Chapter 18
Dahlia flung her front door open to a thoroughly soaked Talula.
It had poured on the ride to Dahlia’s parents’ house.
Talula had arrived extremely damp and out of breath from trying to outrun the storm and her stomach’s rioting butterflies.
She felt like she’d just climbed out of a dunk tank.
Despite her efforts, her carefully chosen outfit—tights, boots, sweater, and soft blue shirtdress—was soaked.
Meanwhile, Dahlia was dressed like Dahlia.
Black pants and an oversized button-up that looked like Bob Ross’s palette had thrown up on it (but in a really, really good way).
A few fine-chained gold necklaces glinted around her neck, including Kiki’s.
Talula did some quick math to figure out if the number of buttons unbuttoned on Dahlia’s shirt meant date or fig.
She kept losing count when she got to the notch of Dahlia’s collarbones.
“Whoa! Get in here before you, like, actually drown.” Dahlia dragged Talula inside and up a flight of stairs. “You’re putting on dry clothes. Right now.”
They entered the messiest room Talula had ever seen.
Clothes were everywhere. A frenzy of multicolored sticky notes covered the walls.
A stack of library books stood next to the door, topped by a small, grocery store pumpkin.
The room smelled warm and good and a lot like Dahlia.
Talula was trying not to do the stalker thing and memorize every inch of the place when something soft thwacked her in the face.
“Change, babe. I refuse to let you die of pneumonia before we save Samhain.”
“Nobody actually gets pneumonia from weather,” Talula felt the need to point out.
“Then what were all those ladies in Victorian novels dying of?” Dahlia chucked a pair of socks at Talula.
“Consumption.” Talula grinned.
“The fake wandering uterus disease?”
“That’s hysteria.”
“Somebody ought to do something about those uteruses.”
“Let’s bring it up at the town meeting,” Talula suggested wryly, and Dahlia tipped her head back and let out one of her big, beautiful Dahlia laughs. Dahlia turned to her, a towel in hand, her eyes bright. “Respectfully, take off your clothes.”
Talula, at the mercy of Dahlia’s dimples, took the towel. She swallowed.
“As we are genteel ladies, I shall leave you to don your garb unchaperoned.” Dahlia bowed.
“Keep an eye out for loose uteruses!” Talula called as Dahlia closed the door.
Loose uteruses? Talula thought to herself, mortified.
Then she heard Dahlia’s chuckle echoing through the hall and let out a relieved breath.
She changed into the clothes Dahlia had thrown at her—fuzzy socks, comfy joggers, an oversized shirt, and a crewneck sweatshirt.
She took a steadying breath, trying not to get dizzy from the closeness of Dahlia’s smell, then padded downstairs to the living room.
Dahlia had lit a few candles and set out an armada of take-out containers on the coffee table.
She stood at its edge, pouring red wine into two mason jars.
“I totally forgot to ask you what you liked, so I got two of everything. Is that okay? Too much?”
“It’s perfect.” Talula sat down on the couch, mouth watering. The heady aroma of curry, noodles, fried rice, and sauteed meat flooded her senses. “This is always how much Thai food I want.”
“Same.” Dahlia offered Talula a jar. “I’d try to impress you with my mom’s fancy glassware, but wineglasses make me nervous. They should make wine sippy cups for grown-ups.”
“I’d buy ten.” Talula took the jar with a shy smile. She wants to impress me? “Thank you for doing this. This spread looks amazing.”
“It’s my secret weapon. Whenever I had a really tough client or needed a little inspiration for a new ad campaign, Thai food and wine in a jar would usually do the trick,” Dahlia explained.
When their plates were loaded up, Dahlia turned to Talula with a shy smile of her own.
“What do you always say? Noosh something?”
“Noosh-eh joon,” Talula replied, moved that Dahlia remembered. “It’s like bon appétit. It kind of means, ‘may this nourish your soul.’ ”
“I love that.” Dahlia held up her chicken satay. “Noosh-eh joon.”
“Perfect.” Talula beamed at Dahlia. “Then I say, ‘khasteh nahbahshee,’ which I think of as, ‘Thank you, I hope you’re not tired from the hard work of doing this lovely thing for me.’ ”
“That’s beautiful,” Dahlia said. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“Anytime.” Blushing, Talula turned her attention to her food, scooting rice into a green curry puddle, then taking a bite. She tasted rich coconut and bright spices, bits of vegetables soaked in flavor and heat.
“Good, right?” Dahlia watched her face.
“Hot. But really good.” Talula’s voice was a little husky from the spice and Dahlia’s gaze. She took a big swallow of wine.
“Spiciness makes your brain work in weird ways.” Dahlia took a few more bites. “The more you can take, the better your ideas.”
Talula raised an eyebrow, feeling a little cocky. “Is this all you got?”
With a wicked grin, Dahlia proceeded to explain the spice level of each curry. “This one’s a two, this one’s a four, this one’s a six, and this one I had to sign a waiver to order.”
The two women synchronized bites, chewing while studying each other’s faces for signs of distress. Talula discovered, quite quickly, that Dahlia’s ideas must be very good.
“How do you do that?” Talula gasped. She gulped down some wine to cool her mouth, which only sort of worked.
“Lots of practice.” Dahlia, victorious, sipped from her jar daintily. When they had eaten their fill, Dahlia handed Talula a legal pad and pen. She broadcasted her presentation’s title slide on the living room TV—“50 Sensational Strategies to Save Samhain.”
“Fifty?” Talula asked, agog.
“Most of them aren’t good. But sometimes a bad idea leads to a great idea.” Dahlia shrugged.
Some ideas were too time-intensive, like Idea #14: Hire artisanal carvers to craft a personalized jack-o’-lantern for everyone in town. Some were simply unrealistic, like Idea #29: Dress drones up like flying monkeys to drop candy from the sky.
“Flying monkeys might send the wrong message,” Talula pointed out, gesturing at Dahlia with a crab rangoon. Dahlia cackled like the Wicked Witch of the West herself.
Eventually, they concocted some solid ideas.
They planned to go over the pictures Talula had of past festivals.
They’d find ones of smiling townspeople, and Dahlia would post some every day on the café’s social media platforms, tagging everyone.
They’d also post polls and infographics, and Dahlia knew a woman who could whip up a whimsical Samhain selfie filter in no time at all.
But none of the ideas were game changers, so they kept eating spicy food and drinking wine for inspiration.
“We should play to Samhain’s strengths. Festiveness. Spookiness,” Dahlia said, refilling their wine jars for the third time.
Talula scribbled Dahlia’s words down on her legal pad. She squinted. How many o’s were in “spookiness”? Three seemed like a lot. But maybe not enough? Wine wasn’t helping her spelling. Talula paused. “Do you think I’m spooky?”
“I think you’re witchy.” Dahlia said the word like she was relishing a particularly tasty curry bite.
“But we need to show people that Samhain isn’t about Satan worship,” Talula added, hoping she sounded believable, “and that I’m not a witch.”
“Not necessarily. It’s harder to convince someone they’re wrong than it is to shift their focus to something more interesting.” Dahlia’s eyes widened. “So, what if instead of downplaying the witchiness, we turned it up to, like, level ten million?”
Wine muddled Talula’s ability to do metaphor math. “What do you mean?”
“Samhain is Satan. But magic is something else completely,” Dahlia explained. “If we amp up the magic, we make the festival theatrical and fantastical. Like fairy tales or those kids’ movies with talking animal sidekicks.”
“If someone says the festival is about devil worship,” Talula said slowly, “I say—”
“No, it’s about magic,” Dahlia finished for her. “Like wishing on a star and the power of true love’s kiss.”
“Would that still work with the traditional Samhain ceremonies?”
“Absolutely. But we won’t do it if it feels like we’re cheapening Samhain.”
Talula fiddled with her pen, thinking. Considering the entire purpose of the Samhain festival was magic-related, it was risky. But then again, wasn’t hiding real magic in plain sight the Blue Moon’s specialty?
An idea began to form in Talula’s mind. She connected the dots like lines between stars to form a grander, brighter constellation. Talula dug her spoon into the spiciest curry on the table. “You’re right.”
“About what?”
“Spicy food does give you great inspiration.” Talula braced herself and took a huge bite. “I know how we can bring magic to Samhain.”
She explained her idea to Dahlia, who whooped with glee.
They talked through it, tweaking here and there, until a plan took enough shape for Dahlia to break out more celebratory wine.
The night went on, Talula tipsy from whatever Dahlia kept pouring, the warm scent of Dahlia’s clothes, and the intoxicating thrill of hope.
Finally, when Talula’s eyes started to drift shut, she murmured, “I should go home.”
She stood up, tried to take one step away from the couch, then thought better of it and sat down on the floor.
“You should just stay here,” Dahlia replied sleepily.
“But I have a Simon.” Responsible-looking thoughts floated in and out of Talula’s head. “And a destiny.”
“If you’re going to save Samhain, you need to make good choices. No drinking and biking.”
“But—”
“Stay,” Dahlia said, reaching over to hold Talula’s hand. “Just…stay. Okay?”
Dahlia’s eyes were shining, making Talula shiver. “Okay.”
Dahlia tugged her out of the living room. Heart pounding, Talula followed Dahlia up the stairs. She was drunk but somehow painfully aware of her hand in Dahlia’s, how that contact was making other parts of her body feel. Simmering and sparkling, aching to touch and be touched.
Dahlia stopped in the upstairs hallway. She hadn’t flicked the lights on, so when she turned to Talula, she was all shadow. “I just remembered that there are no sheets on the guest bed.”
“Oh!” Talula sagged against a nearby wall. “That’s okay! I can sleep without sheets.”
“No!” Dahlia shook her curls. “What I’m saying is, you should stay with me.”
Talula wished that the lights were on. She desperately needed to see Dahlia’s face. To glean the teeniest, tiniest clue about her intentions. Because it sounded like Dahlia wanted Talula to sleep in her bed. With her.
So she asked, “You want me to sleep in your bed? With you?”
“Yes,” Dahlia said, and now Talula was grateful for the darkness.
Her cheeks, face, and entire body felt engulfed in witchfire.
Because sleeping in a bed with Dahlia sounded too good to be true.
But then again, friends slept next to each other all the time, right?
Talula swallowed, her mouth so very dry. “Okay.”
“Okay? Okay!” Dahlia flicked the lights on, pointed to the guest bathroom, and piped, “Extra toothbrushes and towels under the sink!” Then she darted away without meeting Talula’s eyes.
Still tipsy, Talula brushed her teeth and washed her face.
Her pulse thundered in her ears, body restless with want for Dahlia’s scent, her skin, her touch.
She splashed cold water on her face to dull the ache.
It worked as well as the wine cooling the spice on Talula’s tongue.
Finally, she crept to Dahlia’s room, took an anxious breath, and opened the door.
The lights were on, but Dahlia was already under the covers.
Her hair was haphazardly tucked in a pink satin bonnet, her button-up replaced with a flannel shirt.
She was snoring gently, her face smooth.
Like a Renaissance painting of a sleeping nymph.
A beautiful, sleeping, snoring nymph. Talula’s heart squeezed with affection, all the nervous energy deserting her.
She turned off the bedside lamp, slipped under the covers, and took a deep breath—soft skin, pomegranate shampoo, shea butter lotion.
Talula turned on her side, away from Dahlia, and closed her eyes.
Suddenly, arms came around her middle.
Talula went still.
A nose nuzzled into the curve of her shoulder. She felt warm weight curling against her back.
“Dahlia?” Talula whispered.
But there was no answer. Just a contented sigh.
Then, the deep, slow breaths of sleep. Talula didn’t know how Dahlia could be sleep-spooning her.
Especially since Talula’s heart was banging around her chest like a damn racquetball.
Talula tried to pry herself free, but Dahlia’s grip just tightened, grazing Talula’s breasts in a way that made her nerves flare and her core go molten.
So, Talula was stuck. In bed. With Dahlia Jones.
It was wonderful.
To be held like this, to be warm and safe, cradled by Dahlia’s sleepy body.
Being this close to Dahlia felt right in ways Talula didn’t know were possible.
She tried to stay awake, to memorize the feeling of Dahlia’s nose pressed against her shoulder and her arm slung over Talula’s waist. But too soon, Talula fell asleep, smiling.