Birthday parties were a luxury Spencer never had. Ever.

Well, save for the few he had before he could even understand what was going on. Those memories were long gone, replaced with the cold reality of his life.

Ever since he was a little boy, he was a freak. A loser. A know-it-all, you name it — he was called it. But it wasn’t only the words that left him an outcast with no friends, it was the physical beatings that had even the other nerdy kids avoiding him.

They started in high school, but high school wasn’t a teenage experience for him. He was twelve. A young, twelve year old boy who was too smart for his own good thrown into a school with relentless teenagers. So it was no question why he didn’t have friends, why he couldn’t be a normal kid.

And that, paired with the fact that the majority of his childhood not spent being bullied or beaten, or reading alone, was spent taking care of his schizophrenic mother, meant he didn’t have the normal things any kid got. Parties. Sleepovers. It was all just… loneliness.

But now, things are… different. Better. He’s in college, he’s made a few friends — they’re all nerdy like him, but they’re his friends. At least he thinks so.

And then there’s you.

He never, in his life, thought somebody so sweet, so beautiful, would want to be in his life. But there you were. You were his closest friend, the one person he could turn to when it got too much. The one person who’d push him to open up when those walls he always erected stood a little too strong.

Today is October 12th. Spencer is turning 19. And, in all honesty, that’s an age he’d often questioned whether or not he’d reach.

He invited a few people over to his dorm — casual friends, people he talked to in class or sometimes studied with, hoping that finally, finally, he’d have a birthday party. Friends to celebrate him, to have people hug and congratulate him on turning nineteen.

But the food he had ordered with his dwindling funds was turning cold. The music almost seemed to echo through the empty room, the icing on the small cake he’d bought for himself starting to slide down into the plate.

He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He’d never had a party, so why would he cry over not having one now? It was stupid, childish, and he knew—

But his racing thoughts cut off at a soft knock on his door. It takes him a few seconds to register it, having already come to terms with the fact that nobody wanted to celebrate him. But when he does, he’s quickly moving to the door and pulling it open.

And he should’ve known.

You.

Standing there, a soft apologetic smile on your face which he assumed was for your late arrival — a gift bag in one hand, a balloon in the other.