Page 18 of Don't Scare Me, My Love

The doll rose onto its legs as if it was haunted, its dead giant eyes glaring at me as if its moment had finally come. Without a warning, it rushed toward me.

It would have been frightening if I hadn’t known that Nicholas was the master of this stunt.

So, I squatted down and greeted the doll with open arms. “What are you doing here, sweetie?” I asked it, and as I picked it up, I felt some resistance. I searched for the reason and found a fishing line hooked to her arm, revealing how Nicholas did this trick.

“Oh man,” he huffed from behind me. “I’ve worked so hard on this one, and you didn’t even flinch.”

I turned to him, just as slowly as the doll had stood up seconds before, to find his mouth upside down. Even though it didn’t work, the effort he had put in impressed me. A whole two days of preparation for one specific moment.

“Did Gary help you?”

Nicholas nodded. “He’s such a kind man, and as far as I can tell, he’s rooting for us.”

I didn’t know what to make of that, but I just shrugged because it didn’t matter. Gary knew I was gay and was always supportive, so this didn’t come as a surprise.

“Well,” I handed the doll back to Nicholas. “Good luck with your next attempt.” I went inside because we still had a gas station to open up, but as I entered the break room, I felt bad that his trick hadn’t scared me.

Should I pretend to be scared at one point? Not that he would get discouraged and give up in the end.

No one had ever gone to so much trouble to get me to go out on a date. He was quite a prize. And to put it bluntly, I wanted togo on a date with him too and see what his lips could do besides smile.

At least he wasn’t discouraged that his morning scare didn’t work. I found the spider in the cash register later that day—which didn’t make me flinch. After lunch, he held up his phone to take a picture of us at work for his mom when a filter on it pretended that a spider was crawling across my face—which was cute but not scary. An hour before the end of our shift, he tried to scare me by appearing behind me wearing a zombie mask—but instead of screaming, I laughed hard at the weird noises he made.

“I feel bad that you bought all this stuff,” I told him as he took it off. “Mask, fake spider, two dolls? How much did you spend?”

“This may sound strange, but I already had the mask and the spider. And to ease your conscience, I only paid four dollars for the dolls at a thrift store in Ashbourne.”

I couldn’t watch him try anymore. The whole thing was fun, but it clearly wasn’t working out the way we both had thought it would. “Do you have any plans for Saturday?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s Halloween, and I wanted to ask you if you?—”

“Wait.” He held up his index finger to stop me and shook his head. “You can’t ask me outnow.”

“Why not?”

"Because." He stared at me, his eyes blinking hard. "A deal is a deal, and... I've gotanotherone." He drew in a deep breath. “The last one. If it doesn't work out, I'll pay for all the drinks."

“So, let me get this straight. You want to keep trying, but either way, we’re going out on Saturday?”

“Yeah?”

It was just too damn hard to say no to his face. “I don’t think it has ever taken two gay guysthislong to finally go on a date.”

“We’ve already established that we’re weird. And that way, we’ll be past those awful first date situations where you don’t know what to talk about because you know nothing about each other.”

“Can’t argue with that,” I replied. “So, when are you going to try and fail for the last time?”

He shook his head. “I won’t fail. At least you’ll break a sweat. I’m sure of it.”

“Turning on the heat doesn’t count.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Soon, you’ll wish I’d turned on the heater instead.”

There wasno sign of anything happening. He just came to work the next day, did his job, and didn’t even try to do anything scary—no spider, doll, or mask. I was tempted to ask if the bet was still on because it didn’t seem like it was. But the way his eyes were constantly searching for me, the way a smile appeared on his face whenever we talked, and the way it became more and more common for us to stand close to each other behind the cramped counter, I couldn’t complain. Our date was going to happen, and I knew we both couldn’t wait.

On Friday, I was still on the lookout throughout the shift, but even when Gary showed up fifteen minutes before he was supposed to take over, nothing had happened.What was Nicholas waiting for? Was he not trying anything?This was his last chance.

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