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WITH DAWN NOW SAFELY BACK AT UNI, Mollie and the group's priorities turned to Harry's birthday. As Calfreezy had said, rather philosophically as Harry was again complaining about the thought of growing older, you're only twenty-three once. And the group had wanted to make the most of this statement, for some reason unknown to pretty much everyone.
However, knowing he felt awkward under the pressures of social events such as birthdays, they'd decided to celebrate relatively quietly, with an night at the club on the cards for the next week or so and a more quiet (which was never going to be quiet with the group of people going) Nandos on his actual birthday.
Honestly, Harry probably wouldn't have it any other way. It was an easy excuse to go out and get unbelievably drunk, and the thought lingered in his mind that it was possibly also an excuse to stay the night at Mollie's afterwards.
It had hit him as his birthday had become a talking point of the group that he was beginning to reach that dreaded age where days like birthdays just became another day. Being notoriously the most childish and excitable of the group, it seemed almost weird that Harry would be up for dismissing the idea of a birthday more than anyone. However for someone like Harry, as he got older, he found the whole thing around birthdays to get more painfully awkward every year.
That didn't at all mean that he didn't appreciate the effort put in by his friends and family each year, he just appreciated more that it was never a big deal. Just spending it drinking with his best friends seemed like the most perfect way to spend it, in his mind.
Mollie was never truly sure why she took birthdays so seriously. Maybe it was the effort that her Aunt Debs put into birthdays every year as she was growing up. She'd turn up at their door every year after school with a massive homemade chocolate cake that she would always say 'had been made with love' as she hinted at the messy decoration on top.
Mollie admired her endlessly. Probably more than anyone else in the world. She always had a warm beaming smile and wore big, comfy cardigans that she'd crocheted herself, she loved dogs and cats and told stories bigger and wilder than the world. She was a ray of sunshine with a glint of mischief in her eyes that made her seem much younger than she actually was. Her favourite thing about her Aunt Debs was the love that she gave everyone around her. Mollie always took that as her most admirable trait and worked especially hard to carry that trait with her. And though it meant that people would tend to take advantage of their almost inability to hurt someone, still at the age of twenty two, some of Mollie proudest moments were when she was compared to her Aunt Debs.
But it could also be that Mollie's nineteenth birthday started as the one of the loneliest days she'd experienced in London. Her family had just moved back to Blackpool and she remembered very clearly waking up to a rainy February day and it taking a while for it to sink in that it was her birthday as she tottered around her then, very empty apartment. It hadn't felt like home yet. It still smelt like new apartment and furniture and it was obvious that it was taking Mollie a while to unpack all her belongings, which at the time wasn't very many either. She had felt very vulnerable to everything at this point. She had opened the birthday cards from her family and from there was conflicted on what to do next.
