Page 94 of Choosing You

“Speak for yourself, there, Jade.” He flashes that cocky smile. He totally caught me checking him out at the pool.

He stops in front of his door. “Okay, are you ready?”

I nod and he opens the door. His whole room is decorated for Halloween. The blue lights along the ceiling have been replaced by bright orange lights. Cobwebs are draped along the walls, the windows, the dresser, his desk, and around the TV. Ghost and witch cutouts are taped to his closet door. And the infamous concession stand is filled with more candy than any trick or treater could ever want.

“I told you it wasn’t that great, but it’s Halloweeny, right?”

“Totally Halloweeny! I love it! This is way more than I was expecting.” I lie down on his bed and stare up at the bright orange lights. His drapes are closed but it’s such a gray, dreary day outside that even with the drapes open, it would still be dark in here.

“I’m glad you like it.” He lies next to me, propped up on his side, resting his hand on my stomach as if it somehow belongs there. It immediately takes my focus off the ceiling lights. “Do you want to look through the movies I rented? I don’t know anything about horror movies so I got like 10 of them. You can pick what you want.”

I turn to face him and his hand moves to my hip. “Garret, thanks for doing all this. The movies. The decorations. The food. The lights.” I can’t stop smiling as I glance around the room. “This is so great.”

He leans in to kiss my cheek. “I love how excited you get over stuff like this.”

“What can I say? You combined junk food and movies, my two favorite things.” I tug on his shirt, a black thermal henley that fits snugly over his chest. “You even wore Halloween colors.”

He looks down. “Yeah, I guess I did. I wasn’t even thinking about that when I put it on.”

That shirt looks really good on him. His hair looks good, too. Actually everything about him looks really good. I have this major urge to kiss him right now in a non-friend way and see where that leads. I need to take control and stop waiting for him to make a move. Just as I’m getting the courage to do it, he gets up from the bed. Damn!

“Okay.” He picks up a stack of movies and brings them over to me. “We have zombies, ghosts, vampires, witches, or the classic psychotic killer who lives next door. What do like?”

“Zombies.”

He sighs. “I was afraid you were going to say that. Don’t you think it’ll be boring? I mean, zombies don’t even talk, right?”

“Then how about witches instead?”

“We have all day and night to watch these, so if you want we can start with zombies.”

The zombie movie is so dumb that we make fun of it for the whole 87 minutes, making up lines for the zombies to say. Next we watch the witch movie, followed by a vampire one. After that, we get our pizza and watch a ghost movie which turns out to be way scarier than I thought it would be.

At 10, we’re still sitting there on his giant bean bag chair and I’ve completely stuffed myself with pizza and candy.

Just as movie number five, the psychotic killer movie, begins, someone knocks on the door.

“Kensington, get your ass out here,” a guy yells.

“Just ignore him,” Garret says.

“We know you’re in there. Hurry up,” another guy yells.

“Just talk to them,” I say. “Otherwise they’ll never go away.”

Garret gets up and opens the door and the smell of strong cologne wafts into the room. He walks out into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

“What do you want?” I hear Garret say.

“We’re leaving for the party. Let’s go.”

“I’m not going. I told you that earlier.”

“What do you mean you’re not going? Do you know how many girls are gonna be at this party? I just talked to Aiden and he said the girls are all wearing costumes and they’re practically naked.”

“I told you I’m not going.” Garret’s voice is more forceful.

“Why? You got some girl in there? Well, finish up with her and let’s go.”

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