Happy Birthday to Me Again (Birthday Trilogy, Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

put the events of my senior year behind me, and move on. I know it
might have been disappointing to some of you for me to delay my admission to
Yale for a year, but I think I needed this extra time to figure out what I
really wanted to do, and who I really wanted to spend the rest of my life
with.”
    I allowed the
awkward silence to creep into the air. My mom and dad looked at each other with
confusion, and Liesel looked up at me with great anticipation.
    “What those
painful two and a half months taught me was how much of a selfish jerk I’d been
to so many people. And I needed Liesel here to show me the way. To show me the
kind of guy I was capable of being, the kind of guy I was meant to be all
along. I don’t know where I’d be today without her. She’s not only been the
love of my life for the last seven months… she’s become my best friend.”
    I took Liesel’s
left hand, and I could see her eyes tearing up. She bit down on her lower lip
and smiled. “Cameron…” she said.
    I looked out at
everyone at the table. Even my grandfather was finally paying attention to my
speech. “I know this may seem sudden to many of you. I know I’m only eighteen
years old, with many more years ahead of me. But unlike the rest of you, I’ve seen what the rest of my life holds for
me. And I don’t want to live it… without my Liesel.”
    Liesel looked
afraid to take another breath as I pushed my chair against the table, and to
the surprise of everyone, no more so than to my mom and dad, I got down on one
knee and brought my gaze to the gorgeous young woman in front of me.
    “Liesel Maupin…”
    Both of her
hands were set against her chest. I saw a tear fall down her left cheek as she
leaned toward me.
    I licked my
lips, took a deep breath, and turned my head down toward the hardwood floor. I
brought up a small black case and opened it. Inside was a beauty, a half carat
diamond ring in white gold.
    “…Would you
marry me?”
    Her mouth
remained agape, but she didn’t say anything for a moment. Instead, the ground
beneath us started to shake.
    Uh oh. I shook my head, hoping Liesel would stop. Not now. Please, no.
    The table
started rumbling, and the glasses on top started tilting back and forth.
Everyone, particularly my grandparents, looked about two seconds away from
screaming at the top of their lungs.
    “Yes!
Yes! A hundred times, yes!”  
    And then, the
shaking stopped.
    “What the hell…”
my dad said.
    Two tears
dropped down Liesel’s cheeks as she put her appropriate finger out and let me
wrap the ring around it. She leaned forward even further, kissed me on the
lips, and wrapped her arms around me. “Cameron, I love you… I love you so
much…”
    It wasn’t until
I made my way back up to my feet that I noticed the lack of enthusiasm from
others at the table—they all seemed to be in a daze from the momentary
shaking, which everyone probably assumed was some brief earthquake, and not the
simple result of Liesel becoming a bit overjoyed. Kimber was politely clapping,
teary-eyed, and Darlene seemed happy for me. But my mom and dad looked in a
daze, like I had just smacked them across their faces with a ping-pong mallet.
    “This cake looks
amazing, Mom,” I said, returning to my seat at the dinner table.
    ---
    “They
didn’t take it well, huh?”
    “Not at all.”
    “Well, at least
you were able to deliver a blow that matched or exceeded that disease you had
last spring.”
    Wesley removed
his sunglasses and fastened them to the top of his tight black shirt. My best
friend since elementary school, he was tanner and leaner than ever. I hadn’t
seen him since we bid each other adieu last August, with me staying in Reno as
he departed for USC film school in Los Angeles. I couldn’t believe in four
short months he had already changed his appearance to such a drastic degree. He
didn’t look like Wesley anymore. He had lost his hippie dreadlocks, as well as
that famous pair of brown pants he wore