipping.
“Princess?” Bea guessed. “No—mermaid? Nate’s ex?”
“Close,” Georgie gasped. “It’s birthday diva!”
Nate rolled his eyes, pulled a paper, and stood like a soldier forced to join a high-school drama club. He mimed typing. Scowled. Slammed an invisible phone.
“Gage,” Bea said instantly.
Nate pointed at her. “Thank you.”
The room cracked up. Even Gage let out a low breath of amusement.
“Your turn,” Bea said to Gage.
“I’m not—”
“You were late.” She handed him a slip of paper. “You owe us at least one.”
He stared at her. There were no cameras here. No strategic alliances. Just a night that didn’t ask anything of him except to be part of it.
He stood.
The paper crown slid slightly down his forehead as he began to act out his card: “Birthday Boss.”
Bea guessed it before anyone else. He didn’t confirm. He just sat again, beside her.
Georgina smiled, but didn’t make a joke. Nate said nothing—but leaned back a little, as if cataloging this moment. Simplicity. Maybe even joy.
None of them said it aloud, but they felt it: this wasn’t just Bea’s love for Gage. This was something none of them had ever had.
The party wound down the way all the best ones did—slow laughter, sticky fingers, and the muffled reluctance to call it.
After charades, they mostly just talked.
The girls carried the conversation, bright and fast and winding, while the men sat back and let the warmth fill in the space.
No one checked the time. It was the kind of comfort that didn’t need explanation.
The cake came last. Small, delicate, from the Asian bakery near campus. Soft chiffon, light cream, not too sweet. ‘Happy Birthday Gage’ was written in pale blue script across the top. A single, small white candle in the center.
Bea lit it. Stepped back. “You’re twenty-seven now. Make a wish.”
“I don’t need to.” In any other room, that would’ve been it. But here, where no one was keeping score, he said what he never would anywhere else. “I’m in it.”
Nate and Georgina exchanged glances. Neither spoke. But it felt like they’d just witnessed a truth that wasn’t theirs to touch.
Eventually, the men stood to go. Georgie handed Gage his coat and adjusted the paper crown still crooked on his head. “Don’t forget your title,” she tittered. “Birthday Boss for life.”
Bea walked them to the door. “Text me when you’re home.”
“I will.” Gage kissed her temple.
“Thanks for your help, Nate,” Bea beamed.
Nate gave a lazy two-finger salute, like he’d just finished a mission.
The door clicked shut behind them.
GAGE
Gage and Nate rode the elevator down in silence, the echo of laughter and throwback music still clinging to their clothes.
The street outside was quiet, cool. Nate stopped beside his car. He didn’t open the door right away.
“That girl,” Nate mused, turning to him. “Gave you a party no one else would’ve thought to throw.”
He didn’t say the rest. That they’d all enjoyed it more than they expected. That Bea’s love had been written in glitter glue and juice boxes.
This night hadn’t been funny to Gage. Or quaint. It had been unfamiliar and yet, disarming. Intimate in a way he’d never experienced.
She’d given him something he didn’t know how to want.
“I get it now. Why you’re still here.” Nate tapped his key fob. The car unlocked with a soft chirp. “Great party, King.” He climbed in, then added, without turning back, “Don’t think the hedge-fund crowd’s topping this tomorrow. Even with caviar.”
Gage stood for a moment longer, coat collar turned up against the breeze. His thumb brushed glitter from the edge of his sleeve. “Could’ve been worse,” he said. But his voice gave it away.
The cars pulled away, one after the other.
Gage didn’t take the crown off right away. Not until he’d pulled out of the lot and the world felt quiet again. Then he reached up, slid it from his head, and laid it gently on the passenger seat. Like it mattered.