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It was the day of his eighteenth birthday, and Alex Curren was almost as happy as he could have been. All of his old friends had come to visit him in his new home, though many of them had travelled far. Many of them he hadn’t seen in months; not since he had moved away at the urgings of his older brother. The city had been strange to him at first, but his brother’s words had proven true.

‘’Alex, you’re wasting yourself here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad life in a small town. But we both know you can do better.’’ His brother had said those words to him before giving him the money to rent the house, and though it galled him to admit it, he knew that it was true. So to the city he had come, surrendering his past life, saying goodbye to his friends and his family. So far, he had been reasonably successful. Well educated and intelligent, Alex was the sort of person who could go far, and farther still with his successful older brother looking out for him from on-high.

That didn’t mean, however, that he hadn’t felt isolated and a little alone as he had struggled to adjust.

Not so today. Today, the old faces were back in , the old stories flowed anew, and the old laughter soothed his soul. He smiled and joked with old friends, gliding between the sub groups which made up his social life. His older brother toasted him with a drink, and shared an embarrassing story or two, Alex flushed, but laughed along, enjoying the feeling while he could. He knew that tomorrow, most of them would be gone again.

He sighed at that thought, looking own at the drink in his hand. More, perhaps? He frowned at himself, then shook his head. He was no heavy drinker. He didn’t like to be drunk. He didn’t like to think about what he might do or say when he was under the influence. It wasn’t that he had anything to hide, but he knew only too well how easy it was to say something that you didn’t mean when drunk, and how hard it was to fix things afterwards.

So he mingled. He moved, he talked, chatted and laughed. He spoke to John, the workaholic who had even bought his laptop so he could finish frantically typing a report. He laughed with Dave, one of his older friends, who didn’t much like crowds on account of his past.

After that, he moved on. Always circling, always speaking, and chatting and talking. It was easy to do that, easy to use it to distract himself from the niggling worry in his chest. It was what was ruining the day for him, really. It was the thing which kept him form being settled.

It was also a ridiculous thing. So small and petty that it shouldn’t even have mattered at all.

The problem was this. Clara. She was a friend, an old friend. A very old friend, in fact. So old that he could not remember a time when they had not been friends. That was how close they were. They’d known each other for literally most of their lives, they’d bonded, played together, grown up together, and knew each other as no one else could. In the face of that level of friendship, what did it matter such a small thing as this?

But it did matter, to him. Even if he told himself that it shouldn’t.

Clara had not gotten him a birthday present.

So small. So insignificant. She had shown up, hadn’t she? She was happy enough, wasn’t she? She wasn’t mad at him, was she?

But it was the first time she had not gotten him something.

He worried about it. Had he offended her in some way? Had he hurt her? He was also a little hurt himself, though he tried to keep a wrap on that. She could have gotten him something! He didn’t want something big or flashy, he wasn’t hurt that she hadn’t spent a ton of money. He was just hurt that she seemed to have done nothing for it at all.

He shook his head, telling himself to cut that out. There would be time to be gloomy later. For now, he would return to the party, and do his best to have fun.

Next, he stopped to check on friend and on and off partner to his older brother. She was a cute girl, if you were into sporty women. Her figure was athletic, and she had long blond hair. Her blue eyes were sharp, incisive. When she looked at you, you always felt like you were being read. She was nursing a drink, having already gathered a circle of followers. By the way she was gesturing dramatically, Alex reckoned that she was recounting her last game. Lilly was big into sports, as a player, not a follower. When they had been young, she’d played football as well as his brother, which was saying something. Later, she’d gotten into tennis. Alex didn’t know what she was doing now, but suspected pretty strongly that whatever it was, she was very good at it. She was the kind of woman who expected nothing but the best from herself, and her body proved it. Alex felt a little pervy when he thought about her in that regard, but they’d grown up together, and he’d hit puberty having seen her growing as well. Frankly, at the age he’d been at, it was hard not to notice the way her body was slim and muscular, toned and refined by years of sports. She was a little short, but so confident that you almost never noticed. She loomed large in any conversation. When she walked into a room, back to her or not, you knew she was there.

Alex exchanged nods with her, and moved on. She went back to her story, the crowd around her enjoying the excitement of her retelling, even if she might have accidentally smacked someone in the head once or twice.

For the rest of the night, this was what Alex did. He moved between groups, sharing stories, swapping drinks. He laughed, and he spoke with old friends. He told sad stories of the ones who couldn’t be there, he reminisced, and he danced, and he chatted, and he drank

Little did he know that Clara had not forgotten him in the slightest, and that the present she was going to give was one that would change his world forever.