I'm Glad Your House Was Demolished | Kuffy

Eleven

Last year, my birthday was just Jonah, Andi, Cyrus and I going to the Spoon and getting a free birthday milkshake. This year, my friend group has expanded. Now that Cyrus is dating TJ, he's here. Andi asked if Amber could come as well, because they're really close now, and to be honest, I'm just waiting for them to confess their feelings and start dating. Jonah is still very single, although he's been hanging around Walker a lot lately, so I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm also no relationship expert—clearly. 

"I'm done," Jonah says ad he slaps down his last card onto the pile of Uno cards, and the whole group looks at him. 

"What?" Cyrus says. "But you didn't say Uno!"

Jonah just shrugs. "You didn't call me out."

Cyrus shakes his head, disappointed in himself, and continues the game, placing down another card. It's only him, Andi, and Amber left now, and they are all determined to win. Well, they were at the start. Now Amber and Andi are more focused on each other, giggling when one whispers some secret comment into the other girl's ear. TJ watches his sister with narrow eyes the whole time, trying to decode the situation going on here. 

I'm sitting across the circle from Kira. I thought that would help me to not think about her, but it only makes it really easy for me to look up at her frequently, which is a problem. I haven't been speaking to her that much. Even when I was setting up for my birthday after school, I wouldn't accept her help, because I didn't want to be around her. 

"Watching you stand on that chair's armrest kind of scares me," Kira said as she passed by the living room. "The streamers won't be worth it if you fall and break your neck. Do you want some help?"

"No, I'm fine," I replied, shutting her down. 

"Are you sure? I really don't mind."

"I'm sure," I insisted, my voice getting tense. "Just go do something else. I don't need your help."

She nodded and stepped away to go upstairs. The hurt on her face was clear, but I tried not to think about it. I couldn't let myself think too much about it, because then I would've felt bad and let her help me, and I really didn't need her to be kind to me at the moment. I would've rather she made snarky remarks, or shoot a death glare my way, or roll her eyes and sass me the way she used to, because then it would've been easy to stop wanting her around. If she would just be a jerk, then I would be able to kill this crush. 

But she's not like that. As I stand up from the game of Uno, announcing that I'm going to go to the kitchen to look for candles for the cake, she gets up too.

"I'll help you," she says. 

"No," I respond so snappy that even my other friends hear the tension and look up at me, but I pretend not to notice. "I mean I need someone tall to reach them." I turn to Cyrus's boyfriend. "TJ?"

He glances from Kira to me and then says, sounding uncertain, "Uh, sure."

Kira's eyes follow me as I leave toward the kitchen, but I don't look to match them. Once I get into the kitchen, I feel my lungs loosen a little, and I can breathe a bit freer. I open the pantry, inside which is a box of birthday candles sitting on the second shelf from the top. It's not that high. I could definitely reach it myself, but I turn to TJ anyway, wanting to keep up the lie. He just looks at me with eyes that say, 'are you kidding me?'

"Buffy, you can reach that yourself," he says. 

Realizing he's not going to help, I grab the box myself and pull out four candles. Fourteen seems like a fire hazard, so I figure I'll be fine with less. I bring them over to the cake and start poking them into it in random places. They make sort of a really wonky trapezoid on the icing, and now I realize I probably should've made them a square, but I didn't even think about it.