5 #2
Noah grumbled quietly, though not with any real irritation. He liked the way she always gave as good as she got; it kept things interesting.
They both lapsed into silence as she worked the cotton ball in tight circles across the back of his neck, replenishing the alcohol periodically.
He waited for the quiet to start crawling up his spine like ants, the way it always did when no one had anything to say, but the sensation never came.
Instead, it felt comfortable—familiar, even.
It was a phenomenon he couldn’t explain.
While she wasn’t being particularly gentle, there was something about the pressure against his neck that was oddly soothing. Noah felt the muscles in his shoulders gradually uncoil as the minutes stretched on, and finally, a long breath escaped from his chest.
Olivia chuckled. “Well, who knew?”
“Who knew what?” Noah mumbled.
“Who knew the best way to find your off button was to dye you an unnatural color? I would have tried this weeks ago.” She laughed. “By the way, you’re normal all the way to here.” She ran her fingertip in a horizontal line halfway down the left side of his neck .
Trapezius muscle , his brain automatically filled in.
It was apparently still working even as the rest of his body was being lulled into a coma.
He grunted in acknowledgement, content to let her work her magic for as long as she wanted.
He let his head loll to one side and cracked his eyes open, hoping he might be able to see her over his shoulder, but he couldn’t.
Olivia kept working until she was apparently satisfied with the results, at which point she dropped her last cotton ball onto a growing pile on the table.
It landed with a damp thud. “All done, I think,” she said, and she gave the tops of his shoulders a quick squeeze. “You can work on your hands yourself.”
He groaned again and pushed up to a sitting position, surprised to find he wasn’t tense from being half slumped against the chair rail for so long.
He rolled his head in a circle and stretched his arms toward the ceiling.
Then he stopped and watched as Olivia packed her supplies—though she left the alcohol behind for him.
“Don’t you ever think these practical jokes are a bit childish?” she asked after a minute or so.
“Oh, all the time,” he answered truthfully.
“But the way I see it, I’m gonna have to be an adult forever.
I’ve got plenty of time to make good choices and use my prefrontal cortex to its full capacity, but right now I can still have some fun and get away with it.
.. so why not? I’ll be a grown-up when I’m thirty. ”
“Thirty, huh? Is that when boys finally become men?”
“Give or take a decade. My mom’s brother is forty-two, and he still draws body parts on dirty car windshields, so it’s not guaranteed.”
Olivia laughed and turned around, leaning on the counter with the heels of her hands. “Do you know how you’re going to get Conner back?” she asked .
“Not yet,” he admitted. “But I’m open to suggestions.”
Olivia pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and worried it in a way Noah found incredibly distracting. He momentarily lost his train of thought, instead following a completely different set of tracks that ended with him pinning her in place against the cabinetry.
“I have an idea,” she said, “but it would have to wait until tomorrow.”
It took Noah a few seconds to get back to the topic at hand, and he blinked several times to clear his mind. When he did, the only word he really retained was “tomorrow,” and it suddenly didn’t matter what the idea was. “Fabulous, it’s a date!” he declared.
Olivia raised one eyebrow and crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. “No, not a date,” she corrected. “I am not going out with you, remember?”
“You’re going somewhere, and you’re coming with me, right? So, technically, you are going out with me,” he said with a wolfish grin, and Olivia narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, we would be going somewhere, but Campbell, repeat after me: This is not a date,” she said slowly.
“La la la la, I can’t hear you!” he sang, clapping his hands over his ears. He headed toward the living room, and he could feel her hot on his heels.
“Campbell!” she shouted, but he only smiled and sang even louder as he made a circuit around the coffee table. He was going to make the most of this chance, even if it killed him.
Which, judging by the look on her face, it might.
On Saturday afternoon, Olivia pulled her Mustang into Noah’s driveway, which was more mud than gravel, and honked her horn twice.
He came out through the garage and half jogged to her car. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to honk when you pick up a date?” he asked as he opened the passenger’s side door and slid inside.
She turned in her seat and pinned him with the kind of look she usually reserved for her brothers. “Campbell, this is not a date,” she said again, even though she knew the effort was futile. He still hadn’t said those words back to her, despite several days of pressing on her part.
“You’re also supposed to open the door for me,” he added, shaking his head as if truly disappointed. “I really thought you’d be better at this.”
Olivia bit the inside of her cheek to keep her amusement in check. Why was he always making her laugh? If she had a brain in her head, she’d still be curled up on her couch watching Friends reruns.
But apparently, her common sense was on vacation.
“This is a revenge excursion only. There is no version of a date where I go shopping for creepy dolls,” she replied.
Noah rubbed his hands together quickly, and his face split into an evil sort of grin. “I hope we find one that’s haunted,” he said, apparently ignoring the rest of her statement.
She pursed her lips and chose not to belabor the point.
“So, where are we going, anyway?” he asked.
She backed out of the driveway and started toward the nearby town of Willow Creek. “You’ll see,” she answered mysteriously.
“Oh, surprise location!” he blurted. “Okay, points for that, Pix. ”
Olivia sighed deeply and kept her eyes on the road.
A little while later, she pulled into the empty parking lot of a building that looked as if it had been accidentally dropped onto the pavement, like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz .
A creaking sign above the front door read “Beulah Mae’s Bargain Boutique. ”
Noah was the first one out of the car, and he stood looking up at the structure with one hand shielding his eyes. “I’m not sure ‘boutique’ is the word they were looking for,” he said, and Olivia chuckled as she rounded the front of the car.
“Oh, come on, Campbell! I’ve wanted to stop here for ages, but no one ever wants to come with me.”
“There might be a reason for that,” he said dryly, but he followed anyway as she approached the door. A bell tinkled above her head as they passed inside, and all sound seemed to cease when the door closed behind them. Even their footsteps seemed to be muffled.
Olivia looked around. They weren’t in any sort of store she’d ever seen before, but rather at the entrance of what seemed to be an unending maze of shelves, crates and racks of all shapes and sizes.
Every surface was covered in... well.
.. stuff . Typewriters and frilly hats, china plates and glass lighthouses, carved wooden pepper shakers and costume jewelry—you name it, it was there.
Olivia felt the low hum of excitement building inside her chest. This was like an estate sale on steroids.
“Yep. Anything we find in here is definitely haunted,” Noah said from behind her.
She turned sharply and smacked his chest with the back of her hand, but any response he may have had was cut off by the hacking cough of someone nearby. Olivia and Noah both jumped and peered around a dressmaker’s mannequin to find an ancient-looking woman standing behind a rolltop desk .
“Welcome to Beulah Mae’s Bargain Boutique,” she said kindly, though her voice sounded as if she hadn’t used it in a very long time. “Browse at your leisure, and please let me know if you need anything. There are bells on the walls at regular intervals if you get lost.”
If they got lost?! Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.
Olivia glanced back at Noah, who seemed to be fighting a smile. “Thank you!” she told the shopkeeper, and she waved to the woman before turning down the first narrow walkway to their right. It was lined on both sides with low tables covered in beaded handbags.
“Points deducted for potential to die,” Noah whispered.
She shushed him with a quick wave of her hand. “She’ll hear you!” she admonished quietly. “Besides, this is not a date, and I’m not being graded.”
Noah made an amused sort of noise but didn’t answer one way or the other.
They moved through the aisles in silence for some time, occasionally stopping to examine an item more closely. Eventually, they wove their way through the main room and down a short flight of stairs. Olivia stopped abruptly at the bottom, and Noah bumped into her from behind.
“Which way?” she asked, peering down each of four walkways in turn. She almost felt like they should be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, just in case.
Noah leaned around her and examined their options.
“This way,” he announced, as if he actually knew where they were going.
He stepped past her and started down a narrow trail to the right, and Olivia followed.
She scanned the shelves and tables as they went, though she didn’t see any of the white-faced porcelain dolls they’d come for.