Page 40 of Revelry
“I’ll just bet it was.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, smirking. “Are you here as a…” he trailed off, holding up two fingers and tapping them together.
“Oh, no, just friends.” But I stumbled over the word. I had made afriend. It wasn’t something I’d planned on but here we are.
“Cool. Well I’ve got another hour to go on-shift and then I can come and hang out. Leo and Maddy are here already, and Kat will be by in a little while too.”
I nodded. “It’ll be nice to see everyone.” And I shocked myself by kinda meaning it. I was interested to see if Leo would also come dressed as a cowboy given his rodeo career or if he would choose something else.
Jack waved goodbye and went back to serving. I grabbed our drinks and headed back to Gertrude who was over by the pumpkin carving station.
“Tate, let’s carve pumpkins!” she shouted over the music, bouncing on her feet. Her breasts struggled against the lowcorset of her dress and I fought like hell to keep my eyes on her face, but they did drift a little lower than that for a second.
I’m human.
And horny apparently.
“I’m not sure I know how.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Wait, tell me you’ve carved a pumpkin before?”
I shook my head and she grabbed my hand and tugged me behind the station to one of the empty seats. “Right, so it’s not rocket science but essentially cut the top off, scoop out the insides and then carve a shape or character of your choice. Let’s make it interesting, winner of silliest carving buys the next round of drinks?”
I sighed, giving in. “Deal.”
She clapped her hands happily then reached for the two aprons hanging up. “You might want this, it gets messy.”
My stomach muscles contracted. I didn’t cope well with messy and I hadn’t considered that. When it came to animals, my passion for helping them seemed to quiet the noise in my head when it came to mess. And I always wore gloves. But there weren’t any gloves here. I glanced at the other activities and they were all mess-based. Bobbing for eyeballs and the trick or treat station looked to be wet and gooey. My anxiety started flaring.
“On second thoughts, shall we do something else? Didn’t you say there was a Monster Mash Off – perhaps we should practice?” Only my fear of mess would make me suggest a fucking dance routine.
Gertrude frowned at me, a little crease forming between her brows and I hated that once again my OCD was impacting others. I hated that she was excited about this and now I was ruining it.
“Why don’t you wanna carve a pumpkin?” she pouted.
My mouth flapped open but no sound came out. I looked away, how did I answer that? There was no answer that didn’t make it seem like I had serious issues. I glanced down at the apron, squeezing it in my fist and after a moment, she covered my hand. I flicked my eyes to hers and found them soft with empathy.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll hollow them both out so you don’t have to get those sexy chaps all messy. It’s my favorite part anyway so you’re actually doing me a favor.”
Her smile was so bright, so innocent that I couldn’t help but agree.
“Thanks,” I murmured quietly. She clearly had an idea of what the issue was, and embarrassment flushed my cheeks that she had to rescue me. I tied my apron on and while she hollowed out a pumpkin, I drank my whiskey and fetched us another drink each, thinking about the fact that she said my chaps were sexy.
“All done!” she announced, pushing my nice, clean pumpkin over to me. She’d even wiped all around the edges to remove any goo.
She was too damn sweet under all that sass.
“Thanks Gertrude, really.”
“No sweat!” she shouted as the band struck up withBad Romance,the ra-ra ra-a-a-a echoing around the bar and making anything else impossible to hear. I watched as she got to work on her pumpkin, the apron strings dangling behind her, tickling the backs of her thighs. Her tongue poking out as she got to a particularly tricky bit. My lips lifted in a small smile and like she knew what was happening, her stare snapped to mine and my lips resumed their regularly scheduled frowning.
“Hurry up. I may be behind, but I’ll catch up quick!” she yelled, then did a slight wiggle to the music. She was such a ray of sunshine, brightening up the room, like her own little aura was lighting up our lives.
I turned back to my pumpkin, wracking my brain for something silly and coming up empty. Silly wasn’t in my nature. So I just decided to start carving and see what happened.
Damn, it was fun.
I was so invested, darting glances over to Gertrude to see what she was doing. Every time she caught me, she put her arms out, blocking her design and pushing my competitive edge higher.
“Done?” she called a while later.
