Page 38 of Haunted Ever After

But it hadn’t. It had happened to him. He’d said some pretty shitty things to the girl he was trying to date.

Inside Hallowed Grounds, Libby lingered at the counter, chatting with Ramon and sipping on her Diet Coke. Her take-out box was long gone. She and Ramon looked up at him with matching gleeful smiles, which faded as they got a good look at him.

“What happened?” Libby asked.

Nick didn’t know how to answer that.

“I think I fucked up.”

Seventeen

Wow, had he fucked up.

Cassie tried to put the whole thing aside, concentrate on work for the afternoon. But not even her secret love for puns and jam-band music could lighten her mood. All she could see was Nick in her kitchen, his ridiculously handsome face screwed up in a grimace, his gorgeous blue eyes dark like they’d been poisoned, spouting some bullshit about her job, about marriage and kids, like he was doing some 1950s cosplay.

That had hit her hard. She’d had no idea that kids were so high on his list of priorities. But she shouldn’t have been surprised. That was the default; women were supposed to be wives and mothers. It was her fault for being different. Defective.

But it was his eyes that had been the most unsettling. Normally they were such a clear flawless blue, but in her kitchen they’d been dark and angry. She added fix kitchen lighting to her endless to-do list for the house; it was obviously too dark in here.

She logged off a little after six, tossing her headphones to the table and massaging away the beginnings of a headache in her temples. What a shitty day.

She reached for her phone, pulling up the group chat. It had apparently been hopping while she’d been working: twenty-seven messages, mostly a spirited debate about car seats. Not something she could weigh in on anyway.

Nick was such an asshole today…Wait. Had she even filled them in on who Nick was? She backspaced and started over. This guy I’ve been seeing was such an asshole…Maybe she should give more specifics. They didn’t know any of the history, so she’d really have to start from the beginning, right?

So I’m pretty sure my house is haunted, and the ghost likes to communicate by using the magnetic poetry on my fridge. And today the guy I’m seeing here was a real asshole, and…

This text was quickly turning into a paragraph. Cassie tried to be as concise as possible, filling everyone in while knowing she was leaving out key details. But good enough. She was just about to hit Send when another text popped up in the chat.

I totally agree with Monika! That was the car seat we got when our little arrived, and it’s been fantastic.

They were still talking about car seats. If Cassie hit Send now to share her own problems, she’d be derailing the convo. She read through the text she’d created, then held her thumb down over the backspace key until it was gone. Then she clicked her phone off and tossed it to her table. Who cared.

Her chest tightened, and tears blurred her vision. Goddammit, she did not want to cry. She was fine. She was strong. She didn’t need a man who was going to go off on her like that. Not every group text was about her, and she didn’t need them to be.

But a small sob came from her throat as she pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyes. Sure, she was fine and she was strong. But she was so lonely.

The ringing of the doorbell cut through her gloom, the unexpected sound bringing her out of her chair. Was Nick back for round two of yelling at her? She was still dizzy from round one.

The last thing she expected to see was Sophie, balancing a pizza box. Libby was just behind her, a tote bag in her hand and sympathy in her eyes.

“Hi…?”

“I was at Hallowed Grounds,” Libby said. “Earlier today.”

“Oh. Great.” Now their arrival made sense. She could only imagine what Nick had said about her when he got back there from her place. He’d been an absolute dick, yet for some reason he’d been mad at her? Utter bullshit.

Sophie nodded solemnly. “We thought you might want this.” She held up the pizza in illustration, but what they were really offering was what Cassie had been craving for ages now. Friends. People to talk to, and even better, ones who understood the weird-ass things that went on in this town.

She also saw it for what it was. Sure, it was sympathy pizza. But it was also gossip pizza. Anything Cassie said could and would be held against her when Sophie and Libby reported back.

But Cassie didn’t care. She had half a mind to sell the house and get the hell out of here. So fuck it; let them talk. Let Nick tell the town what a bitch she was. He was the least of her concerns.

Besides, that pizza smelled incredible, and she was suddenly starving.

Inside, she cleared off her kitchen table while Sophie set the pizza down on the counter. Libby dug into her tote bag and pulled out a bottle of red wine and a six-pack of lager. “Both go with pizza,” she explained, “and I didn’t know which you liked better.”

Cassie smiled. “I’ll get the corkscrew.”

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