After a moment’s hesitation I tried the knob, and the door gave way. Except for a single lamp burning in the corner, it was dark inside. I heard the low pulse of a song by Citizen Cope. But I didn’t see the man I was looking for. “Jude?”
“Right here.” I looked down and found him on the floor, shirtless, his feet tucked under the rail of the bed, his hands behind his head. My eyes got a little stuck on the unfamiliar six-pack he was sporting these days. Jude tightened his abs and sat up, and I realized that a set of sit-ups was responsible for this mouthwatering moment. “Something wrong?” he said, tilting his head and considering me.
It took another second until I could drag my gaze away from him and back to the box in my arms. “Um, did you get me a birthday cake?”
He let out half a chuckle and got to his feet. “I plead the fifth.”
“Why? I mean… you didn’t even stay for a piece of cake?” I stepped all the way in and closed the door behind me.
Jude sat on the edge of his bed, his chest still expanding rapidly from the workout I’d interrupted. “I don’t know. I wanted you to have something nice, but I didn’t need the credit.”
“Why?” I asked again. I put the box on the dresser. (The dresser. I was never going to look at that piece of furniture the same way again.) Then, uninvited, I went to sit beside him on the edge of his bed.
A pair of serious eyes studied me. “It was just a little thing, Sophie. If I got you a cake every day for the next thirty years, I still couldn’t make it right between us.”
“I really liked it, though.”
His eyes softened. “I’m glad.”
“Do you want a piece? There’s plenty.”
For a second his face remained unchanged, and I panicked. I shouldn’t have come here. He’s going to ask me to leave. I am a fool. But his chin tilted upward and he smiled. I felt it like sunshine on my face. A full-on Jude smile, just for me. “Sure, baby. I’d love a piece.”
Sure, baby. He used to say that all the time in the same voice—rough and smooth all at once, like whiskey. I got up to get the cake box so that he couldn’t see my face. Dying here, I thought, flipping open the top. To be in this room with Jude was to have memories crash over my head at intervals like waves. And just when I managed to push one out of my mind, a new one would sneak up and clobber me.
There was a pile of plastic forks and napkins on the bookshelf in the corner of his room, so I swiped one of each before I brought the cake back to his bed and set it down. He looked in the box. “That’s too big to be just one piece,” he said.
I handed him the fork. “Just do your best. I don’t really feel like taking it home to my parents’ house.”
Jude stuck the fork into the end of the piece, a naughty glint in his eye. He took a bite. A second later he let his eyes roll back in his head.
“I know,” I said. “It’s awesome.”
“They called it Black Forest,” he said, licking his lips.
“Let’s call it Awesome Forest.”
He took a second bite. Then he forked up a third and offered it to me.
Heat rose on my cheeks as I opened my mouth to receive it. Jude fed me the bite gently, and our eyes locked. I felt goosebumps break out on my arms. At the last second, Jude angled the fork to smear my lip with frosting on the dismount.
“You ass,” I complained, and he laughed. The sound of his laughter—low and naughty—cranked my heartstrings a little tighter. It used to be this easy between us. When Jude and I were alone together, the rest of the world didn’t exist.
That’s what I’d thought, anyway. Until our little world cracked in two.
Jude sat back, as if putting a little distance between us. Maybe he felt it, too—the tightening of the invisible cord between us. “So. What did you get for your birthday?”
I wasn’t quite ready for that question. “Well,” I whispered, feeling my sadness rise to the surface again. “For my birthday I received one Awesome Forest cake.”
He set the fork down inside the cake box and set the box on the bed, waiting for me to go on. When I didn’t, his brow creased with concern. And then my stupid eyes watered.
I swear to God, the entire time that Jude and I were a couple, I only cried for sad movies. But now I could not be in the same zip code with him without springing a leak.
Jude reached for me. He lifted me by the hips into his lap as if I were a little girl. And I hid my face in his neck as if I were one. He smelled of clean flannel and laundry detergent.
“My girl is having a rough time,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I mumbled, trying to backtrack. “Birthdays don’t really matter when you’re twenty-three. But it just wears on me sometimes—all the petty, dysfunctional bullshit.” And I don’t have anyone to talk to about it, because you left me all alone.