Troy stood leisurely, clearing his plate and mine. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that Troy hadn’t made much eye contact with me all night until now. “Stay, Harp. It’s mom’s turn to pick the movie, so I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll go grab you some things. There’s a guest room down here with a private bathroom, we’ll get you comfortable.”
His sincerity made me smile. It had been a long time since Troy Hartman made me smile. He disappeared up the stairs and I helped clear the table.
“We’ll need to put the shutters up next door,” Robert mumbled. Something was clearly distracting him all night. “You boys going to take care of that?”
“What’s next door?” I asked.
“It’s like a pool house, except we don’t have a pool here, so it’s used as an extension to our house,” August finally said.
“We use it as a guest house when we have parties or family staying from out of town,” Grace added. “It’s a God-awful mess right now, but wouldn’t want the windows blowing in.”
“Yeah, Dad, Troy and I will take care of it.”
“Well, I forfeit my turn to pick the movie. Harper what do you like? Whatever it is, the boys will find it.”
“I have no preference, just nothing scary.”
Troy returned, moving to my side with some clothes. “Tomorrow’s Halloween. I think scary would be appropriate.” He handed me a clean t-shirt and a hoodie that looked oddly familiar. I eyed it, twisting the fabric to see the logo.
“It’s our old high school hockey sweatshirt.” He shrugged. “Not like you’ve never worn it before.”
I was surprised he remembered. I’d worn it once. When half the team and a few cheerleaders went to hang out by the lake, and it was cold.
I wondered how many other girls had worn this same sweatshirt and wanted to shove it back into his chest.
But when August’s cool expression focused on anything but me, I simply smiled at my old boyfriend.
“Lovely. Thank you. And how about…Night Before Halloween?”
Troy fist-pumped the air at my movie choice. “That’s the spirit.” He put an arm around me and I fought to stay still. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay close for the scary parts.”
I chuckled softly until I caught him glance over at August, who’s jaw was tight as he passed us, moving all the shutters from the storage room to the back door.
“August, will you watch with us?” I asked.
“No thanks.” His response was fast and his eyes on the task at hand. “This might take me a while, since I’m clearly doing it myself.”
I stepped away from Troy’s hold, feeling unmotivated for a movie suddenly. “I don’t know if I should be watching either. I need to detail my sketches before Monday.”
“Well, it’s still early. Why don’t you work on that while the boys work next door and we’ll start the movie in about an hour?”
I nodded.
“Fine. Let’s do this.” Troy sighed and followed August out into the rain.
August hadn’t joined us for the movie. He’d walked in a few times, his eyes brushing past Troy and me sitting side by side on one end of the sofa, while his parents were on the other. Though Grace kept running to the kitchen during the freakier parts of the movie—which was most of it. Needless to say, a movie with my ex-boyfriend and his scary father was not the least bit enjoyable.
It was close to eleven when I settled back into the bed of the guest room downstairs. Everyone else had gone up, except for August, who seemed to be in and out of the house. He was clearly still working on something.
And if I were honest, being alone with him was frightening me more than any Halloween movie, so I didn’t step out of the room.
Choosing to focus on my sketches, I sat up against the headboard in the pumpkin spice scented guest room, where the sheets were floral and the décor in the room was perfectly mismatched. It had been a while since anything felt homey to me. This was as close as it got in almost two years.
After my mother’s illness took a turn for the worse, there was a dark cloud over our house and it didn’t feel much like a home anymore.
