Helen exhaled slowly.
“Well, people still need to eat.”
Ryan looked relieved, as if his mother were finally going to order me back into the kitchen.
She didn’t.
She pulled out her phone.
“Ryan, what are you buying everybody?”
His relief vanished.
“Me?”
“It’s your party.”
He stared at her.
“There are a lot of people here.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You invited them.”
For one second, nobody spoke.
Then Tyler laughed.
Not cruelly.
Just once, under his breath, because the logic was too clean to escape.
Ryan shot him a look.
Mrs.
Helen started asking people what they wanted.
Pizza was mentioned.
Someone suggested barbecue from a nearby place.
Another relative said anything was fine as long as food actually arrived.
Ryan complained about the cost.
That was when Mrs.
Helen looked back at the box of receipts.
“Interesting,” she said.
“Food gets expensive when you’re the one paying for everyone, doesn’t it?”
Ryan stopped arguing.
He ordered dinner.
The wait was awkward at first.
People moved back into the living room.
Some talked louder than usual.
A few relatives avoided looking at me.
Others quietly asked whether I wanted anything from the order.
I said no.
I already had dinner.
My salad was still in the refrigerator.
Ryan barely spoke to me while everyone ate.
The birthday meal arrived in cardboard containers instead of the platters he had promised.
There was no brisket smoking in the backyard, no bubbling pan of mac and cheese, no homemade cake waiting under a glass dome.
Mrs.
Helen cut into the Jell-O mold she had brought and put a candle in the center.
Tyler nearly choked trying not to laugh.
Even I had to look away.
Ryan did not find it funny.
After everyone left, the house looked like the aftermath of a party that had never really started.
Ryan stood in the kitchen beside the empty takeout boxes.
“You humiliated me,” he said.
His voice was low.
I began stacking cups.
“No.
I stopped protecting you from the consequences of what you said.”
“You could’ve warned me.”
I looked at him.
“I did.
