Chapter 27
BETH
Sage surprised me.
After the summer we’d survived—screaming fights, desperate makeups, emotional whiplash—I was braced for impact.
Sage could go from incandescent to ice in a single breath, and I was sure she’d fight to get Ethan back with everything she had.
Phone calls.
Ambush lunches.
Fishing expeditions for information about Ethan.
Instead?
Nothing.
We still met for lunch once or twice a week, but the questions never came. No casual Have you talked to him lately? No carefully disguised How’s he doing?
Because I had nothing to give her.
And she knew it.
Which, weirdly, told me more about our friendship than the whole summer had.
If she’d only been using me, she would’ve kept pressing.
But she didn’t.
We talked about work.
About how the office felt like a mausoleum now.
About how nobody laughed anymore.
And about this… heaviness.
Like the air itself had weight.
Fall had come hard and fast that year. Cold mornings. Shorter days. Everyone walking around like they were waiting for the next shoe to drop, even though no one could say what the shoe was.
Just… waiting.
One Tuesday at lunch, I finally said it.
“It’s Halloween this weekend.”
She looked up from her salad. “Is that a question or a statement?”
“A plea,” I said. “Let’s go to Salem.”
She blinked. “You want to party?”
“I want to feel normal for five hours,” I said. “And I think I’m finally ready to meet someone new. Not fall in love. Just—exist around men who aren’t my ex.”
She studied me for a second.
Then she smiled.
“Meeting a hot boy and dancing the night away doesn’t sound like a terrible life choice,” she said. “Salem it is.”
Relief flooded me.
“I went last year with—” I stopped myself.
She lifted a brow. “Him?”
“Yeah.”
“If we run into him,” she said calmly, “I’ll handle it.”
I laughed. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
We decided on sexy witches.
“How original,” I deadpanned.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s a classic for a reason.”
I asked if she wanted to invite her friends.
She grimaced. “No. They’re in the marriage-and-babies phase that I pretend I’m not bitter about.”
“Good,” I said. “Then we can leave when we want. Bar crawl. No explanations.”
We stayed at my mom’s house in Peabody.
Friday night, we turned her guest room into a war zone of makeup brushes, hair tools, and glitter.
Black leggings.
Knee-high boots.
Camisole tops that walked the line between classy and dangerous.
Sage gave me the best smoky eye of my life and stuck enormous glittering spider earrings in my ears.
I stared at myself in the mirror.
“Damn,” I said. “I look hot.”
She grinned. “That’s because you are hot, Beth.”
For the first time in months, I believed her.
Salem was magic.
Cobblestone streets and colonial buildings draped in pumpkins and candles. Picket fences lined with mums. Victorian houses glowing from inside like storybooks.
By day, it was chaos.
Tarot readers.
Pop-up potion stalls.
Food trucks and fake seances and kids in tiny vampire capes.
By night?
It turned feral.
Live bands.
Bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder.
Pirates. Wrestlers. Lumberjacks. Devils. Angels.
Every man seemed hotter in costume.
We bar-hopped.
We danced.
We got hit on shamelessly.
A pirate tried to buy Sage a drink.
A lumberjack asked me to dance.
And for the first time since the summer exploded, it felt good.
Not desperate-good.
Not prove something good.
Just… good.
Wanted.
Alive.
At one point, Sage leaned close and shouted over the music, “See? We’re not broken.”
I laughed. “We’re just under renovation.”
She raised her glass. “To renovations.”
We clinked.
And in the middle of the noise and costumes and lights, something loosened in my chest.
Not healed.
But breathing again.
For one night, at least, the world wasn’t ending.
It was dancing.
The music was so loud I felt it in my ribs.
Not heard it — felt it.
Bass thudding through the floor, through my boots, through my chest as Sage and I shoved our way through bodies and heat and fog and fake smoke and spilled beer.
Salem at night wasn’t quaint anymore. It was wild.
Costumes everywhere. Pirates and vampires and shirtless Spartans and girls in corsets and fishnets and glitter.
For the first time in months, I wasn’t thinking about my ex.
Or work.
Or the future.
I was just… there.
Then someone leaned down close to my ear.
“What’s your name?”
I turned.
Bright green eyes.
Perfect teeth.
Dark tan.
At least six feet tall.
Not just fit — jacked. Shoulders straining the seams of his tight black shirt, arms thick and cut and unapologetically on display.
I froze for half a second.
I had never had a man like this approach me in my life.
“Beth,” I shouted over the music.
He smiled like he already knew he’d won.
“I’m Derek.”
And just like that, his hands were on my hips and mine were on his shoulders and we were moving together in a way that made my brain short-circuit. Not awkward. Not shy. Easy. Confident. Heat and rhythm and sweat.
We didn’t talk.
We didn’t need to.
Twenty minutes later he dragged me to the bar.
Thirty minutes after that, we were pressed against the brick wall by the bathrooms, kissing like we were trying to memorize each other. He tasted like mint and whiskey. His hands slid to my waist, my fingers traced the curve of his bicep, amazed at how solid he felt.
That was when I opened my eyes.
Across the room — maybe twenty feet away — I saw Sage.
Already working her magic.
She had a tall one this time. Broad shoulders. Blond. Looked like he’d walked straight out of a college locker room.
Of course she did.
I smiled into Derek’s mouth.
I didn’t care if he was here because of her.
I didn’t care if this was a setup.
All I knew was that for the rest of the night, Sage and I were having the best time we’d had since summer died.
They were from BC.
They played lacrosse.
They were loud and stupid and fun and bought us drinks and spun us around the dance floor until my legs ached and my face hurt from smiling.
At one point, we all ended up outside at the ATM, shivering in line with a dozen other drunk people.
Cold wind. Breath fogging.
We took turns pulling out cash for cover charges and shots.
When it was Sage’s turn, she smiled, said, “Bathroom,” and slipped away with her little clutch.
I barely noticed.
I was too busy laughing with Derek.
Ten minutes later, I glanced out the bank window.
And there she was.
At the payphone.
Again.
Quarters in one hand. Receiver to her ear. Not talking. Just… listening.
I laughed to myself.
Sage and her quarters.
God, she was weird.
I turned back to Derek, kissed him again, forgot all about it.
Near closing time, we exchanged numbers with the kind of optimism you only have at two in the morning.
“You better text me,” he said.
“I will,” I promised.
Sage and I stumbled into a cab together, giggling like we were twenty-one again. Back at my mom’s, we kicked off our boots, peeled off eyelashes, smeared makeup remover everywhere.
She logged onto my laptop to check her balance.
I did the same.
Overdraft avoided. Barely.
We crawled into bed and passed out still laughing.
That night, all I knew was that for the first time since everything fell apart…
We felt wanted again.
And the world still felt normal.
A few days later, I was back in my room.
Not my home—just the room I paid for. Beige walls.
A twin bed shoved against one side. A desk that wobbled if you leaned on it too hard.
I shared the apartment with four girls who barely spoke English.
All students. Always gone. The rent was cheap, and they stayed out of my way, which had been perfect when I was never here.
But now I was.
The boat was done.
Happy hour was done.
The office felt like a mausoleum.
So I sat on my bed, knees pulled up, laptop balanced on my thighs, and tried to do something productive before I sank completely.
Job hunting.
I had almost a year under my belt. Real experience. Enough to justify wanting something new. Something that didn’t feel haunted. Work hadn’t just been work—it had been my social life, my safety net, my sense of belonging.
And all of that was gone.
I opened Yahoo Jobs. Scrolled. Clicked. Closed it again.
Nothing felt right.
Then I remembered a listing I’d bookmarked the week before. Something admin-adjacent. Better hours. Different office.
I opened my browser history to find it.
And froze.
My stomach dropped so fast it felt physical.
Search after search after search—
Not jobs.
Real estate listings.
Pittsfield, Vermont.
Cabins.
Farmhouses.
Land parcels.
Then names.
Tony’s full name.
Ethan’s full name.
Tony’s business.
Property records.
Realtors.
“What the hell…?” I whispered to the empty room.
My fingers hovered over the trackpad as the timeline clicked into place in my head.
Mom’s house.
Wine.
Late night.
Me passing out on the couch.
My laptop—open.
No password.
No lock screen.
Sage.
I scrolled faster now, heart pounding.
Why would she be looking this up?
What was she even trying to find?
A cold, prickling feeling crept up my spine.
I remembered something else.
My bank account.
I hadn’t logged out.
I pulled it up so fast I nearly dropped the laptop.
Balance: unchanged.
Relief hit first—sharp and dizzying.
Then came the second thought.
She wouldn’t steal from me.
Would she?
I stared at the screen, my reflection faintly visible in the dark glass.
Sage wouldn’t do that.
She was dramatic. Intense. Emotional. But not—
Not that.
Right?
I applied for job after job after job.