How To Bring Your Love Life Back From The Dead (20 page)

That was the last time she’d tutored
him, and she’d tried to make it the last time she saw him. No one
had gotten as good at avoiding him as she had. She’d raised it to
an art. By the time graduation had come and gone, she’d made plans
to be gone…and plans to leave her ghosts behind.

“I’m surprised you even remember,”
she said, trying to tug her hand from his. He wouldn’t let go. Clay
Matthews could be so irritating.

What would he have done if she’d
shown up that night? Laughed at her probably. Or maybe he would
have actually made her stay the night in that house, and it was
really eerie and creepy back then. One night—alone—in a haunted
house for a measly twenty bucks.

“Of course I remember, this is Rye
Patch, not Chicago.”

She went still again. It’s not like
it was a huge secret where she’d been all these years but it still
surprised her that he’d mentioned it—that he’d
remembered.

“You wouldn’t even be trespassing
this time.”

Yeah, there was no way she’d have
done it, and that was part of it. She could see getting arrested
and compounding the humiliation with a trip to the police station.
Hell, for all she knew, maybe the final part of the joke would have
been for Clay to turn her in. It would have been cheating to do
that in order to win the bet, but he’d been smiling at her at the
time—and who knew what Clay was up to when he was
smiling.

“We’re not kids anymore,
Clay.”

“So, you
are
welching on the
bet, then?” He said it matter-of-factly like he was just setting
the record straight.

She bit her lower lip. It didn’t
feel right—to welch on a bet. Maybe the bet was another ghost
haunting her and costing her sleep at night.

“I’ll give you top rate on inflation
and make it fifty.” He was still holding her hand. It was
scrambling her brain.

“I.…” She shook her head.

“I’ll paint the house whatever color
you want if you win.”

That was tempting. Forcing him to
help her win the bet was awfully tempting. She’d never been able to
get the upper hand on Clay. Ever.

There was just that niggling
concern….

“What do you get out of this?” she
asked, shaking her head again.

“What do you mean what do I get out
of this? A bet is a bet. A bet is a time-honored tradition in Rye
Patch. We take our bets seriously.”

“Yes, but is it just the chance to
laugh at me whether I win or lose? Is that the draw?”

He was so quiet she might have
thought he wasn’t there if she didn’t always feel a heightened
awareness of him when he was around…and, of course, if he wasn’t
still holding her hand. Clay was still holding her hand. He’d never
held her hand this long before, not even when they’d been kids,
before they’d realized there were other reasons to hold hands
besides just staying together.

“Is that what you thought?” he asked
softly.

His voice sounded so different from
when he’d been teasing her that she actually turned and looked at
him. She even met his gaze and stared into his hazel eyes. She’d
always thought he’d gotten the best part of every color in his
eyes. Like genetics hadn’t been able to settle on which color would
be best so it’d given him everything. Now he had small lines on the
edge of his eyes from all these years…all these years of calling
her ‘Duck.’

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have
to. Of course that’s what she thought. There was no other logical
reason he’d bet a seventeen year old girl that she wouldn’t spend
the night in a haunted house. That was a bet guys made with their
twelve year old guy friends. And they made that bet for the sole
purpose of torturing their friends into doing something stupid. She
wasn’t even sure you’d do that to a friend. It was a bet you only
made with enemies so you could laugh at them whether they won or
not.

“So, that’s what you thought back
then too?”

She still didn’t answer. Of course
she did. Seriously. She’d been working up the nerve to ask him to
the high school dance, and he’d wanted to challenge her into doing
something stupid. She’d shaken on the bet so she wouldn’t cry right
in front of him. As it was, she only lasted until her front yard so
her elderly neighbor brought over a pie that night thinking they’d
had a death in the family.

“When have I ever laughed at you,
Cory?”

“You did…just now…because you heard
I’d bet on off-white paint.”

“No, that was laughing at your bet.
I laughed at my mom’s bet too. She was pulling for red to match the
bricks. She seems to think I should let her win just because she’s
my mom. I’ve never laughed at you.”

She rolled her eyes and looked away.
This new fake sincerity was to make her lower her defenses and fall
for it. “You do all the time. Last week, when I wore my hair in
braids, you said I looked twelve years old again. Yesterday, you
came into my shop just to tell me my muffler was waking up half the
town and that you were all taking bets on when it’d actually blow
up.”

“And I offered to fix it for you,
and the other was only teasing you because I like when you do that
thing where you click your tongue and look away like you’d spank me
if you could.”

She clicked her tongue and looked
away…and then froze and winced. Did she always do that? Maybe he
had good reason to make fun of her. She stayed looking away from
him. “Look, some of us just don’t enjoy being poked fun of
constantly. Go find someone else to torture.”

Why was he still holding her hand?
Pretty soon, she’d get so uncomfortable that her palm would sweat,
and then he’d have another thing to make fun of.

Another long moment of silence. This
one she wasn’t going to fill. He wasn’t going to force her to
respond to him.

Finally, finally, he said, “What if
I stopped teasing you—because that’s all it was—what if I
stopped?”

Sometimes, he made no sense at all.
She shifted so she could see him out of the corner of her eye. He
was staring at her with what looked like a serious expression.
“What do you mean ‘what if’?”

“Tonight. The old Miller place—which
I now own—if I promise to stop teasing you, will you come tonight
and finish off our bet?”

It was tempting. She didn’t like the
idea of letting a bet go any more than he apparently did. A bet was
a bet. Plus, he’d stop making fun of her. A bet was a bet—he’d have
to stop.

“And you’ll stop calling me Duck?”
It hadn’t bothered her when she thought it was a childhood nickname
that stuck like glue, but now it implied she’d had a crush on him
for over two decades and he knew it.

“No. Sorry, that’s outside the scope
of the bet. And even if I stopped saying it out loud, I’d still
call you Duck in my head.”

She turned to glare at him before
clicking her tongue and looking away. Her mouth dropped open the
minute she did, and then she did snatch her hand from beneath his
so she could cover her face with both her hands. “I can’t believe I
really do that,” she said through her fingers. Maybe everyone in
town had noticed and made fun of her for it too.

“I think it’s cute that you never
noticed before now.”

“See, you can’t even go a full
minute without making fun of me.”

Another long silence.

“I’ll come paint your shop—in front
of the whole town—if you do it. So they’ll know that you
won.”

She dropped her hands and stared at
him. “They know about that bet? Please tell me they don’t know.
Have they always known?” There was an unofficial official bet book
in Lenny’s ice cream parlor, and he was always in charge of holding
any money—unofficially. Most bets made it in there. If they’d known
all this time…. Well, if they’d known a decade ago, there would
have been a cop car waiting for her to show up and escort her
home.

“No. It’s just between you and me.
But if anyone asks why I’m painting your shop, you can tell them
it’s because I lost a bet. Actually you can tell them whatever you
want. Or nothing at all and let them assume.”

“Let them assume what?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask
them. Do we have a bet or not? One night in a haunted house in
exchange for fifty bucks, painting my house whatever color you
want, I’ll stop teasing you, and I’ll come paint your
shop.”

Now, the bet seemed lop-sided in the
opposite direction it had when they were teenagers. Back then,
she’d thought that only a real moron would take a bet like that for
only twenty bucks. Even with them making minimum wage, twenty bucks
wasn’t worth looking like a fool and staying in a haunted house
overnight and possibly being arrested. “You must really want to see
me lose,” she said.

He sighed and muttered, “It’s like
we’re not even in the same world.”

He was just now realizing that?
She’d known that since they were kids, and she’d started following
the cutest boy Rye Patch had ever seen.

Sometimes he wanted to shake her
until she opened her eyes and saw what everyone else
saw.

When his mom had told him that Cory
had low self-esteem and was shy, he’d laughed at that. She’d always
given as good as she got in high school—up until he’d made that bet
and then she’d wanted nothing to do with him and skipped town as
soon as she graduated. Since she was back, they’d slipped back into
their old patterns like the bet hadn’t ruined everything. It was a
chance reminding her, but he thought now that she was older…she’d
figure out what was going on, and they could maybe rewrite
history.

Talk about a haunting. That bet had
haunted him for a decade.

Never, in a million years, never in
the decade since they’d made that bet, never had he thought what
she’d thought…that this was all some cruel joke on her. No wonder
she’d avoided him. If the guy who had always been there for you
turned against you one day for the sake of a bet…well, things made
a bit more sense to him at the very least.

His mom was going to give him hell
if she found out she was right, and that he had been an idiot all
these years.

“Is there power on in the house?”
she asked suddenly.

It was about time he got some
traction with her on this. He was about to throw in standing
outside her shop holding a sign—a sign that said anything she
wanted it to say. He’d practically been doing that for a year
anyway. She might be the only one in the entire town who hadn’t
realized he’d been doing the adult equivalent to pulling her braids
and, last week, he had actually pulled her braids, and she still
didn’t get it.

“Yes, there’s power on in the house.
I was only using a generator when I was working on the
electricity.” He’d had someone come in and help with that as he
always did, but this time he’d paid for more help along the way to
get it ready in time and for it to be perfect—the last thing he
wanted was for an electrical fire or for pipes to burst. The house
was a monster of a project, but it had been a monster in his life
for a decade, and he was killing that demon at the same time as
finishing off this bet.

“So, I show up…spend the night in
the house…by myself….”

He frowned. “No, I’ll be there.” Of
course he’d be there. That was the whole point of the bet from the
minute he’d thought of it.

“To make sure I don’t
leave?”

“No.” He should just say it—say how
he felt—but he still didn’t. “Because I’m not about to let you stay
the night alone in a haunted house.”

“Were you going to stay ten years
ago?” Her voice was so soft that if he was a couple feet closer to
Main Street and the slow rumble of cars carrying people coming home
from working in the city, he’d have never heard her.

“Of course I was.” Wow, it was just
amazing how much he’d screwed up. It had seemed so obvious. Had he
really not said he was going to be staying with her? He’d thought
he had. Maybe he had, and she’d heard what she’d expected to
hear.

“Oh.” She went really quiet for one
of those long ‘puzzling everything out’ moments. He liked that she
had to overthink everything. Or he had. He’d had no idea she’d been
overthinking things between them. She had to stop that. She’d been
taking his teasing completely the wrong way.