21. Teddy
TWENTY-ONE
TEDDY
Saturday.
“Fuck,” Cash hisses, breathless as we drop the queen sized mattress to the floor. It thuds resoundingly through the empty, desolate asylum, a cloud of dust probably filled with mites and asbestos rising from the floor. Sweat dots both our foreheads, and with his hands on his hips, he flashes me a cocky grin. “Okay, fine, you win. She’s cool. Wish I would’ve snagged her before you.”
Crouching to push the mattress (one we stole from Cash’s parents’ guest bedroom) kitty-corner, I smirk up at him. “Snooze ya lose.”
He grins, eyeing the room I chose to take her virginity in. Tonight. Soon . Just hours away. I’ve had a raging boner all fucking day, but at least carting this mattress up three flights of rickety stairs has exhausted me somewhat.
Falling back onto my ass, I reach for the plastic bag with the grocery store’s logo emblazoned on the front, dragging it across the ancient wooden floors and fishing out the candles we bought down in Hangman Hollow. The cashier—an elderly woman a step away from death—had eyed us with knowing suspicion, as though selling a bunch of unscented candles of varying heights and widths was actually a common occurrence. I’m sure the town is used to teens and freaks using the asylum to attempt to perform seances, but I know none of them have succeeded.
Only Eden can speak with the dead, that I am damn sure of, and quite fucking attracted to as well.
“What time am I picking you two up?”
“Early,” I mutter, standing with a candle in each hand, eyeing the space like an artist before a blank canvas. Who ever would have thought that I, Teddy Poe, would be stressed about candle placement, but here I am. I need this to be perfect for her. “We gotta get back soon. I still have to help my mom with the dress…and convince her to buy us strawberry wine.”
Cash, sticking his head out the window and looking down, pulls himself back in and gives me a queer look. “Why the fuck would you wanna drink that sugary paint thinner?”
Nestling a few candles in one corner, I scrutinize my work, satisfied enough for now. Stalking past him, I grab a few more and place them on the left side of the windowsill. “Because. I read her favorite book, and the girl buries strawberry wine around their boarding school at the beginning of the year. Brilliant, I might add. We should’ve buried some flower by the fieldhouse.”
Jaw slackened, he stares at me and nods slowly. “Dammit! That would’ve been so fucking convenient. Why did you ever try to talk me out of being friends with her?”
His grin is shit-eating, and I smirk, brushing back past him to fill the other corner of the room with candles.
“Asshole,” I mutter.
Above us, the creak of footsteps echoes, starting off slow before pounding down the hall and then stopping just as suddenly. Cash’s eyes widen until the whites are all I can see, and he slowly tilts his head back, gazing at the ceiling in horror. I snort.
“What did you expect? It’s a fucking asylum.”
“How…how did she find this place?” he whispers, morphing into a frightened little boy. I shrug, standing tall and using my toe to scoot the candles closer together. Good enough for now.
“No clue. She won’t tell me.”
“You sure that isn’t a squatter?”
I grin, patting his shoulder and gripping it as I pass by. “Trust me. I was fucking thorough the other day.”
On cue, the faint giggling of a child drifts to us from down the hall, and I smile, not scared in the slightest. She’s playing with us, I think, or at least that’s the vibe I’m feeling. A little girl stuck wavering between this world and the next, happy to have new friends.
“Fuck this shit,” Cash hisses, grabbing his keys and all but running away. But I stay for a moment, closing my eyes, breathing in the scent of rot and decay and misery. On the breeze through the open window, the tang of the ocean is potent on my tongue. We’re near an inlet, I think. I’ll have to ask Eden, because I’m sure she’s found a path to it, probably knows more about this place than the people who worked here a century ago.
Because I know that little shit can talk to ghosts, she’s just too scared of me judging her to tell me.
Slowly, I take a deep breath in, allowing the oxygen to expand my lungs as I open my eyes. I’m met with nothing but an empty doorway, early morning sunlight streaking in through the busted out windows. Disappointment deflates me, and my shoulders drop. Ever since seeing the ghostly visage of her father, I’ve been keen to see more. She at least explained he was alive, but wouldn’t give me much more information that next morning on our bus ride to school.
I’ll meet him today anyways, something I’m actually nervous for. If he’s about to leave this world, to leave Eden behind, I need him to know that I’ll take care of her.
So with a sigh, I gather the empty bags and make my way out after Cash. The rumble of his Mustang reverberates through the cavernous building. Shaking my head, I snort and start down the hall, a chill fanning across the back of my neck. When I turn and glance down into the dark, gaping emptiness, I see nothing.
But when I glance down to the floor, a set of tiny, bare footprints are etched in the dust.
“Tada!” My mom says, stepping aside to reveal the dress she’s been slaving over for days now. She holds her hands clasped near her mouth, nervous for my reaction, but she has no reason to worry. My brows shoot up, my eyes widen, and a beam splits my cheeks.
“Fuck,” I breathe, reaching out to run my fingers over the fabric. Hues of crimson and black jump out at me. The top is fitted, akin to a corset, and from the hips, gauzy tulle flares out, the crimson peaking through. Around the top of the bust is more tulle, adding flare to the chest but also shielding bare skin. I know Eden doesn’t want to be flashy in that sense.
So naturally I had to have my mom make her the dress from the Helena music video, only it’s somehow better than the real thing. I hadn’t bothered asking Eden her measurements, because one, she wouldn’t know them, and two, she wouldn’t tell me if she did. I’d simply…rifled through her room sometime last week after we made our deal. Someday, I’m going to buy her underwear and bras that actually look comfortable and aren’t purchased at the same time as buying your groceries.
“Fuck, it’s perfect,” I say, grinning at my mom. She beams back, relieved and excited.
“Oh, good! I can’t wait to meet her, honey.”
Reaching for her, I pull my mom into a hug, resting my chin on her head. She squeezes me back, patting my shoulder.
“She’s…important, mom.”
“I can tell,” she says against me, voice muffled by my shirt. When we part, her eyes are glassy with pride. “Which is why I have one more surprise for you.”
Brows furrowing as she turns and rummages through a bag, a bittersweet sort of melancholy forms in my chest when she produces a black and red corsage and matching boutonniere.
“Mom,” I chastise, taking them from her. “That’s way too expensive.”
The rose is ebony, the lace and ribbon bloody, and it will look stunning on Eden’s pale, slender wrist.
“You get to go to prom senior year one time, sweetheart. Let me spoil you a little.”
I don’t bother telling her the extra money I had lying around was from a recent kill.
Grinning sheepishly now, I hedge, “On that note…I need you to buy us alcohol.”
I say it with surety and conviction, and she immediately frowns, hands fisted on her hips. I gently set aside the flowers and grip her shoulders, driving my eyes into hers. “Just one bottle. Just some strawberry wine. I promise not to spike the punch,” I say, holding up my pinky finger. She swats it away.
“Theodore,” she says, a warning note to her tone.
“Please?” I beg. “I’ll find a way to get it no matter what, so you may as well just make it easier for me. It’s…a special surprise for her.”
Now, she quirks her brow and crosses her arms.
“What does her father think of this?”
“Stop being a parent just for tonight,” I plead.
“You don’t just quit being a parent, Teddy. You…you two…ugh,” she growls, cheeks reddening.
Oh, god.
My mom and I are pretty open with one another, but that whole sex talk? No fucking thank you. I had to make Cash buy me condoms today, too, and he’d argued with me for forty-five minutes, saying there was no way I needed Magnums. I’d eventually threatened to show him my dick, to which he raised his brows at enticingly, but he’d finally relented.
“I promise not to drink and drive or get anyone pregnant, so can you just buy the wine and stop torturing me?”
Burying her face in her hands, she shakes her head and laughs.
“My God, Teddy, who made you so blunt?”
You did, because you never fucking speak your mind or stand up for yourself.
But I don’t say that, because I’ve said it many times and it only ever hurts her feelings. Sighing, she purses her lips and glares up at me. “You won’t be home tonight then, I’m assuming?”
“No…” I mutter. Her lips thin.
“I’m never doing this for you again, understood?”
Biting my bottom lip, I grin and yank her into another hug. “Understood. You’re the best.”
She squeezes me harder this time.
“Just treat her right, no matter the circumstance.”
My eyes slip closed, and I hug her to me even tighter, knowing where she’s drifted off to in her mind.
“I promise, mom.”
And I mean it.