Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Ihave a surprise for you!” I sing-song, jumping onto Bonehead’s massive back. He stumbles half a step, then straightens, grinning like a kid handed a flamethrower.
“Surprise?” His big hands grab my thighs automatically, like I’m luggage he loves carrying. “Is it food? Is it smashing? Is it food and smashing?”
“Better,” I whisper in his ear, wicked as candy laced with arsenic. “It’s a date.”
Before he can answer, Skully leans around the corner with a smirk, lighter flicking open and shut like punctuation. “Oh good, finally. I’ll grab my jacket.”
“Nope!” I point at him like a nun with a ruler. “Not you. You’re benched.”
“Excuse me?” His grin falters into offended sarcasm. “I’m the best third wheel this nightmare has. Ask anyone.”
“Not tonight,” I chirp, clutching Bonehead tighter. “Tonight is all about my big scary golden retriever. Just me and him. No heckling, no running commentary, no stealing the aux cord to play ironic 80s playlists.”
Bonehead beams like the sun breaking through a graveyard. “Just me?”
“Just you,” I confirm, planting a kiss on his temple.
Skully groans like a man being denied oxygen. “This is discrimination against people with working frontal lobes.”
“Shhh,” I pat Bonehead’s chest and stick my tongue out at Skully. “Go write me a nasty Yelp review. Tonight, I belong to destruction incarnate.”
Bonehead pounds a fist against his chest like a gorilla at a demolition derby. “Date night!”
Marrow drifts in, sipping from a chipped teacup like he’s in another genre entirely. He tilts his head, his voice all velvet knives. “Should I prepare a eulogy now, or after the date?”
“After,” I say sweetly, hopping down from Bonehead’s back. “Because first, we’re going to make art. Smash-art.”
Bonehead’s jaw drops, his next word leaving almost like a whimper. “Smash?”
“Romantically,” I correct.
He looks at me like I’ve just invented the wheel. I take his giant, eager face in both hands like I’m about to baptize him in chaos. “Get your boots, sweetheart. We have a reservation.”
Bonehead vibrates. Actually vibrates. He grabs his jacket, puts both arms into the same sleeve, nearly dislocates a shoulder, and then fixes it with the proud determination of a cartoon who just discovered physics.
Skully makes a wounded noise in the background like a violin that hates me.
I blow him a kiss and slam the door on his pout.
Outside, the night tastes like pennies and sugar.
The pumpkins on the porch gossip; the fog sits low and smug.
Bonehead jogs down the steps in two thuds and opens the passenger door like he’s performing chivalry with a crowbar.
He’s too big for the seat and makes a meal of it anyway, knees knocking the glovebox, grin glued on.
“Hints,” he demands as I start the car. “Or I explode.”
“Mmm.” I tap the wheel, theatrically coy. “Okay. Hint number one: there will be protective eyewear. Hint number two: the phrase waiver required was used in the booking email seventeen times. Hint number three: I was asked, very specifically, to leave my chainsaw at home.”
He makes a noise that is technically a squeal. “Fuck!”
“Language,” I chide, pulling into the street. “You’ve been hanging out with Skully too much.”
The radio tries a soft-rock ballad. Bonehead punches the dial until bass cannons rattle the doors.
He drums his palms on the dashboard like the world is a door he’s about to kick in and hums along, off-key and ecstatic.
Streetlights smear gold over his jaw, making him look like a statue vandalized by joy.
“Rules,” I announce. “One: smash everything. Two: then smash me.”
“Copy,” he says, very solemn, like a dog swearing an oath. “Do we get bats? Big ones? With nails?”
“Nails are extra. I sprung for them.”
He slaps the dashboard so hard the dome light flickers. “I love you!” he declares to the vehicle, the road, the idea of physics.
“Tell me that again when I hand you a microwave,” I say, turning into an industrial strip where neon signs buzz like tired hornets.
A building dressed in cheap blacklight and crime scene tape looms up: MEGA SMASH—Break Rooms For Every Mood; with plastic bats dangling in the windows like festive surveillance.
Bonehead is out of the car before it fully stops, then makes himself behave and opens my door like a gentleman who would also eat drywall for dessert. I take his hand and we cross the parking lot together, a tiny goth queen towing her personal wrecking ball.
We push the heavy door and it swings open with that delicious, abandoned-holiday creak, just like I paid astronomically for.
There is no girl with safety goggles at the desk.
No bored attendant to blink at us. No clipboard.
No polite rule-placard giving me a side-eye.
The lobby lights are low; the bell is dusty.
A little trail of confetti I planted earlier makes a pleased crinkle under our feet.
“Closed for private event,” a limp sign near the counter reads, but the counter is empty.
The bins of coveralls hang like waiting corpses.
Someone—me—has already turned the stereo up in the observation booth; a track that sounds like machined thunder vibrates through the floor. Our building is ours.
Bonehead laughs like a priest granted absolution. “We get the whole place?” he asks, voice big as good weather.
“The whole place,” I confirm, looping his arm through mine. “I paid them a bribe and a muffin supply. They’re at the bar down the street learning twerking or filing an incident report. They won’t be missed.” I wink. “Tonight, we are the attraction. No cameras either.”
He claps his hands once, childlike, and we march through the hallways. The decor is gloriously post-apocalyptic, a sign that reads TONIGHT’S SPECIAL: “PRIVATE APOCALYPSE.” A set of double doors yawns open, industrial light pouring from within—our cathedral.
The smash room is bigger than the one I’d imagined; it’s theatrical.
Concrete floors, hanging lights, speaker towers, a throne of destruction: shelf after shelf of tiny things set out like altar offerings.
Mismatched TVs blink static like old ghosts.
An obscenely large clock sits on a plinth with a Post-it that says HE KNOWS WHAT HE DID—a private joke that tastes like copper.
There are guitars with strings still on them, a photocopier with a face made of duct tape, a stack of porcelain dolls that look offended to be alive.
And so much more.
No attendant to moderate our appetite. No rules other than the ones we carry in our pockets.
I drag a crate of safety gear over and toss Bonehead a helmet like I’m crowning him. He fumbles it on and looks ridiculous and heroic all at once. “Which weapon?” I ask.
He hums like he’s consulting a gospel. “Everything,” he says finally.
“Excellent,” I breathe. “We’ll work through a ritual.”
Bonehead doesn’t wait for ceremony. He goes feral mode the second his hands close around the sledge. His first swing obliterates a tower of porcelain dolls so hard their offended little faces explode into dust mid-scream.
I shriek like I just watched Santa commit homicide. “Yes! Kill them! They were judging me anyway!”
He roars and pivots, demolishing a TV in one clean arc. Static fizzles across the floor like dying stars. He looks at me for approval—eyes bright, chest heaving—and I clap like a deranged cheerleader at a monster truck rally.
“More!” I shout. “Faster! Hit the copier! It’s a lying whore!”
Bonehead bellows, charges, and smashes the duct-tape-faced photocopier into an unrecognizable pancake. His joy is terrifying. Perfect.
I run alongside him like a coach on the sidelines, pointing at targets, and he delivers every single time.
“God, you’re beautiful,” I pant, clapping powdered porcelain off my hands. “Michelangelo could never.”
“Who?” he bellows, sweat glittering on his chest.
“Exactly!”
By the time he’s done with the shelves, the floor looks like a graveyard after an earthquake—shards, wires, stuffing, dust. He’s panting, grinning so wide it’s dangerous, sledgehammer dragging at his side like a lover he hasn’t put down yet.
And I can’t help it—I run up, jump, and kiss him with glass still crunching under my boots. He tastes like sweat, like static, like victory. He hoists me up mid-kiss and spins, laughing, until I’m dizzy enough to forget time exists.
I hand him the studded bat like I’m knighting a dragon. “Warm-ups are over,” I tell him, breathless and priestly. “Now we perform.”
Bonehead bares his teeth and goes.
Barbie doll pyramid? Erased. Little judgmental faces detonate and hair puffs into the air like evil dandelions. I throw my fists up like a boxing coach with glitter knuckles. “Yes! You sexy bastard!”
He pivots to the guitars—three sad survivors from a garage band breakup—and takes them one by one, strings screaming, wood coughing splinters. “Encore!” I howl, hopping in place. “Put them out of their misery!”
He growls my name with every swing, like “October” is the countdown. He’s performing for me and only me, eyes hot, chest heaving, big body spelling worship in ruin. I point to the shelf of kitchen appliances.
“The blender,” I command. “He tried to eat my spoon.”
Bonehead flies. One hit and the pitcher explodes in green ghost dust. “Traitor!” he yells, because he’s a genius, and stomps the base into a confession.
I fling a toaster across the room like a bouquet at a terrible wedding; he meets it midair with the bat and turns it into silver confetti.
I shriek, dizzy with glee. “Get the mistress of carbs!” I hurl a bread machine. He pounds it into a loaf of regret.