16th December, 2020

It was S’s 27th birthday last weekend. After all these years, I still remember her 17th every year. I don’t think she does, but I could never forget it. There were Christmas lights at her house. A Tree, food from her favourite restaurant, and me. Last weekend almost identical to 10 years ago. 

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Except, she was laughing this year but then she was holding herself together. I could see the cracks in her smile. We’d stuck together a year, like magnets we’d sat together in class and chosen subjects around each other. While deciding colleges, we would talk slyly about the possibility of being roommates. Friends at 17, last forever - we believed that then. It’s not a rule, but it was true for us. 

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I hadn’t understood her resistance when I wished her Happy Birthday. She looked upset at the prospect. My 17th just a few months ago had been a dream, a year left of childhood - a dream within reach. But she looked ready to cry, close to breaking down. I wanted to be alone with her and question her, but there were a million people around us all day and I knew nothing is worse than crying in the middle of a crowded room. 

At midnight, I helped her parents pick up trash left on the floor. The night felt heavy, we were exhausted. It had been a long night of dancing, I’d talked to a boy I’d liked then. Funny, I don’t remember about what. Now, I wanted to talk to S, why was she upset? I walked to her room and began talking off my make-up. When I looked up at her from the mirrored-wall, she was sobbing. I was in shock, and she was shaking. 

I sat down next to her, puller her hair out of her face and held her, the best I knew how. I still didn’t understand why she was upset, but I knew her well enough to know it wasn’t the right time to ask. When she quietened down, I helped her clean up and we went to bed. I knew I’d ask her the next morning, when she was calmer, in a better place. 

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***

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She walked out of the morning the next morning, and asked “Can I actually be hungover?” I looked up at her from the bed, she looked hungover, red eyes and tired but I remembered the tiny sip her mom had offered her from the wine glass. “No, I think you’d need more than that,” She laughed. I still remember thinking that the wine was a scary shade of red, I didn’t like the way it had stained her mouth. I wonder what 17-year old me would think of the entire bottles we had last weekend. “You wanna tell me what went wrong?” 

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The rant that followed was neither fully coherent nor logical but I remember thinking it was raw. She was scared of getting older, scared of the future, had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t be as good as we thought it would. Why would we assume differently? The years since childhood has stretched out, gotten increasingly harder and more stressful. But we still had a hope in adulthood, our hope placed in freedom and a yearning for being in charge. Now a year away, we wondered if it would be what we thought it was. Would adulthood would be just as disappointing as sweet-sixteens? We were 17 now, didn’t feel like a dancing queen. What if the ability of getting married if we wanted to meant nothing? Glasses of wine would pile up before we answered those questions, but still I comforted her. I’d told her there was no where to go but up. That was the gist, I still don’t think I was convinced of it. 

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Whatever I’d said that day had given her enough energy to dance. And we’d spent the morning dancing in front of the TV. It’s still one of my happiest memories, jumping in her living room, just the two of us was somehow much better than the dancing we’d done the night before. These days, one of those pop songs will play in the car and I’ll be back there at her place. I was right, things only got better from 17 but I’d still do anything to go back to that moment in time.