Page 44 of Spark
Sophie went through her now-familiar introduction spiel about the article she was writing, and finished with, “…and I would really appreciate it if you could answer a few questions about what happened.”
His voice sounded as raspy as Eddy’s when he replied, “Look, I don’t really have anything to say. I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or any of that stuff. I just had some kind of weird allergic reaction, that’s all.”
“So, you didn’t see or feel anything just before you collapsed?” Sophie persisted.
“No. My throat just started hurting like hell and I couldn’t breathe. Then I passed out.” He paused. “I gotta go, okay? Dr. Nika told me to take it easy for a while and not talk much.”
“Of course,” Sophie said, and tried to push down her disappointment.
I know what I saw that night, she thought.
“Thanks so much for sharing what happened. I hope you feel better soon,” she said.
“Thanks,” Javier husked. “Bye.”
Sophie wrote a few quick notes on her tablet, and frowned at it unhappily. So far, she had a number of jigsaw pieces, but nothing was really coming together in any kind of coherent story. Lots of “maybes” and “probably” and no actual proof of anything.
Just the story that the ghost of Silvio Ornelas told me, and that’s not enough, not if I want anyone to take me seriously.
She sighed, just as someone knocked on the front door.
She looked up to see Chris walk in.
He gave her one of those dangerous smiles and her chest felt tight. “Hey, I was just driving back from my Dad’s place, and I thought I’d drop by.”
“Glad to see you survived the big wedding and Bridezilla,” she told him, trying to play it cool when all she could think about were those few frantic minutes of kissing in her car last Monday.
“It wasn’t a complete disaster, and thank God for that,” Chris said. “But I think if Uncle Dan didn’t already have gray hair, Bridezilla would have given it to him. She threw a fit abouteverything…the tablecloths, her bridesmaid’s shoes, the flowers…Would you believe she flipped out because the candles in the table centerpieces were the wrong shade of white? She said she ordered ivory candles and the ones we put on the tables werecream.”
Sophie gave a mock shudder. “The wrong shade of off-white? Oh, the horror!”
Chris laughed.
“If I’d been in charge, I would have shifted on the spot and let my cat hamstring her,” he continued. “But Uncle Dan never lost his cool. He told me later that even Bridezilla at her worst wasn’t as bad as some of the stuff that happened while he was a Marine in Afghanistan.”
“How did she like your dessert buffet?” Sophie asked. “I know you spent a lot of time working on that.”
Chris beamed. “Oh, shelovedit! So did everyone else. I was kind of shocked, to tell you the truth. Let me tell you, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief and opened a bottle of champagne once the last of the wedding guests left the restaurant.”
“That’s awesome,” she said. “I’m glad you all survived.”
“Yeah. I raked in a ton of overtime, too.” Now that he mentioned it, she saw faint shadows of lingering fatigue under his eyes and reddish stubble glittering on his cheeks and jaw. “Anyhow, since the restaurant is closed on Mondays, and it’s my day off, I was going to see if you wanted to come over to my place and watchHunter’s Blood.”
The series, based on Ash’s best-selling video game, had premiered on Netflix a few months ago. Sophie had put it on her watchlist when it first premiered, but hadn't had the chance to see it yet.
It had been big news in Bearpaw Ridge when the game was optioned by a major studio, then produced as an eight-episode fantasy thriller series. Some of it had been filmed in Bearpaw Springs National Park, and featured Bearpaw Ridge residents as extras.
Chris and Matt had been hired as Werewolf Victims #4 and #5 last autumn. They had sent a series of hilarious text messages about being paid good money to literally lie down on the job for hours, pretending to be corpses while wearing appropriately gory makeup and doused in lots of fake blood.
She started to sayYes, I’d love to, when she remembered her reservations about getting involved with him.
Time to use my words, she thought. It was so hard though. Because she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear his answer.
“Um, are you asking me as a friend…or is this a date?”
He looked shocked by her question, so she added quickly, “I’m okay with either option…I just want to know. So that I don’t, um, mess things up.”
Her heart was pounding with nerves, and she felt sick to her stomach as she waited for Chris to tell her that she was delusional for thinking that he was actually interested in her that way. That she had totally misread the signals…just like she had with Hunter.
