Chapter Thirteen
The television played a rerun of Friends as Josie snatched a pair of shorts out of the laundry hamper, folded them, and placed them on the couch with the rest of the crinkled clothes she hadn’t bothered to iron.
“You really have your life together when you’re folding laundry on a Friday evening,” she muttered to herself.
“A real social bunny, aren’t you, Jo?” She then picked up the glass of red wine from the coffee table, sent cheers to Monica walking onto the screen, and gulped down half of it. “How very inspirational of you.”
Sighing, Josie snatched a blouse from the pile and was just about to go to the bedroom to find a hanger when the doorbell suddenly rang.
It was late. Outside, the sun had set at least an hour ago and even though the curtains were drawn, Josie knew the waxing moon was already out somewhere above the apartment block. She glanced at the clock above the fridge and frowned.
It was eight pm.
Who the hell would show up at her house without calling first or sending a text at eight pm on a Friday?
Not Kelsey. Definitely not James, who was probably out right now unpacking a picnic basket on the beach, hoping to swoon his new hot date.
And any of her other friends would certainly let her know first before they arrived, uninvited.
Dropping the blouse, Josie ambled to the front door and stood on her toes to look through the peephole. She immediately froze. Her heartbeat stepped up a notch and before she knew it, her palms were clammy, and she was wiping them down on her cotton waffle pajama pants.
Peyton was standing in the hallway outside.
No. It couldn’t be.
The very last thing Josie would expect was a visit from Peyton, especially after there had been complete radio silence over the last week.
She had no idea whether or not Peyton had even received the gift she had dropped off so quickly at the fire station in Los Osos yesterday morning.
Sally, the receptionist, had narrowed her eyes suspiciously, as if Josie were planting a bomb instead of a gift.
Squeezing her eyes tight, Josie opened them and peered through the peephole once more.
But her vision wasn’t lying.
Peyton was, in fact, on the other side of the door, a brown paper bag held in her arms, those beautiful sun-kissed waves toppling over her bare shoulders.
“Shit,” Josie mumbled, quickly sidestepping to the round mirror stuck on the wall above the console table.
The last thing she had expected was company.
Even less so from a woman she so badly wanted to impress, and she didn’t exactly exude beauty with her no makeup face, wearing pajamas and her hair shoved in a bun above her head.
She quickly yanked out the elastic, smoothed the fallen strands, and considered running to the bedroom to fetch a tube of mascara when the bell rang again.
“I’m coming,” Josie uttered in case Peyton decided to leave. She quickly patted her cheeks, hoping it would give a natural blush before she hurried back to the door and unlocked it.
“Peyton. Hi,” she said as she threw the door open and backed up a step. “What are you doing here?”
Peyton’s eyes widened, regret flashing quickly over her face. But then she lifted up the gift Josie had gotten her—so she had received it then, thank goodness—and shrugged. “I don’t have a DVD player.”
“Well, you’re in luck. I do,” grinned Josie, feeling slightly faint, which given the circumstances, was entirely normal.
Not in a million years had she expected Peyton to show up on her doorstep for a movie night.
So, it was completely typical for Josie’s body to react with a flood of physiological responses.
Hot flushes, clammy palms and a mild case of dizziness.
Peyton stepped into the house, glanced about the small space that led into the living room on the right, and then loosened her grip around the paper bag. “I think Michael Myers is severely misunderstood.”
Josie laughed. “I want to agree with you. But the man’s killed a lot of people.” She then closed the door and followed Peyton into the living room.
“He’s just a little obsessive.”
“Bordering on the manic,” Josie pointed out.
“He’s been through a lot, okay,” replied Peyton, her eyes catching onto the pile of laundry on the couch.
Josie’s cheeks burned, especially since she had a pile just for her panties, all folded into perfect little stacks.
At least she didn’t dawdle any longer and instead walked to the kitchen, dropping the bag onto the counter. “Have you had supper yet?”
“Supper?” uttered Josie, while simultaneously throwing all the folded laundry back into the hamper and shoving it out of sight. It was bad enough that she was at home in pajamas on a Friday night. Folding laundry made it just so much worse, like she was an old lady with nothing else to do.
“Yes,” said Peyton matter-of-factly.
Not only had Peyton showed up uninvited, but now she was also suggesting dinner. Josie was far too busy trying to wrap her head around things to answer. It was strange enough to see her at the door, but watching her now, in Josie’s kitchen, offering up dinner, was just eerie.
What about the week of silent treatment? What about the furiously disinterested look Peyton gave Josie almost every single time their eyes locked, as if she was secretly wishing Josie would fall off the face of the earth?
She wondered if she should bring it up. Ask Peyton what had instigated her spontaneous visit, but the devil on her shoulder said, ‘And ruin things?’
The little red devil was right. A question like that would ruin whatever was about to happen and so she kept it to herself and instead swallowed down the lump in her throat. “Well then, I guess it depends.”
“On what?”
“On what’s in that bag.”
“Movie snacks,” grinned Peyton, pulling out two packets of microwave popcorn, three packets of M&M’s, one bag of tortilla chips, a salsa dip, and a packet each of bell peppers and cherry tomatoes.
Despite having smashed a bowl of spaghetti earlier, Josie had no objections to a second dinner. Especially one as random as that. She grinned. “I’ll get more wine.”
It wasn’t long after that both Josie and Peyton were sitting on the couch.
The lights were dimmed, snacks were spread out on the table, and red wine-filled the glasses on the coasters as the opening scene of the 1978 Halloween began.
A young Michael Myers, wearing a clown mask, ascended the stairs to his sister’s bedroom where she was canoodling with her boyfriend.
Josie’s mind raced with a hundred scenarios, none of which involved the movie.
In fact, she couldn’t focus on anything, not even the iconic fright scene where Michael scared his sister and killed her thereafter.
She was far too aware of just how close Peyton’s knee was to hers—close enough to feel the warmth through her pajama pants.
Glancing out of the corner of her eye, she watched Peyton lean forward toward the bowl of popcorn, her hand trembling just slightly.
Was she nervous? Was she also struggling to concentrate on the movie?
Instead, was she thinking about that nice big bed and what they could be doing right now instead of fearing for their lives?
Just as Josie contemplated edging her leg closer to Peyton, embracing the deep-rooted desire to get as close to her as possible, Michael suddenly appeared behind his sister, Judith, in the bedroom doorway.
Peyton yelped. Josie pinched her eyes shut and grabbed onto Peyton’s hand, squeezing hard. “Fuck,” she stammered. “That scene gets me every single time. I swear I’ve watched it like ten times already.”
“Me too. It’s a classic scare,” Josie replied, her voice trembling slightly, her heart flapping like the wings of a hummingbird in her chest.
“I think our brains must be wired wrong to keep doing this to ourselves.”
“Probably,” whispered Josie, her heart still thumping so wildly in her chest that she worried it might break through her ribs.
But not because of adolescent Michael stabbing his sister and her boyfriend to death, but because Peyton hadn’t yanked her hand away.
Not even when the scene had cut to the next, and she reached for two cherry tomatoes, popping them in her mouth.
If this was a dream, no one dared to pinch her.
For a while they sat like that, holding hands while their eyes were locked on the screen. Breaths rattled as they awaited more fright, despite having watched the movie many times before.
But the clammier Josie’s hand became, the hotter her body, and the busier her mind.
One question kept repeating itself over and over.
She had to know why Peyton had shown up out of the blue, acting as though all that bitter tension between them didn’t exist. Why she was suddenly showing affection when, all the other times before, Peyton had acted as though Josie were ill with the plague?
Using her free hand, Josie found the remote on the table, beneath a chocolate wrapper, and paused the screen.
“What’s wrong?” frowned Peyton, glancing in her direction. “Are you too scared? I thought you loved horror movies.”
“No,” said Josie. “I mean, I do love horrors. It’s just…
” She glanced down at their interlocked hands and was just about to ask the question on her mind when Peyton’s gaze snapped down and then, as if she had seen the hairiest spider known to man, she snatched her hand back and buried them both in her lap.
“Why did you come here tonight?” asked Josie before the whole moment was ruined, though in all honesty it already felt like it was. If only she had listened to that voice in her head to leave things as they were, to enjoy the moment and worry about the consequences later.
But of course, she didn’t. Josie was incapable of leaving things to chance, always needing answers and clarity, even if it meant risking everything.
“I don’t have a DVD player,” replied Peyton, keeping her gaze anywhere but on Josie’s face. She even began to reorganize the snacks on the table, separating the tomatoes from the bell peppers from the tortilla chips that had fallen into the mix.
“That’s not the real reason, is it?” said Josie.
Peyton tilted her chin up and their eyes met. Her irises were dark, like sapphires clouded by a stormy night sky. “I guess not. Although in my defense, I kind of blanked out.”
“Blanked out?” repeated Josie, not sure what that meant.
“Exactly.” nodded Peyton. “One minute I was looking at the boxset on my dining table and the next I was driving here with a bag full of movie snacks.”
“So, you’re telling me you didn’t even mean to visit me?”
“Not technically.”
“But your subconscious did?”
Peyton chuckled. “I guess so.” Then she shifted her crossed legs and angled her body to face Josie at the same time, a serious, unreadable expression etched into her features. “Look, Josie… There’s obviously a reason I came here tonight. Even if it is easier to act as if there isn’t.”
“What’s the reason?”
Peyton chewed her lip. Those sharp incisors reminded Josie of a vampire, the hot variety, like Esme Cullen. “It’s just… um… I think I owe you an explanation.”
“Explanation?”
She gazed down at her lap and took a deep breath, as if psyching herself up for something. Whatever it was, it was big. Josie could tell by the way Peyton’s pupils were dilated, as if she were about to reveal a deep, long-held secret. “I was engaged once,” confessed Peyton.
The news hit Josie like a freight train.
She had never expected something like that from Peyton.
She had always just assumed that Peyton wasn’t the type of person to believe in love or to ignore it, even when it stared her right in the face.
This news was a complete and utter surprise. Good or bad, she had no idea.
“Was?” muttered Josie softly, wondering if she should squeeze Peyton’s wrist apologetically the same way you would say sorry to someone grieving over a dead relative.
“Was,” repeated Peyton, rising to her feet. She stepped sideways, past the coffee table, looking jittery as if she might run away, and added, “I’ll be right back.” As she reached the hallway, Peyton paused and spoke over her shoulder. “And don’t worry, I’m not running away.”
“I wasn’t worried,” lied Josie, giving her best smile even though her body had tensed up, ready to run after Peyton if she made the dash to the front door.
There was absolutely no way Peyton could confess to something like that and leave without giving Josie any more details. Absolutely no way.