Page 49 of Blocked Score

“So don’t go making some big thing out of it around here. No surprise parties, okay?”

Lane shakes his head. “No, I’m not throwing you a surprise party. I’m throwing you a very obvious party that you’ll see coming a mile away. Because from this moment on, I don’t want you to think for even a second that another birthday of yours is going to pass without anyone noticing. I don’t want you to ever be surprised that there are people out there who care about you enough to celebrate your birthday. You can take that as a given, starting now.”

I’ve never been more at a loss for words.

All I can do is blink my eyelids at Lane while my mouth hangs open. My chest feels tight with emotion when I pull in a breath.

“You … you don’t have to do that,” I tell him.

“When you care about someone, you don’t celebrate their birthday because you have to, you do it because you want to. The second I tell the guys that your birthday’s coming up, you won’t be able to avoid having a party if you tried.”

My heart clenches. There’s a sudden prickly sort of pressure on the bridge of my nose. I blink my eyes tight a couple times to keep any moisture from gathering.

“I mean, if you think the guys will insist …”

“They will. And so do I.”

A crinkly tearingsound fills the air as I rip open my next present.

“Oh, Jamie!” I exclaim as I take the small gift card out of the deceptively large box. “This is great! My room’s been totally empty since I moved in.”

Jamie got me a gift card to a plant shop in town. With some leafy green plants hanging around, maybe my room will start to feel more like my home and less like a long-term hotel stay.

Though, after opening a bunch of presents so far today and seeing how genuinely excited the guys were to have this party for me, this place is already starting to feel a lot more like home than …

Than anywhere I’ve ever lived, I realize.

I’m feeling more at home here with a guy I had a fling with a year and a half ago and his hockey teammates who I just met, than I did growing up with my dad, or any of the rare times I stayed with my mom and her real family, or when I lived with Caleb.

I force my brain to make a U-turn away from that train of thought. Way to take a nice realization and spin it into something negative, Scarlett.

I’m living somewhere where I’m gradually starting to feel at home, and I’m having a great day. I’m just going to take those two facts as the positives they are.

The roommates of course are all here: Lane, Sebastian, Rhys, and Tuck. Hudson, their big, burly goalie who has a bunch of sick tattoos, is also over with his girlfriend, Summer. Tuck’s girlfriend Olivia and Rhys’s girlfriend—as well as Lane’s sister—Maddie are here, too. Three other guys from the team, Jamie, who I know, along with Carter and Kiran. And, of course, Harper.

It's funny. Throughout my life, I’ve always had tons of people who I considered friends. I’ve always been social and up for a good time, so I’ve always had groups of people around me who I’d hang out with.

But somehow, none of them coalesced to ever make me feel like my birthday was any kind of big deal.

Looking back, I guess they were all more like acquaintances who were nearby. Convenient to party and pass the time with, but not people who actually cared enough to organize anything for me, or to go out of their way to put in an effort. Even though I always made a point myself of picking up a present for someone if I knew their birthday was coming up, as little money as I had.

The one exception would be Demi, but lately we’re not talking that much. She’s up to her neck with her senior year in Chicago, along with grad school applications. I don’t blame her for being busy, but I hope once things get a little less hectic for her, we’ll keep in touch more.

Next, Harper hands me her present. I unwrap it to find a book.

“Blinding Mirrorsby TK Chilton,” I read the title. “Oh! I’ve heard about him.” He’s supposed to be a major sensation in literary fiction right now.

I’m not surprised Harper, an English major who’s always in the middle of reading something, got me a book. She respects my love of mafia romance, but she’s been nudging me to expand my reading horizons.

She nods enthusiastically. “It’s so good. It’s, like, the best book I’ve read in forever. I can’t get enough of Chilton.”

Sebastian’s expression twists as he glances at Harper, like there’s a bad taste in his mouth.

“Here, Scarlett,” he says, handing me his present. I rip the paper to find another book calledDust Country, by the same author.

Sebastian folds his arms over his chest and says, seemingly more to Harper than to me, “It’s by far his best work.”

Harper snorts. “Are you kidding?Dust Countryis fine, but it’s his weakest effort. It lacks the originality of his other works.”

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