"Did I miss the flashes or they never happened?" Wes asked as he ran the comb through his sleeked back, gelled hair for potentially the thousandth time within the past fifteen minutes.
Ted stifled a yawn and blinked his eyes in confusion. "What flashes?"
"The flashes of camera, dude! Have they taken a photographic evidence of the single most embarrassing moment of my life?" Wes rephrased his question and leaned towards the full-length mirror. His tongue automatically wedged out from the corner of his mouth while his fingers arranged the stray locks on his forehead.
"They probably have," Ted eventually replied. At his inconsistent frequency of responses, Wes turned his head slightly and noticed his distracted expression almost instantly. "I didn't pay attention at that time," he added truthfully.
His cousin separated his lips to bring him to order for his absentmindedness when the phone in his room began to ring. He strode towards the grey instrument and shouted over his shoulder as he picked up its receiver, "Ma! I got the phone!"
"Okay!" came back the prompt answer from across the hall.
"One day when almost all calls are for me," he muttered before he spoke the customary greeting into the phone.
"Oh, hi. Why aren't you here? Is it? Damn. Do you want me to tell –? Okay, okay. Spare me the shout please. It's my birthday! Thanks for your wishes though, and get well soon."
"Who was it?" Ted asked, his ears having picked up the last three words in the one-sided conversation he had mostly filtered out.
"Just a guy from my college," Wes said, heading back to his spot in front of the mirror. "Wayne. Do you know him? I thought he'd show up today, haven't met him in a while. Fella fell sick though, talk about bad timing."
Ted's shoulders slumped once again and he phased out the rest of his cousin's rants. It was only when fingers snapped under his vision that he realized his attention had drifted off for the umpteenth time that morning.
"Let's go out to the party, mate!"
Wes slapped his cousin's back twice and beamed at his grimace as he gave him a shove with both hands. Ted stumbled out and was saved from a potential face-to-floor meeting by Wes who caught his arm and helped him straighten up, chuckling the whole while.
They entered the living room area to a fresh round of applause and first time hugs, the latter activity having been avoided when the birthday boy had been sporting undergarments. Only when everybody had stepped aside and had asked all forms of embarrassing questions including the usual exclamations of "Oh, you've grown so big so soon!" to which Wes had politely replied, "That's what twenty five years of life does," and had grinned when the exclaimer looked confused at his response, did Katherine detach herself from the wall where she stood glued to in one corner of the room and approached them.
"Wes, you old man!" she said with a warm smile and slapped his arm.
"You wish weird."
"Eh, what you gonna do about it?" Katherine said with a shrug of her shoulders. Before they could continue, however, Wes was whisked away from them and led towards the centre table where a large blue birthday cake had been set up, complete with cracker candles that spurted out sparks of gold.
"Wow, they could not make it any more obvious that Wes is their favourite," Katherine commented under her breath.
"Yeah, they adore him," Ted affirmed, his pupils trained on her as stealthily as he could manage. Even while she had greeted Wes with a smile, he had noticed the anger concealed underneath.
"So are you, by the way."
"What makes you say that?"
Katherine snorted at his pretence and turned her head towards him. "Oh please, they smother you with their love soon as they lay eyes on you. Here comes another one," she added as a portly lady she did not bother to remember the name of and referred to as "one of the aunts" made her way towards them – well, towards Ted. When the lady reached them, she acted as if there stood nobody beside her nephew.
Ted managed a tight-lipped smile as the lady – his Aunt Cecelia – wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, or squeezed his limbs together and knocked the breath out of him. He had a hard time suppressing his cough and ultimately had to disguise it under clearing his throat.
"Honey, you look good! Where's the wife?" she asked once she separated from him.
Ted drove a finger through his collar as he answered, "Amelia really wanted to be here, but she got sick suddenly. I urged her to take rest instead." He could feel Katherine smirk at his excuse, however he had never been good at lying and this was the best he could conjure on the spot, especially after overhearing Wes' phone call moments ago.
"Oh, to think, you may become a parent soon!" Aunt Cecelia gushed, clapping both his cheeks.
"I'm sorry, what?" Ted asked blankly.
She flashed a lopsided smile, which got lost in the fullness of her face, and said, "Oh, dear, you try to act so innocent! What do you think happens after marriage? Kids!" She said the answer to her own question as if that word is what will make her win a jackpot on some game show.
Ted once again ran a finger through his collar and gulped.
"Oh, Wes is about to cut the cake!" Katherine exclaimed, thinking it time to save her cousin further embarrassment. The portly lady spared her a glance from under her brows and visibly scowled before she flicked her head upwards and headed back to the crowd surrounding the centre table. They had just stopped snapping pictures and handed the birthday boy a knife with a red bow on its hilt.
"So, what actually happened with Amelia?" Katherine asked in a whisper as they stood at the precipice of the crowd. Most of her words were drowned in the ensuing claps.
Ted sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "I honestly don't know. I did ask her to come here by eight. And it's already" – he paused to stand on his tiptoes and consult the wall clock over the heads – "half past ten. Yup, it's official. She's a no-show."
Katherine opened her mouth and inhaled air to speak, but her speech was stopped at her throat when the relatives in front of them shuffled all of a sudden and Wes' voice travelled to them, "...where are they? Oh! All the way back here!"
Within seconds, he appeared before them with a piece of cake in his hand. Over his shoulder, they noticed his parents wipe their lips with tissue papers while their cheeks bulged out on one side. He grinned at them before stuffing half the piece in Ted's mouth first and then in Katherine's.
He leaned forward and said in an urgent murmur, "Get me out of here soon, guys! I'll die from all this adoration!" Even as he spoke the last word, he was dragged back to the cake. His mother had already cut it into pieces and his father was putting a piece on a small paper plate, passing it around.
Katherine and Ted exchanged amused looks and became witnesses to the blue cream being smeared on Wes' face and hair by other cousins, ranging from little kids to teenagers.
*****
As it turned out, the cake smearing incident resulted in the perfect escape for Wes. He excused himself to wash up and eyed his parents intently, who nodded their heads as indistinctly as they could.
"Ted dear, Kat dear, help him, would you? We'll bring out the snacks in the meantime," Aunt Alicia said pointedly. The two being addressed nodded furiously and led the "creamed" boy to his room.
"Will not miss their favourite kid if you don't return?" Katherine asked presently as Wes emerged from the attached bathroom in his bedroom. He was soaked in water from his head till his chest.
Wes shook his head, sending beads of water flying around the room, some landing on the two perched on his bed. Katherine scowled at him while Ted threw a towel at him.
"Ma will find some topic to discuss, I'm sure. I'm gonna go ahead and assume the hot topic to be my marriage," he explained, using the towel to dry his hair first.
"Ah, the pleasures of gossip," Katherine said in a flat tone.
"Or, they could be bitching about you," Wes added with a fake smile and was immediately pelted with a pillow.
"So much for dressing 'decently' for your birthday," she muttered and flumped backwards on the bed. "Get changed quickly, please!" she exclaimed when the room fell silent post her pronouncement.
Wes peeled off his wet T-shirt, wiped off the residual droplets and put on a shirt and a jacket within minutes; clearly afraid of Katherine snapping her cap, Ted noted and almost chuckled.
They climbed out from the only window in that room and debated whether they should take the car or not. "Probably not a good idea, considering they will be able to hear the engine," Wes mused and the other two noted.
"Where to then?" Ted asked once they were well on their way, on foot, towards the nearest bus stop.
Both Wes and Katherine raised their eyebrows at the question. "Did you just join our group?" the latter countered in a sardonic tone.
Ted rolled his eyes and patted his stomach. "This guy is pretty hungry. Before we hit the valley, I need food."
"Oh. Now that you mention it, mate, could not agree more."
A moment of silence passed between them before Katherine said, "Take-out then?"
"Obviously," the other two had muttered in unison.
"This feels more like my birthday," Wes said presently with a sigh as he lounged on the small patch of grass overlooking the valley. Without the bonnet of the car, they had to make do with the naturally available resources. While the grassy spot was quite a distance away from their usual stop, the view was just as breathtaking; besides, the three of them were alone and away from the party, and that was what ultimately mattered to them.
Ted and Katherine were unwrapping their brunch and laying it out in a true picnic fashion. On days when it was not his birthday, they would give Wes a hard time for not helping out, however they decided to give him an out – he was becoming old, after all.
He propped himself on his elbows and looked sincerely at Katherine, her face half hidden behind her locks blown over by the breeze. "Hey, Kat," he said and she looked at him with an eyebrow cocked questioningly. "Sorry about whatever the aunts and uncles may have said to you."
Katherine stared at him for a second before she brought her gaze back down to the food and shook her head. "It...it was nothing, don't worry."
"It was not nothing," Ted said in a severe tone. "Kat, I heard them too."
She pushed her locks behind one ear and chose not to comment. Instead, she chuckled and said, "Well, at least, Dad did not hear any of it. Pretty sure he would have socked whoever said it, regardless of age!"
She laughed as if it were the most hilarious thing she had ever heard, and the boys exchanged glances. "Kat?" Ted probed with caution once her laughter died down.
"Let it go, guys," she said eventually, reclining against a rock behind her. Ted immediately warned her to not put too much pressure on the boulder and she obediently shifted her position. She had removed her jacket to cover her legs instead; apparently, the breeze was no friend to her skirt. She handed them their burgers and took a bite off of her own.
"Wes," Katherine spoke, quite unexpectedly, looking at the one she addressed before she turned to the other lad, "Ted, let's not get into all that at least today. Remember what we decided six years back?"
The two boys respectively swallowed the minced burger bite in their mouth and chorused, "Birthdays should be happy, and so shall we strive to keep it so."
Their synchronised narration made Katherine laugh and she nodded between her mirth. "Idiots," she asserted, using the back of her forefinger to wipe away the pearls of tears in her eyes.
*****
AUTHOR'S NOTE: O~kay! I have no excuses to give, so I will just save you the trouble and crawl under a rock all by myself.
With my laptop, of course. Don't want to be late in updating once again!
All right, you know the drill -- vote, comment and share!!! Lots of love, awesomers!! <3 <3