Ellie woke to the smell of vanilla and something burning.
The light outside her window was bright, the way it gets in late July—when the sky forgets how to be subtle. She blinked sleep from her eyes and sat up, heart thudding strangely.
Something was different.
There were voices. Music. Was that balloons?
She stepped into the hallway wearing Dylan's old hoodie, the one with the frayed sleeves and the smell of cedar and detergent, and nearly tripped over a stream of crepe paper taped across the floor.
"Surprise?" Dylan stood in the kitchen grinning, flour dusted across his cheek and a deflated party hat sliding down his curls. "Okay, not the best execution, but the pancakes didn't catch too much fire."
Ellie blinked, completely thrown. "What is this?"
He spread his arms. "Your birthday."
She stared at him. "My…?"
"It's July 19th. You're seventeen. This is what people do, El. We celebrate. You get to exist out loud today."
Ellie's throat tightened. A birthday.
It wasn't just that she'd never had a party—it was that she'd grown up being told they were sinful. Self-centered. Displeasing to Jehovah. Even in grade school, she'd sat in the hallway while her classmates sang and passed out cupcakes, a quiet exile in the name of righteousness.
Now here she was, standing barefoot in the kitchen, surrounded by dollar-store streamers and the smell of burned sugar, with Dylan looking at her like she deserved the whole damn world.
"I don't even know what to do," she whispered.
Dylan smiled and crossed the room to place a sparkly tiara on her head. "You don't have to do anything. Just be happy."
So she tried.
It started awkwardly—she laughed too loud, opened gifts like she was afraid of breaking them. There was a sketchpad with real watercolors. A playlist Dylan made with songs that reminded him of her. A thrifted leather satchel "for all your deep existential poetry." And a little silver ring with a pine tree etched into it.
"I love it," she said, spinning it on her finger. "I love all of this."
He brought out a cake, lopsided and iced with too much blue frosting, the words Happy First Real Birthday, Ellie! scribbled across the top in crooked letters. They ate it on the porch, sitting cross-legged on a quilt, watching bees swirl through the wildflowers by the fence.
She felt giddy. Light. Like she'd cracked open a hidden part of herself and sunlight was pouring in.
She licked frosting off her thumb and laughed so hard she had to clutch her side. "God, is this what I've been missing? Just… joy for no reason?"
"You've been missing a lot," Dylan said. "But I'm glad you're catching up."
That's when his expression shifted—subtle, but unmistakable.
"What?" she asked.
He leaned back on his hands and stared at the sky. "So… there's something I need to tell you."
Her stomach dipped. "Please don't say you're allergic to cake."
He smiled weakly. "No, it's worse."
Ellie froze. "Okay…"
Dylan cleared his throat. "My mom… and my sister? They need a place to stay. For a while. Some stuff went down—job loss, divorce, housing issues. I told them they could move in next week."
She blinked, the sugar rush crashing.
"…What?"
"It'll just be temporary," he said quickly. "I mean, it's family, you know? My mom and my sister, and the kids—there's four of them, but they're good kids. Loud, yeah, but sweet. I couldn't say no."
Ellie sat silent, the tiara still crooked on her head.
"So… they're moving in here? All of them?"
He nodded. "Just until they get on their feet."
She stood slowly, walking a few paces away from the quilt, suddenly aware of how small the house was. How fragile the peace had been.
"Dylan," she said, carefully, "this… this place has been the only quiet I've had. The only thing that felt like mine. And now it's going to be full of people. Kids. Your mom."
"I know." He stood too. "I know it's a lot. And I should've told you earlier, but I didn't want to ruin today. You deserve to be celebrated."
She crossed her arms. "You already promised them?"
He hesitated. "Yeah. I did."
Silence filled the space where laughter had lived a moment ago.
Ellie turned toward the house, her gaze landing on the little birthday banner taped over the doorway. It fluttered in the breeze like something uncertain.
"I don't know if I can do this," she said, barely above a whisper.
"You don't have to decide right now," Dylan said gently. "Just… stay. Let today still be yours."
She looked at him then—really looked. He wasn't perfect. He hadn't handled this perfectly. But he wasn't asking her to be perfect either.
"Okay," she said, quietly. "But I'm going to need a closet with a lock."
Dylan laughed. "Deal."
She wasn't sure what this meant yet. What lines it would draw, or blur. But for the first time, her birthday had been real. Messy. Sweet. Complicated.
And maybe that's what freedom looked like too.