A surprise birthday party for Jim - A Soy Luna Fanfic

Chapter 14: The food you've all been waiting for

A bit of time had passed.

"I'm hungry, can we have the cake?", Luna asked normally.
"Luna!", Yam scolded her.
"No, it's alright Yam... wait, there's cake?", Jim grinned heavily as she noticed that Luna had accidentally spoilered the upcoming.
Jim slowly patted her best friend's back, since she seemed disappointed that the surprise had been ruined, judged by the fact that Yam was blatantly staring at the ground.
"Oh my lord, I didn't even expect there to be cake, considering how huge this has already been! How big is the cake? Is it filled with sprinkles? Is there filling?", Jim excitedly squeeled, much to Yam's content.

"You know what? You're going to find out right now!", Pedro said, while pointing towards the table.
"Go on, sit down. The quicker you do, the quicker you know whether or not we put unicorns into the frosting."
"Unicorns? Pedro, that-", Nina tried to explain how exactly that wouldn't be possible, but instead of letting her finish her lecture, Pedro just interrupted the girl by elbowing her arm.

"Ahem, I mean, of course I know if it's true or not, but I'm not going to tell!", she quickly improvised, making the boys chuckle.
"Go on, sit down Jim!", Simón encouraged Jim, while the others joined in on his action.
"Let's goooooo", Jim yelled, as she ran towards the table, the rest speed-walking to be able to catch up.

While the others sat down, making sure to assign the seat in the middle to Jim and sort the rest of them, so friend groups would be able to sit together, Luna called over Nina, Simón and Pedro, her important assistants for the next part of the plan: gracefully presenting the cake.
"Ok guys, what we need is a plan and luckily, I'm the plan-master here." Luna pointed at herself and afterwards at Pedro.
"You", she didn't even say his name any more, in order to come across as more commanding, "bring out the drinks first please, we need an appetiser."
Next, her finger moved over to the remaining two people in this reunion.

"Simón, Nina, you two in the kitchen. Yam wants this to be perfect, we're making it even better than perfect."
"Uhh, you mean excellent?", Nina asked, like her nerdy-self always did.
"Not important, Nina", Luna responded harshly.
"Sorry."
"Alright, get to your positions, guys!", and since she had said so, the others followed the order.

After Luna had finished her rather demanding speech, Pedro hurried over to the bar, his footsteps still somehow managing to be more quiet than his panting, while Nina and Simón rushed into the kitchen. "Alright everyone, who wants drinks?", Pedro shouted out, to which everyone at the table just replied with "Me!", since they were dying of thirst.
Rather fast, Pedro, one-by-one, brought out all of the glasses he had prepared earlier, hoping no one would be too picky about what they wanted.
All of the glasses were placed on a tray, so Pedro simply went around the table and everyone chose the drink they liked.

Not even Delfi complained, but that was only because of her crush on Pedro and her not wanting to risk her chances of being on nice terms with him.
In fact, the crush was the only secret she had been able to keep for this long, not even her friends knew about it.
She really hoped Pedro hadn't noticed her acting off lately.

Last but not least, he left three strawberry milkshakes with extra chocolate flakes inside for the newly crowded kitchen chefs, as sort of a little reward for their hard work.

After he had placed the tray behind the counter where it belonged, Pedro quickly went to the table sat down with the others.
There, he was easily able to join in on their friendly little discussion on how the outer space should definitely be explored more frequently, in order to have a suitable second planet to live on.
The peace and quiet really did the group some good after a while of standing up without a break.

Exactly the opposite was starting to unfold in the kitchen.
Complete chaos ensued, as Luna, Nina and Simón were running around and not at all able to plan what we were going to do next.
That was, of course, until the most professional of the three sat them down and they all took a quick moment to calm down and discuss together. In the end, they all settled on Luna and Nina, being together like always, bringing out the cutlery first, in order to add more suspense.

Then, after the two sat down, they would give Simón a sign, so he could roll in the first cake.
So, making sure to have properly counted the amount of forks, knives and plates beforehand, Luna and Nina split the job and took the things out of the kitchen, to the table which their friends were sitting at, all while acting as cute little waitresses with their decorative aprons around their waists.

Jim was super excited to finally have a cake for her birthday again; for the first time in years, to be exact.
Truth was, she had been short on money for quite a while now. Her school education had been already been hard enough, but now, in order to finance her little apartment and the most basic necessities, she started working some shifts spread across the week in a local diner.
As a result, she was left feeling very tired a lot of times, sometimes even falling asleep in the Roller, which left her friends very worried for her mental health.
But alas, today wasn't the day to worry about her financial struggles, Jim thought.
She wouldn't let those negative thoughts get the best of her today and so, her mind quickly focused on the beautiful occasion right now.

In the meantime, Luna and Nina quickly served the cutlery by running around the table and ran back to the kitchen, expecting Simón to have already lit the cake's candles, since it was obviously part of his job.
But to their surprise, when the pair entered, they found Simón simply sitting in the corner, doing absolutely nothing. So the only correct thing for the two to do, was of course kick the boy out of the kitchen for not cooperating at all and them working on the candle-issue themselves.
After they had lit all of the 18 candles placed across the table, which were, at times, a hassle to find, the moment had finally come.

The dessert has been served... but not fully

After the cake was completely decorated and the pair had stopped laughing for a moment, they ever-so-slowly rolled the cart with the cake on top of it out of the kitchen entrance, making sure to not roll it too fast, in order to prevent the candles from blowing out too early and, so it would add more suspense as well.
As Luna and Nina rolled in the beautifully lit paradise, they started gleefully singing 'Happy Birthday' and after the first verse, all of their friends who were surrounding Jim chimed in as well, causing Jim to feel embarrassed, as any other would too.
But, she also looked around herself in complete awe.

It was adorable to see everyone she was close to in unison and singing.
Seeing something like this always filled her with happiness, she was proud to be close to such cheery people.
Jim fought back tears, as she started looking at the cake.
It looked like it was made with so much love, so much thought and overall care.
Jim had always wished for a party like this one when she grew up. Year by year, month by month, she wanted to celebrate her birthday properly again, like she had done when she had been just a child.

And now, she had gotten what she wanted: celebrating her birthday with her best friends.