“I don’t like feeling useless.” He pouts, which only draws more attention to his perfect lips.

“I know, I know. You like taking care of everything. But it’s your birthday, let me be the responsible adult for once.”

He puts an arm around my back and draws me closer to him. “I’m eighteen today. I’m technically the adult here.”

“Then go do your taxes or iron your clothes or do whatever it is adults do. I got this.” I use every ounce of willpower to untangle us, but he just holds me closer and brings his lips to mine.

Like every single time I kiss Aiden, I melt into him. I can feel the heat emanating from his body as I wrap my arms around him and pull him closer to me. This is what a normal life with Aiden would be like. Yes. This is all that I want.

“Shit!” a voice exclaims from the kitchen, and Aiden and I push apart.

“Language!” Aiden scolds, heading into the kitchen to see what happened before I stop him.

“I got it,” I intervene, stopping him from venturing into the kitchen any farther. “Responsible adult here, remember?”

“Fine.” He steps back and it looks like it takes some effort. “I came to remind you guys that everyone is going to be here in an hour and a half.”

“Oh wow, time flies! Okay, no big deal, we got this.” I turn back into the kitchen and find Jason and Jackson hunched over the bowl, fishing around in the chocolate batter with forks.

“What happened?” I ask, looking into the bowl.

“I think I lost, like, half an eggshell in the batter,” Jason sheepishly admits. “Maybe more.”

He thinks? A quick glance at the clock tells me there’s no time to start over. “Let’s just see if we can find it, or as much of it as we can.”

“What if we don’t find it all?” Jackson frowns. He wanted this cake to be perfect.

“It’ll add . . . texture to the cake. No big deal,” I reassure him.

An hour and forty-five minutes later, the table is set and the cake is iced, and our friends have arrived to celebrate Aiden’s birthday.

He demanded that we not get him any presents, but obviously we did. Before the winter break, we all pitched in and got him this super-high-tech barbeque that he and Julian have been drooling over for the last couple of months. Even though it’s January and kind of cold outside, the guys were so excited to use it that they brought over a bunch of meat and we had a barbeque birthday feast.

We sing happy birthday to Aiden again as he sits looking extremely uncomfortable, even more so than earlier today at lunch, and blows out his candles as quickly as possible. We sit in the family room to eat the cake, with a movie on in the background that no one’s really watching.

“Is it supposed to be crunchy?” Julian asks.