His birthday started the way it always did senior year—with Marcus banging on his door at nine AM screaming "BIRTHDAY BOY" like he hadn't been asleep for four hours, and Liam already in the kitchen attempting to make pancakes shaped like a "2" and a "1" that looked more like a drunk snake had died on the griddle.

"That's not a two," Asher said, squinting at it from the doorway, still in last night's boxers and nothing else.

"It's abstract," Liam said. "Interpretive."

"It's a dick, Liam. You made me a dick pancake."

"Happy birthday," Liam said, completely unbothered, flipping it onto a plate anyway.

Danny showed up twenty minutes later with a case of Coors and a gift bag that turned out to contain a single (1) protein bar and a Post-it that said IOU real gift, spent my money on the beer instead, which honestly tracked. Marcus gave him a jersey with HORCOFF and the number 69 on the back instead of his actual 12, laughing so hard at his own joke he nearly choked on eggs.

This was his birthday, apparently. Dick pancakes, warm beer at ten in the morning, and three grown men who loved him roasting him mercilessly instead of saying it with words, because that was how guys did it. Nobody in that kitchen was going to say I'm glad you exist. They were going to make fun of his hairline instead, which hadn't even started receding, but that wasn't the point.

"Party tonight," Danny said, mouth full. "Sigma Chi's hosting, everyone's coming, Coach even said we could push morning lift back an hour tomorrow which means it's basically a national holiday—"

"I'm not going," Asher said.

Three heads turned.

"You're not going," Marcus repeated, like the words didn't compute. "It's your birthday party."

"I know. I'm still not going. Not till later, anyway." He grabbed a piece of bacon off Liam's plate, dodged the fork aimed at his hand. "Got something first."

Danny was watching him with that specific look—the one that meant he already knew, didn't need it spelled out, because Danny had been rooming with him long enough to recognize the difference between Asher's bullshitting everyone face and his real one.

"Tell her happy birthday to you," Danny said, deadpan, and went back to his beer before Asher could throw the bacon at his head.

He picked her up at four, right as the light in Boulder started doing that thing it only did in early spring—gold, low, catching the top of the Flatirons like they'd been dipped in it. Except they weren't in Boulder. They were in Palo Alto, six states and a thousand miles from the actual mountain, and it didn't matter even a little, because the tradition had never really been about the mountain.

"You didn't tell the guys where you were going," she said, climbing into the 4Runner, already smiling like she knew exactly what today was.

"Nah." He pulled out of her building's lot. "This one's not for them."

They didn't have Chautauqua Park here. Didn't have the actual trailhead, the actual boulder they used to climb on when they were nine and ten and eleven, the one with the flat top just big enough for two skinny kids to sit cross-legged and split a thermos of hot chocolate her mom always over-sugared. What they had was a hiking trail up in the hills behind campus that got them just high enough, just far enough from everyone, that the whole Bay sprawled out gold and hazy beneath them by the time they reached the top.

Close enough. It had to be close enough.

She'd brought the thermos. Of course she had—she never forgot, not once in thirteen years, not even the year he'd been such an ass about a girl at his own party that she'd almost skipped it. Almost. She never actually skipped it.

"Still too sweet?" she asked, handing it over.

He took a sip. Grimaced, dramatic, the way he always did. "Diabetic. You're trying to kill me on my birthday."