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Lexi stood in her kitchen over her cake, one unlit candle in the middle and a very sad-looking streamer above her head.
She normally didn't do anything for her birthday specifically for fear that no one would show up. Besides, she didn't want to have a birthday event where her sister could just walk in and out at any point.
But, this was her senior year of high school. She was turning 18. She didn't want to be alone again, on her 18th birthday.
So, she'd put up a streamer, bought herself a cake and some party hats, and invited the whole friend to her house for her special day, even sure to send the text a week ahead of time so that people would have time to work it around their schedule. Surely, this year would be nice and she would be able to look back years from now and be glad that her 18th birthday was spent with friends.
...Only, now that it was the elected date and time, no one was around except Cassie and her mom, both of which were off doing their own thing. None of her friends had sent a text explaining their absence or even just wishing her a happy birthday.
At first, she decided that maybe they were just late, but now it was approaching midnight and she'd been standing in front of her cake for hours.
No one is coming, she realized, feeling stupid for ever having set anything up in the first place. She did well not to cry, though. No, she didn't want to risk Cassie walking in and making fun of her.
Instead, she just lit the candle, posted a photo of the cake to her story with the small, petty hope that her 'friends' would see it and feel bad, and sang the birthday song to herself, choosing to ignore the irony of her singing herself Happy Birthday when she was decidedly not having a happy birthday.
She blew out the candle, cut herself a slice of the cake, and ate it alone in the kitchen.
This fucking sucks.