AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I wish you the best.” She hangs up before I’m able to respond, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not sure what I’d say anyway, except that I’m quite sure this wasn’t the trick I was expecting mere days before Halloween. At least give me a bucketful of tasteless candy corn first to soften the blow, right?
That night, I lie in bed for too many restless hours with a sheen of sweat over my forehead. I can’t get any sleep. I’m in a mood. Wind keeps brushing against the windows, making them creak irritably, as if they’re just as fidgety as I am. My troubled mind drifts back to my landlord, who I most certainly will not inform about my recent employment status change: being let go before my first day of work. And that, coupled with my ever persistent feelings about a certain barista I can’t seem to talk to or get off my mind, has me feeling like a failure. Not to mention all the promises I made to my parents—and to myself—before getting this apartment in town.
At least it’ll be Halloween soon. There is something about everyone deciding they would rather be anyone other than themselves for a night that I find I can deeply relate to at the present moment—even if they’re a ghoul, or a toothy werewolf, or a slutty kitten person.
Or an adorable barista. In a tight shirt. With his equally adorable apron. And perfectly-styled hair.
Ugh, I am so not sleeping tonight. I close my eyes, clutch my pillow like it’s done something wrong to me, then turn over to my other side, determined as hell to get a wink of sleep after this awful day.
Hey, maybe Spooky Beans is hiring?
That thought makes me smile.
Until I hear the loud crash in the kitchen that has me bolting up from my bed in surprise.
I wait and listen. Nothing touches my ears. Didn’t I have a stack of dishes precariously balanced right by the sink? No, I put them away. What about the mountain of Tupperware in that one cabinet that I told my mom I didn’t need but she packed anyway? No, it didn’t sound like a particularly plastic crash. What was that?
I lie back down, annoyed, then turn away to face the wall as I close my eyes again. Then comes a groan that doesn’t quite sound like the building settling. Even more irritated, I curl up tighter. Can’t I just get a few measly minutes of sleep in this damned apartment?
Then I hear the floorboards creak under the weight of clear and unmistakable footsteps in the living room.
This is probably the moment any reasonable person would think back to Mrs. Shaheen’s words of warning. A reasonable person would be worried. Freaked out. They would search for a weapon under the bed or reach for the baseball bat in their closet and investigate the noise with fight-or-flight grit, ready to strike whatever comes at them, whether it be robber or poltergeist.
Instead, my reckless ass huffs testily, slumps out of bed in just a pair of low-rise tighty whities, and marches out of my room unarmed. As I suspected, no lights are buzzing or flickering in strange patterns. No cupboards are ajar. Nothing floats in midair unexplainably.
No, this place isn’t haunted. The only damned thing haunting me is Byron’s face in my mind as he smiles, hands me my coffee, and tells me to have a great day over and over again in a tormenting, lusty loop.
I find myself stopped at the entrance to the kitchen, where my eyes fall on a spot by the wall. It looks like a fresh (and hurried) paintjob is covering something up. Is that the burn spot Mrs. Shaheen mentioned? I shrug it off and head for the fridge, yanking it open to get a glass of milk—where I note only three slices left of the pizza I ate for dinner. Wasn’t there four before? I shrug that off too and tiredly gulp away, fridge open, carefree. The milk doesn’t help, except to gift me an ill-timed craving for chocolate chip cookies at this gloriously late hour—two-ish in the morning, to be precise.
So I head to my tiny desk by the window, flick on a lamp, and pull out my laptop. Might as well make use of my sleeplessness by setting up a job interview or two, right? Of course, knowing how awkward and frozen I get under stressful circumstances, I’m not confident in the least at my prospects of actually landing another job.
To my surprise, however, I’m able to find three different places for which to schedule interviews with such short notice. And for tomorrow, at that! How lucky am I? Encouraged now, I open Spotify and let it play whatever it thinks I’d like to hear as I hunt some more.
