Page 16 of Don't Scare Me, My Love

“Boo!” Nicholas threw up his arms as if he was a monster and roared so loudly that the trees on the other side of the parking lot shook.

I just raised my eyebrows.

“Nothing?”

“No.”

He lowered his arms and shook his head. “This is unbelievable.”

“This is me.”

His eyes stared ahead of him for a second before they glanced at me. He took a deep breath. “Then how about this?” He stood up straight and took a step toward me. “If I can scare you enough to make you scream, flinch, or break out in a sweat, will you go on a date with me?”

My head jerked forward.Did I just hear him right?I couldn’t take my eyes off of his as they remained focused on me. His lower lip quivered.

He was asking me out?

I could’ve just agreed to go on a date, but the twinkle in his eyes when he suggested this bet made me want to see how far he would go. “You’ll have to try hard to make me sweat.”

The corners of his mouth turned up. “I’ve seen enough horror movies to be inspired.”

“You can pretend to be murdered by a serial killer for all I care, and I won’t even flinch when I know it’s just an act to scare me.”

His eyes narrowed as if he was already thinking about how to make that happen. “I’ll make you scream, sweat, and beg for more in the end, I promise.” He held out his hand for me to seal the deal.

“You’re still talking about scaring me, right?” I stared at his hand for a moment but then took it.

He nodded until his eyes widened as he must have realized how his last sentence sounded.

My heart was racing. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that with this bet, we’d just postponed a date we both wanted to have, butwho cares? The way we met was weird. The way we got talking was weird. Why shouldn’t the way we got to go on a date be weird as well?

The bell ring of the main door made us both look up to find the woman and her suit back with us. We let go of each other's hands and locked our eyes one last time as if to confirm that this bet was on.

He’s going to have a hard time scaring me, butman, I was excited—and rooting for him more than I probably should have.

Nothing happenedfor the rest of the day except for him being charming with the regulars and telling another stranger a bloodcurdling lie about my eye. Of course, with furtive glances to see if I was still cool with it.

“A barber slipped and cut open his eyeball,” he said, followed by another pat on the back from me after the man had left.

When I asked him how he got the idea, he laughed and said, “It was from this old movie that’s not even a horror film, by Salvador Dali,” who was not only a surrealist painter but also made movies, as I learned seconds later. I got a whole lecture about how there was a scene where they cut an eye open and how they did the shot without having CGI back then. I’ll spare you the details.

What he told me was both fascinatinganddisgusting. But seeing his face light up as he talked about it made it hard to take my eye off him.

Other than that, the last hours of our first shift together were more or less business as usual. There was no attempt to scare me, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he had to come up with something first or if he wanted to drag it out until I stopped expecting anything.

At the end of the day, I quickly introduced him to one of my other employees, Gary, who took over the evening shift, and then Nicholas and I went our separate ways. He, after all, didn’t scare me enough to make me sweat, flinch, or scream, so we couldn’t just hang out.

The next morning, he was waiting for me in the parking lot, a burlap bag on his shoulders, sitting on the hood of his minivan. We didn’t talk much, except that he insisted on opening the storeso he could internalize all the tasks. No mention of the burlap bag or of what was in it. I knew it had to have something to do with our bet, but I wasn’t going to be afraid of a bag. So after I unlocked the security system and opened up the safe so he could get the till, he hung the bag on a hook in the break room and went through each step just as I had shown him the day before, this time with me shadowing him.

He checked the restrooms, turned on the lights and the coffee machine, fired up the pumps, and made me a black coffee.

And me? I was always waiting for something to happen—some attempt at a scare—while he did his job as if we had never had this conversation.

“So, what do you have planned?” I finally asked after we unlocked the front doors.

We stood behind the counter, waiting for Jack to bring fresh donuts and for the first customers to arrive. Nicholas counted the change in the register.

“Doing a good job?”

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