Part of Me

15

15

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"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect."
-Margaret Mitchell

MICAH caught up with me on my way to English. "Hey, D."

I smiled at him. Over the past few weeks, I'd gotten used to Micah. Sure, he made a crude joke here and there, but all in all he was a good guy. "Hey."

"So what are you going to do with your day off?"

Furrowing my brow, I stopped outside my class. "What day off?"

"Cayden didn't cancel? Jesus, that kid is just go-go-go all the time, isn't he?" When I gave him a confused look, he held his mouth agape. "He didn't tell you, did he? His birthday is today. He's eighteen."

"No, he, uh...he didn't tell me," I said.

Why didn't he tell me?

"Yeah, well between us, he hasn't really been that excited for his birthday for a while. You might not want to mention it." I nodded, though I didn't really hear him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cayden leaning against his locker, talking to Grayson. Micah chuckling brought me back to reality. "You're not going to listen to me, are you?"

I grinned. "Hey, at least you can say you tried. I'll see you later."

He waved me off and I made my way over to Grayson and Cayden, the former giving me a weird smile. "Hello, Devyn."

"Um, hi? Sorry to interrupt, but can I talk to Cayden for a second?"

Grayson nodded and walked away, but not looking between the two of us and smirking. An uncomfortable shiver ran down my spine, but it was soon washed away when Cayden placed a hand on my arm to get my attention. "What's up?"

"Why didn't you tell me today's your birthday?"

Immediately, his smile fell and his eyes hardened. "I'm going to kill Micah."

"No, don't. Why didn't you tell me? You could've cancelled tutoring today. You know I would've understood." He was silent for a minute, pursing his lips as if he was thinking my question over. "Micah said you don't really get excited about your birthday. Does it have anything to do with Mia?"

"What?" he snapped, surprise evident on his face.

"Has everything with Mia made you not like your birthday?" I asked bluntly.

"How'd you know?" I gave him a look, silently telling him that I wasn't stupid. It was easy to see how much Mia meant to him, so it was only natural that their birthday would stir up bad feelings for him. "It's just ever since she started pulling away from our family, it hasn't been the same. We used to love our birthday. It was the only day of the year we could actually get our dad to leave the office before five in the afternoon, and that was only to go to dinner. We fought over where to go every year and we ended up at the same place every year." He chuckled at the memory. "Honestly, I don't even know why we fought about it. We both knew we would compromise on the same restaurant." His easy-going grin fell once again and I found myself wanting to comfort him somehow, but I had no idea what I could possibly do to make any of this better, so I just stayed silent and listened. "We haven't been to that restaurant in two years now."

"Cayden, I'm so sorry."

He shrugged, looking down at the floor. "It is what it is. I'll see you after school."

Before I could even think of stopping him, he was gone.

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