Page 64 of The Way We Fell

I don’t mind sharing them. Ruth, Paloma and I—and Amie, too—have shared everything with each other for years; decades, even. We tidy up after lunch and sit back down with cups of coffee, and lemonade for Paloma, and Ruth slides the card into the reader on her laptop.

“Fuck me, K, your tits lookfantastic.” Ruth clicks on the first picture and my image fills the screen: I’m looking straight into the camera, wearing a filmy, sheer white shirt open over my lace underwear.

“Thanks, love.” And you know what? I believe her. Idolook good. Sure, my belly is a little softer than I’d like it to be, and my hips are wider than my friends’—I’ve always been the curvy one, while they’re all svelte and skinny—but I look fucking good.

“Doesn’t she look great?” Paloma sits forward, feet tucked up under herself on the sofa. “She’sso goodin front of the camera.”

“I’m an awkward turtle,” I protest.

“No you’re not!” Paloma answers with a squeak. “The camera loves you, baby.”

Ruth scrolls through the rest of the pictures—in total, Paloma put nearly three hundred of them on the memory card. When we took them, I didn’t know what I’d do with them, other than maybe look at them if I needed a bit of a confidence boost. Even when I feel awkward, Paloma always makes me look great. But now, I’m thinking about a certain someone’s birthday, and making a mental note to check out printing and framing services.

Later that evening, I slide a bowl of dressed salad across the kitchen table towards Jay as he sighs and stuffs his phone back into his pocket.

“Ruth wants me to have a birthday party,” he says. His tone holds a hint of annoyance and far more sadness than I ever want to hear from him.

“She wants to celebrate another year of you, because she loves you.” I plop a spoonful of salad onto my plate. Between the tang of the salad dressing, the richness of the pasta sauce, and the sweet, pungent smell of the garlic and caramelised onion flatbread between us, my mouth is watering and my stomach is growling.

“She wants me to invite some friends.”

“So, invite some friends.”

“I don’t have any friends, Katy.”

“What am I, chopped liver?”

“You’re not my friend,” he says, picking up a slice of the flatbread. “You’re my lady.”

I smile indulgently as my heart cracks in two, growing to twice its size in my chest. I’ve never liked the sound of anything more.

“So, why don’t you invite some of the guys from work? Just yesterday, you were telling me how you spent the entire evening laughing with them.”

“Maybe,” he hums. “It just—I don’t know. It feels wrong to have another birthday when Caleb will never have another one. Is that dumb?”

The thought had never occurred to me, but now that Jay has brought it up, it prickles at my skin like needles, burning my eyes and constricting my throat. This will be his first birthday since leaving the army. The first birthday without his best friend. I glance up at the ceiling, at the fluorescent strip light I never use, which is but a quiet shadow in the ambient glow of my preferred string lights hung from corner to corner. I reach across the table to place a hand on his forearm, and his dark eyes lift to meet mine, unfathomable sadness etched in every feature.

“It’s not dumb at all,” I say quietly. “But maybe you can celebrate your birthday for him, too. Celebrate the life he lived and the good he did.”

Jay’s throat works as he swallows hard, visibly trying to hold back his emotions. I want to tell him that it’s okay to be sad, to feel whatever he’s feeling right now. But I’ve told him that already, and I don’t think it’ll help. So I hum quietly, squeezing my fingers lightly on his arm until he takes a deep breath.

“He loved birthdays, you know? Not his own, he hated his own birthday. But he loved everyone else’s. He loved treating people like royalty for that one day.”

“I love that,” I say with a watery smile. “He’d probably chauffeur you to Ruth’s and hold the door open for you, I bet.”

“Yeah, he would.” Jay’s chuckle is quiet, but it’s warm, and it’s soothing the ache in my chest. His lips curve into a tentative smile. “I miss him.”

“I know,” I whisper. “I’m sorry, love.”

His left hand comes to cover mine on his right arm, and he holds it there for a long moment, taking deep, careful breaths. I can’t even imagine the pain. The thought of losing my best friend—any of them—makes me nauseous, even more so with this secret I find myself keeping. But to go through that, and the physical trauma of Jay’s injury, and then losing his job as a result of it all, too? I feel all of his emotions, but the pain is unimaginable.

“He’d want you to be happy, love,” I say quietly. “Remember him well. Celebrate him. Keep his memory with you.”

A tear slips down my cheek as Jay lifts my hand to his lips, pressing a tender kiss to my knuckles.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“Always,” I respond in kind. He shifts some pasta around his plate, digging for a piece of sauce-drenched sausage. I shove a forkful of food into my own mouth. It’s considerably cooler than before the mood shifted, but the tension slowly drains from Jay’s face as his rubs his thumb across my knuckles, and I eat my dinner one-handed, content to just listen to the sound of forks tapping plates, and Jay’s careful, quiet breaths.

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