Bad Friend

37. Birthday Boy Part 1

H.

"Okay, so all you have to do is put your hand in the birthday bowl, pick out a slip of paper, and then we can get started."

"Birthday bowl?" I asked, looking at Gwen skeptically. I was only teasing, though, I actually thought it was really cute that she'd put so much thought into my birthday plans.

Just as I knew she would, G rolled her eyes. "Yes, the birthday bowl. Lena and I brainstormed too many ideas that I eventually couldn't decide on one, so now you're going to pick. So..." Gwen held the birthday bowl—which was just the glass bowl from the tattoo studio where she usually kept candy for customers—for me to pluck one of the folded up scraps of paper.

It was a little surreal to be celebrating a birthday with Gwen. For all the years I spent visiting her, I never once went on my birthday. There were times when I thought about it, but the boys always had something planned, so I stayed. And then of course there was last year, which didn't exactly go to plan. Last year. I could hardly believe that so much time had gone by. In reality, G and I had been together for a little over a year by now, but we were saving any real anniversary celebrations for when we went on our first date. Her decision, not mine.

Things had been so good, it almost felt surreal. Sure we had a couple of bumps, but what couples didn't? In my mind, the good vastly outweighed the bad, and I'd honestly never been happier. We were together whenever we could be, and when we couldn't, we talked constantly. Gwen still seemed hesitant to hang out with my, for lack of a better word, "inner circle," though, which did trouble me at times. But G either stayed tight-lipped about it whenever I brought it up, or just said she wasn't a fan of being around so many people at once. "You know that, H."

Part of me didn't believe her, but I also thought she just didn't want to tell me to my face that she didn't like my friends. G thought she was a mean person, but I knew better. For all of her outward expressions of grumpiness, she really did have a heart of gold, and most people got along with her whenever she gave them the chance. But for reasons I didn't understand, she didn't like my friends, and she was trying to spare my feelings by not telling me that she didn't or why. I couldn't fault Gwen for that, some people just didn't like other people. It hurt a little to know that she didn't like some of my closest confidantes, but I tried not to think about it too much. Instead I focused on her, on us.

Like right now. I stuck my hand in the birthday bowl and moved my hand around until my fingers snagged on a folded scrap of paper. Taking my hand out, I unwrapped the paper and read aloud, "Uh...Batting cage." I looked up at her, more confused than I was when she uttered the words "birthday bowl." "Really, Gwen? Neither of us play baseball."

"Where's your sense of adventure, old man?" G asked, coming over to straddle my waist. We were sitting outside to watch the sunrise, another thing that took me by surprise today.

Gwen liked to sleep in, liked to pull me back into bed any way she could, but this morning she was the one pulling me out of bed. No breakfast, she hadn't tried that since that morning her mother came to visit, another ordeal we didn't discuss very much, but that was mostly because neither of us had anything to say about it. G was right in saying her mother was a piece of work, and while I hoped I could help in bridging the gap between the two of them, I decided that it was best to trust my girlfriend on that front.

"Did you just call me old man?" I asked. "You're older than me.

G waved her hand dismissively. "You're missing my point, and my point is that we have never backed away from adventure, and we aren't going to now. So get up."

She did have a point. The unique nature of our friendship was centered around trying new things, so I could see why she put something like baseball on the agenda for today, even if it was a little out of the ordinary for our usual nights out. Especially because I had come to learn that G was in no way athletically gifted. The thought of her trying to swing a baseball bat did hold the promise of a good laugh, though, which quickly had me on board.