Page 108 of Pick Me Up On Tuesdays

The one where Ethan’s father waited.

I glanced at Ethan. His jaw was clenched so tight I saw the muscles twitching. His usual smug, reckless expression was gone. He looked… different.

Smaller, somehow.

I didn’t know much about his past. Ethan never talked about it. Not in any real detail. He joked, he dodged, he deflected. But right now, standing here, with the weight of his father’s presence looming over him, I realized something.

Ethan wasn’t just afraid.

He was terrified.

The lead monster stopped walking. The other two closed in behind us, their shifting, liquid-like flesh making that horrible sound again. Like something slithering inside them was trying to push free.

A door opened.

Not the front.

The back.

The air changed instantly, thickening, darkening. The noise from the town—cars, music, voices—dulled, like the world itself was recoiling.

A figure stepped out.

I didn’t breathe.

Ethan went rigid beside me.

The man—if you could call him that—moved with an effortless grace, his presence so commanding that even the monsters seemed to shrink in his wake. He was tall, his suit impossibly tailored, his every movement deliberate. Shadows clung to him unnaturally, distorting the space around him.

And then, I saw his eyes.

Golden.

Not like Ethan’s. Not like the monsters. Not like ones of a person that was almost dying.

Brighter. Deeper. Swirling with something that looked like fire but felt like something far worse.

My fingers twitched at my sides, instinct screaming at me to run, to fight, to do something.

But I didn’t move.

Because he was looking at me now.

And then—he smiled.

Not a normal smile.

A slow, knowing, razor-sharp curve of the lips.

Like he had already won.

Like he had been expecting me.

Like I was exactly where he wanted me to be.

Ethan inhaled shakily beside me.

“Son.”

---