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I realize at once I don’t want to let this go. “Byron, can we …?”
“Yeah?”
I meet his eyes. “Let’s have a do-over. Tonight. I’ll take you to dinner or something, my treat. Then we can hang out back at my place if you feel comfortable with that. No big loud Halloween party. Just you and me. We can just hang out and get to know each other.”
Byron’s eyes light up at once. “I’d love that.”
“Great! What time do you get off?”
“Five. I live just a couple blocks away.”
“Me, too. I’ll meet you here at seven, then?”
“Six. I can clean up pretty fast.” Byron smirks. “I want as much time tonight with you as I can get.”
I smile. “Six it is.”
“Six it is!” Byron pulls his drink toward him. “I’ll be sure to wear something super tight. Y’know, so you can rip it off of me more easily.”
Whatever air I’m trying to breathe in like a normal human being, I straight up choke on it.
Byron grins, winks, then rises from the table. “I’ve gotta get back. See you later, ghosty.”
“See you later, princey,” I say back, then watch as he turns around to head back, my eyes dragging down to his tight ass in those work slacks of his.
It isn’t until I reach the street that an all-too familiar dread fills me.
Fear. Anxiety. The paranoid what-ifs of daily life.
In other words: my annoying best friends who seem to always live inside me, regardless of lit candles.
I return home and shut the door at my back. In the silence of my apartment, I take my first actual sip of the Pumpkin Prince he gave me. No surprise: it’s delicious. But it does nothing to eliminate the panic that has begun to set up permanent housing behind my eyes.
I’m gonna have to bite the candy corn bullet. “Hey, are you there?”
Silence.
I set down my drink on the table and face the empty room. “West? … Hello? Are you there, West?”
More silence.
Then I turn my brain back on and realize I forgot to do one simple thing: something I was rather terrified of this morning. With a pounding, anxious heart, I grab the box of matches, take one, then go to the candle I put out in the living room. With a flick against my thigh, a little flame is born, and I bring it to the candle, lighting it.
I look up. No one stands before me.
Fuck. “West? West, are you there? … Westley?” I get to my feet, staring into the nothingness of my empty, lonely apartment. “Westley Harmeyer …?”
I hear nothing. I see nothing.
Despair wracks my chest. I’ve destroyed him. The bit of existence he had as a ghost, I obliterated it. He is no more. He belongs to another plane of existence now, and it’s all my fault.
I killed Westley Harmeyer again. I ended him. I—
“The only person on Earth who calls me by my full name is my Grandma Bessie.”
I spin around at the sound of his voice. There he is, West, curled up in the back corner of the living room.
“Oh, thank Hallow’s wiener!” I breathe out as I slap a hand to my forehead. “I thought I went and wiped your ass out of existence or something …”
“Nah. Can’t get rid of me that easily.” Despite the humor of his words, there is none in his tone; he’s a flat bag of literal joylessness.
Taking in his mood, I sit down next to the candle. “I’m sorry about how things went last night.”
He’s staring up at the ceiling, not at me. “I guess judging from the Pumpkin Penis you brought home, you and your pal made up.” He gives a lazy yet approving nod. “I’m happy for you, my man.”
“I said I’m sorry. Can you stop staring at the ceiling and look at me, please?”
“It’s a nice ceiling, though. I’m used to it.”
Quite suddenly, I’m tired of him feeling sorry for himself. “Look, I’m just gonna get to the point. I have never been like you, my whole damn life. But last night, I almost was. Now it’s gone. I didn’t learn a lesson. I’m not a changed person. I’m still too afraid to be brave. I’m terrified all the time. Scared of saying the wrong thing. Fear has always ruled my life, West.”
“Then you’re perfectly in season,” he says. “After all, this is the season of fear. That’s what Halloween is about. Scaredy-cats. And actual cats, which I like.” He eyes the window. “Except that demon kitty who keeps coming to that window and hissing in my direction.”
“West …”
“That particular cat can burn in feline Hell.”
I abandon the candle and come right up to West in the corner of the room, crouching next to him. “I need your help. I know this is going to sound crazy, but … I don’t think I can do this without you.”
