She staggers out of bed on her 29th birthday and finds a card in her mailbox. “Susie, happy 30th,” it says inside, “love, Mom.” She places it in the trash can atop the mound of streamers and plastic red cups and beer bottles from her surprise party the night before (come to think of it, who cleaned all of this up?) and then she steps into the shower. She lets the water flow over her body until it runs cold, then dresses in the clothes she wore yesterday so she doesn’t have to open the closet and see the emptiness of one half of it, the half that still smells faintly of his cologne. She’s 29 today, but she feels 16. Naïve. Vulnerable. Helpless.

Her stomach gurgles with the aftershocks of inebriation, the taste of beer lingering in the bottom of her throat. Coffee, she decides, and she snatches her purse from the small table by the front door. As she pulls the strap and the purse slides off the table, it knocks something to the ground. The ring. She recalls the night before, her cousin Ernie begging her to take it off: “Please, Susie, it’s not healthy. Wearing it won’t make him come back.” He was right, of course. Still, she slides it back down her finger before she leaves the house.

At the café around the corner she orders a mocha and a bagel and she sits on a bench beside a napping homeless man. The sun is directly above her head, making her hair follicles tingle with warmth. The homeless man stirs and runs a hand through his hair. He notices his bench companion and apologizes—“I hope I wasn’t in your way,” he says, and he begins to rise from his seat.

She stops him, asks him not to leave. She offers a half of her bagel, since she has no appetite anyhow. She doesn’t explain why, but she needs someone sitting beside her. It’s her birthday. She can’t be alone, not right now. They each eat their bagel halves, and when they’re finished, he says to her, “You know, it’s my birthday today.”

She stares ahead at the buildings across the street. She watches the people going in and out, the couples and the businessmen and the pairs of friends and the people who are by themselves. She wonders, are they broken-hearted too? But they can’t be. They’re smiling.

Finally, she tells the homeless man: “It’s my birthday, too.” For the first time, they actually face each other, look at each other, read each others’ eyes. She holds her hands in her lap and feels the ring with her right hand, feels its jaggedness and its smoothness…and its coldness. She has been keeping it. It makes the past seem like the present. It makes the truth seem unreal. It makes her believe he will want it back, and he will have to come and see her.

She decides to go home. She needs to call her mother, she needs some time alone. When she stands, she removes the ring. She will never look at it again. She hands it to the homeless man. “I don’t know how much it’s worth, but there’s a pawn shop right around the corner.”

The homeless man examines it. “Lady, I can’t…I shouldn’t…”

“It’s killing me,” she says. “Happy birthday.”