23 Cassius
Don’t Be The Bomb
“You look hot.”
Zae says it while leaning back with the makeup brush still in her hand, fake blood dried on two of her fingers and way too much satisfaction on her face, as if this whole thing wasn’t her idea from the second October started and she began talking about Halloween like it was a nationally recognized personality trait.
“I look dead,” I correct, watching her from the chair she shoved me into twenty minutes ago. “There’s a difference.”
“There is,” she agrees immediately, which throws me off for a second before she lifts the brush again and points it at me. “And that’s why I said hot. You’re welcome.”
I stare at her. She stares back. Then her mouth twitches and she ruins the whole thing by grinning.
Brat.
We’re at my house, in my room, and the whole place smells faintly like cinnamon candles because Mom decided the first day of October meant full seasonal takeover.
There are fake bats in the hallway, miniature pumpkins on the kitchen counter, and one ceramic ghost by the front door that’s been staring into my soul for two straight weeks.
Zae loves it.
Obviously.
She loves all of it. The candles. The candy bowls. The cheesy decorations. The horror movies. The ranking system she made for Halloween candy that she’s been trying to get me to take seriously for the last four, almost 5, years.
She’s loved this month as long as I’ve known her, and she’s the kind of person who goes all in or not at all, so by the second week of October she already had a zombie costume planned for both of us and a speech ready in case I tried to refuse.
I tried.
It didn’t matter.
Now she’s standing between my knees, warm and smug and way too pretty for somebody painting fake bruises onto my face, and I’m letting her because she’s happy and because I’ve spent the last two weeks feeling every shift in her mood like my body’s been tuned to it.
That part hasn’t changed.
Maybe it never will.
“Stop doing that,” she murmurs, catching my chin between her fingers to tilt my face back toward the lamp. “You keep clenching your jaw.”
“I’m sitting still.”
“You’re sitting aggressively.”
I huff out a breath.
“That’s not a thing.”
“It absolutely is when your neck looks like you’re about to challenge someone to a duel.”
She leans in again and drags the brush lightly under my eye, deepening the shadow there. Her breath skims my skin. Her hair brushes my shoulder. The whole thing should be annoying. Instead, I’m thinking about how easy it is to let her be this close.
Always has been.
“Done,” she announces finally, stepping back and tossing the brush onto my desk like she just completed surgery. “Now you look like you survived something terrible and somehow came out hotter.”
I stand and turn to the mirror.
Yeah.
I look dead, rough but in an intentional way. Dark smudges under my eyes. Fake blood at my jaw and collarbone. Torn black shirt she cut herself because she “didn’t trust Spirit Halloween to understand the vision.”
“You’re obsessed with me,” I mutter.
“Obviously.” She grabs her jacket off the bed and shrugs into it. “You’re the main character.”
I glance at her then. She’s in ripped black shorts, fishnets, boots, and some cropped top she also cut to hell and back. There’s fake blood smeared along one shoulder and across her thigh, selling the zombie thing without making her look like she crawled through a haunted house.
She always knows where the line is.
“Ready?” she asks, already halfway to the door.
I nod once. “Yeah.”
Mom’s voice floats up from the kitchen before we make it to the hallway. “If either of you drip fake blood on my carpet, I’m sending the bill to your children.”
Zae lights up immediately and takes the stairs ahead of me. “Mama Lori!”
I follow slower, watching her hop the last step because apparently she was born without a sense of caution. Mom is standing in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel over one shoulder and a mug in her hand, looking us over with the kind of long, dramatic silence only a mother can weaponize properly.
“Well,” she says at last, “you two look concerning.”
Zae beams. “Thank you.”
“That was not praise, sweet girl.”
“It is now.”
Mom laughs despite herself and reaches up to fix a strand of Zae’s hair where the fake blood near her temple pulled it weird.
“You still look beautiful,” she murmurs.
Zae melts a little at that, because she always does. “You’re biased.”
“I earned the right.” Then her eyes slide to me, and she squints. “You look like somebody’s bad decision.”
“That also feels correct,” I reply.
She shakes her head but steps closer anyway, straightening the collar of my shirt the same way she’s done since I was twelve.
“You be careful tonight,” she says, quieter now, and the shift in her tone catches me more than it should.
“I will.”
She holds my gaze for a second longer, like she’s trying to see something I don’t want showing, then lets it go and takes a sip of her tea instead.
Zae leans against the counter and points at the bowl beside the fruit basket. “Are those the Halloween Reese’s?”
Mama Lori narrows her eyes. “Those are for trick-or-treaters.”
“So yes.”
“Zae.”
“Mama Lori.”
I snort and grab two anyway, tossing one to Zae before Mom can mount a defense. She catches it and grins at me over the foil wrapper like we just pulled off a crime.
“You’re both terrible,” Mom mutters, though her mouth twitches.
“We learned from the best,” Zae replies, then pops the candy in her mouth and sighs. “Worth it.”
My poor mother points at the door with her mug. “Go. Be young and weird. Try not to scare children.”
“No promises,” Zae says, already backing toward the door.
I follow her out, grabbing my keys from the hook. The drive to the park takes twenty minutes if traffic cooperates. This one isn’t the little campus skatepark or the newer one closer to town where freshmen like to film each other missing ollies and acting like it’s content.
This is the old spot, the one from high school, the one just outside of town where the bowl is deep enough to spike adrenaline and the graffiti never lasts longer than a month before somebody paints over it.
It’s where I used to spend whole afternoons with blood on my knuckles and no real plan for what came next.
Zae knows that. She also knows I haven’t brought her out here in a long time. Maybe that’s why she stays mostly quiet in the passenger seat, one knee tucked up, fingers tapping against the wrapper of the second Reese’s she’d already stolen from the kitchen.
“What?” I ask finally, glancing over.
She catches me looking and shrugs one shoulder. “I’m just thinking.”
“That’s dangerous.”
She grins. “Says you.”
Fair.
The speaker noise hits us before the parking lot does.
Ritual by Ghost is blasting like it’s an anthem that everyone knows.
Halloween costumes are everywhere when we get out.
Skeleton hoodies. Devil horns. Somebody in a cheap ghostface mask trying to skate and almost eating concrete because he can’t see where the hell he’s going.
Zae takes one look around and makes that small, delighted sound in the back of her throat that always gets me. “I love this park. It’s the best one. Remind me, why don’t we come here more?”
“It’s farther.”
“So?”
“So, lazy.”
“You’re the lazy one,” she shoots back, then smiles in that sharp, bright way she gets when she’s fully in a moment. “This place has character.”
That it does.
I watch her instead of the park. She drops her board to the ground, stepping onto it with that little shift of balance she does when she’s about to move.
“Go,” I tell her, nudging her board lightly with my shoe. “Before you explode.”
She glances up at me, fake blood dark under her eyes, face alive in a way that’s been harder won these last few months than I think even she fully understands.
“You sure?”
“Go show off.”
Her smile widens and she pushes off. Meanwhile, I lean back against the fence with my board beside me and track her without even trying not to. She drops into the bowl clean, knees bent, shoulders loose, moving easy from one curve to the next.
She always looks more like herself when she’s skating. More comfortable in her body. More sure of where she ends and the rest of the world begins. Watching her does something ugly and soft to my chest at the same time.
“Damn.”
The voice comes from my right. I glance over. One of the local guys I vaguely know from seeing him around is watching the bowl too, nodding toward Zae as she lands clean and rolls it out.
“She’s good.”
“Yeah,” I answer before I think about it.
He glances at me. “She yours?”
I don’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
The word lands heavier than it should, full of pride and possession. Maybe a little responsibility. Something tangled up in all three. The guy nods and then skates off.
Zae circles back, riding up the wall near the edge where I’m standing and glancing up at me for half a second before dropping back down.
Gorgeous.
“She sure tamed you fast.” Another voice sounds from beside me, and I recognize it at once.
Derek.
I turn to face him, seeing the same grin, posture, and look in his eyes that always made it hard to tell if he was bored or just waiting for something to light on fire.
Back in high school, he was the kind of guy who never had to throw the punch himself.
He just knew exactly where to stand and exactly what to say to make sure somebody else did it for him.
I used to think that counted as friendship.
Zae knew better even then.
Derek steps closer, hands shoved into the pockets of a beat-up leather jacket, taking me in from costume makeup to boots with a grin that didn’t get any warmer with age.
“Didn’t think I’d see you back here playing nice,” he says.
I don’t answer right away. The old instinct is still there, the one that wants to square up first and think later, but it stays buried.
For now.