Laughing, Madeline pats my arm.
“I’m brainstorming,” I tell the group. “What about a rake?”
“A rake would probably work,” Gideon agrees.
Inside,the party is crowded but low-key. There’s a cauldron filled with apple cider, a ton of cookies, and several plastic pumpkins filled with choice Halloween candy.
“Josie was saying that neighborhood expectations are very high around here,” Madeline says, poking through candy until she comes up with a full-size Twix, then opens it and offers me half. “They have to get the big candy bars, or the neighbors will talk.”
We’re still in our haunted-house costumes. She’s in overalls and a tank top, hair in branded pigtails, fake blood everywhere. It even looks like it’s dripping from the scar on her forehead, which is a nice touch. I’m a dead circus ringmaster, complete with a loud jacket and my face painted like a skull. Not a Dia de los Muertos skull, just a regular one. I did a very good job, though.
“I thought the neighbors already talked about Bart,” I say, biting off a piece.
“They do,” she confirms. Madeline and Josie hit it off the instant they met, the first time Madeline and I came over for dinner during the summer. “But it turns out Eugene—the one whoreallyhates Bart—has been a pain in everyone’s ass lately,so there’s a growing portion of the neighborhood who are in favor of the giant skeleton.”
I take another bite and glance around, making sure no one can hear me.
“What thefuckis going on with small towns?” I ask, and she laughs. “They’ve been fighting about decorations for two years now. There arefactions.”
“Have you ever read the letters to the editor in the paper? They areunhinged,” she whispers. “Last week someone wrote a very strongly worded one about graffiti on the Main Street bridge. There wasonegraffiti tag, and it got removed within a day.”
I’m trying to think of a bridge or underpass in Virginia Beach that doesn’t have graffiti on it, and I can’t. It’s a city. People spray-paint things. It’s part of the charm, I swear.
“Do you hate it yet?” I ask her and cover my sudden nerves by taking a sip of apple cider.
“What do you mean,yet?” She pokes me in the side. “Quit expecting me to change my mind. I’ll tell you if I do, but so far, I find the factions and the letters charming.”
It’s too good to be true, right? Madeline loving this town, loving my friends, loving my cat, lovingme. There are still times, late at night when I can’t sleep, when I think I’ll wake up from a long dream and be on someone’s filthy couch in Richmond, already thinking about another fix. I can’t possibly be here, at a Halloween party where there’s cider and cookies and “Time Warp” playing in the background. I can’t possibly have a girlfriend who moved across the state to live with me. She can’t possibly be happy about that decision.
But then Madeline wraps an arm around my waist, and the song changes to “Thriller,” and Wells and Gideon come through the front door proclaiming victory over the roof jack-o’-lantern, and it is. It’s all true somehow.
“You have to holdstill,”she says, which is dumb, because Iam. I’ve been holding still for several minutes now while she slathers some Crisco-like substance on my face. It’s gross, but it does get the makeup off.
“I can do it myself,” I say, moving as little as possible. I’m sitting on our bathroom counter, in my underwear, with her between my legs.
“You miss spots.”
“I don’t.”
She ignores me, swipes more Crisco onto my nose, then steps back. “Rub that around real good, then get in the shower,” she orders me.
“You gonna join me?”
“No, because you actually have to get clean.”
“What if I got clean andthendirty?”
“What I like about you is how creative you are,” she laughs. “Clean and then dirty. Groundbreaking.”
I pull my hands off my face. They’re now covered in Crisco and face paint.
“You didn’t say yes or no to getting dirty,” I point out.
“Ask again in ten minutes,” she says and starts the shower for me.
Madeline cleansthe fake blood off, then joins me in the shower, which is pretty big and surprisingly good for fucking in. I’m not saying it’s the main reason we picked this house—it’salso got three bedrooms and a garage that I turned into an art studio—but we did take the fuck-size shower into consideration.
And it’s good—italways is with her—but it’s afterward, when the water is losing heat and I’m pressed against her back, skin warm and slick, my forearm braced across her chest, that always breaks me a little. She relaxes into me slowly, one hand against the shower wall. Her breathing echoes. It’s warm and wet and slippery, and in this state, it’s a little hard to tell when I end and she begins. I don’t mind.
