She smiled when she saw me. She was pulling at her fingers and chewing her lip as I looked at everything.
“It’s all amazing,” I said.
She let out a breath and smiled wider. “I think Frankenstein should’ve been a little taller, but I misjudged on some measurements.”
“He looks perfect to me. Hey, Emily…”
“Oh, nope, nope!” She said, waving her hands like she was trying to hold me back. “I get it. You don’t have any more work for me after this. I wasn’t expecting this to be some kind of ongoing arrangement. So we can skip the awkward you’re technically fired but it’s not really like you’re fired thing. I already put two and two together when you kind of ghosted me, so—”
I laughed. “That’s not what I was going to say, actually. I wanted to tell you that I remember you. Before I came today. You’re the Emily from high school. We had Home Ec. I was an ass. I kind of ruined everything? Ringing any bells?”
She twitched her head to the side a little and gave me a crooked smile. “I recognized you. I just didn’t want to make it awkward.”
“Too late.”
“You don’t need to explain. Really. It was a long time ago. I get it.”
“I do though. I feel kind of like I’m taking the easy out here, but I want you to know I wasn’t the one who smeared a cupcake on your painting. I took the fall for Haisley because I was a dumbass and I thought it was the kind of thing I was supposed to do as her boyfriend.”
“Seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s not like I have a voodoo doll of you in my closet that I torture every night out of spite or anything.”
“See, I know you’re lying because I saw your apartment. There wasn’t even room for a closet in there.”
She grinned. “Got me.” She paused, working her lips to the side in thought. “Didn’t you and Haisley break up almost right after the whole cupcake thing?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if you know this about me, but every relationship I’ve ever been in has crashed and burned. I’m pretty sure I have some kind of curse. No matter how well it starts out, every relationship I touch is doomed.”
“Is that why you’ve been able to resist my womanly charms?”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t say I’ve completely resisted them.”
“No?” she chewed her lip again, but this time, it sent a small shockwave of heat through me.
“Hey,” I said quickly, more to diffuse the heavy air that seemed full of potential than because I had something worth saying.
She waited expectantly, eyebrows high.
“Uh, I wanted to invite you to the party. Tomorrow. I figured you knew you were invited anyway, but I don’t actually have a plus one. So I thought maybe you could come with me. As friends, or something.”
“Or something? Can I choose the ‘or something’ option?”
I chuckled. “As friends.”
“Okay. I’ll come to the party with you, as your friend. Are the rules the same as at the gastropub? We have to make sure we’re not having fun or it turns into a date?”
“Definitely. And make sure you don’t wear a sexy Halloween costume, because if there’s a massacre at the party, by horror movie rules, the sexier your costume is, the faster you die.”
She thought about that for a second. “Wow. I think you’re actually right. Horror directors hate the slutty Halloween costume. I guess I’ll dust off my Bill of Rights costume.”
I squinted at her. “I can’t tell if you’re making that up or if you’re serious.”
“I guess you’ll just have to wait for tomorrow night to find out. Won’t you?”
11
Emily
I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, which was decorated with water spots because I apparently brushed my teeth like a barbarian. I probably flossed like a maniac, too, but that was only once every six months—right before dentist visits.
I had been joking about the Bill of Rights costume, but one perk of being an artist and having familiarity with a range of fabrics and mediums was that I’d been able to whip a costume together last night and this morning. I was now a full-sized Bill of Rights.
I stared at my reflection and wondered if I’d taken the whole “not slutty” thing a bit to the extreme. I looked like a rolled up newspaper. My legs stuck out the bottom of the costume just above the knees, my arms were attached to matching sleeves so only my hands were free, and my face visible by an oval cutout. I’d made the whole costume from a fabric that was light enough to bend but would still look like paper, and I’d spent several hours painstakingly writing down what I could fit of the bill on my costume.
If I hadn’t worked so hard on it, I probably would’ve backed out. I looked ridiculous, but that was probably for the best, anyway. I was already walking a thin line by agreeing to come to the Halloween party with Ryan in the first place. Trying to dress sexy or hope that he’d like how I looked was putting one foot into some very dangerous territory. When I’d freshly been caught up in him, I was ready to forget all about Paris. The day he took me to Galleon, I probably would’ve gone along with anything he wanted. But time apart had been good. I’d worked on the art and I’d had a chance to remember why it was so important to me.
I felt whole when I was working with my hands and making something. I was addicted to the challenge of trying to improve, and to the final moment of satisfaction when I saw how my hard work and focus had taken something rough and turned it into a completed project. In a perfect world, I could still pursue that and get the guy I wanted, but the world wasn’t perfect, and I knew my future in art led through Paris.
Maybe I should’ve gone dressed as my acceptance letter to art school in Paris just to be sure I kept my thoughts in the right place.
There was a knock at my door.
I opened it up to see Lilith, who was dressed in one of her normal outfits, but it was spattered with blood and there was a perfect, bloody handprint around her shin. She was holding a rolling pin covered in dried blood.
“Nice costume,” I said.
“What costume?” she asked. “I just didn’t have time to shower after my date.”
“You know you’re creepy when your best friend isn’t a hundred percent sure that was a joke.”
“Who said we’re best friends?” she asked.
I punched her shoulder. “I did.”
She gave me a rare smirk. “Fine. If you’re going to be weird about it, we can call it that. And I might kind of like Halloween, okay? But if you tell anyone I was in a good mood, I’ll murder you and everybody will just think your corpse is a decoration until tomorrow. I’ll be in Mexico before they find out.”
“Yeah right,” I said, putting my hands on my knees and leaning forward. The top of my costume extended about a foot and a half past my head, which let me swing it at Lilith like I was trying to swat a fly with a newspaper. I swung my hips around and started chasing her out into the hallway until I finally pinned her against the wall with a solid blow.
To my surprise, she was fighting to hold back a smile. “That was the dumbest looking thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“I’ve known the Chamberson brothers a few months,” said Ryan, “so I can’t say the same.”
“Ryan!” I squawked. I straightened too fast and the weight of my costume started pulling me backwards. I pinwheeled my arms for balance, but it was useless. I thudded to the floor, but hardly felt the impact because of all the padding.
Ryan and Lilith stood above me, looking down.
Ryan was dressed in a suit, but he had some kind of baby carrier strapped to his chest with a bag of sugar inside.
“A sugar daddy,” I said from the ground. “Nice.”
He grinned. “You’re the only one who got it so far. I knew I liked you.”
“Someone is going to have to help me up.”
“Please don’t,” Lilith said. “I kind of want to watch her flop around and try on her own.”
Ryan extended a hand. “
I feel like I got my fill from watching her swat you with her giant, oversized head.”
I let him pull me to my feet, but frowned. “You just mean the head of my costume, right?”
“Oh, absolutely. Your real head is the perfect size.”
“He said you’re perfect. And he likes you. Gross,” Lilith made a gagging motion. “If you’re going to get her pregnant, make sure it’s a girl. Little boys are unbearable once they hit middle school age, and I can’t promise I wouldn’t off the kid as soon as he asks if my phone had any games.”
“I’m not even going to respond to that,” I said.
“That counts as a response,” Lilith said.
“You should’ve told me you two got along so well,” Ryan said to Lilith. “I would’ve offered to be your personal driver a long time ago.”
“You’re driving us to the party?” I asked. It was probably a stupid question, but my head was still spinning from using myself as a human flyswatter a few seconds ago.
“That’s the plan. At least it was, until I realized I could kidnap you and pull a Nicolas Cage from National Treasure. Now I’m kind of tempted just to be able to say I did it.”
“Actually.” I held up my finger. I knew I was being the stereotypical, obnoxious “um, actually” girl, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Nicolas Cage steals the Declaration of Independence in that movie.”
Ryan smirked. “Didn’t realize you were a fan of the late great Nicolas Cage and his impressive filmography.”
“Nicolas Cage died?” Lilith asked.
“He should have,” Ryan said.
“That’s horrible.” I couldn’t help laughing. “I happen to like Nicolas Cage, the actor and the person, thank you very much.”
“Wait,” Ryan said. “Are you serious? What could you possibly like about him, except Con Air. I’ll admit, I kind of liked that movie.”
“He’s probably immortal, for one. Does anyone know how old he is? No. He’s also hilariously bad with his money. He’s bought a shark, a genuine collection of shrunken heads, and a private island right next door to Johnny Depp’s private island, just to name a few.”
Ryan was holding back laughter and Lilith was giving the I’ve-heard-this-speech-a-dozen-times-already look to the ceiling.
“Did he really buy a shark?”
“That’s the least believable part to you?”
“It’s just the most impractical. I mean, where do you keep it? Aren’t you worried it’s going to break free and eat you?”
“Sharks can’t walk on land, dumbass,” Lilith said.
Ryan glared at her. “It’d just need to aim one perfect jump. Free Willy style.”
I nodded. “He’s right. It’d be a kamikaze move, but it could work.”
“God,” she rolled her eyes. “You dorks deserve each other. And on second thought, don’t even make a girl. Your DNA needs to die off with you.”
Ryan shook his head and laughed. “The fact that I’m having this discussion with a giant replica of the Bill of Rights makes me feel like I’m in some kind of weird fever dream.”
Lilith swung her rolling pin at Ryan’s elbow.
He jumped back and grabbed his arm. “What the Hell?”
“Just wanted to prove you weren’t dreaming,” she said with a casual shrug.
I’d known the work I did for Ryan was meant for a party of over two thousand people, but the sheer scope of the event hadn’t clicked until we arrived at Galleon. The lobby was untouched by Halloween decorations, to my surprise, but I hardly noticed with the huge groups of costumed people heading for the elevators. I had a moment of giddy pride when I saw my posters plastered all over the lobby. I’d already seen them several times as I came and went, but the excitement of seeing what was really my first officially commissioned piece of art on display still hadn’t faded.
My pride was short-lived, because a quick glance told me that no other women here were worried about dying first in the event of a Hollywood horror showdown. In fact, it looked like they might actually be competing to see who had dressed provocatively enough to be killed first.
I sucked in a breath, straightened my back, and soldiered on. Let them flaunt their boobs. Psh. A real man doesn’t care about cleavage, he cares about an inalienable right to bear arms, right? And guess what, that particular right was plastered right across my butt. That’s right. I was a dirty girl, and I wasn’t going to apologize.
“No decorations down here?” I asked Ryan.
“Bruce wouldn’t let it happen. He said it was bad enough having to allow this ridiculous party in his building without us ‘tainting’ the lobby while we were at it. But the joke’s on him, because I put a few fake spiders on the toilet seats down here and William helped me booby trap his office.”
Lilith stopped in her tracks. “You guys booby trapped Bruce’s office?” She thought about that for a few seconds, and then something like a robot’s idea of what a smile was supposed to look like touched her face.
By the time we reached the elevators, Lilith was lost in the shuffle of people, but somehow, Ryan managed to stay close by my side.
“Should we wait for her?” asked Ryan.
“No. She would ditch us before long, anyway.” I let the crowd jostle me closer to the elevators while I tried to make a battle plan. I’d accepted Ryan’s invite and known he might have only been saying I could come as a courtesy. It was highly likely that he hadn’t even planned on making an effort of finding me in the crowd once I arrived. Instead, he’d shown up to give me a ride, and now he was talking like he was planning on sticking together.
The art school half of my brain was flashing warning alarms, but the female side of my brain was twirling a bra on its fingertip while it sipped a sloppy martini.
I started hearing the music as soon as we were in the elevator. We rode it up to the top floor and had to squeeze our way out through a man dressed as a vampire and a woman dressed as a succubus—or maybe she was just dressed as a woman in her underwear with a tail and wings, I couldn’t tell the difference.
My breath caught at the sight of the party. The ceiling trailed up at least four or five stories. Huge swinging props were dangling from the ceiling and swaying, including one of the ghosts I'd made. A fog machine clouded the floor and drifted up to the sky, creating little swirls of mist where the ghost broke through. I wanted to clap with delight. It looked so real and spooky. It was like I'd stepped inside one of the inexplicably high-budget Halloween parties from my favorite old-school horror movies. Orange and black lights pulsed in the fog like some kind of creepy thunderstorm waging at our feet, and a live band dressed as zombies played on a stage in the center of the room.
There was too much to take in. There were decorative touches everywhere I looked, from the hollowed out pumpkins holding the punch, to the ramshackle little huts that had been erected and scattered around the party. I could just barely see shrunken heads and all kinds of gross but wonderful props jammed inside them.
“This was all you?” I asked. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the music.
He shrugged. “Sort of. I basically chugged a few energy drinks, stayed up late, and wrote down all the ideas. I gave it to William and told him to use his money to make it happen.”
I grinned. “You did a little more than that to get one measly ghost, a Frankenstein, and some posters out of me.”
“Well, I think that ghost is clearly the centerpiece of the party. I needed to make sure the artist was capable.”
“It was so important that you never checked how it was coming or came to see it until right before the party?”
He sighed. “If you’re trying to corner me into admitting you’re special and I gave you way more attention than every other part of setting this party up, it’ll never happen.”
I smiled contentedly. “That was close enough to an admission. I’ll take it.”
He smiled wryly and grabbed my hand. “Come on, let’s see if you can dance in that ridiculous costume.�
�
“Pause!” I said. “I think you’re going to have to find some alcohol and put it in me before you get me to dance in this.”
“You want me to put it in you?” he asked. There was a glint in those light brown eyes that told me everything I needed to know.
I cleared my throat. “There’s a lot of things you need to put in me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “If this turns into a play on words about your costume, I’m going to be disappointed.”
I laughed. “First, you need to put an apology in my ears for being a dickbag in high school.”
“I thought I already did that, but I’ll say sorry as many times as you want me to.” He leaned forward and then stopped, grinning. “Your ears are kind of behind the weird little sleeve thing around your head, though.”
I tugged at my costume until my ear popped out and then tilted it toward him.
His voice was a warm rush of air in my ear. “I’m sorry for being a dickbag in high school.”
He stayed dangerously close to me, but pulled back enough that I could see his face. “Now, what do you want me to put in you next? Because if you’re all out of ideas, I’ve got a few.”
I wanted to laugh, but the only sound that came out was a choked kind of gurgle. I’d expected some slow flirtation and a lot of trying to read the tea leaves to gauge his interest. This was more like a shotgun to the face. “You know how master chess players are always like, ten moves ahead?”
“What, are you going to say I’m checkmated now or something?”
"No. I'm going to say I was always horrible at chess, and I was hoping some more clever follow-ups would come after the put it in my ear thing." I shrugged and grinned. "That was the best I had."
He smiled in that way guys have been smiling since the stone age—the one where they have that obnoxiously charming twinkle in their eye that says they’re reading you like a book, and they’re on the part where the sexy music starts playing and the light dims.
His Treat Page 9
