A Different Kind of Birthday Present

Allan stood in the middle of the storage unit with a box labeled KITCHEN, MISC in his hands and dust in his throat, and he thought, not for the first time that day, that thirty years old and here he was, alone on his birthday, holding somebody else's dead father's gravy boat. The unit was half empty and smelled like old cardboard, and the one bare bulb overhead threw his shadow long and crooked across the concrete, and through the crack in the roll-up door he could see a slice of orange late-afternoon light lying across the asphalt like something spilled. He set the box down gently, because the gravy boat inside it was older than he was, and he wiped his hands on his jeans and just stood there a minute.

Thirty, he thought. His mother had called that morning and sung at him, badly, the way she always did, and his buddy Toby had texted him a beer emoji and nothing else, and the woman he'd been seeing casually, who had ended things two weeks ago, had texted happy birthday! with an exclamation point that he knew meant nothing. He was thirty and single and he worked for a woman he had a crush on and he was spending the day of his thirtieth birthday sorting through the leftovers of a man he'd never met. If somebody had told him at twenty-two that this was the life he'd have, he wasn't sure what he'd have said. Probably laughed. Probably said something dumb like, sounds peaceful.

It didn't feel peaceful. It felt like a waiting room.

He heard a car pull up outside, gravel crunching, and then the roll-up door rattled up another foot and Britt ducked under it and came in, and the orange light followed her in and lit up the dust in the air around her as if the whole room had been waiting for her. She was thirty-three, three years his senior, and she'd hired him three years ago when he'd needed a job and she'd needed a second pair of hands at the shop, and in three years they had built up this easy back-and-forth thing that he had never once acted on because she was his boss and that was the end of it.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, already pulling off her jacket, "traffic on the bridge was stupid, and then I had to stop and get gas because of course I did, and I know I said two o'clock and it is now, what, four-thirty?"

"Almost five," Allan said, and he heard how flat his own voice came out.

Britt stopped fussing with her jacket and looked at him. "Okay. What's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong."

"Allan. I have known you for three years. I have watched you burn your hand on a heat gun and laugh about it. You don't do flat." She set her jacket on a stack of boxes and put her hands on her hips. "What's wrong."

He picked up a roll of packing tape and put it down again. "It's my birthday," he said finally. "Today. I'm thirty today and I'm spending it in a storage unit."

For a second she didn't say anything, and then her whole face changed, the work face going away and something softer coming in behind it. "Oh, Allan!"

"It's fine. It's dumb. I just," he shrugged, and the shrug didn't come off as casual as he wanted it to, "thirty felt like it was supposed to be something, you know? Married by now, or at least dating somebody for real, or have a house, or something to show for it. Instead I've got a storage unit full of a dead man's dishes and a phone full of women who stopped texting back. It just feels like time's running out and I never started."

Britt was quiet for a moment, and the dust drifted through the light between them, and then she said, "Come here, I want to show you your present."

"You got me a present?"

"I did. It's in the car. Hold on." She went back out under the door and he heard the trunk of her car pop and thunk, and when she came back she was carrying a garment bag, the long kind, black and slick-looking against her arm. "Okay. So. Before you say anything, hear me out, because I've been thinking about this all week."

"All right," he said, and he could feel himself smiling a little in spite of everything, because Britt with a plan was always something.

She hung the garment bag off the edge of a box, unzipped it slow, and pulled out a dress. Black, slinky, the kind of material that would slide around on itself when you moved, thin straps and a low neckline and a hem that would end well above the knee on most anyone. She held it up against herself for a second and then held it out toward him.

"I wore this to a costume party two Halloweens ago," she said. "And I have been dying for an excuse to get somebody else into it, because it fit me weird and it would fit you great, and you are exactly my size in the shoulders, I've noticed, don't ask me how I noticed. I want you to try it on for me. If you want to. You can say no, obviously, say no and I'll never bring it up again and we'll go back to boxes."

Allan stared at the dress, then at her, then back at the dress. The fabric caught the bulb light and threw it back in a soft black shine. "You want me to wear a dress."

"I want you to try on a dress," she said. "On your birthday. Because I think it would be funny and because I think you'd look good and because you've been standing in this room all afternoon looking like your dog died, and I'd rather you spend the rest of today doing something that makes you laugh at yourself." She tilted her head. "What's going through your head right now, honestly?"

"Honestly? About nine things at once." He took the hanger from her, and the dress was heavy and cool in his hand, and something in his stomach did a slow flip that he wasn't going to name in front of her. "Part of me is going, this is insane. And part of me is going, well, nobody's here, and it's my birthday, and I've spent thirty years doing the safe thing."

"And?"

"And the safe thing hasn't exactly been paying off." He looked at her. "You won't tell anyone at the shop."

"Allan. Who would I even tell, Vince would take a picture of me just telling him." She smiled. "It stays between us. Try it. If you hate it two seconds in, take it off, no harm done."

The unit had no real room to change, no back wall and no curtain, just boxes and shadows, and Britt solved it by walking to the roll-up door and pulling it down most of the way, leaving it cracked open just enough that a band of orange light lay across the floor. She turned her back to him and started fussing with a box of picture frames, making a show of it.

"I'm not looking," she said. "I'll be real busy with these frames. Frames are fascinating."

Allan pulled his shirt off over his head, and the air in the unit was cool on his bare