"Happy Birthday, it's from me and Jesus." Mariana hands me a little gift bag.
"Thank you!" I hug them both. I look inside the blue bag, it's a grey flannel shirt, a black graphic t-shirt and a pair of black skinny jeans. I won't have to borrow Callie's jeans now.
"And me, Jude and Brandon got you these." Callie hands me a shoebox, they've bought me a pair of white sneakers. They must have been so expensive.
"Guys, you didn't have to get me all this."
"Don't be stupid it's your birthday," Brandon says. He hugs me.
"Yeah, we just want you to feel at home," Jesus adds.
"Thank you so much." I feel a little bit emotional.
"Well go put them on!" Mariana sends me off upstairs. I look pretty decent in the new clothes, and the sneakers are my size too. I take my hair out of the ponytail and let it fall over my shoulders and I go back downstairs and straight over to Sophia. I say hello to her and her parents.
"Hey! How are you? I've barely spoken to you since the trial."
"I'm okay, things are going well." I pull her aside, so we can sit and talk.
"You don't seem like things are going well, what's up? Is it that guy?"
"Yeah, I guess. I've kind of been seeing him." She looks shocked. "Well, I told some of the others that I'm gay and it was fine but then I met Jason and totally fell for him, and then Brandon outed me to him in front of everyone and I ran off because I was so embarrassed, and I met up with Rae and-"
"Wait, slow down, who's Rae?" She cuts me off.
"Rachel, from um- from an old foster home-"
"As in Rachel, John's daughter? Gracie, what the hell? Why are you hanging out with her?" She's furious with me.
"That's not the point, I met up with her and, well I don't know we just like really connected and we kissed and stuff and I didn't feel guilty at the time, I was sure Jason would hate me because of what Brandon said and I was going to like officially end things with Jason but then he like forgave me, I guess? And I was too scared of how he'd react if he found I was cheating, which I don't even know if it counts as cheating because we never made anything official, and now I don't know what to do." I'm breathless from my ramble.
"Okay, calm down. You need to be honest with him if you are only into girls, but I don't think you should be seeing that girl. It's not safe."
"You don't even know her, she's nothing like him, okay?" I snap back.
"Who's nothing like who?" Callie comes and sits with us.
"Did you know Gracie's seeing Rachel?"
"Sophia!" I get angry.
"Yeah, she told me and Mariana she met up with her yesterday, she's from an old foster home, right?"
"She's John's daughter." Thankfully, Sophia whispers.
"What?!" She's practically yelling.
"Keep your voice down, look it's not a big deal, she's a good person." I get up and start to walk away from them, they follow me.
"Gracie!" Callie and Sophia stop me, Sophia's parents join us with another gift bag, it's a pretty big one.
"This is from all of us," Gill says.
"Oh, wow." I take the bag. "Thank you."
"Open it," Robert says. We sit down at the buffet table. I open the huge bag and find a whole wardrobe of clothes, really cool clothes. Exactly my style.
"Oh my God, this is amazing!" I pull out each item, there must be hundreds of dollars' worth of clothes in here.
"Look in the bottom!" Sophia sits next to me. Right at the bottom, there's a box, it's pretty heavy. It's wrapped in really delicate pink wrapping paper. I try to savor it, but Sophia starts rushing me, so I rip it all off until I'm left with a laptop in my hands. I'm so much shock I can barely move.
"Wow, that's pretty nice." Jason comes over to us, putting his arm around me.
"I can't take this, it's too much." I try to give it back to Sophia, but she pushes it back.
"Don't be stupid, it's fine it's my old one, you always say how much you liked it." Sophia hugs me.
"Thank you, so much, this is insane!" I hug the whole family. I feel so lucky.
"You have a lot of people who love you." Jason takes my hand; I stand up to face him. I feel guilty again.
He takes me by the waist. I can feel Sophia and Callie's eyes on me. I'm guessing Mariana just assumed I picked him in the end. Jesus starts up the music and we all start dancing and having fun. I can deal with the Jason situation tomorrow. I don't want to hurt him, especially after he did all this for me.
Everybody's significant others arrive, Noah brings Taylor too. It just seems like more and more people want to celebrate with us. Stef and Lena join us a little while later, turns out they had no idea about the party, and they got a little mad at the others. But I told them I was okay with the party and we would all clean up afterward, so they began to let loose and dance with us. It ended up being a really fun night, I tried my hardest to make it look like all I wanted was Jason, and Sophia and Callie eventually drop the Rachel thing. But she's all I'm thinking about. After a few hours of dancing and eating and having fun, everyone helps clean up and people start to leave, I say goodbye to Sophia and promise I'll see her tomorrow to let her know what's going on, I've managed to convince her that I won't see Rae again.
Jason's the last one left. I walk him to the door to say goodnight. He's looking at me, in that way that he always does. I truly know that he cares about me, and I've never been certain of that with anyone before. I just don't know what's going on in my head, my heart, it's not like my feelings for him just disappeared completely, he's still an amazingly sweet guy. But what I have with Rae is different to what I have with Jason. How am I supposed to choose one of them without hurting the other?
"Did you have a good night?" His fingers dance the palm of my hand.
"I had an amazing night, you did it. You made me love my birthday again." I kiss him. "I can't thank you enough."
"It's cool, doing this for you was so much fun." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a blue box. "I got you this."
"You've done enough, Jason."
"Just open it." He puts the box in my hand. It must be jewelry of some sort. I pull up the velvet lid and a beautiful silver necklace glistens, there's a G etched into the metal.
"Wow." I can't believe how amazing he is, and I can't believe I'm still thinking about ending it with him.
"What? You don't like it?"
"No, no I love it, it's gorgeous. I'm just, shocked." I can't take my eyes off of it. "It must have cost a lot of money."
"Money doesn't matter. Here." He takes it from me and spins me around to put it on for me, I feel like I'm in a movie. "You look amazing. As always." He grabs me by the waist and pulls me in for a kiss. "There's one more thing, I know we've only been on two dates and we haven't known each other for that long but I like you. So, will you be my girlfriend?"
"I- Um, yes." Why did I say that? "I'd love to." What's happening to me? I can't be his girlfriend. He kisses me again.
"Gracie." I hear Stef's voice and we immediately pull apart. She and Lena are standing at the stairs. "Time to say goodnight."
"Night Jason, thanks again." He kisses me on the cheek.
"No worries. See you soon." He leaves, and I'm faced with Stef and Lena who have a pretty stern look on their faces.
"Kids, meeting in the kitchen!" Lena shouts. We all pile into the kitchen and sit around the table. This is the part where we all get grounded.
"Now, we know it's Gracie's birthday and you wanted to do something special but she's grounded and you all knew that," Stef says. I completely forgot I was already grounded, I guess I was distracted by my birthday.
"So, you're all grounded," Lena says, she looks pretty annoyed.
"What?!" All the others yell.
"For two weeks."
"Two weeks?!" Jesus says.
"I'm supposed to be seeing Kiara tomorrow!" Callie shouts.
"And I'm seeing Noah!" Jude says.
"I'm sorry kids, you should have thought about all that before you through this party."
They all start talking over each other trying to plead their cases, I feel awful. They did all that for me. Stef and Lena get even madder and make us all go to bed early. Callie and Mariana seem pissed off as we get ready for bed. I start crying, trying to keep it silent.
"I'm so sorry, if I knew it would get you guys in trouble, I would have asked you to shut it down before they got home. Please don't be mad at me."
"We're not mad you, Gracie." Callie comes and sits next to me on my bed.
"You're not? But I got you all grounded."
"We got us grounded, besides we wouldn't have shut down the party even if you had asked. It's your birthday, you deserve to have an amazing day." Mariana joins us.
"Don't cry, it's not every day you turn fifteen." Callie acts as if it's a huge milestone. "I'm so glad you made the right choice; with Jason I mean." She and Mariana smile at me and all I feel is that horrible, gut-wrenching guilt again. He's not the one for me, I just know it. But I stupidly agreed to be his girlfriend.
