“Explain to me again why I have to be there for cake and ice cream with the Mitchells, Mom, because I don’t get it. You want to celebrate Sadie’s birthday, go right ahead. But, she’s twelve. I can think of better things to do with my time.” I pull my denim jacket from the back of the kitchen chair, shrugging it on. I don’t know where I’m planning to go, but there’s got to be somewhere better than here, with an impending joint birthday party with a kid.
“Oh, stop. It’ll be fun. You know that Rick and Anna enjoy the fact that you and Sadie have the same birthday, almost as much as your father and I do. It’s like fate brought us together,” she rambles on.
I can’t hold back, and I roll my eyes dramatically. “We’re not Mitchells, Mom. And they’re not Butlers. We’re two separate families, in case you and Dad haven’t noticed.”
I watch as Mom puts the finishing touches on the cake she’s working meticulously on, never once turning her attention away from it to look at me. I also notice that the cake has white and purple icing. Girl colors.
They can call it whatever they want, but the backyard party they’re tossing me into is for Sadie, the Mitchells’ daughter.
The daughter my Mom and Dad always wanted, but never got. Instead, they’re stuck with me, and they make no efforts to hide their disappointment in that fact.
“We’re practically family,” she halfheartedly argues back.
“We share a lot line with them, Mom. Not blood. Not last names. They’re neighbors. We can do things without the Mitchells every now and then, you know.”
Her lips pull tighter then, and her gaze flickers to me for a split second. “That’s enough, Ashton. I mean it. You and Gunner have been inseparable basically since birth, so I really don’t know where—”
“Gunner and I are the same age!”
“And Gunner will be at the birthday party at five o’clock,” Mom says briskly. “And so will you, so you’ll have each other to keep company, if you can’t bring yourself to give Sadie a few moments of your time on her special day.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind her that it’s my day, too. It’s my goddamn birthday, and all I want to do is spend it with someone other than a goddamn twelve-year-old girl. But there’s no use. Mom isn’t listening now, just like she hasn’t listen
ed the last eighteen years I’ve been alive.
The Mitchells and the Butlers will always be one and the same, as far as she’s concerned. And Gunner—yeah, he’s been my best friend since before we could walk, but I understand that we aren’t brothers.
Like brothers, sure. But not from the same family.
And I sure as hell am not Sadie Mitchell’s brother, either. The last thing I want to be is any closer to that annoying little girl than I have to be.
* * *
“I thought eighteenth birthdays were supposed to be full of stolen liquor and chicks in the backseat of our cars?” Gunner stares straight ahead, his elbows leaning against the back of the top of the picnic table, legs sprawled out in front of him. “How the fuck did we get lucky enough to be here, with our parents, and Sadie, eating hamburgers and chocolate cake?”
His summation does little to help my mood out. “Your guess is as good as mine.” I sit beside him, drinking Pepsi from the can in my hands. We both have done everything we could for the past hour to avoid hanging out with our parents or their friends. “You can thank your sister for this.”
That comment earns me a cocked eyebrow from him. “Seriously? You can’t blame her. It’s not like she purposely was born on your birthday to spite you. It’s their fault.” Gunner juts his chin out toward the group of adults on the patio. “Our parents have gone all fucking Brady Bunch on us. One big happy family, and all that.”
“They can’t tell where your family stops, and mine begins.” I narrow my eyes. “It’s bullshit.”
“Easy, killer.” Gunner shifts, but by now he should’ve realized how impossible it is to get comfortable on a picnic table. “If it’s any consolation, my eighteenth is in two months. We’ll do it up right, then.”
I give him a sideways glance, the thought of it making the corners of my mouth turn up. “Now, we’re talking. Can you get the keys to your dad’s Camaro?”
“Can you talk Ashley and Madison from our history class into joyriding with us?”
“The twins in the back row?” I didn’t even know he’d been interested in them. But, hell, who wasn’t? “Shit, that’d be some birthday present, Gunner.”
“Think you can sweet talk ‘em?” He grins, nudging me. “There’s two. Might be able to salvage some of your birthday, too.”
“Damn.” I run my hand through my shaggy chestnut hair, wincing slightly as I think about the work I’d have cut out for me to pull off such a feat. “Which one do you want?”
“Madison,” Gunner replies without hesitation. “That chick’s been eye-fucking me for weeks.”
I let out a low whistle. “Can’t say I’m complaining if I can do Ashley.”
“That means you’ll do whatever the fuck it is you do, and charm them into partying with us?”