Hot by Halloween

by Jessica Bucher

  This friends-to-lovers thing was new for me. I’d only ever been in a relationship with Mitch, and with Mitch there was no friends, just lovers. I had no idea what was supposed to happen next. Two minutes ago, I was sure he would lean in for a kiss. The night before, after all that handholding, rib cage stroking, water flirting, I was also sure there would be a kiss. But my lips remained as untouched as they had been for the last three months. So long as you didn’t count my kissing a carnie over the summer. It was a low point. I’ve stricken it from my memory. If only I could strike it from Lucy’s phone.

  My thoughts about kissing were interrupted when Gray pulled back the dressing room curtain.

  “These shorts cannot possibly be regulation.”

  I cocked my head to the side, taking in the vision before me. Sure, I had seen Gray in a Speedo a whole lot of times, but he somehow managed to be hotter in costume. This is what my mother meant when she said it was sexier to leave a little to the imagination than to put it all out there. I made a mental note to tell the girls to back off the thigh highs. Our three little sexy kittens would play better if they slanted toward Josie and the Pussy Cats rather than Catwoman.

  “Um...hello...standing here dressed like an idiot waiting for your approval.”

  I laughed, pretending to take a long look from head to toe. “I don’t know. I need you to run in slow motion for me to really be able to assess this.”

  Gray shook his head and yanked the curtain back closed. “I’m buying it!” he called from inside. “It took you a full thirty seconds to respond, and that’s all the validation I need.”

  “What part of slow motion running don’t you understand?” I responded, giggling to myself. I loved picturing Gray chugging through Mitch’s party, the red floaty, life saver thing tucked under one arm.

  After much harassing about my secret costume and a whole lot of unhelpful suggestions from Gray (no, I would not be going as Little Bo Peep, thank you), Gray paid for his costume, and we hit up the brew pub next door for lunch.

  There was no official law preventing teenagers from eating in a bar during the day, but based on the reaction we got from everyone from the bartender to the video poker players in the back, it wasn’t a common occurrence.

  “I feel out of place,” I whispered, after the waitress left our table to grab our waters.

  “You look out of place,” said Gray, glancing around at the rest of the clientele. We weren’t just the youngest ones there. I was the only female.

  When the waitress returned, she handed us each a menu. Literally nothing on the menu could be described as healthy.

  “I guess I’ll be getting water with a side of water,” I said, scowling down at the list of deep fried everything.

  “What?” asked Gray. “That’s ridiculous. You’re getting food.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s easy for you to say McAbs, you’re not the one who has to stand next to Lucy and Nora in the exact same costume.”

  Gray got a wicked grin on his face. “So your costumes are the same then.”

  I narrowed my eyes and wagged my finger. “No more guessing. You wait like everyone else.”

  “We’ll see,” said Gray. “I think I can weasel it out of you before the party.”

  “What are you having?” asked the waitress. She wasn’t much older than we were. Twenty-one maybe, but she had the disposition of a middle-aged bar wench, right down to the little tap she did with her pencil as she waited for us to put in our requests.

  “We’ll have a large order of onion rings, fried pickles, and a burger to split.”

  Our not-so-friendly waitress took the order back to the kitchen with little more than an, “Uh-huh.”

  “I am not eating all of that.”

  “Correct. You’re eating half of that,” said Gray.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “It’s important to me to look good in that costume.”

  Gray frowned. “Addy, you’d look good dressed as Chewbacca. You’ve got to stop worrying about this.”

  I laughed off the Chewbacca comment and ate the fried food, even though I knew he wasn’t trying to be funny. The whole day felt like a great date, and I didn’t want to ruin that by letting all of my insecurities show.

  On the way home, however, I could tell that Gray wanted to say more. He’d asked me if this Halloween party was about Mitch before, and I’d said no, but that was before I started feeling things. Now if I told him about my goal, it would look like I had lied to him. I wasn’t an expert, but that probably wasn’t the best way to start a relationship—if that’s what this was.

  I decided then and there not to tell him about our goals. If nothing romantic happened between us and swim season ended with us being just friends, then whether or not I started hanging out with him to make Mitch jealous wouldn’t matter. And if we ended up a couple, then we ended up as a couple. He didn’t have to know everything, right?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gray

  “Don’t laugh,” I said to my mom as she stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room to see me in my red shirt and shorts, sunglasses, whistle, and white streak of sunblock on my nose.

  I had to give her credit—at least she tried. But within minutes, my mom was red-faced and howling. “I love it!”

  “I’m a walking caricature, Mom.” I really tried to keep my humor about the whole thing, but it was hard to play along when after a whole week, I still had no real clue where I stood with Addy. And I was starting to get a little worried that her reason for going to this party was about more than just her trio costume.

  I was the guy taking his maybe-girlfriend to her newly single ex’s party. It put me in an uneasy position to say the least, but I just kept reassuring myself that there was no way he and Addy had the chemistry that she and I did.

  A bright flash caught my attention as I looked up and saw that my was snapping photos of me with her phone. A moment later, the doorbell rang.

  “Don’t you dare post that online,” I said as I walked over to the front door. My mom stood back in her scrubs, practically bursting with excitement to finally meet Addy outside of the few times she saw her at the meets. All of her intense interrogations about our status certainly hadn’t helped this past week either.

  When I pulled the door open, I was greeted by three giggling cats. My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I took in their costumes. Addy was in the middle, glaring at me with bright eyes and a wide smile. I almost didn’t recognize her with her eyes caked with black makeup.

  “Come on in,” my mom said as she moved around me to open the door for them.

  Through their quick introductions, I stood speechless, watching Addy for a sign of the girl I knew. I couldn’t see her freckles under her makeup.

  “You like it?” she said, posing with a little meow between her friends.

  I nodded, but it felt like the expression on my face was broken. “Three...cats…” I stammered.

  “Three little kittens...who lost their mittens,” she corrected me. All I could think about was the limitless possibilities of cat costumes that didn’t require a skin-tight body suit and a tiny skirt so short that she probably couldn’t sit properly for the rest of the night.

  “I see that,” I muttered as I turned to grab my cell phone off the entryway table. When I turned back, Addy’s smile had been replaced with a grimace aimed directly at me. I wasn’t exactly good at being subtle, I guess. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her costume because I did. I just didn’t like the feeling in my gut that this was what Addy thought I wanted, and if that was the case, then we were really starting off on the wrong foot.

  We said goodbye to my mom and walked out to the car. I tried my best to keep a light mood, but Addy could read me like a book. She kept glancing at me with a question on her face, but I kept shrugging it off. The last thing I wanted to do what ruin her night with my sulking. I was her friend after all, not her boyfriend. Who was I to judge her for her clothing choices?

>   “Why do you have a pie?” I asked Lucy, as I turned to find her holding what looked like a real pie in her lap.

  “It’s fake,” she said as she knocked on the top.

  “Then you shall have no pie,” Nora added from the backseat. “Don’t you remember that nursery rhyme?”

  “Can’t say I do,” I answered.

  “You’re no fun,” Addy said with a glassy stare toward the road. Great...were we fighting? I really needed to learn to keep my facial expressions quiet.

  Ignoring her, I turned back to the other girls. “Where did you get a fake pie?”

  “Lucy flirted with a guy at the diner, and he let her take it if she promised to bring it back.”

  “It was in their display case,” Lucy said, defending herself. “And it wasn’t flirting...I was just being nice.”

  The girls broke out in laughter, and I tried to let it lighten my mood, but the tension between me and Addy wouldn’t let me relax. I couldn’t stop thinking that something I said or did must have let her believe that this was the kind of thing she needed to wear to impress me.

  How could I make her understand that she was so much better than this? I just wanted the girl who ate burgers and custard with me. The girl who wasn’t afraid to put me in my place The girl on the dock.

  Addy

  Gray was weird. From the moment he opened the door, he was weird. Wasn’t seeing me dressed up like a sexy kitty supposed to be hot? If my own, sorta-maybe-boyfriend didn’t think so, then what were the odds that the rest of the party would? All the confidence I’d built up just half-an-hour earlier whizzed out of me like a deflating balloon.

  The girls giggled in the backseat, making small talk with Gray, but I couldn’t think of a single relevant thing to say. All I could think was I had wasted a whole lot of time swimming back and forth to garner such a lackluster response. It was almost enough to make me want to whip the car around and talk the girls into a low key evening in the barn. Almost, but not quite.

  I pulled up to Mitch’s place, bumping my tires against the curb in a sloppy, nervous attempt to parallel park. Cassie and Mitch were no longer an item, but her car was there, and that took me by surprise. They’d managed to go from boyfriend-girlfriend to actual friends in no time. We’d been together eons longer, and the two of us didn’t even follow one another on Instagram (well...not officially anyway). I felt a sick pit of jealousy forming in my stomach. The exact opposite of what I hoped would happen here tonight.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, linking arms with Nora and Lucy. “It’s time for these three sexy kittens to make their appearance.” I didn’t miss Gray’s dramatically raised eyebrow as he stepped aside to let us enter first.

  We rang the doorbell then stood in position, Lucy with her fake pie held out in front of her, Nora and I with our mittened hands dangling in front of us like little paws. Mitch grinned from ear to ear when he opened the door. The kind of reaction I thought Gray would have.

  “Three little kittens who lost their mittens!” said Mitch, unexpectedly leaning over to pop a kiss on my cheek. “You girls always do something clever.” I was frozen in place. My three-inch stilettos wouldn’t budge and not just because they were sinking into the welcome mat. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but Gray chose that exact moment to push past us.

  “Can you show me where the bathroom is?” asked Gray. His knuckles were white where he gripped his fake flotation device, and it occurred to me for the first time that I might be making the wrong guy jealous tonight.

  “Right this way,” said Mitch, taking a step toward the guest bathroom before hollering back at us. “Everyone is in the backyard.”

  Nora leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Did he just kiss you on the cheek?”

  My face was still hot from the contact. “I..I..yes?”

  “Guess you can check the box next to ‘make Mitch jealous’ then. I’m not sure I saw him kiss you on the cheek when you were actually dating.”

  I shook my head, attempting to clear my thoughts. This was what I wanted, right? Mitch to be mad for me? The problem was, every time I imagined this moment, he was still dating Cassie. Now that he was actually single his wanting me back was a lot more dangerous.

  “You need to be careful,” said Lucy as if she were reading my mind. “This is more complicated than we planned.”

  Ha, she didn’t know the half of it. Two months ago when we were diving into a heap of hay there was no Gray Turner. What the heck was I supposed to do now? Hang all over Gray in his sexy lifeguard costume and make Mitch feel bad? That was going to make everyone feel bad.

  I needed a moment to think, but I wasn’t going to get it.

  “Can I talk to you, Addy?” Mitch was back from the bathroom, and Gray was nowhere to be found.

  Lucy and Nora gave me a warning look, but what was I supposed to do, say no? That wouldn’t have been right.

  “Sure,” I said and followed him down the familiar hall to his room. Once inside he closed the door behind us, a sure sign that this was not going to be a ‘hey, how ya doin, miss hanging out’ talk.

  I walked around the room, taking in the changes. Gone were the silly photos of us I’d tacked to his bulletin board. Just like the Winter is Coming poster I gave him last Christmas was no longer hanging in the empty spot between his closet and bedroom door.

  “I kind of lost interest in Game of Thrones,” he said, noticing me looking. “The finale ruined it for me. It wasn’t because it was from you. If that’s what you were thinking.”

  That was what I was thinking, but I didn’t tell him that. “Gotcha,” I answered continuing to move around the room. Now that I was in here, it felt like a real bad idea. Like what good could possibly come of this, and where was I supposed to sit down? On his bed? Heck no! I was dressed like a sexy kitty!

  I whipped around anxious to get the conversation over with and out of my ex’s bedroom.

  “What did you want to say?” I asked, peeling my eyes from his bare walls to his face.

  Mitch smiled. He had a super cute smile, one side of his mouth always lifting just a little higher than the other. “Did you know this is the first time you have looked at me since we broke up? You’ve been acting like my face is the sun or something—must not look directly!” he joked.

  I shrugged, but I couldn’t help but grin back. “Yeah well, I was hating you a little.”

  “A little?” he asked, taking a step closer to me.

  I felt my palms getting sweaty. It had been a long time since Mitch gave me a smoldering look, but I remembered what it felt like, and more importantly, what came next. Mitch reached up to cup my cheek, tilting my head back with his hand as he pulled me into his frame. I was one sweet nothing away from falling for it...until I caught a glimpse of us in the mirror above his dresser.

  At that moment, in that pose, we looked exactly the way he and Cassie had in the parking lot. I didn’t mean anything more to him than she did. Maybe he wanted to get back together, or maybe he just wanted to make out with a hot girl at his big party. Either way, there was nothing in it for me. I was wasting time with Mitch when I could be hanging out with a guy who fell for me with a uniboob and a swim cap. There was no comparison.

  “I’m sorry, Mitch,” I said using my mittens to push back from him. “But I came here tonight with Gray, and if you’ll excuse me, I need to find him.”

  “Got it,” said Mitch, stepping back awkwardly. Now it was him who wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I didn’t realize you two were a thing.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and backed out of the room. I wasn’t sure we were a thing, but I was positive that finding out was a lot more important than making Mitch feel bad about dumping me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gray

  I was pouting. No, what I was doing was worse than that. What was worse than pouting? Sulking. That’s it. I was sulking, big time.

  After I came out of the bathroom, I found only two kittens on the gazebo in the backyar
d. They didn’t want to look me in the eye, and when I also couldn’t find the party host, it wasn’t hard to see the nail in my coffin.

  So, I left the party. There was no way I was going to mingle in some weird attempt to pretend I wasn’t devastated. The only problem was that I didn’t drive, and Mitch’s house was too far from civilization to walk, so I waited on the bumper of Addy’s SUV.

  The thoughts that ran through my head hovered somewhere around the idea that I must have been so isolated in this new town that I completely fabricated this connection with the only person who showed any real interest in me. The whole thing between us was in my head, and that was humiliating. I held her hand!

  I basically invited myself to this party because she was coming. The party she probably wanted to come to for Mitch. I just third-wheeled myself into the situation.

  My head fell forward in utter humiliation. Poor Addy was just trying to improve her swim game, and I had to make it all romantic and pine after her like a creep.

  “What are you doing out here?” she called from the front door.

  I had no clue what to say to that. Shrugging, I just answered. “I don’t know what I’m doing at this party, Addy.” She didn’t say anything as she hobbled across the lawn. About halfway, she stopped, huffed in frustration, and tore off her heeled boots.

  “You know what?” she said as she sat down on the bumper next to me. “I was just thinking the same thing.” Then she looked up at me, the street lights reflecting in her eyes, and I felt like she stared up at me for a second longer than friends were supposed to stare at each other.

  “What do you have all this on for?” I said, trying to wipe off the black smokey ring around her eyes.