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I hadn’t told Ophelia that my birthday was today. I was turning twenty-eight. Was that old or young? I didn’t know. When I was twenty-three, I wore heart-shaped stickers on my face. When I was twenty-five, I fell in love. I only drank tequila and pineapple juice, as if that said something important about me. At twenty-seven, I grieved and made bank. I felt tired when I pictured it, twenty-eight years contained in my body, an overstuffed carry-on. At the same time, it seemed like a sexy number, rounded and lush. Young for a writer, old for a gymnast, the perfect age for a bartender or anonymous fuck. I would throw away my flavored condoms and start reading about Bitcoin. I would buy satin sheets and retinol creams and carbonated water. I’d be sleek but fun, poised but game. I would dance with my eyes closed alone in a bar. All my shirts would be see-through, chopsticks in my hair. I couldn’t ever be embarrassed. From now on, I’d sleep naked with the windows ajar; that felt very twenty-eight. I took comfort in remembering what Simon had said, his eyes wet with meaning: You’re still so young!
As I walked, I thought about my answer to Nobody’s question. What would I miss most about being alive? It felt like bad luck to say what aloud. Instead I kept my answer close to my heart, like a locket containing my lover’s hair. It felt good to hold it there. It was both a secret and not, both hush-hush and public. I tried to imagine what my loved ones would say. Ophelia would miss sudoku, Dino would miss lingerie, Mazzy would miss Aperol. Or maybe Ophelia would miss yoga, Dino would miss ice cream, Mazzy would miss trashy paperback novels. The things we loved most were both elemental and petty. You squeezed them while you slept, these scraps. They made your body look beautiful, like the perfect accessory. Dog’s kisses, blue jeans. No one was dumb enough to say justice or family. No, we lived for Halloween and yard sales and driving at dusk with the windows rolled down. We lived for honeymoons and midnight snacks, blow jobs in chain hotels. We lived for paper valentines. It was garbage, but beloved. The devil’s in the details, my mom used to say as she stared at the TV. So too, it seemed, was heaven, or something just as good.