“You are.” He squeezes my shoulder. “You and Laurie Strode are my top two ever.”
Laurie Strode? Who is Laurie Strode? I never evenheard of…
Oh no.
I remember why I broke up with Brady.
He must sense my body going stiff. He touches my chin with his fingers. “Nora?”
I sit up in bed, yanking my green scrub top from the floor where I abandoned it. “I have to use the bathroom.”
Brady sits up in bed, watching me pull on my shirt, underwear, then my pants. As I tighten the drawstring, he frowns at me. “Are you leaving?”
“I have to get up early for surgery in the morning.”
“Yeah, but…” The blanket falls from his muscular chest, and for a moment, I’m tempted to stay. “It’s not that late. Stay a little longer. We can order a pizza or something.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Chinese?”
“Sorry.” I look around the bedroom for my shoes, then remember I left them at the front door. “I just have a very busy schedule.”
Before he can protest again, I race into the bathroom and slam the door behind me.
I look at the doorknob and find a little lock. I turn it, even though I think it’s very unlikely that Brady will attempt to burst in on me. I’m sure he’s still sitting in his bed, wracking his brain to try to figure out what he did wrong. But I need a moment of complete privacy. Just to myself.
I check out my appearance in the mirror. I had pulled my hair out of its bun at some point between the kitchenand the bedroom, and the black locks are strewn everywhere. Luckily, I wasn’t wearing any makeup to get smeared, but I look decidedly disheveled. I splash some water on my face and take a deep breath.
Laurie Strode. Of course.
Laurie Strode was the girl inHalloween, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. You know, that movie with Michael Myers, the guy in the white mask who tries to kill the babysitter. I watched that movie with Brady in college because he loved it. Then we watched the rest of theHalloweenmovies. AndFriday the 13th.Nightmare on Elm Street. He loved slasher films.
And I grew to love them too. My favorite part of the day became curling up with Brady on the futon sofa in the common area in his suite and watching actors get bludgeoned to death. It was probably the best relationship I had ever been in. I had never felt quite so connected to another person.
I can now remember the exact moment when I stopped liking him.
It was a Saturday night. We had been invited to a costume party, but we waited until the last minute to deal with the costume situation. I had mostly figured I would just go as a sexy cat or something along those lines, but Brady insisted he had some scary masks in his closet.From Halloweens past,he told me.
Sure enough, he had about half a dozen masks stashed away at the bottom of his closet. I laughed when he held up the Jason hockey mask. Or the Freddy Krueger mask that was a mass of scarred skin.Scared yet?he teased me.
And then he pulled another mask out of the pile. When he held it up to his face, a shiver went down my spine. What is that?
This is my Halloween mask from like ten years ago,he explained.Remember that serial killer from right here in Oregon, the one who killed all those women and cut off their hands? The Handyman?
That’s when I knew for sure what I was looking at. Brady owned a Halloween maskof my father’s face. Of course, why was I so surprised? Hadn’t we spent our entire relationship watching women get bludgeoned to death? It was a fictionalized version of my father’s life.
Looking at that old mask, I was so sick, I had to make up an excuse to avoid going to the party. The next day, I broke up with him. And for the rest of college, every time I saw him, I ran the other way.
God, how could I have forgotten? I must’ve blocked it out. After breaking up with Brady, I never watched another scary movie. It was never the same after that.
I wonder if he still watches slasher films. I wonder if he still loves them as much as he used to.
I wonder if he still has that mask of my father’s face.
I take a shaky breath and come out of the bathroom. The door to the bedroom is closed—did I close it when I left? I can’t remember. I put my hand on the doorknob, intending to tell Brady I’m leaving now. I owe him that much at least. It’s not like he did anything wrong.
But the doorknob doesn’t turn. The door to the bedroom is locked.
