Chapter 39
39
MADDIE
“ P icture before we head out,” Jasmine says.
Jasmine points her phone’s camera at the full-length mirror in our dorm room. I sidle next to her and throw my arm around her shoulders. I tilt my hip, and Jasmine kicks her leg back to strike a pose before she snaps the picture.
“We would so be the hottest harlots in Manhattan if this were the nineteen-twenties,” Jasmine says, looking approvingly at the selfie.
I laugh. One of Jasmine’s lit classes has been focusing on F. Scott Fitzgerald for the last couple weeks, so she’s become obsessed with Roaring Twenties design and fashion. She had the idea for us to dress up as Flappers for Halloween, so we’re both wearing sleeveless, low-cut dresses, short heels, long bead necklaces, and cloche hats.
I actually think I look super cute, and a surge of confidence has me feeling anticipation to get to Lane’s house, where we’re attending their Halloween party, so I can see the effect it has on Rhys.
“Ready to go?” I ask.
“Certainly dah-ling,” Jasmine pronounces, sounding like a Golden Age Hollywood starlet.
“Is that how they sounded in the twenties?” I ask with an amused grin.
She shrugs. “I dunno. Seemed appropriate.”
We laugh as we leave our dorm room and step into the hallway. Our floor is like a pageant of costumes, with people pre-gaming and getting ready to head out to the dozens of parties taking place across Cedar Shade.
We pass a plethora of sexy nurses, sexy angels, sexy devils, sexy cats, sexy witches, the kind of costumes that are just excuses for girls to show as much skin as possible. It’s not my style, but I love it for them. If you love to show off your treats for Halloween, then go ahead and feel sexy and empowered, sister.
Then there are the more creative costumes, like one guy who’s dressed up as a literal haunted house. I can’t imagine how much time he spent working on that costume, and I really can’t imagine how he managed to fit through any of the doorways in this building.
There are skeletons, iconic movie characters, ghosts, and of course the perennial low-effort costumes, like a guy dressed totally normally who’s claiming his costume is a time traveler from one week in the future.
Lots of the doors in our building are strewn with Halloween decorations, and some of the common areas have pumpkin-shaped, Halloween-orange lights set up. Fittingly, Monster Mash is playing on a speaker by the door when we leave our building.
It’s Friday night, and October 31 st is tomorrow. It’s the best possible day for Halloween. Everyone can party tonight, leaving tomorrow night safe for neighborhood kids trick-or-treating. Rhys, Lane, and the guys are planning on handing out candy tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to joining them.
The weather is crisp, but not painfully cold on my bear arms. The air is buzzing with energy, music blasting from all the parties we’re walking past on our way to the hockey house. The occasional scream of someone being pranked or scared punctures the air, too.
Jasmine and I, along with the half dozen people close to us walking down the sidewalk, supply one of those screams ourselves as we pass a large pile of leaves and someone in a skeleton costume suddenly leaps out of them and yells, scaring the hell out of us.
He runs off cackling, and Jasmine and I laugh about it after we finally catch our breath. Hey, can’t hate on getting into the spirit of the season.
The guys’ house is packed when we get there. The front yard is filled with pumpkins and headstones, and the front door is wide open to accommodate the waves of people coming and going, and strewn with fake spider web.
Rhys, Lane, and Hudson are standing at the kitchen island, just throwing back a shot when we step inside. Jasmine and I weave through the crowded living room toward them. On the way, I have to do a double take at an incredible costume of a guy who’s made it look like he’s been decapitated and is holding his own severed head in his arms.
The guys’ costumes are pretty great, too. They’ve been talking about the theme for days, but I’m impressed by how well they pulled it off.
The five of them are dressed up as zombie versions of different sports players.
Rhys is a zombie baseball player. His thighs look mouth-watering in those tight baseball pants. His hair is frazzled and shooting out in a million different directions, and he’s wearing face paint to give himself a zombie-like complexion, just like the other guys. Heat crawls up my neck as I note the appreciative way his eyes hover up and down my costume.
Lane is a zombie basketball player, and there’s a big hole in the chest of his jersey with red body paint underneath to look like a gaping wound. Hudson is a zombie football player, with his helmet cracked and pieces of fake brain applied around it.
“Wow,” Jasmine marvels, “you guys did a hell of a job.”
“ Brains ,” Lane bleats. He waddles zombie-like towards me and grabs my shoulders, opening his mouth wide and dipping down like he’s about to take a bite of my head. I laugh and shrug away.
“What kind of zombie athletes are Tuck and Sebastian?” I ask, swiveling my head to see if I can spot them.
That question has Hudson rolling his eyes. “Tuck is …”
But the man himself cuts off Hudson to answer. “A zombie swimmer.”
I turn around, and my jaw almost hits the floor.
Tuck is wearing the tiniest speedo known to man. Every other impressive inch of his body is on full display. The only indication it’s a costume is the fact that his goggles are cracked and there’s fake blood splatter on them.
“We tried to talk him out of it,” Lane sighs with a chuckle.
“And deprive all the women in this party of an image they’ll cherish for the rest of their lives?” Tuck retorts, outraged. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of female eyes resting on a ninety-percent-naked Tuck McCoy.
Olivia, his girlfriend, sidles next to him. She’s wearing a Phantom of the Opera costume. Tuck being fully exposed and Olivia wearing something that covers her head-to-toe is a fitting representation of how opposite the two of them are. But they’re utterly head-over-heels for each other.
“You’re lucky I’m not the jealous type,” Olivia jokes to him as her hand brushes against his washboard abs.
“Hey, mates,” Sebastian says with a fake British accent, walking up.
“Ah,” Jasmine nods, taking in his costume. “Zombie soccer player.”
Sebastian’s expression pulls into a look of fake outrage. “Excuse me, I’m a zombie footballer .” His British accent doesn’t falter.
Summer bounces over in a sexy Elle Woods-style bunny costume and wraps her arms around Hudson. “I love this song,” she says as, once again, Monster Mash picks up on the speakers. “Let’s dance.”
I know Hudson isn’t the dancing type, but he’s also not the type to be able to refuse any request from Summer, especially not when she’s dressed like that .
Jasmine spots a couple girls she’s become friendly with in one of her classes, and we hang out with them for a while. My eyes keep flitting over to Rhys, and every time they do, I find that he’s already looking at me, and sparks streak down my back.
A guy in a gladiator costume bumps into Jasmine, and when he turns around to apologize, I can feel sparks flying between them. It strikes me as a good time to head to the bathroom and give the two of them some space to flirt.
When I walk down the stairs afterward, Rhys is standing by the back door. He tilts his head toward outside, and then steps out.
Anticipation pools in my stomach as I follow. When I step outside, I look to the side of the house. Rhys is there, shrouded in the shadows, and he indicates for me to follow him toward the narrow alleyway between the house and the fence that separates them from their neighbors.
When we’re alone in the secluded, unlit area, Rhys’s hands immediately shoot to my waist, and his mouth presses to mine. He sweeps his tongue across the seam of my lips, his grip curling into the dip of my waist.
“Couldn’t wait another fucking second,” he says when he pulls back, his voice hoarse. He shakes his head as he looks down at me. “Gatsby would forget Daisy in a second if he saw you at a jazz club dressed like that.”
The way he’s looking at me is making my cheeks blush so bright and hot that I have to look away and slap at his chest. That compliment was so cheesy it really shouldn’t make me feel as gushy as I do right now.
“I like your costume, too,” I say. “The baggy eyes and hair standing up in a hundred directions really works on you. You should go for the zombie look more often.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Rhys says, “the dead aren’t the only thing that’s rising right now.”
Peals of laughter burst through as Rhys tugs me closer to him, and my stomach flips when an outline in his thigh-hugging baseball pants confirms that he’s not lying.
“You know,” I say with a sly tone, “Jasmine’s been hitting it off with this guy tonight. It’s possible my dorm room will be available later.”
Heat flashes in his eyes. “Fuck, Maddie, these pants are tight enough as it is without me thinking about that all night.”
I press a kiss to the sharp edge of his jaw and giggle. “I’ll keep you posted.”