The rest of the table was quiet for a minute. My friends shifted uncomfortably in their seats, and I moved my tongue across the surface of my teeth. I swallowed a few times. It didn’t help. I opened my mouth to say something, but it would have been impossible to speak without my voice cracking, so I sat there speechless and fixed my eyes on the ceiling.
“Well, everyone’s sick of watching Maggie cry by now, right, so I’ll jump in,” said Clive, refilling his glass while I discreetly dabbed at my eyes. Amy beamed from the end of the table, visibly thrilled with this result.
“She’s a lot, right? She’s very loud, terrible to share fries with, and she talks during movies,” said Clive.
The table erupted with a list of films I’d single-handedly destroyed for them: times I’d spoiled the ending, asked the name of a character who’d just been introduced, pointed out when someone said the title of the film in the film. Clive continued: “I don’t understand what she does for a living, and when she tries to explain it, it’s like, those people have been dead for centuries and I hope they stay that way, shut up! She’s a nightmare, top to bottom, but being mad at her is technically biphobia, so. Happy birthday, you dumb bitch, we love you.”
I smiled at Clive, grateful to him for cutting through the sincerity of the moment. Emotional Lauren opened her mouth and immediately started tearing up, so the other Lauren stepped in, telling a story of a particularly busted birthday we’d shared in university at a bowling alley. The night had ended in romantic disaster for several of us, horrific hangovers for most of us, and one instance of being charged fifty dollars for ruining a pair of bowling shoes in a beer pong–related mishap. It had not been the highlight of my twenties.
“Still, you went home with a really cute guy that night,” Lauren said. “And isn’t that what’s most important?”
“I think that was you,” said Amirah.
“Yeah, it was you,” said Emotional Lauren. “I remember because Maggie puked taquitos on my duvet.”
Clive and I agreed it had been Lauren’s story, not mine.
“Well. I guess what I was trying to say is: happy birthday, Maggie, and congratulations to me.” Lauren raised her glass: “To the hottie from the bowling alley, wherever he may be.”
There followed some debate about whether he had been all that good looking—Lauren insisting, of course, that he had; the rest of us finding this account revisionist. Amirah took a sip of water and composed herself for her turn.
“The main image I remember of your wedding—”
“Oh, here we go.” Clive folded his arms. “We just stopped the waterworks.”
“No, no, it’s good, I promise,” said Amirah, turning back to me. “The main image I remember of your wedding is you in your dress—and it was beautiful, let’s be honest here, whatever else happened around that event, the dress was fucking gorgeous—you were sitting in this fancy dress, chowing down on those burgers that came out at, like, one, and you were crying your face off.”
I snorted, surprised and a little embarrassed. “I don’t remember this . . .”
“Well, it happened,” Amirah continued. “We had snuck off to have a snack and debrief a bit, and you started crying—for context, I mean, I’m sure you were drunk—but you were so upset because you thought it was unfair that there wasn’t a ceremony for pledging love and commitment to your friends.”
Emotional Lauren burst out laughing: “I remember this, oh my god! You got ketchup on your tits while telling me I meant as much to you as any partner.”
“I think her actual phrase was ‘friends can be husbands too,’” said Clive.
“You were very worked up,” Lauren added.
Amirah nodded. “You made us all hold hands and promise to love each other forever,” she said. “You called them ‘our vows.’”
My face was flushing a deeper red than the wine and heat and food had made it already. Amy’s eyes were enormous: “I can’t believe you don’t remember doing this.”
“The bartender kept feeding me G&Ts!” I cried. “He had a special stash for me underneath the bar that I could get any time I wanted, without waiting! He kept calling it ‘bride juice’！”
The faces around the table registered a deep disapproval of the phrase “bride juice,” and Amirah wrestled back control of her anecdote: “All of this is to say, I think you were right, and—”
“I’m so sorry,” I said quietly. “For everything, the whole—”
“Relax, it’s almost over,” Amirah said. “My god, no more big apologies, we get it, you were a little garbage tornado, and now you’re not . . . as much.” She laughed and so did I, but I worried I might throw up or prostrate myself before her or burst into embarrassed flames. “I want you to know,” she continued, “I meant what I said while you were drunk and eating that burger: you’re someone I promise to love forever.”
I looked across the table at Amirah. She looked a little bit bashful and exceptionally beautiful. She took a bite of some remaining pasta and her engagement ring caught the candlelight, and she said, “Amy, I hope you’re happy. That’s all my sincerity for the year.”
Amy did look happy. She pushed her chair away from the table, wiped her mouth daintily with a napkin, and said, “That was the moment this tablescape deserved.”
We cleared the table, and Lauren brought out a cake. It was very homemade, a lopsided green heart covered in thick pink globules.
“Rosettes,” Clive said. “There’s rose water in the icing. It’s called a theme.”
Between the rosettes was a message, piped in slanting orange icing: better luck next year. They didn’t sing the song, just cut the cake and yelled, “birthday!” in unison. Amirah’s gift was a dark brown Italian drink, for sipping from a set of impossibly small glasses, gifted by Lauren.
We poured a round and toasted again, this time to nothing. The brown drink was herbaceous and sweet and thick. Savoring it in small sips made me feel restrained and elegant, though after our first glasses we poured huge amounts of it over ice and mixed it with bourbon, an idea we stole from the website LibationNation.com.
Amy got me a necklace that said joy, and Clive promised to cook me an enormous meal at his house on a date of my choosing. Emotional Lauren gave me a gift voucher for a pedicure. “The employees are extremely rude, and they go so hard on your foot calluses it’s genuinely painful,” she said. “I love it there.”
We ate second servings of cake with our hands, and Hannah and Ed FaceTimed at a moment of extreme commotion: Amy was outsourcing witty responses to the dozens of men clamoring for her attention on dating apps, and Lauren had convinced her to message hot toilet to a man whose profile comprised four identical images of him in the bathroom.
“You guys are the worst!” she screamed, smiling wide to show us that she didn’t mean it.
The man replied moments later with haha, absolutely, and they planned to meet up next week.
Clive told us his sister was pregnant and threatening to call the baby “Khaleesi,” Lauren announced she was considering going back to school, Amirah told us we could wear whatever we wanted as her bridesmaids, and Emotional Lauren admitted she had already started a Pinterest to brainstorm outfits for all our future weddings. Stuff was happening, and I was glad to be there for it.