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She pulls the phone away from her mouth and shakes her head at me. “It’s not them. My mom and my aunt decided to toilet paper Candi Mellow’s house, because she stole my father’s moonshine recipe. They took your mother with them, apparently, and they are now stuck on top of a tractor, surrounded by wild turkeys.”
I open my mouth to say “you have got to be shitting me,” but what’s the point? I’m not really surprised by anything that happens in this town by now.
“Isn’t that recipe engraved on his headstone?”
“She says it’s the principle of the thing. I don’t freaking know,” Sidney mutters before bringing the phone back to her mouth. “Stop saying she deserves this because she has a stripper name, Mother. Candi is a very nice woman. Ford, can you—”
“Tell them I’ll be there in five minutes,” I cut her off, leaning down for a kiss.
“My hero.” She smiles up at me before going back to the phone call. “No, tell Ford’s mom we are not calling a swat team or the FBI. I don’t care who she knows at Ralph Lauren.”
Wondering if I’ll ever be happier than I am right now, even knowing I’m about to go to battle with some wild turkeys—again—I leave my Halloween firecracker on the porch of our home, where she sits her ass down and lets me take care of things.
Halloween night
“Stop glaring ateveryone. Trick-or-treating is almost over.”
I don’t bother wiping the irritated look off my face when Sidney turns away from me with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen, to hand another costumed child that steps up onto the porch one of the giant candy treats she put together for tonight. This is the happiest day of Sidney’s life, celebrating her first Halloween night in her dream home, which in turn makes it the happiest in mine.
I’m just pissed we’re not spending it naked and alone.
It’s not like this isn’t how I feel every damn day of the week we have to be surrounded by other people, so Sidney really shouldn’t be surprised.
The fact that she’s wearing a 1950s-style pin-up dress, with a Halloween design on the skirt that comes down to her knees that’s been swishing around her legs all night long, has had my hands itching to slide up under that full skirt and see what color panties she’s wearing for me since the minute she walked out onto the porch. She looks as adorably sexy as always with her pumpkin Converse on her feet and pumpkin headband bobbing around above her head, and every time I look at her, I still can’t believe she’s mine. I still can’t believe that after six years and a lot of fucking up the last few weeks, we’re right here, where I’ve always pictured us, happier than I ever imagined.
“Aren’t these pumpkin lollipops the cutest?” Sidney gushes to a little girl dressed as an angel, shoving another one into her hand. “Here, have two. I made plenty.”
I finally do crack a smile when the poor child almost topples over trying to carry her pumpkin pail filled with candy, along with the two pumpkin lollipops Sidney forced into her little hands. She really did make plenty of those damn things.
Not wanting to give out just a regular handful of bite-sized candy pieces like every other house, Sidney decided the Gore Househadto give out something memorable for its first year participating in trick-or-treating in as long as anyone could remember. She glued together two paper plates stuffed with candy onto a twelve-inch-long lollipop stick, wrapped the candy-filled plates in orange cellophane and decorated each one to look like a jack-o-lantern. These things are huge, weigh a ton, and took her five days to make two hundred of them. Sidney also went overboard setting up a table of treats for adults who were forced to walk around town all night taking kids trick-or-treating, filling it with foil-wrapped hot ham and cheese sandwiches, rum-spiked hot apple cider in to-go cups, and their own adult treat bags filled with mini bottles of liquor. My sweet, sexy, Halloween mascot has been in her element all night, chatting with tourists down by the fence in between trick-or-treaters, regaling them with Gore House ghost stories, and showing them pictures on her phone of the remodel inside.
“Can we all agree that the next time we’re going to come over and help you put together these fun little trick-or-treat packages that you warn us ahead of time if it’s a naked event, so we’re better prepared?” Callie complains, handing a giant pumpkin lollipop to the next kid in line dressed as Batman.
Sidney looks over at me, and even in the dark with just the glow from all the jack-o-lanterns around us, I can see a blush color her cheeks. I got home from the bar that night to find her sitting on the living room floor, wearing nothing but one of my flannels, surrounded by hundreds of pieces of candy and crafting items. She didn’t even look up at me when I came in the door. She just casually told me she loved me while she tied a ribbon around a stick and told me not to be mad about all the money she spent on candy. It hit me right at that moment that I was finally home. I was finally where I was meant to be, and I never had to leave again. Callie and Marcus walked into the house right in the middle of me “thanking” Sidney on a pile of miniature Snickers.
“My boo doesn’t need to warn anyone when he decides it’s naked time, right?” Marcus holds his fist out to me from his chair next to mine on the porch, and I keep my arms folded across my chest.
I’m wearing the damn matching shirt with him that saysHe’s my booon it. He’s not getting anything else out of me tonight.
“You weren’t invited to our home, and you did not ring our doorbell,” Sidney reminds them, making my chest feel tight every time she refers to this place asour home. “If we want to get naked in the middle of our living room while putting together candy treats, that is our choice.”
Watching this woman settle into the Gore House and make it her own, getting it decorated for Halloween in the blink of an eye, and bribing Marcus with pumpkin cream cheese waffles to get him to help me move her bed into the house so we wouldn’t have to wait for the one I ordered has been worth every minute of the fact that no one in our lives gives one good goddamn about boundaries.
Penny and Ginger still threaten my life once a week, but at least they leave their weapons at home when they randomly stop by at the ass-crack of dawn, with Sidney’s mom and aunt in tow, begging Sidney to make them all breakfast.
Callie was almost inconsolable when she realized she and Sidney wouldn’t live across the street from each other anymore. Until she realized we were only a few blocks away, and the spare key Sidney gave her couldn’t possibly bejustfor emergencies, like Sidney made her promise.
All I’ve ever wanted is to make Sidney happy. Give her thatnormal and goodlife she daydreamed about the night I met her, when she told me about her dad and the pumpkin lights. I think Sidney has realized our lives will never be normal with the family and friends we have, but it’s close enough, and that’s all that matters. Watching the smile never leave her face today from the minute she woke up, even while she spent half the day scolding me to stop glaring and complaining, makes me realize we might have done everything wrong, but it all turned out right in the end.
The first minute I stepped foot into Harvest Grove, I didn’t feel like I belonged, and I couldn’t wait to leave. Now, this Halloween-crazy town is theonlyplace I feel like I belong. The only place that makes me happy. The only place that makes me feel alive and like I have a purpose. All because of one beautiful, frustrating Tanner woman, who broke all her rules for me.
I never have to leave Harvest Grove again.
I get to spend every holiday, and not just Halloween, with the woman of my dreams, making her happy and taking care of her.
It’s the most important job I’ve ever had, and even if I have to wear matching shirts with Marcus for the rest of my life, I’ll do it with a… well, obviously a glare on my face, because I’m still me. But I’m finally happy, doing what I want to do, in my little slice of Halloween heaven, and nothing could be better than that.
Not knowing whether to look toward heaven or hell—because let’s be honest, who knows where that man is right now—I dip my chin and mouth a silent thank-you to Pops, wherever he is. Six years ago, I thought he ruined my life, when in reality, he was just getting it started.
