Graveyard Blues [Brallon]

Happy Birthday

I don't understand birthdays. It's just a day to celebrate one year closer to death with people that will mourn you when that time arrives if they aren't dead themselves.

It's a flurry of comments on my social medias that sparks the realization that I'll most likely have to attend a party later, and that I will definitely need to supply a gift with a heartfelt card. I'm not good at those. Brendon writes those for me. I shoot him a quick text and he agrees to crank one out for me later.

Half the crew is crowded around Taylor's hotel room when I step outside. One of the new cameramen is holding a crumpled pie tin and Taylor is covered in whipped cream and rainbow confetti. She's smiling and trying to find a spot for her little paper Burger King crown while everyone sings the happy birthday song to her.

Josh and Tyler pose for a photo with her, and I briefly hear them tell her they couldn't possibly have picked a better Taylor Winchester.

Then I see her picking her phone from her pocket and zooming in down the hall to me, eating McDonalds in my old gym shirt from high school. She smiles and the notifications start popping up — taylorswift mentioned you in their story, joshuatyler mentioned you in their story, jennasfx started following you, hayleyyy tagged you in their post. It's only eight in the morning.

Taylor pushes her way through the mingling crowd and leans back against the wall with me. The cream has started to drip off her cheeks and to the floor. "I heard you volunteered at thar huge animal adoption thing. Did you have fun?"

It was cold and a nightmare. The paparazzi caught wind of my attendance and I couldn't go two minutes without cameras capturing my every move. It was good attention for the adoption agency. Every animal they had out there had been taken home. Brendon was ecstatic, and I pretended to care. I was good for the most part, but I wanted to run a couple people over with a semi truck.

"It was alright. The cats didn't like me very much." She peels back the rest of the bandages falling off my arm from a restless night. There are deep and shallow cat scratches everywhere. "I'm just glad I'm not allergic."

"Ah, that's good then. You can babysit my cats sometime."

"They'll get along great with our hamster."

Her eyes light up and she accidentally rips the bandaids off my skin in excitement. "You have a hamster?! What's its name? When did you guys get it? You didn't bring it, did you?"

I wouldn't have been caught dead even looking at that hamster a month ago, and she wants to know everything about it. There's a padlock on the cage and Brendon keeps the key hidden so I can't access it easily.

"He's just a little guy," I tell her and she holds her hands over her chest, "and we got him just a bit ago, so he doesn't have a name picked out or anything. Our house-sitter is looking after it, Hayley. You met her."

She nods and finally takes off her crown as the crowd disperses. "I remember her. She's cute. How old is she again?"

I don't know her exact age, but she's in her early twenties. Her birthday was a while ago, and I had Brendon send her a card for me along with a new guitar from the music shop downtown. I didn't pick out the gift nor did I care, and she knew that, but she thanked me either way. "She's finishing up her first semester in college — University of California, Davis I think."

"Cool! Does she live on or off campus? I've heard it's expensive either way."

"She lives in a shared apartment between our place and there. It's always cold and crowded so we let her use our guest room most of the time."

"That's so sweet. What's she studying?"

"Not sure. She switched her major recently. Why're you so interested?"