Page 57 of The Moment You Know

“I know.”

“That kind of sucks.”

“It does. Now, can I have my phone back?”

Andrea was still reading. “You’re thirty-five?”

“Hand it over,” Paige demanded.

A little reluctantly, Andrea gave Paige her phone back and then left her office. Once Paige was alone, she checked her texts, seeing she had two from Jules.

JULES: Happy 35th birthday !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JULES: There are 35 exclamation points, just for you.

Shaking her head, Paige texted back.

PAIGE: Stop with all the exclamation points, already. They’re really not necessary.

JULES: You ready for tonight?

Jules was responsible for Paige’s birthday becoming a bit of a production, mainly so that Paige’s first birthday without David wouldn’t be a total downer. That had paved the way for the next year (and the one after that) until it was pretty much a tradition. And, even though Paige had resisted at first, she’d grown to really appreciate it.

Until this year.

Turning thirty-five years old meant she was now dangerously close to being forty and while that wasn’t necessarily depressing, it was a little disappointing. The life that she had thought she’d be living was not the life she was living because she wasn’t married, nor did she have any children. And the possibility that she would ever be married again, or ever have children seemed to be drifting farther away from her, especially since the only actual date she’d been on had gone nowhere.

And to make matters worse, her biological clock was ticking like a motherfucker, which seemed to be directly related to finding out David had a child.

So, turning thirty-five was a bit of a shit sundae.

PAIGE: As ready as I’ll ever be.

JULES: I have a surprise for you, and you’re going to love it …

For a moment, Paige flinched at the mention of a ‘surprise’ and immediately thought of a few worst case scenarios. With Jules, a worst case scenario could be pretty bad. Not jail-time bad, but there had been a food poisoning incident, which had ruined Indian food forever.

PAIGE: It better not be a stripper. I won’t be down with that.

JULES: You’re showing your age. No one says ‘down with that’ anymore.

PAIGE: Not true. I say it all the time. That, and ‘talk to the hand’.

JULES: If it weren’t your special day, I’d tell you to eat a bag of dicks.

PAIGE: I wouldn’t even know what that means. And I don’t want to, so please, don’t feel like you need to explain it to me. Or send me a meme.

JULES: You mean a gif.

PAIGE: Whatever.

JULES: I should totally look for one. I bet they’re out there.

PAIGE: I’m sure they are. Don’t send me one.

PAIGE: So, tell me about my surprise.

JULES: It’s a surprise. You’ll find out tonight.

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