1.
Four months earlier
Molly and Noah were already seated at the table when I arrived at the restaurant. I was underwhelmed by the presentation. There were no gifts waiting, no bouquet of flowers, nothing to indicate that we were celebrating my birthday rather than having an ordinary meal.
I swallowed my disappointment as I pulled out a chair and joined them.
"Oh wow," I said. "My two favorite people. What are we drinking tonight?"
The setting was so mediocre that I decided it was a fake-out before the surprise party that I'd spent the previous two months hinting to my fiancé, Noah, that I wanted.
"I'd love a surprise party," I told him while we stood in the corner at a housewarming for one of his friends.
"Maybe you'll throw me a surprise party," I whispered into his ear while we made love.
"I told Noah that I want a surprise party," I texted his mom.
My favorite birthday party ever-my last real party-had been a surprise. I was turning ten, and I came home from school to find the living room full of people. None of them were other kids. I didn't care. I didn't have any friends my own age anyway. I claimed that I preferred the company of adults. "Kids are stupid," I used to say to my parents, and the three of us would laugh and laugh. There was no better feeling than entertaining them like that.
What I couldn't admit was that I felt excluded. The other girls were enrolled in dance lessons, soccer, and horseback riding, and developed languages that I was unable to speak. They didn't care about the films that I'd watched over the weekend or the chapter books that I'd completed. My parents didn't seem to understand that children's extracurriculars existed, and wouldn't have been able to afford them if they had understood. "What could be better than the three of us?" they said, which was a statement that I wanted to be true.
My tenth birthday fulfilled fantasies that I didn't even know I'd had. Instead of one big cake with cursive icing spelling out Happy Birthday, Lexie, there were trays of exquisitely decorated petits fours and a tower of cocktail shrimp. Someone gave me a flute of champagne, and thought it was hilarious when I took a sip and grimaced before setting it down. The air grew smoky with a scent that, years later, I would realize was marijuana. We pushed the couches out of the way to make a dance floor, and I grew lightheaded as I spun in circles, the guests cheering my name. I was so ecstatic that I failed to notice the lack of presents. I ended the evening with the assumptions that all adult parties were like that and that age ten was going to be the best year ever. I was horrendously wrong on both counts.
When I woke on the morning of my thirtieth birthday to find on my bedside table a note from Noah that said See you tonight @ Antonio's 7pm in Noah's messy doctor's scrawl, I took it as confirmation that the surprise party was happening as requested. I looked up Antonio's online and saw that they had a private room available for rent. I scrolled through photos of the space, building in my brain a vision of the night to come. Couples were always throwing each other elaborate theme parties on my favorite reality shows-gatherings with themes like "cowboy," "luau," or "1920s murder mystery," filled with dozens of the friends who served as extras in their lives. That was the kind of thing that I was envisioning, except the theme was "my parents' house twenty years ago." Before everything went wrong.
I spent the day primping. I got a facial, followed by a manicure and a blowout.
"It's my birthday," I told the aesthetician.
"It's my birthday," I repeated to the nail tech.
"It's my birthday," I informed the hair stylist.
It was the kind of thing that was allowed only one day of the year, and I was going to take advantage of it.
At home, I opened a bottle of champagne and practiced making surprised faces in the mirror.
Oh my gosh, what a surprise!
A surprise party?! I had no idea!
I can't believe my fiancé is so good at keeping secrets!
By the time I put on the sparkly purple dress that my best friend, Molly, had helped me pick out, I was significantly inebriated. I took selfies against the wall of my town house, with the best lighting, and ordered an Uber to come pick me up, because if Noah's party for me would be anything like the ones that I'd seen on TV, there was no way that I would be in any state to drive later in the evening.
When I'd arrived at the restaurant, I was surprised when the host led me past the private room, which was dark and empty, but I wasn't surprised to see Molly sitting next to Noah at the table. I'd known for weeks that she was in on the secret. On a couple of separate occasions, I'd caught Noah texting her when I'd peeked over his shoulder. Molly and Noah had conspired together before-she was the one who had told him my ring size and preferred stone cut before he'd proposed-so when I saw the messages, I knew something good was in the works.
Then, two weeks prior to the dinner, Molly had invited me to the mall. She'd ordered a dress online that turned out to be too small, and rather than mailing it back, she decided it would be easier to return it to the store directly.
"It would be a good opportunity to buy a dress for your birthday," she said, with a wink.
That was the kind of friendship that Molly and I had-we existed together. If I wanted an afternoon coffee as a pick-me-up, she swung by and we went to Starbucks. If Noah had a late shift at the hospital, Molly came over with a pizza and we watched reality television. Having Molly was what I'd imagined having a sister would've been like, had my mother ever listened to my requests for a sibling.
Molly was the first friend I'd ever had who provided the kind of bond that I'd witnessed in movies. I'd had acquaintances, of course. People I saw at work or the gym. We said hello to one another and exchanged pleasantries, but we didn't really know one another. It was like there was some invisible fence that everyone had the access code to except for me. I blamed my mother. She hadn't been close with anyone either, except for my father, and that had ended catastrophically.
Things with Molly were different. She was fun and pretty and, most important, she liked me. She made me want to tell her things, real things, not the mindless chatter I gave other people.
When she picked up the sparkly purple dress and said, "This would be perfect for your birthday," I listened between the lines to hear This would be perfect for your surprise party.
That was why I was certain that the table at the restaurant was the beginning of the night rather than the end. Surely there was something more than a simple birthday dinner afoot. If about nothing else, I was right about that.
As I approached the table, Noah's gaze drifted in the direction of my cleavage. I did have nice breasts, an attribute that I didn't take for granted.
"You look good," he said.
As a medical resident, Noah spent a lot of hours at the hospital, which meant that he had to tend to our relationship in other ways. He gave frequent compliments, had a standing weekly flower delivery, and knew my favorite meal at all our regular take-out spots, so that I wasn't stuck cooking for myself every single night. Molly sometimes asked me if I was lonely spending so much time by myself, but I didn't mind. After all that time alone in my youth, being with others too much could be overwhelming.
"Thanks," I said.
I noticed that Molly had also donned a sparkly dress, which seemed a little tacky considering that she'd helped me pick out my outfit for the evening. Molly could be like that sometimes, stepping into other people's spotlights when given the chance. I knew it was because she was insecure. She needed the reassurance of having everyone look at her.
"I think I'm going to get a martini," I announced, thinking of the glasses that had floated in guests' hands at my tenth birthday party. "I don't usually drink martinis, but it seems like a good night for one."
"I think I'll get one too," Molly said.
Noah, who didn't ordinarily drink, because he was nearly always on call, ordered straight bourbon. He kept glancing in my direction in a way that made me worried there was something on my face.
"We have something to tell you," Molly said when our drinks arrived.
"Oh?" I took a sip of my martini. It didn't taste the way that I thought it would when I was a kid. That was true of a lot of things. Coffee, cigarettes, oysters. Everything about being an adult was at least a little bit worse than it looked from a child's viewpoint.
Molly glanced at Noah, who was staring intently at his drink.
"Noah and I are in love," she said.
I giggled. It was the only reasonable reaction to such a joke.
"With me?"
"No, with each other."
It might've been an effect of the candlelight, but she looked almost gleeful. She was so unlike the Molly I thought I knew, the Molly who came off as meek until her shell was cracked. I considered myself to be a good judge of character. After all, I'd detected the wrongness within my parents before anyone else had. There hadn't been anything sour or vindictive in Molly, or at least I hadn't thought there was. The possibility that I'd been mistaken made me panic.
Meanwhile, Noah was somehow shrinking, his body deflating like an air mattress over the course of a night.
I giggled again. The sound irritated me, but I couldn't stop myself.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"We've wanted to tell you for a while now. I swear, we didn't mean for it to happen. We ran into each other at a bar. We were drunk and, well . . ." Molly's voice trailed off as she waited for me to put the pieces together. She had the tone of someone pretending to be apologetic, which I was well acquainted with from all the reality shows that we'd watched together. I'm sorry if I made you feel that way, but I was being my authentic self.
"Noah doesn't go to bars. He's always at work." I lost confidence in the words as they came out of my mouth. I was operating in a dream space, where I wasn't sure what was real. It seemed strange that my arms were still connected to my body, that I was able to maintain my hold on the glass.
"There are things that he doesn't tell you," Molly said.
I looked at Noah, who was now the size of a mouse. I couldn't figure out why I'd ever thought him tall.
"Did you forget how to speak?" I asked.
I'd never seen him like that before. He usually had the obnoxious confidence of a man with a degree in how bodies worked.
"Sorry, Lexie," he whispered into his bourbon.
"That's it? That's all you have? Your job that involves telling patients that they're dying, and you can't look me in the eyes and tell me that you've been cheating on me?"
I stared him down. He refused to meet my gaze.
"This is a joke, right? One of those pranks? Well, you got me. I'm so sad, boo-hoo. You're having an affair, are deeply in love, all that. Can we skip to the end, where you tell me that none of this is real, and then celebrate my birthday?"
Noah's head shot up like someone had just stuck a needle in his side.
"It's your birthday?"
His eyes were red. Had he been crying? I hadn't noticed.
"Of course it's my birthday. That's why we're here. This is my birthday dinner."
Noah looked at Molly.
"Did you know?" he asked.
"Yeah, I mean, I guess I thought it was a little weird that you wanted to tell her on her birthday, but I went along with it because that was what you wanted," she said.
Noah shook his head.
"No," he insisted. "No, I didn't know. You should've told me, Molly. I wanted to let her down gently; you knew that."
The joke was going on too long, too seriously. I needed it to end. I looked around for hidden cameras, for the rest of the party to pop out and say, Surprise! It wasn't the kind of thing that was ever supposed to happen with Noah. Above all else, he was supposed to be safe.
"It's better that she knows," Molly said. "Now she can get on with the rest of her life."
"Noah is the rest of my life," I said. I thought about the house we were going to buy, the children we were going to have. The last time I'd seen Noah's mother, she'd handed me the smallest onesie that I'd ever seen, stating that she'd found it in the store and couldn't resist. It had been an act as meaningful as when Noah had slid the engagement ring onto my finger.
"We have a wedding date, a venue. I bought a dress. It's being tailored. What about the house?" Noah and I had been casually house hunting for the past couple of months. He'd moved into my town house shortly after we started dating, and we'd decided that it was time to move into something bigger and jointly owned. Just the previous weekend we'd toured a suburban four-bedroom, five-bathroom house that he'd called his "dream home." For some reason, I'd thought my presence was implied within that dream.
"Lexie, I'm sorry. It's over," he said sadly.
There was a rushing in my brain. The sound of a dam lifting, a waterfall set free. They were serious, or at least Molly was. She sat with her martini glass pinched between two fingers. She looked so good. Had she lost weight? I'd thought her dress was similar to mine, and now I realized that it was exactly the same, only hers was bright red instead of purple.
I thought back to our shopping trip. She'd known. She'd directed me to buy the dress and then purchased one of her own. The whole situation had been engineered to obliterate me. Why go for a gunshot wound when you could send a bomb?
Copyright © 2025 by Tasha Coryell. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
