An Unexpected Interruption

“Yeah,” I stumbled, trying to find the right words, “I’d take your number. I mean you can have my number. We should hang out!”

My voice came out a little too high and she smiled, nodding and holding out her hand to me. It took me a little longer than I’d like to admit that she was waiting for me to hand over my phone.

“Oh!” I said, fishing in my pockets and then realizing that we were drawing a little too much attention from the people around us, so barely paying any attention as I handed the phone over to her.

It was just a moment. It was just a single instant. Just her fingers brushing against mine, but it was enough to take me away.

Something in the moment felt a lot like slipping into this body for the first time. It was the confusion of that room that I was in, the hazy smoke of incense and the feeling that I was seeing a thousand different lifetimes play out layered one on top of the other.

But then it all settled and in the blink of an eye I was somewhere else.

Close your eyes one moment and open them another and the light is streaming in through windows overhead. I hear humming from the other room and I groan as I roll over, knowing what comes next.

It’s the same thing that’s happened for so many years, since my first year of college and now in my mid-thirties you’d think that they’d gotten over it but they haven’t. They still keep on insisting on making this day special for me.

I like it. I’d never admit to liking it but I do like it. I love the fact that they remember, because I can only too easily imagine a life where they don’t. I don’t want to give up on it, even if it’s a little awkward.

I hear them shuffling around outside my door and I close my eyes and pretend to sleep. That’s a lie I don’t think either of us really believe, the loft we live in has two bedrooms and I chose the one with the skylight windows so sleeping in isn’t really an option. But as they step inside and bring in the elements of the surprise, arranging them around my bed and around the room, I do my best to hide the smile from my face.

They are, as always, so unsubtle. They leap into my bed, bouncing it so roughly that I am jolted out of my pretend sleep and roll around with a groan that is quickly silenced when they slap their slim little hand over my mouth.

The touch is shockingly intimate, much the same as it was the first time we touched when I gave her my phone during the first day of frosh week and she put her number into it. I stare up at Rachel who has a grin that could make the Cheshire Cat jealous plastered across her face as she waits that one last instant before she breaks out into song.

The song we all know. The one we all get once a year. This time caterwauled by her tone deaf voice that is charming and indulgent as she throws herself into it with everything she has.

And I drink down every last drop of that. I let her make my day special. I let her show me that she loves me.

Rachel and I have been friends for years. The love we have is not a romantic love, it’s the affection of true companionship. We’ve bled for each other. We’ve cried for one another. We’ve been there through every single important moment that the other had, there to prop them up when they need a helping hand or there to applaud when they succeed.

And when she finishes with a flourish I laugh and push at her, blushing at the familiar and welcome attention.

“You’re a butt,” I tell her affectionately, “And you still can’t sing.”

“Yeah,” she replies, “But you love it.”

I nod, the closest that she’ll get to an acknowledgement from me but she doesn’t need one. She knows she’s got my thanks just like she knows that this was all simultaneously too much and entirely welcome at the same time.

“You went too far this year,” I tell her, but she shrugs and I know I won’t be able to convince her of that so instead I do what I always do.

I thank her the way I always thank her.

I pull her close and press my lips against hers.

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