Chapter 7
The Old Hollywood vibes are strong as I sink into a sleek leather chair and smooth jazz plays over the speakers.
“First built in 1926, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was home to the first Academy Awards,” a nearby tour guide whispers, trying to intrude as little as possible. “Back then, the ceremony lasted only five minutes. Imagine that! Yeah, you can look inside. It’s the longest continuously running hotel in all of Los Angeles. It is also one of the most haunted hotels in the city.”
I glance over my shoulder. A familiar tour guide pokes his head into the lobby. I am not confident Gary’s daytime walking tour is any more informative than the one for which I shelled out serious cash.
“The hotel is home to some of the most kindred spirits in Tinsel Town, including one Marilyn Monroe— Oh, not you again!”
Behind the tour group, Hayden waits patiently for them to stop blocking the door.
“I have nothing to say! You’re correct so far. Can I…?”
Gary grumbles but guides the guests out of the way so that Hayden can enter. He lugs several large bags with him. Clearly, he’s packed for more than one night away. Either that or he has a very intense skincare or haircare routine. He does have nice skin and hair. He meets me with an eager smile that I can’t help but return.
“Are we moving in? Where’s the Ouija board?”
Hayden glances at all his bags. “It’ll make sense. Come on, let’s check in.”
I’m already on edge about spending an entire night alone with Hayden. Skroll wasn’t willing to shell out the money for two rooms. Besides, if we’re filming overnight, we should be together. I conquered my fear of being alone with him when we prepped the pilot episode, but there’s something strangely intimate about being in a room alone with him for a whole night. He’ll see me without makeup, in my pajamas, will know what position I sleep in. I’ll shower in the bathroom, and he’ll know I’m naked in there. He’ll get my morning grumpy/grogginess. I will be sleeping in a bra.
As we reach our room, there’s a childlike glee in his eyes as Hayden films discreet shots of the interior. Our travel budget only accommodates two people, so we’re on our own for filming on location.
“I could not get us one of the more haunted rooms,” he laments.
“Shame.”
“It is.”
Our room is nicer than most hotel rooms I’ve stayed in. Two large beds with perfectly made sheets and colored pillows, a desk in the corner, and a flatscreen. There are even wood floors, which is a change from the usual horrifying hotel carpets. Our windows overlook Hollywood Boulevard and a parking structure. Classic Hollywood.
“Not bad. I see why the celebrities don’t want to leave.”
“Ha,” I snark as he sets down the bags. “Did you bring our whole studio?”
Our .
Even if I weren’t the host, it’d still be our studio. But I am a host now. The title is still kicking around in my mouth and I haven’t settled on the aftertaste yet. It still doesn’t feel real, and it especially doesn’t when Hayden reaches into one of the bags and whips out a camera.
“Boom. Night vision.”
I block my face with my hand like a celebrity trying to avoid the paparazzi. Hayden frowns.
“Come on. Don’t tell me you’re camera shy.”
“Of course not.”
I’m not used to being allowed in the spotlight.
No one’s wanted me there before.
I lower my hand.
“We don’t need night vision if the lights are on,” I advise. Hayden sinks into one of the kitchenette chairs and dives into his bags again. He unloads the contents onto the table.
“Whoa, are we going full Watergate here?”
“No, just coming prepared.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, “and what exactly is this stuff?”
“All right, well, this is our night-vision camera, obviously . Next, we have an infrared thermometer, to keep track of cold spots or sudden temperature changes.” He moves along to the next piece of equipment like he’s Vanna White. “We have an EMF recorder, which picks up on electromagnetic fields and particularly high levels of unusual energy. This is just a regular digital recorder for picking up sounds. This one is an SB7 Spirit Box. It does a sweep of frequencies and can help us pick up on sounds and voices we might not hear on our own. And this guy—oh man.”
He holds up a small square box that looks just like the digital recorder. It’s a good thing he’ll be the one using this stuff. If it were me, I’d be investing in a fun label maker. Everything looks the same.
I blink a few times. “How much of this did you already have?”
“None of it!”
“And here I thought you were a professional ghost hunter already…”
“Well, I had the camcorder and digital recorder, but that’s normal. This thing—the Ovilus—contains a database of words and syllables, so if we asked the ghosts a question, this machine would pick up changes in temperature or magnetic fields to give us an auditory response.”
I cross my arms. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not. This is how we can communicate with ghosts!” He waves the device like a noisemaker on New Year’s Eve.
“Like, if I asked right now what the ghost in this room wants for dinner, it would tell you it wanted steak?”
“It might be a vegetarian,” he mutters into his chest.
After we settle, we take a tour of the hotel with one of the staff members. Skroll handled all our permits, and the hotel has allowed us to film on-site. Some of our travels will have to be dictated by where we can go.
We take turns behind and in front of the camera. Hayden registers a few particularly cold areas and EMF spikes, but nothing out of the ordinary. I snap photos on my phone, Hayden looming over to look at my screen each time to detect “orbs.” We detect none. Following the tour, we break for dinner at one of the Roosevelt’s many trendy bars. A bartender brings us our drinks, and Hayden swivels his barstool to face me.
“Have you ever stayed in a haunted hotel before?” I ask.
“I have,” he says. “To be fair, I grew up near Boston. Just about everything is haunted there.”
“Explains the accent.”
“What?” he gapes. “I don’t have an accent.”
“Oh, yes you do. When you get upset about something, you sound like an angry fan at a Red Sox game.”
He drops his r ’s and widens the a ’s, and it’s another part of the facade chipping away. I never imagined finding a Boston accent sexy, but I never thought I’d find a monster hunter sexy either. The man is too good at poking holes in everything I know.
“Wait until the season starts. We’re going to have to schedule our work around games very carefully.”
“Uh…huh. If you’re from Massachusetts, what made you move to LA? You could theoretically podcast from anywhere.”
Hayden swirls his drink, picking at the orange peel in his old-fashioned. “It was time for a new start.”
“Thank god you didn’t say you came here to be an actor.”
He laughs, biting the corner of his bottom lip. “ Obviously not. You saw how bad I was in front of the camera. I never would have made it as an actor.”
“I’m not so good in front of it, either,” I concede.
His shoulders shift, and I recognize the movement as the rattling discomfort that runs through him when he has a point to argue. It unsettles me that he wants to argue this point. How could someone who hardly knows me feel so strongly?
What I also can’t explain is the coy smile and determined look in Hayden’s eyes as he waits for me to find the rest of my words. I feel confused and nervous in a way I haven’t in years, full of doubt and certainty at the same time. Something flutters in my stomach and makes my palms itchy, and I’m suddenly so aware of everything: the way Hayden’s ice cube pops in his glass, the closeness of his brown leather hiking boot to mine, the scent of his earthy cologne, the rich browns in his hair and beard.
It’s the jitters in my stomach, my breath whooshing out of me as I try to speak, and the prickling sensation at the back of my neck. It’s the feeling of attraction that I’ve only felt a few times in my life, and taken chances on even fewer. It’s a want I’ve only followed into the lair once, and I left with bites and scratches. Hayden makes me want to believe in a lot of things, and right now, he’s making me believe I won’t always need to fear this feeling.
Instead, I smile and swallow the feelings with another sip of my drink. “I think maybe it’s time for a new start for me, too.”
?
?
By the time the sun goes down, we’ve relegated ourselves to our room for our investigation. Hayden arranges the camcorder to film both of us on our respective beds, all of our gear lingering between us.
“What’s up, ghosties? We’re here to hang.”
“I don’t think the ghosts want to be called ‘ghosties,’ Hallie.”
“Did they tell you that themselves? Through your uvula thing?”
“ Ovilus . And no, but they might.” He picks up his audio recorder and hits Record, setting it carefully on the nightstand. He fetches his handy little Ovilus and places it between us.
“Do we need to chant or something?” I ask.
“ No . We do need to try and engage with the spirits.” He passes me the smaller camcorder. “But we need to be respectful. You don’t want to piss off a ghost.”
“What’s it going to do? Make me cold?”
“Ghosts have killed people before.” His expression is dead serious.
“Outside of movies?”
“Outside of movies, Hallie.” He composes himself. “Okay…spirits of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, we come in peace.”
“No,” I say. “We don’t. We come seeking views on the internet, and if the ghost of Marilyn Monroe is here, can you please tell us what the hell happened with JFK? We’re doing an episode on him next week, so any tidbits would be awesome.”
“We can’t admit we’re in it for the views. You are making us seem disingenuous .”
“Hasn’t anyone told you to not pay any mind to what people think of you?”
Easier said than done .
“I obviously do not mind what people think of me,” Hayden says. “I talk about Bigfoot for a living, for god’s sake.” Suddenly, he looks nervous, a shiver running through his shoulders. “Okay, not to be that guy, but I just got really cold all of a sudden.”
“Put on a jacket. Wait, are you scared ?”
“You don’t understand,” he seethes. His hands run up and down his arms to sate the goose bumps rising to his skin. “I’m from Boston. I drink iced coffee when it’s below freezing. This is cold. Evil .”
I attempt to smother my laugh. “Do you want the ghost to…like…fart and warm the room up or something?”
“I don’t think they can do that.” I’m joking, but leave it to Hayden to fact-check my ghost fart joke. “I’m sorry about her. She’s new at this and I’m doing my best to educate her. Please don’t come down too harsh on—”
“If you can hear us,” I interrupt, “move something—”
“—Do not!”
We both quiet as my phone charger drops off the nightstand. Of course, the cord isn’t glued to the surface, but Hayden—all six-foot-something of him—jumps onto the bed. His back presses hard against the headboard, hands covering his mouth.
“It just moved your charger.”
“It fell! It was loose in the first place.”
“It moved , Hallie.”
“Doesn’t mean it was a ghost.”
“It definitely was.”
“Fine.” I stand up, looking around the room for something I can test our fake ghost friend with. “Can you tell us a name?”
“There are so many famous ghosts here, Hallie—”
I sit beside him, the Ovilus between us. “How thrilling! You’ll get to meet a celebrity.”
“I like my celebrities alive, thanks,” he says.
“What’s your name?” I ask again.
We hover over the device. Then, a word pops up on the screen, a digitized voice announcing it for us.
“Little.”
Hayden squints, jaw hanging slack, trying to find some hidden meaning.
“ Little —? Oh my god, there’s a little girl that’s reported to haunt this hotel.”
“Bitch,” the device snaps.
His gaze lifts to mine, then back at the Ovilus. And then back at me. “Did that ghost call me a bitch?”
I scratch my head. “It might have been talking about me. It did say ‘little.’ You’re kinda large.”
Hayden frowns at the device. “That’s derogatory. It’s not nice to call a woman a bitch.”
“Ass,” it corrects.
Hayden and I both shrug.
“That’s better,” he concedes.
“Gender-neutral, too. I deserved that.”
“Of course,” Hayden scoffs, pulling his knees up to his chest. “You told a ghost its experiences were invalid. You were just as mean.”
“Fine, maybe it’ll interact with you.” I scoot back, my hands up in surrender. “If you like Hayden better, can you touch him—?”
“No!”
“Poke him. I dare you.”
The two of us linger in silence. Down the hall, other guests chat. Loud rap music echoes from the street below. A toilet flushes above us. But nothing pokes either me or Hayden. He rubs his arm a few times, but is obviously trying to rationalize his psychosomatic, tender arm strokes.
“This ghost is a Consent King.” I whoop. “We love that.”
We continue to film periodically throughout the night. Hayden leaves the recorder running to give a thorough listen tomorrow, but I presume the most riveting thing we’ll pick up is either snoring or sleep-talk. Meanwhile, I plan to pop two melatonin gummies and try to sleep through whatever midsleep recordings Hayden tries to do. I know it’s inevitable.
I let Hayden shower first. I try not to think about the prospect of him being naked a room away because we still have to spend the rest of the night together, but it’s easier said than done, and my skin feels all kinds of warm. He emerges a couple minutes later in the same clothes as before and we swap.
I run the water and place my pile of clothing on the counter. That’s when I realize I’ve forgotten a change of underwear, naturally. I fling open the door and contemplate the stealthiest way to grab a single pair of underwear from my bag without Hayden noticing, but stealth is clearly not my specialty, because within seconds, I crash into something.
No, not something.
Someone.
I catch a handful of smooth skin and firm muscle, and it feels like an electric shock running through my fingertips. If I could breathe, I know I’d be breathing in the fresh scent of amber and whiskey, mingled with the lemon verbena soap in the hotel shower. But I’m not breathing because I’m touching Hayden, and I can’t draw my eyes away from where we touch. I’m at the end of a branch that spreads across the left side of his stomach, attached to a skeletal tree, much like the deer on his arm, inked onto his side, rooted beneath the waistband of his boxers and pajama bottoms.
Now I know that the waves on his arm wash over the shore of his chest and shoulder and the Kraken’s tentacles clutch around sails and masts on the top of his bicep, gripping him like I suddenly want to. His torso is toned and lithe, with thin muscles wrapping his stomach and chest. When I run out of ink to gawk at, my eyes track across a thin layer of dark hair on his chest that extends down his stomach, and all I can process is how much more of him I want to explore and the way he catches me with a firm grip on my arm.
“Oh my god,” I whisper. I don’t mean for it to come out, but it does. “I’m…I am sorry. I didn’t know you weren’t decent.”
We yank away from one another. I conclude the best course of action is to cover my eyes, which feels foolish, but I don’t want Hayden to see the heat in my cheeks or the way I’m struggling to look at anything else.
“It’s…okay,” he stutters, quickly reaching for the T-shirt behind him on the bed. “Do you need something?”
“ No ,” I spit out. I will handle the underwear debacle later . “Absolutely not. Bye.”
I stumble back into the bathroom and slam the door. Jesus. God. This is horrible. I try to think of something very unsexy—like the Loch Ness Monster or the Yeti—but then I imagine Hayden talking about them. Emphatic hand movements, the passionate drawl of his voice. When I step into the shower, I notch the temperature down.
After dragging my brain out of the gutter as I showered, I wipe my makeup off and stand in front of the mirror. A weight sits on my chest. My skin is splotchy, and I should start doing a regular skincare routine. I worry about what Hayden will think about the circles under my eyes and the flatness of my damp hair. Is he going to wish he had a better-looking co-host? Is he going to regret asking me to be on camera with him?
I change for bed, begrudging how I’ll have to sleep in a bra tonight, but the last thing I need is for Hayden to know I have boobs. Small ones, granted, but he doesn’t need to know. I carefully exit the bathroom, and peer out. Thankfully, Hayden is fully dressed in a pair of spaceship pajama pants and an Emerson College hoodie. He sits on the bed, toying with the Spirit Box.
It begins to thump in bursts of white noise. It’s one of the most grating sounds I’ve ever heard, and I glance back into the room.
“Is there anyone here?” he asks it.
A garbled series of noises echo from the machine. It sounds like radio frequencies, not words.
“How did you die?”
“What?”
“I made contact with someone named George.”
“George?”
He nods, so earnest it hurts. There is something so pure about the way Hayden does everything. He waits for each burst of the Spirit Box to give him something , even if it’s only a blip of an Enrique Iglesias song from a nearby radio.
“What does George say?”
“George—do you have anything to say?”
There’s another garble. I’m beginning to get a headache listening to this thing. I’m also partially worried someone will call the front desk about the odd noises coming from our room.
“He says ‘lick.’?” Hayden frowns at the Spirit Box. “That’s not helpful—”
“That’s nasty !” I cry, through a mouthful of toothpaste.
“Well, if you don’t believe in ghosts, you have no reason to be afraid of one licking you, right?”
I spit into the sink and rinse. Returning to my bed, I lean back on the comforter, turning onto my side as Hayden flips open his camcorder again. I’m glad we’ve moved on from the Close Encounters of the Shirtless Kind without incident.
I wonder if he’s made many changes to his nightly routines, like how I’m wearing a bra to bed. Does he wear spaceship-patterned pajama pants every night, or if I weren’t here, would he be sleeping in boxers, or nothing at all?
Aaand, then I’m thinking about Hayden sans clothes again.
“Any last words?” He turns his video camera on me.
I cover my face with my hands. “Oh god, no, I don’t have makeup on.”
“So?”
“So, I look ugly!”
“That couldn’t be further from the truth!”
His words shock both of us. He quickly clears his throat as I lower my hands. “What?”
“You look…” He mentally bounces between options like he’s on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? before eventually selecting the final answer. “Fine. Don’t worry, you look fine.”
Somehow, this brings a sense of relief. I’m not prepared for what I’d do if he told me I looked pretty. I’m not ready for a compliment from someone like him. Not someone who makes my stomach do flips and looks at me like I matter. He looks at me like he’s eager to hear what I have to say. He studies me. I don’t think Cade ever even saw me.
“We don’t have to film you all ready for bed, if you don’t want,” he finishes.
That couldn’t be further from the truth , I hear him say again. “No, it’s…uh, actually fine.”
Hayden turns the camera on me again with a smile. “Take two: Any last words?”
“Before you kill me?” I laugh.
“No, before one of the many ghosts in this hotel kills you.”
“They will not.”
“They might!” he teases, flipping the camera on himself. “We are about to head to sleep. I had a quick conversation with a ghost named George a few minutes ago, but he proved to be generally uninformative. We’ll see if we find anything nefarious overnight, and hopefully we’ll survive our stay.”
He shuts the camera and sets it on the nightstand beside him. Hayden settles on the bed as my underwire digs into my sides, but it’s better than a nip-slip. We aren’t on the best indecent exposure track record today.
I turn on my side to face him as Hayden dims the light between us. His hair is still drying, dark curls forming at the nape of his neck and sleepiness hanging in his eyelids. As he slides under the covers, he tugs the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, bundling up. He removes his glasses and sets them beside his phone on the nightstand. It’s the first time I’ve seen him without them for any extended amount of time.
He’ll take them off to rub his eyes or nose, or when he gets very into explaining something, but here they are off and it feels like letting down a barrier between us. He’s handsome with or without them, but he feels vulnerable now. Without the frames demanding attention, I notice he has light freckles on his nose and great, dark eyelashes. I like this unguarded version of him.
“How much can you see without your glasses?”
Hayden huffs out a laugh. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Nothing at all? That’s sad. How will you see the ghosts all night?”
“I am going to have to rely on all my other keen senses in that case. Thankfully, you have that blue hair, so I can generally see you,” he says, waving in my direction.
“In case you need someone to snuggle with when you get scared?”
I’m not sure why I say that, and I’m not particularly proud of it.
His tiny smile taunts me, but he scoffs to hide it. “Pssh, me? Scared? Never. Makes you easy to spot in stores, I guess.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, and every mom in the vicinity has to comment on the fact that my hair is blue.”
“It’s like how my mom was with all the tattoos. I still have to wear long sleeves when I visit her because she doesn’t like to look at them,” he jokes, but it hardly feels like a joke. My parents didn’t love the blue hair at first, but they were never the grounding and yelling type, so they got used to it and accepted that it was “self-expression.”
“I think they’re cool. How many?”
“You mean you didn’t count before?” His eyebrow quirks when he laughs.
Of course he noticed me checking him out. I wasn’t exactly discreet with it, but it’s a conversation I’m not prepared to have with him. I could ask what he meant when he said I looked “fine,” because it was clearly not the word he wanted to use.
“The number must be pretty high,” I tell him. “The deer on your arm—”
“It’s not a deer.”
“It sure looks like a deer.”
“It’s a Not Deer.”
“You already said that.”
He breaks into a smile and shakes his head. “No, a Not Deer .”
“What the fuck is a Not Deer?”
“Urban legend from Appalachia. It’s a deer at first glance, but the longer you look at it, it’s obvious something is wrong with it—”
“So, it’s an ugly deer,” I laugh, burying myself against the pillow.
“ Not Deer.”
“Sure, sure, you tell yourself that, Hayden.”
Instead of a rebuttal, he offers a small laugh, turning on his side to look at me. I don’t know how well he can see me, but he smiles anyway. I smile too.
“You really can’t see anything?” I ask again.
“Hardly. Why?”
“No reason,” I lie. “Sleep tight, Hayden.”
“Good night, Hallie. Don’t let the ghosties bite.”
“I’m fairly certain they won’t .”
He scoffs and turns over, hitting the lights. As soon as the lights are off, I reach behind me and unhook my bra, wiggling out of it and tossing it into my bag. I’m so happy he is vision impaired in this moment. Within a few minutes, his breathing deepens, but there’s no snoring, thankfully. At least if we’re going to spend all this time buddied up on our hunts, I’ll get a decent night of sleep.
I fall into a committed slumber quickly, only to wake several hours later to voices.
“Siri, what time is it?” Hayden whispers.
Siri, that traitor, shouts, “It’s two forty-seven a.m.”
A flash from our night-vision camera brightens the room. Hayden sits at the corner of his bed with the camera turned on himself. Glasses still off, framing himself poorly.
“It’s almost three in the morning and I…something touched my foot. The room looks empty now.” He turns the camera around to scan the room. “It could have been a dream, but it felt really, really real. Man…I’m like…shaking right now.”
Finally, Hayden realizes I’m awake.
“I felt something,” he hisses.
I collapse into the covers. “Hayden, please go to sleep.”