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noticed me.
    Oh my God! Imagine running into you here. Too fake.
    It’s been so long! Why not hang a “Look at my crow’s feet” sign around my neck?
    How are you? Maybe. Save it as a last resort.
    Are you married? Definitely not.
    I think of you every year on your birthday. Swallow fatal amount of sleeping pills before uttering these humiliating words.
    As pitiful as it seems—even to me—it was true that every year for the past fourteen, I remembered Matt’s birthday. Perhaps it was because the first time we slept together was on his twenty-second birthday, our fourth night together in Fort Lauderdale. The day before, I’d driven to town with Olivia, Libby, Cindy and Eve to stock up on alcohol and purchase a small cake for Matt’s birthday. I’d negotiated use of the hotel room until two that morning and planned to invite Matt over in the evening for cake and Jack Daniel’s. At midnight, I would be the first person to wish him a happy birthday. That was the plan.
    At around eight-thirty, I got a call from Libby. She was at the guys’ hotel room and whispered, “You’d better call Matt.”
    â€œWhy? We agreed to get together later. What’s up?”
    â€œOlivia and I have been here for a few hours, and Eve and Cindy just walked in. Matt thinks you’re blowing him off.”
    â€œWhy are Eve and Cindy there? I thought they were going for a walk.”
    â€œLook out the window.” Pouring rain. “This was the closest place they could run for shelter. Anyway, Matt is doing a really bad job at trying to act like he doesn’t care, but we can all see he’s bummed out ’cause he thinks you’re avoiding him.”
    â€œYou’re kidding!” I exclaimed. After just four days I could already see that unshakable apathy was very much part of the persona Matt had cultivated. Even though it was clear he liked me, he’d still pepper his conversations with “whatever.” I couldn’t help feeling just a bit giddy with the fact that he was showing visible signs of actually caring about me.
    â€œPut him on the phone,” I told Libby.
    â€œNo way. He’d kill me if he knew I called you. You call back here in a few minutes.”
    Blowing him off? I laughed. If he only knew I was actually writing his name in blue icing on a supermarket birthday cake.
    â€œHey, are we still on for tonight?” I asked Matt when I called back.
    â€œHey Prudence,” he said coolly. “Where’ve you been all day?”
    â€œWell actually I’ve been shopping for birthday stuff for you. I thought we could celebrate together.”
    â€œShit,” he said.
    â€œWhat an ingrate,” I teased.
    â€œNo, it’s not that. Thank you, no, thank you really. It’s just, well, when I didn’t hear from you, I thought, you know. I thought you were, you made other plans so I told my buddies we’d go out drinking. I should’ve called. Shit. I fucked up. Okay, how ’bout this? Why don’t I come over now and then I’ll go out with my friends later?”
    I didn’t love the plan, but I was already completely in love with him so I accepted it. I rationalized that this would be an opportunity to show him what a cool girlfriend I would be.
    He arrived a few minutes before nine in an orange mesh football jersey over a white T-shirt, and crisp 501 jeans. His brown hair was wet and combed neatly in a side part. At the door, he smiled so powerfully it seemed to have the ability to swing the door wide open all by itself.
    â€œHey,” he said. His head moved from one side of the room to the other as he scanned the rainbow of balloons strewn across the floor, and his cake on the table.
    â€œHi. Come on in,” I said, trying to seem very okay with how the evening was turning out. In reality, I was a bit embarrassed that I’d gone through all this trouble for a fifteen-minute round of drinks