Tina | | I'm here, I'm now, I'm ready

[impy]

Happy birthday dear Tiiiina, happy birthday to youuuuuu!

His eyes sparkle in the flickering candle light as he watches her attempt to blow out all her birthday candles. One by one the lights disappear and the overhead lights click on before the darkness can descend.
She plucks the purple candles off her cake and licks the frosting off, offering him one to be polite.
He shakes his head. "No thanks. I don't really like cake," he says.
She laughs, for a second sure he's kidding. When he doesn't laugh too, she stares at him, not caring that she looks ridiculous with a tiny purple birthday candle in her mouth, and six in her left hand waiting to be de-icified. "Seriously? Well, what do you have for your birthday then?"
He shrugs and then a smile slides across his face making him look even younger than normal. "Pie. My mom makes the best pie you've ever eaten."
She takes her time finishing off the last candle and pops it out of her mouth with a sigh. "Not really big on pie," she says finally. The birthday cake comes back in pieces, handed out to those who want it. He gets a bowl of icecream instead.
"You don't like pie? You. Don't. Like. Pie? I'm sorry, I don't think that's possible." His voice sounds weird, like he's trying to kid around with her, but is entirely too serious.
"Well, think about it. How many pies are there? I don't like cherries," she says slowly as he takes a bite of icecream and waits for him to snort. He does and shoots her a dirty look. She smirks.
"So no pie? Not even apple? Come on, what kind of American are you if you don't like apple pie?"
"Says the person who doesn't like cake. But fine, apple is okay. Sometimes."
"Good, I wouldn't want pie to break us up," he says. "Hurry up, your present is waiting."


With that in mind, she's been trying to learn how to make a good pie for months. She hasn't told him because it's supposed to be a surprise. Which has meant a lot of smuggling of less than perfect pies and supplies in and out of the house, but damn it, she's going to do this even if it kills her.
She appeals to his mom over the phone, which is a little akward since she's the reason this woman's son lives entirely too far away. But his mom is helpful and soon Tina's pies no longer make her friends wince seconds after seeing or tasting them. Infact, sometimes they ask to take the whole thing home with them. That's been happening a lot lately, actually.
His birthday party is in a few days, giving them time to celebrate alone tonight. At least that's the current plan. The original had them celebrating all day, but someone from work decided he needed his gift earlier that afternoon. Since he'd be skipping out of work for the weekend, and Bob was the one covering for him, it seemed kind of selfish to say he had to stay home with her. Especially since it was his birthday.
The apartment seems a little empty though. Maybe it was because in her head she keeps replaying the sound of the door slamming as he left a few hours ago.
That whole maturity thing seemed to skip out on both of them when it came to birthdays. So she hadn't been ecstatic that he was going off with Bob, who had a habit of always getting into trouble with the police doing the simplest things. So what? Did that mean she wasn't allowed to point out that his friends had kept him out so late the night before that she'd seen him for all of twenty minutes before Bob called to kidnap him?
Apparently.
Still. He's supposed to be home soon, and they'll have dinner and he'll tell her how Bob evaded the cops this time and everything will be forgotten. It'll work out.
And then there'll be pie. Well, for him. She'll nibble on the cherry-less bits. Because he should have pie on his birthday.

She watches the clock and despite what she'd always thought, a watched clock does manage to tick on at the normal speed. Infact, time seemed to be flying. She'll close her eyes for a second, just to blink, and the next thing she knows, hours have passed.
Dinner? Would have been ruined if she hadn't planned on ordering pizza. His favorite, no less. She ordered the pizza anyway, but wasn't stupid enough to wait to eat it. She's seen enough TV to know what would happen if she did that.
That was hours ago. The rage and indignation had come and gone, as had the worry. Now she's just tired.


She checks the phone. No messages. Nothing. She thinks of calling some of their friends, but doesn't want to seem like she's checking up on him. She is, she just doesn't want to seem like it.

He's in jail. No, he'd call. His mom would call. That's not it.
He's dead. No, again, the police would have appeared.
He ran away from home and one of his loser friends is hiding him. Totally possible.

She's crying. She can't help it. She knows it's entirely too girlie for words, but Christ! It's 2am and in another few minutes he'll have been missing for twelve hours. What if something did happen?
Or what if he's just an asshole and it's taken her this long to figure it out? Oh, God.

She crawls into bed, pulls the covers over her head, and tries to ignore the feeling of being suffocated. Everyone else on the planet can pull this form of sulking off, why can't she? When she can't take it anymore, she comes up for air and tries not to cry anymore.
She looks over at his side of the bed and resists the urge to fling his cell phone, forgotten again, across the room. Momentarily satisfaction is outweighed by the resulting drama.
A little while later she falls asleep, visions of flinging the stupid pie in his face dancing in her mind.


The door opens and he stumbles in, half drunk and more than a little out of his mind. He looks around the apartment and a part of his brain realizes it's cleaner than when he left it. A tinier part of his brain starts screaming, "Danger!" but he ignores it. God, he's hungry. He makes his way to the kitchen and yanks the door open, snickering as the broken shelf falls to the floor, taking with it a can of whipped cream and some other crap that probably should have been thrown out.
Food.
Scratch that. Is he drunk [yes!] or is that a pie sitting on the second shelf? Holy Christ, it is a pie. And Cool Whip. And on the top shelf a pizza box from his favorite pizza place.
Screw the pizza. There's pie. Pie that doesn't look like someone dropped it, stomped all over it, and then tried to scrape it all back together.
Feeling brave, he steals a tiny piece.

The bed shakes and a minute later she feels lips on her own.
"The hell?"
"You made pie! For me!" He looks so stupidly happy that for a minute she's tempted to just ignore the missing for more than twelve hours thing.
And then again, she's not that tempted.
"Yeah. I did. Where the hell were you?" she snaps, anger washing over her. She could kill him, she really could. Stupid selfish sonofabitch. He didn't give a shit about anyone other than himself.
"Didn't you get my messages?" He looks honestly confused. He's always been a fantastic liar when he needs to be.
"What messages? You mean the ones that don't exist? You mean those? Because, no, I didn't get those."
"What about my cell?" He's looking at her like she's stupid. She hates that look. He knows that.
"How could I check your cell? You had it with you, dumbass!"
He ignores the name calling, he's used to it, and points to the bedside table. Where his phone sits, still plugged in and waiting for someone, anyone, to remember it. "I forgot it yesterday."
"Poor you." What the hell? Is his drunkeness making him slow or something? What's the point?
"Tina, I called it a thousand times. I left messages. Check."
She does, though she's not happy about it. 13 missed calls. Hardly a thousand. List. Bob. A number she vaguely recognises as the dive the two of them are so crazy about.
"Oh."
"I just figured you were still mad at me. Or at Bob."
"Oh." She feels like a jackass, sort of.
He gently pries the phone from her hands and tosses it over his shoulder. "Now, where were we? Oh, yeah." He grins. "Pie."



I've had the pie/cake debate. I come down on the side of cake. He comes down on the side of pie. He's weird. You can't light a pie on fire and sing happy birthday. He does not, apparently, care. You cannot lick frosting off candles for a pie. Again, I don't think he cares.

However, I never master the art of the pie, except maybe an apple pie. But I do like cherry pie filling. The sauce. Good stuff.

Also, I am not Tina. But I figured she could have the pie/cake debate and my love of cherry filling sauce. Cuz, you know, yummy.

I should be in bed.

Comments

[mystalkershrine.livejournal.com]

"I've had the pie/cake debate. I come down on the side of cake. He comes down on the side of pie. He's weird. You can't light a pie on fire and sing happy birthday." I never knew they lit cakes on fire. I knew they lit candles on fire, and the candles were on the cake, but I didn't know they lit cakes on fire.

...Wouldn't you be worrying that your cake was gonna burn down the house?

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

*grins* Yes, yes I would. But some years, I think a flaming cake would be preferable to the kind of cake offered.