When she says things like this, confusion fills my already-crowded mind.

“You don’t like birthdays, though?” I ask, not expecting, but hoping, for a sliver of explanation. Her birthday is next week, but she made me promise that I wouldn’t do anything for her.

She’s making me promise a lot of things lately. I’ve only known her for a few weeks and I’ve already promised her too much.

“Nope.” Nora pushes the door open, holding it for me to pass through.

Instead of asking her why, I decide to talk about my favorite birthday memory. “When I was younger, my mom would always make a huge deal out of my birthday. The entire week was always a celebration. She made all my favorite meals, and we stayed up late every night.”

Nora looks up at me. We’re approaching the door to the corner store now. A couple passes, hand in hand, which gets me to wondering if Nora has ever had a serious boyfriend. It drives me crazy that I don’t know anything about this woman. She’s twenty-five. She must have dated in the past.

“She would always make these cupcakes baked inside of ice cream cones and bring them to my school. She thought it made the kids like me, but it only made them make fun of me more.” I remembered my freshman year when no one in my class would even touch one of the sprinkled cakes she made.

No one except Dakota and Carter. The three of us tried to eat as many as we could during the walk home from school so my mom would think everyone in my class loved her gift and had celebrated my birthday with me.

We had five left when we got to our block. We ended up leaving them on a piece of lumber at the entrance to the Patch, a wooded area that was home to addicts and people down on their luck—with empty stomachs and empty lives—and we liked to think that we fed at least five of them that day.

“I would have eaten one.” Nora stares past me.

She doesn’t elaborate on her reasoning for hating her own birthday, and I didn’t expect her to. That’s not why I shared a piece of my past with her.

Nora opens the door to the store, and the little bell rings. I follow her inside, and I smile when Ellen regards us, cake in hand, and tries her hardest to fight off a smile.