And it was this idea that got her up, off the ground. That made her shove the dresser until it slid off the hatch, muscles protesting all the while. Then she dealt with the mangled but still movable padlock, and lifted the trapdoor. Heart in her throat, but holding.
And there he was. As human as she could imagine anyone being.
More human than that, in fact. Because, man, he looked wrecked. Exhausted. Maybe even a little vulnerable—to the point where it probablywouldhave affected her. Itwouldhave played on her heart strings. If it hadn’t been for one other tiny detail about him that she simply had to focus on instead. “Are you actually wearing one of my grandmother’s nighties?” she asked.
Because god, he was. He totally was. And it wasn’t even one of the simpler ones either. It was a huge, flowery tent, with ruffles on the ends of the voluminous sleeves. Then more ruffles on the hem, and around the middle.
He looked like a display in a cake shop window.
And he obviously knew it. His sallow face flamed red the second she spoke. “Don’t say it like it’s nuts. It was either this or emerge completely nude.”
“But you had loads of clothes on last night. There must be some of them left.”
She waved in the direction of where the clothes should have been, as he clambered out into the hallway. But he just sighed and rolled his eyes. “All that tells me is that you haven’t fully grasped what just happened.”
“I totally have, okay? Your face went weird.”
“Yeah, and the rest of me followed.”
“So your whole body grew fangs?” she asked. And, okay, she loaded it up with deadpan. But she was pushing it now, and she knew it. Worse: he knew it too.
He gave her such a withering look.
“Oh come on, you can guess better than that. You’ve seen this movie a million times before. Heck, you’re anexperton movies like this. You once told me the entire plot of one of them, when my mom wouldn’t let me watch.”
She pictured herself telling him, even more strongly than she had envisioned the memory of the movie theatre. She saw his face getting increasingly more disgusted as she went into all the gory details. Saw him trying to scoff as if he wasn’t scared, even though his eyes had always given the game away.
Then later on, he’d snuck up to her window. Like in the movies, where the guy comes to cop a feel. Only instead of anything like that, they’d hidden in their usual place: her closet. Before falling asleep while talking about all the ways they’d save each other, if the plot ofGinger Snapsever happened to them.
And now it was, kind of.
But she wasn’t doing half as well with it as she’d thought she would.
“Right. Yeah. But that’s when it’s not real. And if I say it out loud now, then it’s very real. It’s extremely real. It’s too real formy apparently fragile brain to cope with,” she said. But he just shrugged. And plowed on.
“So then I’ll just say it.”
“Okay, but break it to me gently.”
“There’s no way to gently break this.”
“Sure there is. Use some nice-sounding euphemisms.”
“What, like once every full moon Uncle Hairy comes to visit?”
He said it in the same slightly desperate, kind of exasperated tone he’d been using for the last five minutes. But the thing was, he’d gone with those words. And those words were funny, she couldn’t deny that they were funny. So now on top of trying not to put too much trust in him, and going all soft over flashbacks to their once-was-friendship, she had to force her immediate response to that down.
She pressed her lips tight together. And when that didn’t work she glanced away. But it was too late. It was too late and she knew it. She could see it all over his face. He lookeddelighted.
And he sounded delighted too. “Hey, you’re almost laughing,” he said.
Damn him. “I am not. This is my horrified face.”
“You may be able to get away with claiming that with other people. But not with me. I was your best friend for like ten years, remember? I know your amused expression when I see it.”
“Well, maybe it’s changed since then.”
He shook his head firmly. “Nothing about you has changed since then.”
