Changes

I play with the string on my pants nervously as I sit and wait like the others, all of us in absolute silence. Multi-color balloons are strewn across the floor haphazardly, my throat still tight from blowing all 72 (now 65, seven popped) up.

I haven't seen or talked to her in six months, and our fight still rang in my mind. Out of the blue, on her birthday, we started talking again through private messages. I sent her birthday wishes and she replied. We talked an entire day, about our lives and the things we still loved.

And now…today.

Her surprise party.

The sounds of a car entering the driveway are suddenly heard, and my body tenses up.

So many things have changed from what we once were. I don't think we ever got the chance to move on properly and so we fought.

A car door slams.

Maybe the six months had been good for us. It was our chance.

The front door opens, and her voice is heard. I look up at the sound, her sarcastic tone familiar, even now. "I don't even know why I'm here, Mom made me come."

I have to smile.

And then she enters the small living room to find forty people waiting for her. Her eyes are wide as she stares at us and we stare back at her.

"SURPRISE!" we finally shout.

I stand in the background as she hugs people, wanting to look at her before she sees me. I'm afraid of her reaction. Our email conversations had been good, normal, but emotions aren't portrayed well through text. Out here, in the open, every little thing could be seen.

I see the changes in her, and I wonder if she'll see the ones in me. She's wearing feminine clothes, I notice first, and her hair is down. It's hard to remember the tomboy I know her as. She's even wearing pink.

Her eyes flit over to my face and my breath hitches. This is it, this is the moment where she'll change her mind about our new-found contact. She won't see the changes in me, or she will and she won't like them.

In a flash, she is across the room, her arms thrown around my waist.

I stare down at the top of her head for only a fraction of a second before my arms are around her, too, and I'm squeezing, and she's squeezing back, enough to crack the ribs through my thin body. We stand there for a while, just hugging each other. I barely notice the "aww" someone voices or the cameras that flash.

She pulls back and smiles brightly at me, my wonderful best friend, and I smile back, muttering, "Happy Birthday."

She laughs. "Your breath still smells like alcohol."

My smile widens at the familiar joke.

Maybe some things never change.