The Secret (Boston's Best 1)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Matt

"Darius James I swear to whatever is fucking good and holy if you do not put that burger down and come over here and help Alex hang up this sign, I will chop off those balls that are so precious to you and you will never see them again." Brooke glares daggers at D's head.

He holds his hands up in the air and talks through bites of his burger, "Okay, okay, woman relax. I'm coming. No need to get your panties in a twist."

She points at him and walks into the kitchen, "I'll twist your bloody panties, Darius," She says his name with such venom, "If you don't hurry up right now."

Brooke continues scolding D and I sigh and drop the last keg down in the hall and Penelope comes up to me, "She's just stressed out."

I raise my eyebrows at her, "Brooke's always stressed out."

"Yeah, but that's just how she works, Matt, she needs everything to run smoothly and be perfect or else she freaks. You know this, Matthew. Don't be rude to her just because she's your ex."

"I'm not saying anything."

She looks me over before shrugging, "She throws parties all the time but she only ever plans birthday parties for me and herself, and she's been doing it for so long that she knows exactly what we want. But Maddie's new. We don't know a whole lot about her. Brooke just wants Maddie to have a great birthday."

I look over at my ex-girlfriend walking around the house with a clipboard ordering everyone around and I nod, "Yeah, I understand."

Pen smiles and pats my arm before walking over to one of Maddie's friends, Gianna, and talks with her.

Brooke kept to her word and kept the party small with only the people Maddie wanted here –Evelyn, Nick, Jadyn, Will, Gianna, Alex, Pen, Felix, Darius, and Brooke and me.

But having this small amount of people and not the whole cheer and football teams here to help set up is only slowing us all down and is stressing Brooke out more than usual.

We have a banner that says 'Happy 18th Birthday Maddie!' on it hanging up on the balcony at the top of the stairs that faces towards the open plan bottom floor.

This house is huge. Nearly the whole bottom floor is one room besides the games room, the three car garage, and the bathroom. The second floor has six rooms and three bathrooms. And the third floor is just Penelope's room, it has a bathroom and walk-in closet and the rest of the space is open. And the basement is massive, it has a bowling alley.

There are balloons and streamers all over the place and there is a buffet of appetisers and pizza and burgers and because Maddie's friend Aebhín is Jewish she needs Kosher food so Brooke got some of that too.

Alex and I ordered a vanilla sponge cake –because that's Maddie's favourite, but we specifically asked that it be decorated in green icing and that it say, 'This wee ginger leprechaun is 18'.

We find it hilarious but I don't know how much Maddie will enjoy it.

Mads, Aebhín and Evelyn are the only people not here right now because Maddie's mom wanted her to spend the day with her and her sibling Riley.

And Maddie can't drive so Evelyn has to drive her here.

After about twenty more minutes of finishing touches and making sure everything looks perfect Evelyn texts Nick to tell everyone that they're pulling into the driveway now.

We all stand in a line in front of the entrance with party blowers in our hands.

The door opens and Evelyn and some girl with long dark brown hair who I'm assuming is Aebhín walk in first and Maddie comes in after them and she just takes my breath away.