selfish | salia

Chapter 23

this is prewritten which is why i'm able to post rn! thank you so much for 6k on this story, i'm glad you're enjoying it <3

I had been naïve to think that Freya's birthday would be the last time I felt that stressed for a while.

Simon's birthday was exactly one week later, and it had been hard finding him a present. Something he hadn't already gotten, that was.

However, as midnight approached on September sixth, I was confident I had smashed it out of the park with his presents.

We had tried to plan him a party, like Freya's but he had insisted against it. A lot. He said he would prefer to spend the day in the house with me, and the guys if they wanted to come round.

Ethan and Tobi were coming around tonight for dinner, but until then Simon was pretty much free to do anything.

"You're turning twenty five in ten minutes...how do you feel being an absolute grandad?" I teased, the two of us just chilling in his room, some music in the background.

"I'm not the grandad, Josh is. He's older than me!" he protested.

"You're still old...tomorrow you will be five years older than me, how scary is that?"

"Okay, hang on a tiny second, you're turning twenty one in two months, so don't even try and go down that route!" He retorted, and he had a point.

"Okay fine, we are both getting old. It's still scary," I shrugged my shoulders, nestling my head against his chest.

A few moments passed before I spoke again. "Is it bad that I want to give you your presents now? We should wait, until midnight, right? But I really want to give them to you," I blurted out, knowing that they were just on the floor to my left right now.

"if you want me to open them now, I will open them now," he said softly.

"Don't you want to wait until your birthday?" I questioned him, surprised that he was so casual about it.

"I don't really...do birthdays. It's just a day where you turn one year older. I will open the presents whenever you want, Tee."

"I'm the complete opposite. Birthdays are my favourite days, and this might sound a little selfish, but, my birthday is my favourite day of the year. Except maybe Halloween and Christmas," I spoke, getting up and reaching over for the presents on the floor. There were three. One was tickets for him to go bungee jumping, he had mentioned it being something he wanted to do before. The second was a jumper I had spotted in a shop in central London. I imagined him wearing it, and that on its own was enough for me to buy it for him. The third was a ring with his initials engraved on the outside. I had come to notice that he liked wearing rings, so it was an appropriate present.

"Alright then, presents!" I said excitedly, handing him the small present first, the ring. It was still in it's box.

He took the present from me, glancing up at me with a curious expression. he ripped open the paper, eyeing up the box. His face broke out into a smile when he saw the contents of the box, picking the ring up and holding it up to the light.

"Are those my initials? I love it," he spoke gratefully, leaning over to me and kissing me. He placed the ring on his index finger flexing his hand out in front of me. "What do you think?" he asked, knowing exactly what he was doing.

"I think," I spoke slowly, dragging my words out, "that I love it because I bought it and I have great taste. Anyway, swiftly moving on," I rushed, chucking the next parcel at him, the hoodie I had gotten him.

"Oooh. It's soft. I wonder what this is?" He said sarcastically. I had already told him that one of his presents was going to be a piece of clothing because I had accidentally let it slip when I had come home with it.