Tomorrow is my 27th birthday. The worst thing about this particular birthday is that for the first time in my life, I realize that I don't know where I'm going. My wants are simple: a job that I like and a guy I love. Unfortunately, on the eve of my 27th birthday I also realize that I am 0 for 2.
First, I am an attorney at a large New York firm. By definition this means that I am miserable. Being a lawyer just isn't what it's cracked up to be. I work excruciating hours for an asshole partner, doing mostly tedious activities and that sort of hatred for what you do for a living begins to chip away at you. So I have memorized the mantra of the law firm associate: I hate my job and will quit soon. Just as soon as I pay off my loans. Just as soon as I make next year's bonus. Just as soon as I think of something else that pays the rent. Or better yet, find someone who will pay it for me.
Which brings me to my second point: I am alone in a city of millions. I have plenty of friends, as proven by the solid turnout at my "surprise" birthday bash tonight. Friends to rollerblade with. Friends to summer with in the Hamptons. Friends to meet on a Thursday night after work for a drink or two or three. And I have Naya, my best friend from home, who is all of the above. But everybody knows that friends are not enough, although I often claim they are just to save face around my married and engaged girlfriends. I did not plan on being alone in my mid-twenties. I wanted a husband by now; I wanted to be a bride in my twenties. But I have learned that you can't just create your own timetable and will it to come true. So here I am on the brink of a new year, realizing that being alone makes my birthday daunting, and being 27 makes me feel more alone.
The situation seems all the more dismal because my oldest and best friend has a glamorous PR job and is freshly engaged. Naya is still the lucky one. I watch her now, telling a story to a group of us, including her fiancé. Trey and Naya are an exquisite couple, lean and gorgeous with matching dark hair and brown eyes. They are among New York's beautiful people. The well-groomed couple registering for fine china and crystal on the 6th floor of Bloomingdale's. You hate their smugness but can't resist staring at them when you're on the same floor searching for a not too expensive gift for the umpteenth wedding you've been invited to without a date.
"So the lesson here is: if you ask for a Brazilian bikini wax, make you sure you specify. Tell them to leave a landing strip or else you can wind up hairless, like a ten year old!" Naya finishes her bawdy tale on stage, and everybody laughs. Except Trey, who shakes his head, as if to say, what a piece of work my fiancé is.
"Okay. I'll be right back," Naya suddenly says. "Tequila shots for one and all!"
As she moves away from the group toward the bar, I think back to all of the birthdays we have celebrated together, all of the benchmarks we reached together, benchmarks that I always reached first. I got my driver's license first, could drink legally before she could. Being older, if only by a few weeks, used to be a good thing. But now our fortunes have reversed.
Naya is now leaning over the bar, flirting with the twenty something aspiring actor/bartender whom she has already told me she would "totally do" if she were single. As if Naya would ever be single. She said once in high school, 'I don't break up, I trade up." She kept her word on that, and she always did the dumping. Throughout our teenage years, college, and every day of our twenties, she has been attached to someone. Often she has more than one guy hanging around, hoping.
It occurs to me that I could hook up with the bartender. I am totally unencumbered. Haven't even been on a date in a nearly two months. But it doesn't seem like something one should do at age 27. One night stands are for college girls. Not that I would know. I have followed an orderly, goody two shoes path with no deviations. I got straight A's in high school, went to college, graduated magna cum laude, took the LSAT, went straight to law school and to a big law firm after that. No backpacking in Europe, no crazy stories, no unhealthy, lustful relationships. No secrets. No intrigue. And now it seems too late for any of that. Because that stuff would just further delay my goal of finding a husband, settling down, having children and a happy home with grass and a garage and a toaster that toasts four slices at once. So I feel unsettled about my future and somewhat regretful about my past.
Naya returns with the shots but Trey refuses his, so Naya insists that I do two. Before I know it, the night starts to take on that blurry quality, when you cross over from being buzzed to drunk, losing track of time and the precise order of things. Apparently Naya has reached that point even sooner because she is now dancing on the bar. Spinning and gyrating in a little red halter dress and three inch heels.
"Stealing the show at your party," Dianna, my closest friend from work, says to me under her breath. "She's shameless."
I laugh. "Yeah, Par for the course."
Naya lets out a yelp, claps her hands over her head, and beckons me with a come-hither expression that would appeal to any man who has ever fancied girl on girl action. "Demi! Demi! Come here!"
Of course she knows that I will not join her. I have never danced on a bar. I wouldn't know what to do up there besides fall. I shake my head and smile, a polite refusal. We all wait for her next move, which is to swivel her hips in perfect time to the music, bend over slowly, and then whip her body upright again, her long hair spilling every which way. I glance at Trey, who in these moments can never quite decide whether to be amused or annoyed. To say that the man has patience is an understatement. Trey and I have that in common.
"Happy Birthday, Demi!" Naya yells. "Let's all raise a glass to Demi!"
Which everyone does. Without taking their eyes off her.
A minute later, Trey whisks her down from the bar, slings her over his shoulder, and deposits her on the floor next to me in one fluid motion. Clearly he has done this before. "All right," he announces. "I'm taking our little party planner home."
Naya plucks her drink off the bar and stamps her foot. "You're not the boss of me, Trey! Is he Demi?" As she asserts her independence, she stumbles and sloshes her martini all over Trey's shoe.
Trey grimaces. "You're wasted, Nay. This isn't fun for anyone but you."
"Okay. Okay, I'll go….I'm feeling kind of sick anyway." She says, looking queasy.
"Are you going to be okay?"
"I'll be fine. Don't you worry," she says now playing the role of the brave little sick girl.
I thank her for my party, tell her that it was a total surprise, which is a lie, because I knew Naya would capitalize on my birthday to buy a new outfit, throw a big bash, and invite as many of her friends as my own. Still, it was nice of her to have the party, and I am glad that she did. She is the kind of friend who always makes things feel special. She hugs me hard and says she'd do anything for me, and what would she do without me, her maid of honor, and the sister she never had. She is gushing, as she always does when she drinks too much.
Trey cuts her off. "Happy Birthday, Demi. We'll talk to you tomorrow." He gives me a kiss on the cheek.
"Thanks, Trey," I say. "Goodnight."
I watch him usher her outside, holding her elbow after she nearly trips on the curb. Oh, to have a caretaker. To be able to drink with reckless abandon and know that there will be someone to get you home safely.
Sometime later Trey reappears in the bar. "Naya lost her purse. She thinks she left it here. It's small, silver," he says. "Have you seen it?"
"She lost her new Chanel bag?" I shake my head and laugh because it is just like Naya to lose things. Usually I keep track of them for her, but I went off duty on my birthday. Still, I help Trey search for the purse, finally spotting it under a bar stool.
As he turns to leave, Trey's friend Sean, one of his groomsmen, convinces him to stay. "Come on, man. Hang out for a minute."
So Trey calls Naya at home and she slurs her consent, tells him to have fun without her. Although she is probably thinking that such a thing is not possible.
Gradually my friends peel away, saying their final happy birthdays. Trey and I outlast everyone, even Sean. We sit at the bar making conversation with the actor/bartender. It is after 2 when we decide that it's time to go. The night feels more like spring than summer, and the warm air infuses me with sudden hope: This will be the year I meet my guy.
Trey hails me a cab, but as it pulls over he says, "How about one more bar? One more drink?"
"Fine," I say. "Why not?"
We both get in and he tells the cabbie to just drive, that he has to think about where next. We end up in Alphabet City at a bar on Seventh and Avenue B, aptly named 7B.
It is not an upbeat scene. 7B is dingy and smoke filled. I like it anyway. It's not sleek and it's not striving to be cool because it's not sleek.
Trey points to a booth. "Have a set. I'll be right with you." Then he turns around. "What can I get you?"
I tell him whatever he's having, and sit and wait for him in the booth. I watch him say something to a girl at the bar wearing army green cargo pants and a tank top. She smiles and shakes her head.
A moment later Trey slides in across from me, pushing a beer my way. "Newcastle," he says. Then he smiles, crinkly lines appearing around his eyes. "You like?"
I nod and smile.
From the corner of my eye, I see the girl at the bar turn on her bar stool and survey Trey, absorbing his chiseled features, crisp fade, full lips. Naya complained once that Trey garners more stares and double takes than she does. Yet, unlike his female counterpart, Trey seems not to notice the attention. The girl at the bar now casts her eyes my way, likely wondering what Trey is doing with someone like me. I hope that she thinks we're a couple. Tonight nobody has to know that I am only a member of the wedding party.
Trey and I talk about our jobs and our Hamptons share that begins in another week and a lot of things. But Naya does not come up and neither does their wedding.
After we finish our beers we move over to the jukebox, fill it with dollar bills, searching for good songs. I push the code for "Stay with Me" twice because it is my favorite song. I tell him this.
"Yeah, Sam Smith is at the top of my list, too. Ever seen him in concert?"
"Yeah," I say. "Twice actually."
I almost tell him that I went with Naya to one but I don't bring this up. Because then he will remember to go home to her and I don't want to be alone in my dwindling moments of 26. Obviously I'd rather be with a boyfriend, but Trey is better than nothing.
It is last call at 7B. We get a couple more beers and return to our booth. Sometime later we are in a cab again, going north on first avenue. "Two stops," Trey tells our cabbie, because we live on opposite sides of Central Park. Trey is holding Naya's Chanel bag, which looks small and out of place in his large hands. I glance at the silver dial of his Rolex, a gift from Naya. It is just shy of four o' clock.
We sit silently for a stretch of ten or fifteen blocks, both of us looking out of our respective side windows, until the cab hits a pothole and I find myself lurched into the middle of the backseat, my leg grazing his. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, Trey is kissing me. Or maybe I kiss him. Somehow we are kissing. My mind goes blank as I listen to the soft sound of our lips meeting again and again. At some point, Trey taps on the Plexiglas partition and tells the driver, between kisses, that it will just be one stop after all.
We arrive on the corner of seventy third and third, near my apartment. Trey hands the driver a twenty and does not wait for change. We spill out of the taxi, kissing more on the sidewalk and then in front of Jose, my doorman. We kiss the whole way up in the elevator. I am pressed against the elevator wall, my hands on the back of his head.
I fumble with my key, turning it the wrong way in the lock as Trey keeps his arms around my waist, his lips on my neck and the side of my face. Finally the door is open, and we are kissing in the middle of my studio, standing upright, leaning on nothing but each other. We stumble over to my made bed, complete with tight hospital corners.
"Are you drunk?" His voice is a whisper in the dark.
"No," I say. Because you always say no when you're drunk. And even though I am, I have a lucid instant where I consider clearly what was missing in my life previously and what I hope to find going forward. It strikes me that, in a sense, I can have both on this momentous birthday night. Trey can be my secret, my last chance for a dark chapter, and he can also be a prelude of sorts, a promise of someone like him to come. Naya is in my mind, but she is being pushed to the back, overwhelmed by a force stronger than our friendship and my own conscience. Trey moves over me. My eyes are closed, then open, then closed again.
And then, somehow, I am having sex with my best friend's fiancé.
