Everyone, Darcy, Sadie and Alex, had arrived as I was decorating the cake. I looked at the time, 9:30 p.m., I still had time.
"We can all fit inside Oliver's car and carry the cake perfectly," Sadie was trying to organize our trip, "you could ride shotgun and hold the cake..." she was talking to Darcy but then she stopped dramatically to glance at me "...or you could do it"
I looked at Darcy and we both started to chuckle, struggling to hold our laughter in. We quickly got a hold of Sadie's game as we talked about it over the past few days and, although I wanted to confront her and pick a fight, Darcy suggested I should just ignore her and laugh it off.
Oliver walked into the kitchen shortly after arriving. "Hey, pal" he said as he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.
"Hey" I replied with my eyes still on the cake. I glanced at him and frowned, "you look so cute today" I complimented.
He muttered a shy 'thank you' and left.
Alice gave me tips for the cake but I did not let her help me, I wanted the cake to be fully by my hand. When I was done, I went to the living room proudly to show the others while they were watching some football game. As I was receiving praise, I looked at the time and it was 11:55 p.m. I almost dropped the cake in shock.
"It's only five 'til midnight! Let's go, now!" I was yelling desperately and everyone started panicking.
Alex got on his bike and the rest of us got on Oliver's car. The clock hit midnight while we were on the way, I could only think of how pissed Leela must be.
When we arrived we decided to break in singing Happy Birthday, so she wouldn't get so mad.
She started giggling as soon as she saw us walk through the door singing and holding a cake. We all rushed to hug her one by one.
We had been waiting for this day for so long, that even with everything that happened, I still needed everything to be perfect. I wanted Leela to have that perfect, Pinterest-inspired, Instagramable birthday party she deserved. I wanted her to be pampered all night.
We had the cupcakes, the pink spark, the golden '21' balloons and the flower crown. Everything.
Darcy and I went to change our outfits into the pink ones, because that was the theme of the party. Alex and I made a deal; he purchased a beautiful pink dress of mine that I only worn once, for him to give it to Leela in hopes that she would wear it that night: she didn't.
I hid my disappointment as I sat down in the living room, having drinks and casually chatting.
Everyone looked at me casually as if I was a car crash on the road, I was grieving and no one knew what to do or say. But I still tried for the night to be only about Leela.
I sat on the couch with Darcy, we had grown closer again after what happened. We were already trying to go back to normal before Logan's passing made me hold on tightly to her, we didn't really get the chance to dive deeper into our problems, we were just leaning on each other.
We were drinking and making fun of how awkward Oliver looked when he had to deal with the two of us, so our drunk selves made a bet of how uncomfortable we could make him.
We started staring at him and we laughed uncontrollably whenever he tried looking around the room or putting his phone in front of his face to cover it. At some point he decided to fight back so he stared at me, then at Darcy, then quickly glanced at me and got back to Darcy, and stayed there.
I started feeling out of place since I clearly wasn't even part of the joke. I felt so bad being in the middle I started feeling sick, I went to the bathroom. I stared at my reflection in disgust, I felt ridiculous. Did I really think I had anything to do with the situation? I was a complete outsider. I was nothing.
