sorry for typos 🥲
@charliethe1: 27 years around the sun wit my favorite people, and many, many more to come! I wouldn't know a better day than today to also share with y'all that I am officially the new creative design director at @Lacoste! Couldn't have done it without my incredible team and family, especially so early in my career. I love y'all endlessly!
Good for her I said in my head. But the exaggerated huff I let out must not have matched my inward sentiment, as Nas cut his eyes over to me in confusion before taking a glimpse of my phone screen and realizing what was going on.
"You gon' say happy birthday?" he asked me, turning his attention back to the road.
"I don't know. I feel like I should but her boundaries were clear. I just don't know."
I clicked on the comments and scrolled through the heap of happy birthday wishes from our college friends, mutual friends, and every one else on Instagram, it seemed like.
Since the first birthday I spent with Charlie now 6 years ago, we celebrated each and every one of them together. She was my only family when I moved to Arizona, so she took birthdays extremely seriously. We would go to the 24-hour burger spot not too far from her apartment at 12 o'clock midnight and do their birthday eating challenge—eat as many burgers as the number in your age and eat free! We never made it past 5 burgers, but not because we couldn't, but because our stomachs quickly filled with heartfelt laughter as we watched each other stuff our faces. Then, we would drive back to her place to get ready to go out. It would usually be about 1:30am at that time, so we would take as many shots as we could in the remaining hour and a half the club was open. I would somehow always manage to find my way to the DJ booth and steal his mic, forcing the entire club to tell my best friend Happy Birthday. We would pass out on her couch for a few hours, then wake up to continue our shenanigans, ranging from baking a cake in her kitchen blindfolded to sneaking into movies until it was dark outside. But none of that would happen this year, because this year we weren't friends.
"You wouldn't feel weird if I did tell her happy birthday?"
I watched as his shoulders rose then fell in indifference, "Nah, I get it."
"I'm not asking if you get it. I know you get it, I wanna know how it would make you feel."
He quickly met my eyes once more and turned back to the road, "I wouldn't love it, but I understand and wouldn't hold it against you or nothing like that."
I slowly nodded my head, taking a last look at her post before swiping the app closed.
"But you need to stop acting like you the one that caused y'all relationship to be like this. You know it wasn't you, right?" he asked me.
"I know, I just...I kinda can't help it. She gave me the signs and I missed them all."
"Still not your fault, Indica. Shouldn't have been sending you signs in the first place. She should've talked to you like the grown adult she is."
I rolled my eyes at that statement. Not at him, but at the fact that Fallon had told me the same thing and I was frustrated with myself for not being able to see that this wasn't my fault. This was not my fault.
"Where did you say we were going?" I asked him, refocusing my eyes out the window as my surroundings became increasingly unfamiliar.
"To meet my accountant—"
"Uh oh, you went broke? Cause you can drop me off right now if that's the case," I teased.
"Says the one without a job?" he squinted at me.
