Home Ice.

Chapter Fifteen.

Avery

It's my birthday. I'm officially 26 years old.

26. The idea of being this age is insane to me. Not because I think it makes me old, but because I just cannot believe how quickly time has gone. I know that saying that time is flying is a cliche, but it trips me out when thinking about how much I've gone through and how much has changed.

I think back to when I was 18 years old and I feel like I'm looking in on a life of someone else, or like she's just a person I read in a book. The memories are still so vivid in my head yet I feel like I can't fathom them to be my own. It's weird how time can do that, how you can be so sure about something happening yet the more you think about it, the more it seems like it's something you made up.

I was always told that my imagination was way to active for my own good. I think too in detail about things that will never happen, I come up with full plots to scenarios in my head right before I fall asleep. I feel like I have these worlds just swirling around in my head and I have no idea what to do with them. I've always been like this, I've always dreamed with my eyes wide open.

I guess that's why sometimes when I look back at my life, I almost romanticize it. I fluff up the details and look back on a time where maybe I wasn't so anxious and start to really make it seem like it was the best I'd ever felt. It's easier to tell yourself that the past was good than to admit to yourself that it wasn't.

The only thing I've never had to romanticize in my life is Finn. This is obvious since he's a walking romcom, but there really has never been a time where I've thought back to a moment with Finn and felt the need to change it in order to feel better about it. Every single day that I spend with him, I feel like I'm living in one of those out of touch scenarios I conjure up before I drift off to sleep at night. Hell, they're even better than those semi-sleep dreams. That's when you know you have it good.

And today is one of those moments. The entire day has been filled with them.

Well, it's only 11AM but so far today. I woke up to kisses being peppered all over the side of my face and his strong arms wrapping me up in the most secure embrace I could ever receive. He didn't say anything for a good few minutes, he just showered me with silent love and let me know how much I mean to him purely through his gentle actions. When he did speak, his words were soft and whispered against my ear and between kisses, "Happy birthday, ma fleur."

I realized a few moments later that he had already been up and about before I even woke up. The apartment smelt so good and both him and Ollie had party hats on.

He put one on my head and gave me one more forehead kiss before he made me get up. He barely gave me time to brush my teeth before he pulled me by my arm into the living room. He's always so eager on my birthday, like I am on his, but today it seems like he snorted a line with his morning coffee.

Which, by the way, he picked up from Harmons before I woke up. Not only that, but he also cooked us breakfast. He's been trying to perfect a good bacon egg and cheese and I've been helping him by telling him everything wrong with them. He thought it'd be an easy recipe, but his mistake was having a New Yorker be his taste tester.

Today's was the best one he's ever fucking made. I didn't believe he made it at first because of how spot on it was, but he made the good point of saying that theres no where around here that has it like this one.

He then told me that when we were in New York, he asked one of the guys at the deli he went to when he picked us up breakfast one day. He said the guy was a Kraken fan and recognized him, so he thought he might as well reaps some benefits. He told the guy, who's name is apparently Antonio, that his fiancée was from the city and that he was trying to make me the perfect BEC.