“How old are you?” Kahoni asks after the singing dies down and Nick blows out the candles. Nick mumbles an answer. I can’t hear it, but I know what it is: he’s sixteen, the same as me now.

“Sweet sixteen!” Kahoni says, clapping him on the back again.

“Have you ever been kissed?” asks a red-faced woman at the next table—Penny Jacobi, because of course it is. She looks like she had too much wine at dinner. “Well, have you?

Nick stares at her incredulously, like Penny just asked him if he’s ever walked on the moon. “You mean, like, romantically?”

“Well, I don’t mean by your mother.” Penny smirks.

Nick doesn’t have a mother that I know of. Everyone calls his dad a “confirmed bachelor,” whatever that means. Nick’s mother must have been in the picture at some point, but what happened to her, I don’t know.

“No,” Nick murmurs. “I’ve never been kissed.”

“Maybe we could fix that.” Penny giggles and looks around. “Who wants to kiss this young man on his birthday?”

Silence.

“What, no takers? Oh, come on, he’s not that bad-looking!” slurs Penny. “Who will volunteer?”

Every girl of a remotely eligible age turns away. I’d like to say I’m different, that I stand up then and give the Jacobis the finger and plant a big fat kiss on Nick’s surprised lips in front of everyone.

But I don’t. I just sit there, keeping my head down, hoping I don’t catch Penny’s eye.

“Sit down, Mom,” says Kate finally. “Leave the kid alone.”

“Yeah, don’t be a jackass, Jacobi. Sit down before you fall down,” says Marjorie Pearson, and nobody messes with Marjorie, so Penny stumbles back to her seat.

Kahoni puts his hand on Nick’s shoulder and squeezes. “Don’t worry, dude. It will come. That first kiss, it’s too special to waste on just anybody.”

Here we go again. Special.

“Right,” Nick agrees faintly. Kahoni seems like an expert on the matter, being that his name, I remember, means “the kiss.” He squeezes Nick’s shoulder one final time and then wanders off to talk to some of the other guests.

Everyone goes back to what they were doing before the cake. Thankfully that includes the Jacobis. I watch Nick pick at his cake.

Unkissable.

Unfuckable.

And suddenly, I just think, no.

No, I think. So I do what I should have done earlier.

I stand up.

It’s like an alien has taken over my body. I don’t linger. I don’t practice what I should say. I don’t try to think of something clever. I don’t hesitate. I march straight over to Nick’s table and I say, “Hey.”

His eyes still light up when he sees me. I didn’t misinterpret him before. He likes me.

“Happy birthday,” I say.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll do it.”

“What?”