I found Ren alone at a twenty-four-hour laundromat with lights so blue and eerie they hurt my non-existent eyes. They made us both look dead. A couple of cheap paper ghosts hung by the wide windows, cobwebs drawn with chalk markers on the glass.
He barely looked up from the clothes he was unloading from the dryer as I hopped up onto the machine next to him.
“So, what’s up with you and that handsome ghost?” he asked.
I bit my tongue to keep from answering too quickly and giving myself away. “He’s just a local nuisance.” I counted a few beats in my head, trying to make the change of subject natural. “You have any plans on Halloween?”
He averted his eyes, concentrating on folding his clothes. “I’ve never been big on it, to be honest. I get enough thrills and chills every day.”
That broke my heart. It was my favorite holiday. My mother had forbidden it in our home, so, of course, I always had to sneak out, do my best to dress up with whatever I had in my closet. In college, I’d go all out, slutting it up like I had much to flaunt. I’d never missed out, up until the last two years.
“Well, it used to be every day,” said Ren, glancing up with a grateful smile. “You wanna stay in and laugh over some bad ghost movies?”
That sounded fucking adorable. Too much.
I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “I can’t.”
He gave me a rapid blink. “What, have you got, like… otherworldly business?”
“Well…”
It would be an especially wild night at the Haunt. Not that I’d join. But it would be a good time to check on Evie.
“So there’s like a whole party out there somewhere?” he said, like he’d been thinking about this all day. “All kinds of spirits you could’ve been hanging out with this whole time, instead of me?” My dead heart skipped a beat under his searching gaze. “I can’t help but wonder what you’re even doing here.”
I stole one of his shirts out of his basket, trying to steady my hands by making myself useful, though I wasn’t very good at folding. “You looked like you needed the company.”
He didn’t take it like I’d intended, beaming as he grabbed his shirt from me, shook it out, and folded it again. Only for me to snatch it back and lightly whip him over the head with it.
“I mean you need to get out more. If you died now, would your sendoff put the ‘fun’ in funeral, or would your turnout be as sad as mine?”
He gave up on the shirt, tossing it unfolded in the basket. “You make a depressing point.”
“Damn right,” I said. “Have some fun while I’m gone. You’ll have your place to yourself, if you want to have company over. Get dressed up, get drunk… get some.”
Just as I’d hoped, he blushed. The scowl kind of ruined it. “Is that the kind of night you’ll be having? Is the handsome ghost invited?”
I probably mirrored his expression, my face flushing. “He’s an insufferable ass.” But I didn’t have to defend myself. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“You’re right. It’s not.” He moved to plant himself in front of me, looking up into my face. “As long as we’re still pretending we never kissed?”
“Well…” I gulped. “We didn’t. Not really.” I unfolded my legs, dropping through the dryer and stepping out from the other side. “If you wanna make out for real, you’ve got to look elsewhere.”
He gripped the basket tight. “I guess I could go for a drink.”
“So…” I followed him to the exit. “What are you gonna wear?”
* * *
Ren came home early from work the next day with a fairly vanilla skeleton costume. I liked the way it clung to his lanky body. The makeup I dabbed on his face brought out his cheekbones and jawline.
“How do I look?” he asked.
I couldn’t answer, at first, like I’d had the breath I didn’t need knocked out of me. He wore death better than I could’ve dreamed.
“You look like you’re getting lucky tonight.”
I walked him to a bar that wouldn’t be too overwhelming for a homebody. Just a cozy hole in the wall, every inch covered in band stickers and graffiti, obscuring most of the tables and counters, scratched through wax and wood. They’d hung yellowing paper skeletons and witches and cats that might have been brought out every year since they’d opened decades back, though the orange lights and fog machine were new, as was the playlist they didn’t blare too loudly.
I should’ve known tonight would be more crowded than most. We had to weave around the milling bodies in their gaudy colors and cheap fabric—or lack thereof. So much thigh and cleavage. I couldn’t help but stare, flushing with lust and self-consciousness, before looking down at my own same old fucking clothes as always.
Some of the costumed girls were looking at us. At him. I couldn’t blame them. I’d done a damn good makeup job. He looked haunting, with those good bones of his brought to the surface. The tight skeleton suit didn’t hurt, either.
I tensed with a sudden shock of nerves that weren’t my own. Ren had probably meant for that to be a comforting brush of his hand through mine, but he only pooled our anxiety.
He held his phone to his ear. “We’re really doing this?”
His painted brow creased in worry. That gave me the backbone I needed to grin up at him. It didn’t hurt that somebody had stumbled slightly through me, wobbling with what felt like a sugary cocktail, grown-up candy.
“Don’t worry, I’ll warm you up first.”
He gulped. I couldn’t help but slip into a smoky drawl, standing on tiptoe to murmur in his ear. “What would you say to me if you saw me in this bar in life?”
He yanked his hand away all of a sudden, not soon enough to hide a hot burst of shame. “I wouldn’t be here.”
That shut down my newfound boldness. He found an opening at the counter and took it, looking as if he were frantically phoning a late friend for some company, annoyed to be alone.
“It’s a good thing you’ve got me, then,” I said, as I took a seat in midair beside him. “I feel right at home.”
He turned to me with a thorough up-and-down look, as if he were imagining what I would be wearing. “I wish you were here.”
I didn’t know what to say.
The bartender spared us any silence. Ren fumbled with his order, not expecting to have to specify a brand, like he’d never been in a bar. I suggested a mild beer, which he repeated gratefully. As he sat there waiting for it, I looked around. We needed to hurry up and find somebody he could touch.
At last, one of the noisy groups in the corner vacated their table, and behind them, I spotted her. She was perfect, dressed like a ragdoll, about his age. Not the prettiest, but mostly symmetrical, with mousy brown hair in pigtails and real freckles under the painted ones, plenty of handfuls to grab under her frilly frock. Her green witch’s brew cocktail looked near finished as she sat there alone in a booth, like she’d been waiting for a while. Maybe for a date, but maybe not.
“She looks nice,” I said. “I bet she’d appreciate some company.”
He stared at her, then at me. I put my hand through his, until the bats in his stomach turned to butterflies.
“You’ve got this,” I said.
His smile looked too wistful. But he made sure to down the rest of his beer, with unexpected grace, before heading her way.
She looked up as he approached, then glanced down shyly and nervously drained the last of her cocktail. In that costume, with the innocent circle of blush on her cheeks, she looked like she’d gotten lost on her way from hosting a kids’ party, or had a rough day supervising holiday fun after school. The kind of girl he could take home to mom. He wasn’t the type to leave in the morning, either. This could be the start of something.
He slid smoothly into the booth across from her, slipping into his laid-back, never-seen-a-ghost customer service voice. It made me shiver and flush at once. “Mind if I sit here?”
Her pigtails waggled as she shook her head, her soft voice swollen with a smile. “Not at all.”
As I watched them from across the bar, the cobwebs and paper skeletons trembled as if from a draft. Nearby, some costumed girls tried to cover their bare skin, shivering.
Time for me to bow out.