It had to be absolutely perfect.

Annie had forbidden Lex to spend any of his saved inheritance on Nikki's fifth birthday party. He was pretty sure this pregnancy was making her more irritable than the last one had, so he didn't fight her on it, just agreed to use some of their monthly budget for the decorations.

Lex was packing up Nikki's lunchbox for the day while she ate her cereal at the table. Or rather, attempted to eat her cereal—she kept stopping to ask Lex questions. "How many days til my birthday party?"

"Three days left." They were holding her party on Saturday; today was a Wednesday, which he thought was pretty late to be sending out invitations, but Annie had insisted it was plenty of time for the families to RSVP. "Eat your breakfast, please."

She scooped up another spoonful of cheerios, but lowered the spoon after bringing it halfway to her mouth. "Can Onyx come to my party?"

"It's going to be at our house."

"Papa could ride Onyx here."

"Well, you're not going to be able to ride her at your party."

"Why not?"

"Because you're going to be busy with your friends. Now, eat your breakfast."

Nikki pouted. She lifted the spoon again, and nibbled one cheerio from the spoon.

"Come on, Nikki, you're going to be late for school if you eat it like that."

She took a real bite of cereal, then said, with her mouth full, "So what are we gonna—"

"Chew and swallow."

She swallowed, coughed a few times, then said, "So what are we gonna do at my party?"

Lex sighed. "We're going to have a nice lunch, and cake, and presents, and party games."

"Like checkers?"

"No, not checkers, that's a two-player game."

"But I like playing checkers with you!"

"Well, you're not going to be playing with me, you're going to be playing with your friends."

"And Uncle Clark and Nana and Papa?"

"You can give them invitations when Nana picks you up from school today." He and Annie both had important meetings.

"Is Uncle Clark at Nana and Papa's house?"

"He said he'd come visit you today, yeah. Look at me for a minute, Nikki?"

She looked up from her cereal bowl, squirming in her chair.

He showed her the stack of invitations and her horse-covered backpack. "I'm putting these in your backpack. You need to give these out to your friends today, okay? There are fifteen of them, you don't have to give them all out, but as many as you want." There were only fifteen kids in her preschool class, total, so she could invite everyone if she wanted.

"Okay."

"Good." He nodded toward her cereal bowl. "Finish your breakfast."

"I'm full, Daddy."

"You barely touched it. Three more big bites."

"How about two?"

He raised his eyebrows. "How about three, like I asked?"

She actually rolled her eyes before picking up her spoon again. Lex shuddered to think what her teenage years would be like.

He helped her get packed up and ready to go to school. As they pulled up to the school, Lex got out of the car to help her with her carseat, but she was already out of it by the time he opened the back door. "Bye Daddy!" she yelled, grabbing her backpack and running out of the car.

"Whoa, whoa!" He chased her a couple of steps and scooped her up into his arms, turning her to face him. "Hey. You know I love you, right?"

"I know, you said that a bajillion times."

"I want you to have the perfect birthday. You're sure there's nothing you want?" She hadn't even asked for any presents. She'd been all over toy catalogs at Christmastime, but there wasn't as much around in January.

Her nose scrunched up, then her eyes went wide. "Nana's strawberry cake!"

"You got it, Nikki." He pulled her into a hug, which she returned for only a half second before wriggling away.

"Bye! Bye!"

He chuckled and let her go, and she ran off to her classroom ahead of him

----------------------------------------

But Thursday passed, then Friday, and Lex didn't receive any RSVP's.

He asked Annie about it enough times that it was clearly starting to drive her crazy. "Is it possible they recognize the Luthor name?"

"I'm sure they do," she said, picking up her curling iron. "But I doubt that has anything to do with this."

Stolen novel; please report.

He paced behind her in the bathroom. "I don't want our daughter to grow up ostracized because of my name. Maybe I should have had her take your maiden name."

"I'd like to see them try to pronounce Preobrazhensky." Annie began to curl her hair.

"I guess it doesn't matter, they've all seen me with her at this point. But . . . what if no one comes?"

"You made a lot of invitations. I'm sure a few will come out, even if their parents aren't calling. Parents of four- and five-year-olds are very busy, you know."

But Saturday morning arrived, and he still hadn't seen a single RSVP. He knew people were busy, but he had a hard time believing not a single parent could be bothered to send a quick text, even to tell him they couldn't make it. It almost made him angry.

The last thing he wanted was for Nikki to have a birthday party like the last one he remembered.

Lex asked Nikki multiple times whether she had made sure to give invitations to everyone she wanted to come. He worried she had lost them and was too afraid to tell him—he'd accidentally snapped at her a month ago when she'd lost her third jacket that school year. But she insisted she had invited everyone, and Lex knew she hadn't lost the invitations, because both of his parents had the invites, along with Clark, and he'd even seen an invitation sloppily taped to the inside of Onyx's stall, though he explained to Nikki twice more that she couldn't ride his horse while her five-year-old friends were over. He even checked her backpack to make sure she hadn't somehow forgotten to give them out. All he found was a coloring book, a few broken crayons, and a couple of shriveled breadsticks from the school cafeteria. Apparently she had traded away her apple for them, and then forgotten she was saving them for later.

The party was at one in the afternoon. At ten, he and Annie were serving her up chocolate chip pancakes. The last thing he wanted was to put a damper on her day, but she needed to be prepared. "Nikki," he said, sitting down beside her. "I . . . haven't heard an RSVP from any of your friends."

"What does that spell?"

"It just means," Annie said, eyeing Lex, "we don't know how many of your friends are coming. They haven't texted your dad."

"Oh." She picked a chocolate chip out of her pancake and nibbled on it. "Are Nana and Papa and Uncle Clark coming?"

"They're going to be a little late," Lex said, refraining from commenting on the way she was eating. "Nana said she needed a little more time on the cake."

"Oo! Is she gonna draw flowers on it with frosting?"

"Um, of course," Lex said, making a mental note to text his mother. "I'm going to run a couple of errands."

Nikki pouted. "No, Daddy . . . it's my birthday!"

But Lex was set in his course. If she wasn't going to have any friends at her party, he wanted to make sure she had lots of presents.

At a quarter to one, Lex returned with a small pile of extra gifts. Annie had reminded him of the budget again, so he couldn't get as much as he wanted. He went to check in on Nikki.

She was playing with her plastic ponies in her room, wearing her jeans and a t-shirt.

"Nikki, where's your birthday dress?"

"I didn't want to wear it."

"Didn't . . ." Lex pinched the bridge of his nose. "Nikki, it's your birthday, and your friends are going to be here in fifteen minutes—"

"Lex."

Lex turned to see Annie standing behind him, her arms crossed.

"It's her birthday."

Lex sighed. "Okay, Nikki. You can wear that if you want."

She stood up, dropping her toys and running for her game shelf. "Daddy, can we play checkers?"

"We don't really have time . . ."

"But . . . but you didn't have time yesterday because of work and helping Mommy clean the house for the party!"

"We had to clean the house for guests."

She pouted.

Lex sighed. "We can play until one," he said.

She cheered, and they set up the game.

After four reminders that her pieces couldn't move backwards and two that they couldn't move onto the white squares, it was five minutes after one. Lex picked her up and carried her out into the living room.

And he faced his nightmare.

The room was beautiful. It was decorated with multicolored streamers and balloons, mostly in shades of purple. A huge banner read, Happy Birthday Nicole. There was a pile of presents in the corner and a table stacked high with snacks and goodie bags.

But the room was empty. Lex glanced outside to see if anyone was coming in—nothing.

His throat choked up, his eyes stinging. He was going to have to talk to his daughter about the prejudice in their community against Luthors. He was going to have to wipe his baby's tears away on her birthday . . .

"Daddy, look! Mommy put out rice krispie treats!" Nikki bounced up and down, running from place to place in the room. "And balloons! Can I play with one, Daddy? Please please please?"

"Um . . ."

She gasped when she saw the pile of gifts. "So many presents! Are they for me? Can I open them? Did you buy them, Daddy? Or was it Mommy? Or Santa?"

"Nikki . . ."

"What?"

"I . . ." The room swam. He couldn't do this. "Maybe we should just go finish that checkers game."

"But it's my party time!"

"I know, but . . ." He knelt down to eye level with her. "How many friends did you invite?"

She scrunched up her eyes and nose, seeming to be concentrating on counting. "Four," she finally said.

He blinked. "Just four? Did any of them tell you whether they could come?"

"They all did! Except one." She giggled. "Onyx can't talk."

A sinking feeling overcame him. "Who were the other three?"

"Nana, Papa, and Uncle Clark."

"Nikki!" He stood up. "You didn't want to invite your friends from school?"

"Well, I love my friends from school, but I wanted to ride Onyx on my birthday!"

Lex's breath caught. That was what all of this was about! He scooped up his baby girl in his arms, spinning her and covering her with kisses until she screamed with laughter. "You could have told me you just wanted a family party!"

"But then Mommy wouldn't have made that many rice krispie treats!"

Lex burst out laughing. "You little Luthor!" He tickled her under the arms until she was gasping for breath and pushing away, and then he put her down. "I'm gonna call Papa and tell him to ride Onyx over. That okay with you, master negotiator?"

She nodded emphatically. "Can we play checkers out here until they get here? And can I have a rice krispie treat?"

He kissed the top of her head. "It's your birthday, Nikki."

----------------------------------------

Lex's parents got a good laugh out of the story. Clark laughed and flipped Nikki upside down to tease her about it. Annie just smirked and said, "Took you that long to figure it out?"

Nikki made Clark fly her around the front yard for about ten minutes, then she sat on Onyx for over a half an hour before she agreed to go inside for lunch. She only took a few bites of her pasta before asking Annie to take down some of the balloons for her to play with, and she and Clark played with the balloons until one popped and startled her and Annie had to calm her down.

Then they sat her down to open her presents, which ended up taking hours, because she kept wanting to play with each toy and read each book and try on each piece of clothing she opened, and at one point she declared she wanted to take a break to ride Onyx again, using the foolproof argument, "It's my birthday!"

It was after dark by the time they cut the cake, and Nikki ended up nearly passing out at the table, her slice half eaten. Half asleep, Nikki submitted to long snuggled from both of Lex's parents before Lex carried Nikki out into the cold evening air to say good bye to her grandparents and uncle—and Onyx. Then he carried her to brush her teeth and go to bed.

She had been nearly asleep—though not quite tired enough to refrain from arguing about brushing her teeth—but she sat up just as Lex was about to leave her room. "Daddy?" she said softly.

"Yes, Nikki."

She smiled. "That was the best birthday ever."

Lex grinned and walked back to her bed. He gave her one last hug and kiss on the cheek. "Until next year," he said.

"Oh, yeah." She nestled down under the covers. "I already have plans."

Lex chuckled. "I'm sure you do," he said, and he let her sleep.