"I don't drink."
"You've never legally had the option! Maybe you're a secret cocktail person. Maybe you love mojitos. You don't know until you try."
"I don't want to try."
"Too bad. Birthday boy doesn't get a vote." He throws a pillow at me. "Tonight. Ten o'clock. Murphy's. Wear the blue shirt."
"I only have three shirts."
"Wear the one that isn't gray or black. The blue one. It makes your eyes look less dead."
"Inspiring."
"I try." He's already texting furiously. "Oh man, Melissa says happy birthday. And she's bringing cake. CAKE, Dev."
"That's actually nice."
"She's ACTUALLY nice. Unlike you, who's being a grump on his own birthday." He yanks open the curtains. Weak October light fills the room. "Twenty-one. You're officially an adult."
"I've been an adult since I was eight."
Tyler's face softens. He knows better than to push when I say things like that. "Yeah, well. Now you're an adult with friends and a birthday party. Let me have this."
"Fine."
"That's the spirit! Okay, I gotta run, double shift today, but I'll be back by nine to make sure you don't bail." He pulls on his warehouse uniform, grabs his backpack. "Oh, and Dev?"
"Yeah?"
"Happy birthday. For real. I'm glad you're here."
He says it simply, no joke underneath, and for a second my throat goes tight.
"Thanks, Tyler."
He waves and he's gone, thundering down the stairs like he does everything, at full volume, no apologies.
I check my mail cubby on the way out. The aging-out notice is there again, a polite, impersonal reminder that my grace period has a limited number of days left. As if the number isn't tattooed on the inside of my skull. The math hasn't changed. It just gets heavier every time I look at it.
Happy birthday to me.
* * *
The library is my birthday present to myself. Five hours of reading before my shift, the same as every morning, except today I'm twenty-one and nothing about the number changes the reality of anything. I can legally drink, which I don't want to do. I can legally gamble, which I can't afford. I am exactly as close to and as far from an apartment as I was yesterday.
Silas is in his corner when I arrive. He's been here every morning this week. Tuesday, Wednesday, now Thursday. Same routine. Vending machine coffee at 7:10, two cups, one for eachof us. We read in parallel. Sometimes we pass notes. He wrote one yesterday about a character inThe Lions of Al-Rassanthat made him throw the book across the room, and I wrote back telling him to pick it up and keep going because the next chapter would fix everything. It didn't fix everything. He texted me at 11 PM:
You lied. Nothing is fixed. I'm devastated.
And I texted back:I said the next chapter would fix everything. I didn't say which next chapter.
This is us now. Notes and texts and mornings reading in parallel and afternoons in the café where he sits in his booth and I make his coffee and we talk about books during my break and it's the best week of my life.
I lift my book in greeting. He lifts his. The salute.
I read until 11:30 and then go to the café, and Robin is in crisis mode because the espresso machine is making a sound like a dying animal.
"Don't panic," he says, which means panic.