Droplets of water snailed their way down the passenger window of Lilith’s car. She was pretty much my only real friend, and she was also my only access to private transportation around the city. I was admittedly over-bundled against the light chill of the early Fall morning, but I’d been waiting all summer to wear my comfy clothes, and I could always peel some layers off if I got hot.

I ran my fingertips over the letter in my jacket pocket. I’d made such a habit of carrying it around and re-reading it that I’d ended up turning the paper soft, but I still brimmed with equal parts excitement and dread when I touched it. The letter meant a new start. A chance to take a real step toward my dream. For years, it felt like I’d been circling the idea of becoming a real, professional artist with about the same drunken lack of direction as a toddler on a bike with one training wheel. I never could just go in a straight line, and every time I thought I was getting closer, I’d zip right past it and have to circle around to start the process all over again.

This time was going to be different. The letter in my jacket was that straight line. It was a direct flight, and even I couldn't mess this one up. I just had to show up at the airport in January. It would be as simple as breathing. Then again, I had sleep apnea, and apparently breathing wasn't always the simplest thing in the world for me, so that was a bad analogy. The point was, I could do this.

It was my favorite time of year. It was Fall. Summer was over, or at least coughing up its final, dying words. I knew summer was supposed to be the best. It was the time of swimsuits, parties, picnics, and throwing a frisbee to your golden retriever in the park. Yeaah! Go, Summer! Except that had never been my reality. For me, Summer was underboob sweat, staying in all day because I'd rather not melt outside, and getting the yearly sunburn that reminds me why I don't ever want to get a sunburn again. Oh, and the influx of air conditioner commercials about "beating the heat" that pop up on the radio.

Well, screw you very much, Summer. It was over for another year, and now it was the time of horror movie marathons and for M&Ms to put out their Halloween themed commercials. The leaves were turning every shade of yellow, orange, and red you could imagine. Rainy morning or not, I couldn’t help feel the familiar excitement of the coming holidays. This morning had been the day I waited for all year—the one where you can feel the change as soon as you step outside. The air had that crisp, energizing quality that made me want to tackle my day, even if tackling my day should've had the appeal of tackling a three-hundred pound, sweaty man with patchy body hair.

I'd always loved Halloween. Maybe not so much for the holiday itself, but more because it was the first wave of the cold-weather holidays I spent all year looking forward to. Except for this year, they'd be more than just another round of holidays. They'd be the last few months before I flew overseas and started art school in Paris. No matter how many times I thought about it or how often I re-read the acceptance letter, it still didn't seem real.

“Stop looking so happy over there,” Lilith groaned. She wore a thick bar of eye-liner, a perfectly straight row of black bangs, and a black lace choker on her pale, slender neck. She had the perfect porcelain skin and features of a beauty queen, but she wore a constant expression that let you know, without any shadow of a doubt, she resented the fact that she had to exist.

If she had to be here, she’d make sure the universe knew it had made a mistake.

I’d had the good fortune of meeting her in high school, and we’d been unlikely friends ever since. Maybe it was because she only survived school from my notes and study help, or maybe it was that I’d managed to save her from the worst of the bullies she seemed to attract. Either way, I liked her, and I guess it was for the same reason people inexplicably liked cats. Want to poop on my pillow because I went out of town for a day? Want to pee directly outside your litter pan even though it’s perfectly clean? Or maybe you want to just make sure gravity still works for the tenth time this week and knock my drink to the floor. That was Lilith, well, minus the bathroom habits, as far as I knew. Deep down. Deep, deep, down, I knew she still needed affection just like everyone else. And I liked how hard she tried to pretend she didn’t.

“I said stop it,” she repeated in her usual deadpan. “I can see you smiling from the corner of my eyes. It’s going to make me barf.”

“Can’t help it. It’s Fall,” I said the words in a singsong voice, partly because I knew outward happiness was like Lilith’s kryptonite.

She grimaced. “Good, then maybe those disgusting creatures you’re trying to grow in our kitchen will die soon.”

“Plants, Lilith. They’re called plants, and considering they’re inside, I’m sorry to say they will probably survive.”

“Accidents happen, though.” She didn’t take her eyes from the road, but I thought I saw a little glimmer of pleasure in them as her thoughts turned murderous.

“What kind of person doesn’t like plants?”

“They smell.”

"Ooh!" I said, pointing to a billboard on the side of the highway. "Pumpkin Spiced Lattes! We're half-way through October, and I haven't even had one yet. We have to. Please.”

“Ugh.” She gave me a sideways look—showing no concern for the fast-moving traffic in front of us as she stared me down

A nervous smile twitched across my face. “The road,” I said quietly.

She languidly dragged her eyes back to the road. “It’s not going anywhere.”

“Technically, no, it’s not. But we are. At about… Ninety,” I said, leaning to the side to glance at the speedometer. I laughed, but my heart was pounding. I was pretty sure a few more seconds would’ve had us careening off the road to our fiery deaths. I had too much to live for to die young. The last season of Game of Thrones was still coming, I had never eaten a poached egg, and my bucket list still had at least ten items left unchecked, starting with ice skating with a gorgeous guy at night to the soundtrack of Dirty Dancing.

In all seriousness, if I died before I made it to art school in Paris… I was definitely going to come back to haunt Lilith. I’d use my artistic skills to draw ghostly penises in the fogged up glass of her shower doors, and they wouldn’t be the high-school variety of graffiti penis. They’d be disturbingly detailed and lifelike. I’d… well, actually, that was about as far as my haunting creativity went. But if the time came, I’d think of something better.

Lilith shrugged at being reminded to watch the road. It was hard to say when she was amused, but I thought I could sense it radiating off her like heat. I probably seemed innocent to the world and breakable to her, even after the years we’d known each other. In her cat-like way, I think she was pawing me closer to the edge of a long, hard drop to the floor just to see what would happen.

I looked out the window as we took the exit. Stores had already started stocking the shelves with Halloween gear from candy corn to pumpkins, and I'd watched no less than two horror movie marathons, even though I had the same tolerance for being startled as a chihuahua on the Fourth of July. Freddy Krueger scared me the most. I mean, what's scarier than a guy who gets you in your dreams? At least with the other bad guys, you can not be the horror movie bimbo who doesn’t realize that basements equal death, upstairs equals death, and barns full of thrashing equipment definitely equal death. Honestly, if I was in a horror movie, I’d gather up all my friends, look in the mirror, and try to figure out which one of us looked most like the cute girl next door. Everybody else was dead, and the guy who looked most like a jock was probably secretly the killer. Predictable or not, I still watched horror movies from behind a big pillow.

I told Lilith she could park and let me run in to grab the coffees, partly because I wanted a taste of the weather, but more because I’d seen how much she frightened fast-food workers. She once told me how she had found a dead fly, saved it in a zip-lock bag, and then dropped it in her fries to get free food at a restaurant. The worst part was I was pretty sure she didn’t really care about saving the money. I think she just liked tormenting people.

I wrapped my scarf a little tighter around my neck. Yes, my scarf. It was scarf weather, and I don’t know if I loved anything more than wrapping what was basically a baby sized blanket around my neck and nuzzling into it all day. It made me wish we could bring back capes. I’d never seen it in one of those medieval shows or movies, but I’d bet my life that people spun their capes around and used them as blankets when they were just hanging out around the castle.

Just feeling the crisp air outside made me want to skip and clap my hands together, but I knew Lilith would probably spontaneously combust if she caught that much happiness in the rearview mirror, so I controlled myself.

I managed to get our coffees without traumatizing anyone and slid back into the car a few minutes later. Lilith took the coffee from me and sipped it. She groaned. “Ugh. Disgusting.”

“What?” I asked. “Did they mess it up?”

“No. It’s fine. I knew it would taste like this.”

I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain.

She glared at me. “It’s easier to hate everyone who drinks these if I remember how gross they are.”

“Riiight,” I said, nodding like I understood. I sipped my drink and then paused. I expected her to laugh, maybe even just a little, but her face showed no expression.

I smiled to myself. She might not think she was funny, but I enjoyed Lilith and her… moments. She definitely had the same kind of charm of a cat. They might act like they hated you and were too good for you, but you just knew they still wanted scratches even if they’d never actually admit it. I wondered what Lilith would do if I scratched behind her ears, but decided she could do more damage to me than a cat, so I kept my hands to myself. I still planned to find a way to make her smile eventually, even if it meant I’d have to bring her a dead bird.

We pulled up to the retirement home a little while later.

“Want me to walk you in?” asked Lilith.

I grinned. “No thanks, mom.”

“Whatever. I’m gassy anyway. Probably better if I don’t move around too much right now.”

“Believe it or not, I could’ve gone all day without knowing that.”

“It’s your lucky day. I’m running a two for one special.”

“What? On things I didn’t need to know?”

She nodded.

I could see she was waiting for permission and had a feeling I was going to regret it, but I sighed. "Okay. Go ahead."

"I see a gray man with no face who stands in the corner of my room some nights. He watches me sleep. I wake up paralyzed, and I can't move anything but my eyes—”

“Perfect!” I interrupted because I already felt chills rolling across my skin. “That should help the insomnia I’ve been dealing with. I’m going to go teach some grumpy seniors to paint now. Thanks for the ride.”

“Oh. William is going to be there today. It’s on his schedule. Just a head’s up.”

William Chamberson was Lilith’s boss. She worked as his secretary, and I wasn’t sure if she was giving me a head’s up because she thought I still had a crush on the man, but I’d never had one to begin with, whether she believed me or not. My middle school boyfriend cheated on me by holding hands with another girl just a few days after we’d officially announced we were “going out.” So, yeah, I was basically an expert in the kind of life-changing pain unfaithfulness can cause. William was married, and my inner middle schooler would, like, never even think about having a crush on a married man, even if he was drop-dead gorgeous and charming.

William was a twin. His brother was Bruce Chamberson, and they were the CEOs of a multi-million dollar corporation. I’d met both of them a couple times in the few weeks I’d been running painting classes here. One of the seniors was William’s grandmother-in-law, and his wife, brother, and brother’s wife regularly came by for poker night with the seniors.

Bruce was the buttoned-up Superman type, with a jawline that could break through brick walls faster than the Kool-Aid man in a 90s commercial, eyes that could make you break a sweat, and the lean, muscular body to match. His hair was always perfectly in place, and it only took a few seconds of watching him to see that he either had O.C.D. or was dangerously close. If you liked your men… well, actually, if you liked men in general, then it would’ve been hard to find fault with him. Except the whole being married part, of course.

Then there was William. If Bruce was Superman, William was what Superman would look like if he liked to party, had never met a comb, and had a slight problem with kleptomania. Together, they were an unlikely pair, but it was highly entertaining to watch them clash, which they always seemed to do.

When I first learned Lilith was working as a secretary for some ultra-powerful businessman, I'll admit, I wondered what kind of boss could put up with her. As soon as I met William, I got it. Lilith was the scheming cat, and William was… I guess he was more like a fox with a little bit of a puppy's enthusiasm and good-naturedness thrown in. He seemed carefree and innocent at times, but there was a cunning genius hiding behind his easy-going nature. I could imagine the amusement in his eyes if Lilith dropped her deadpan humor on an important client or give someone the cold shoulder because she was in the middle of a text.

I carried a small bag of supplies in through the front door, greeted the familiar faces on my way in, and started setting up in the recreational room they’d given me as a classroom. The money from this gig wasn’t great, but it was money, and it was a job related to art. That was a win, in my book. Ever since I’d set my sights on being an artist, I’d carried a chip on my shoulder. Nobody ever thought twice about making jokes when they learned what I wanted to do. “Oh, you’re an artist? So which Starbucks do you work at?”

They could all stuff it. Because I didn’t work at a Starbucks. I worked at… Well, I worked at a retirement home, and sometimes picked up odd jobs. Besides, when I had worked at a coffee place, it wasn’t a Starbucks, thank you very much. It was actually a Starbucks copycat, which might have been worse. Still, they could stuff it.

I was setting up what each student would need at their table when I heard a voice I didn’t recognize outside. I craned my neck to look into the hall and saw the man who was speaking. One of my eyebrows arched involuntarily.

I liked what I saw, and so did my eyebrows—one of them, at least. I had the oddest hint of familiarity about him. He looked kind of like a guy I knew from high school, but I’d gone to high school in a middle-of-nowhere town outside the city, so the coincidence was bordering on impossible.

He was straight-backed and built like an athlete. His hair was cut short and dark, and my eyes immediately sank to his mesmerizing lips. He was clearly very passionate about whatever he was saying, but I paid about as much attention to his words as a high schooler at the end of seventh period.

He was that guy. The guy you dream up when the lights are dimmed, and you're five minutes into a bubble bath. When candles are flickering beside the tub, and you've got a little silky smooth music floating through the air.

I could’ve authored a few thousand fantasy situations right then and there. Fifty Shades of That Guy. One where I’m standing beside my broken down car on the side of the road—forget the fact that I don’t own a car—and he plants his tattooed hands on the hood and takes a look. “I’m going to need to get under your hood, miss. And it’s going to be a dirty job. And I’ll have to use my biggest tool. My penis. I’m going to have sex with you.” Yeah, my dream guys aren’t very subtle.

Or maybe I’d be cornered by three hooded men in a dark alley and he’d come in swinging. Once the bad guys were on the floor, he’d scoop me into those chiseled arms and whisper sweet nothings into my ear the whole way back to his apartment.

“I lost my dentures.”

It took me an unnerving moment to realize the words hadn’t come from Mr. Fantasy’s lips, but from the infamous Grammy, who had walked up beside me. She was William’s grandmother-in-law, and she was the quintessential misbehaved class clown of the retirement home.

“O-okay…” I said.

“And I found Earl’s,” she said, bursting out in laughter as she smiled and flashed a pair of horribly fitting teeth.

I gagged a little. “Why would you—what?”

“The bastard beat me in poker last night. Now he’s going to be beating his food into a liquid if he plans to eat.” She cackled again as she hobbled toward her seat. She moved like she was a frail old woman, but I’d seen through her act. She could move with the ease of someone much younger, but she liked to play the part of the sweet old granny because it helped her get away with more of her shenanigans.

I tried to shake the image of Earl’s teeth in her mouth and refocus on the wonderful moment I was having.

The man was talking to William Chamberson, who noticed me and started heading my way. Now both men were coming toward me, and in a moment of panic, I almost ran.

I calmed down—barely—and faked a smile that hopefully showed I wasn’t about to need a change of pants.

“Ryan,” William said, gesturing to me. “This is Emily. Emily, this is Ryan. He took over running my wife’s bakeries when the TV side of her business took off. And it so happens he’s in need of an artist.”

Ryan. Even the name was familiar. I must have done some serious memory repression in my high school days because I was having trouble putting a name to the face of my cupcake baking tormentor from all those years ago. I could've sworn it was Ryan, though. Up close, the feeling of familiarity had only grown stronger, too.

Ryan reached to shake my hand. So formal. I swallowed and reached to grab his hand, even though in all my fantasy scenarios, our first contact would be a kiss.

I completely missed the lock-in procedure and ended up squeezing his middle and index fingers instead of his whole hand. Somehow, he managed to smoothly cover my mistake by pulling my hand gently toward him in an old-fashioned kind of maneuver that had me blushing.

“Hi,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was feeling the same sense of déjà vu. His head tilted a little, and it looked like he might say something, but he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

“So you’re the artist? William has talked up your work a lot. I’m excited to see it.”

"I mean, I'm poor, and I like to draw pictures. I also wrestle with a lot of insecurities, self-doubt, and emotional pain. I think that qualifies me as an artist, right?"

He grinned and turned his head to William. “I’ll take her.”

“Where?” I asked.

Both men held back laughter.

Where? Did I seriously just say that? I felt like I needed one of those old-fashioned fans to cool off, or maybe just a big burlap sack to put over my head.

“Figuratively speaking,” Ryan said. “Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m putting on a Halloween party for everyone at The Bubbly Baker and Galleon. It’s kind of a team-building thing. At least that’s my excuse for using William’s money.”

The Bubbly Baker. My memory filled with images of the guy I’d known in high school and how we’d been paired together in Home Ec class our first day of senior year. He was the typical, popular jock, and he was dating the most obnoxiously gorgeous and mean girl in the school. I’d expected him to slack off and want me to do all the work, but he had really seemed to love cooking, and he had been good at it. It was the same guy. It had to be.

As soon the thought crossed my mind, it all came back in a rush. The way he hadn’t stood up for me when his girlfriend, Haisley, had embarrassed me in front of half the school, or how he’d let her make up a story about me and never defended me. To top it all off, he’d even taken credit for smearing a cupcake we baked together across my senior art project.

The only thing stopping me from stomping on his foot and giving him a few choice words was that I felt fairly certain he’d never actually been the one to do it. His girlfriend had been sneering victoriously at me the whole time, and the Ryan I had known seemed much more like the kind of guy to take the fall for someone than to do something like that.

So I never knew the truth, but none of it felt quite so life-shatteringly bad now, especially after so many years had passed. We were kids, and we did stupid things. Yes, I’d hated him, but right now, he was an opportunity for a job. Besides, it had been years and years, so it would be ridiculous for me to still hold a grudge, right?

“Ass.” William was looking at his phone and didn’t seem to actually care about Ryan’s admission. “Hey, it looks like I’m about to get into a bidding war on eBay. Gotta leave you two astute business-people to the contract negotiations.”

“eBay? People still use that?” Ryan asked.

“Uh, yes. I buy shit on eBay all the time.”

“Like what?”

A mischievous glint entered William’s eyes. He waggled his eyebrows mysteriously and backed away. “All kinds of things,” he said, then turned and left.

Ryan shook his head. “Probably dildos.”

“Definitely dildos,” I agreed. My stomach was practically bursting with nervous butterflies, but there was a friendliness in Ryan’s eyes that was at odds with his rugged looks. I’d never dream of talking about dildos with a guy I’d just met again for the first time since high school, especially not one I’d sworn was a mortal enemy, even in my bodice-ripping fantasy world.

I thought about asking him if he remembered me, but what if he’d rescind the job offer if he did?

“So do you have any samples of your work? A portfolio, or anything?”

His words hung in the air. I felt time slow down, like the potential of the moment had a crushing gravity of its own. Behind the innocent words, I felt his curiosity—his interest. I felt it crackling through the air like electricity, and all I needed to do was reach out and grab it. In some ways, making things right with him felt like it’d cover up an old, long-forgotten scar. In other ways, I thought it might rip it back open.

“You could sit in on my class,” I said. My head spun a little when I heard my own words, just as innocent as his but carrying their own hidden meaning. I didn’t tell him I’d email him my portfolio or even offer to show him several of the sketches I had just a few steps away in my art bag. I couldn’t help it. On any other day, I might’ve had the willpower to let the moment slide harmlessly by, but today? Today I felt the unshakable excitement of changing seasons and the coming holidays. It felt like a day for taking chances and doing reckless things, and I couldn’t stop myself. “We’re doing the classic Van Gogh recreation of Starry Night, but in Halloween colors. It’s kind of an art cliché by now, but they’ve all been asking when we’re going to do Starry night, so...”

“Didn’t Van Gogh cut his penis off or something and mail it to his girlfriend?”

I grinned. “His ear. I can’t remember if he mailed it or delivered it by hand, though. I guess you’d want something like that to get there fresh, right?”

“Well, then you forgot the most important detail. That’s like the difference between a break-up text and doing it in person.”

“Right, because ear or penis, what’s the difference? But the delivery method…”

He nodded. “I’ve seen paintings of the guy. He probably had a lot more use for his ear than his penis.”

I covered a smile with my hand and shook my head at him. “If you think some jokes about famous artists are going to make me like you, you’re right.” I was scared at how quickly I could feel it happening. The same easy conversation that had flowed between us back then came now like no time had passed at all. I remembered how quickly I’d fallen for him, and how much it had stung when he returned my teenaged girl crush with coldness.

“Who says I want you to like me? I’m just here for the practice. My dream is to become famous enough that when I cut off a body part, they’ll make high school kids learn about it for centuries.”

I gave him a wry look. “I’ll make you a deal. Sit through my class, and then I’ll tell you how much your self-mutilation would rock the art world when I’ve seen what you can do.”

“Perfect. You do have supplies for finger-painting, right?”

I rolled my eyes, but smiled once I’d turned my back to him and got back to setting up the room. My heart was pounding from our quick conversation, and I felt giddier than I had in a long time, especially from talking to a guy. He was shockingly handsome and had the kind of quick, playful personality I liked.

I didn’t even know if he was single, or what his intentions were beyond his supposed need for an artist. God, for all I knew, he could still be with Haisley. I made a quick promise to myself. If he was, first, I’d find a way to ruin her day, and second, I’d run as far from him as I possibly could. There were limits to my capacity for forgiveness.

What I did know was he had a way of making me feel like I was straight back in high school, where something as simple as a glance could set my heart pounding and make my skin burn. He’d given me more than a glance though, hadn’t he?

I took a deep, calming breath. All I had to do was remind myself about art school. No matter who Ryan had become or what he wanted, that was priority number one. Paris. My future. My dreams. Everything depended on me stepping on an airplane in January and setting off for the new chapter in my life. Hopefully it’d be the part of the book where things got interesting. So far, the book of my life had been the parts you skim while you decide if it’s worth forking over a few bucks.

I just needed to remember. I had a life to think about, and the last thing I needed was to fall for some guy who would make me think I had a reason to stay and miss my chance.

But I did need a real job. As much as I loved art night at the retirement home, it wasn’t exactly the Sistine Chapel.

I started my lesson and stammered my way through the brief reminder on mixing paints and how to set up a color palette for a larger project.

I stumbled over my words more than once because I couldn’t stop stealing glances at him. Ryan wasn’t just good-looking. It was like he’d been carved out of a chunk of crystallized female desire and plopped right in front of me. He was exactly my recipe of sexy. Confident, but not in the in-your-face kind of way. Dark, heavy eyebrows, dark hair, and a look somewhere between action hero and the male lead in a romance movie. I could imagine him punching Russians at the helm of a hijacked boat or picking up girls in a rainstorm while he professed his undying love—okay, who am I kidding, I was picturing him picking me up in said rainstorm.

It had either been way, way too long since I had any serious attention from a guy, or Ryan was something special.

I could almost feel my brain mentally flicking me for attention, like it was trying to say, you know what else is special, ovaries for brains? Paris! Art school. Your professional and financial future. Your dreams.

My ovaries were too busy running through ridiculous fantasy after ridiculous fantasy to hear. As long as I was looking right at Mr. Dreamboat, there was going to be no logic bouncing around in my skull. It was all hearts and little kissy-face emojis. Even reminding myself what a jerk he’d been in the end back in high school didn’t help. That was, what, one million years ago? Two? How could I fault him and those intense, smoldering light-brown eyes for something that happened so long ago?

Ryan seemed to actually be very focused on doing a good job, but he was adorably bad at it. I was relieved to see he was kidding about finger painting, but he held the brush like he thought he might have to bash someone over the head with it. I had to stop and help him more than the seniors because he was color challenged.

“What do you get when you mix yellow and red?” I asked.

“Brown,” he said confidently.

I tried not to laugh. I took my job seriously, even when I was getting paid less than minimum wage and covering the cost of supplies. My parents had never managed to climb their way up the career ladder, but one thing they taught me was to do my job with integrity, no matter what it was. For my dad, that was mopping the floors of office buildings, and for my mom, it was scheduling appointments for a dentist’s office. Still, they showed me how to take pride in a job well done instead of what job was being done.

My dad always had a way of phrasing things that made them stick in my mind, and I still remember what he’d told me when I said I wanted to be an artist. He hadn’t discouraged me or said there was no money in it. He’d thought for a while, took a deep breath, and nodded his head. “That’s great. People are going to try to put that down, but those are the same ones who would put you down for wanting to be a plumber or a cook or a secretary. Do what you do well, and you’ll never have to care what they say.”

So when Ryan looked up at me with those dreamy, light brown eyes, I looked back down to his palette and focused on the task. My dad would want me to remember my job was to teach art right now, and Ryan desperately needed to be taught.

“Actually, you get orange.” Without thinking, I grabbed his hand and helped show him how to mix more in a circular motion instead of the choppy, aggressive cuts he was using. I pulled my hand off of his incredibly warm and wonderful skin as soon as I was done, feeling a wave of tingling prickles roll through me where my skin had been against his.

“Hm,” he said. “I don’t think I understood the technique there. Can you show me again?”

I almost swatted at him and giggled like an idiot, but I managed to suppress it as I turned around and squeezed my eyes shut. Paris. I chanted the word in my mind like a mantra. I’d been doing a perfectly fine job of avoiding men up until now. Bit by bit, I could feel myself fighting through the girly stupidity that was threatening to make me deaf and blind to reason and good sense.

“Are you going to teach the rest of us how to paint this shit?” barked Grammy. Her words came out a little slurred through Earl’s teeth. “Or are you going to flirt with the little boy in the front all night?”

“Did you need help?” I asked. My voice was a tight squeak, but I pretended nothing was wrong.

"Yeah.' Her lips turned up in a wicked grin. "I forgot how French kissing works. Maybe you horn-dogs can show us?"

Earl, whose mouth was a sunken, puckered little hole without his teeth, burst into scratchy laughter punctuated by hacking coughs. The rest of my students didn’t seem as amused, or they were oblivious—I couldn’t tell.

When class was over, Ryan’s painting somehow still looked like it had been finger-painted, even though I’d definitely seen him using a brush. It was, without a doubt, the worst painting I’d ever seen a grown adult produce. If Jackson Pollock had a baby with Picasso and the baby grew up to be a cocaine addict who painted with shaky withdrawal hands, it still would’ve been better than Ryan’s work. He held it up and looked at it with a wrinkled forehead, then turned it and smiled a little. “Oh, it was upside down,” he said.

“You can tell?” I asked, tilting my head.

“No, not really. You’re lucky I’m not looking for an art teacher, because I didn’t learn a thing.”

I frowned. “None of my other students complained.”

“I guess they didn’t have as hard a time focusing on what you were saying instead of how you looked saying it.”

I self-consciously ran my hands across my hair, immediately thinking I must’ve had something embarrassingly wrong the whole time.

“No. I’m saying it was nice watching you. I can tell you really care about all of this. I guess I forgot to actually listen, is all.”

I grinned. “If you had listened and ended up with that painting, I’d fire myself.”

“From a place this nice? No way. You can’t give up this kind of gig.”

“Hey. Watch it. I’m lucky to have this job. I’m doing something I love and getting paid for it.”

A slow smile spread his lips. “I like that.”

“You like what?”

“You’re passionate. It’s refreshing.”

“And what about you? Is your passion taking art classes at a retirement home?”

He didn’t answer me immediately. Instead, his eyes ran over me as he bit his lip a little and let it go in a way that made my knees feel like jelly.

Paris. Just think about Paris…

A change came over his face, as if an unpleasant thought occurred to him. In an instant, the heat and flirtation in his body language melted away and there was only friendliness and professionalism left, but no heat. “Actually, I’m passionate about two things. Running my business, and, well this is going to sound weird, but holidays.”

“What’s weird about that? Everybody likes holidays.”

He shrugged in a self-conscious way that was endearing from such a gorgeous guy. “Maybe not quite as much as me.”

I smirked. "Sorry. I'm having a little trouble imagining what it looks like for someone to be too into holidays. Caroling dressed as Santa? The person on the block who turns their house into Halloween Horror Nights? Or the guy who gives speeches about pilgrims and Native Americans before letting anyone take a bite at Thanksgiving?"

He rubbed the back of his neck and scrunched his face like he was trying to figure out how to answer that.

“What?” I laughed. “Don’t tell me that’s you…”

“I mean—I’ve never done the pilgrim thing. But I do think people miss the point of Thanksgiving.”

“Oh no,” said William, who poked his head in the door.

I jumped back from Ryan like I’d been caught doing something wrong.

“Am I too late? Is he already admitting what a geek he is?” William strolled into the room and frowned as he plucked Ryan’s painting from his hands. “Jesus. You call yourself an art teacher? This looks like you made him swallow as much paint as he could and let him vomit it up on paper. Actually, it’d be generous to assume this came out of his mouth. Maybe he—”

“Thanks for the professional critique, William,” interrupted Ryan. “I’ll try really hard to do better next time.”

“I’ve seen an elephant paint a better picture than this, come to think of it. True story, there’s this place where—”

“We get it,” Ryan said. He gave William a healthy glare that pretty clearly said “get lost,” but William was either oblivious or didn’t care.

"So," William moved around the room, running his hands idly over everything within reach as he walked. He picked up a paintbrush, ran a finger down its length, and then set it back down after some consideration. "I came in here and caught you two grinning at each other like some horny high school kids. Highly unusual. What happened to the Ryan I know?"

“We weren’t—”

“Shh,” William said. “You don’t need to make excuses. We’re all adults here. I’m just trying to figure out why my good friend here,” he moved to Ryan’s side and squeezed his shoulder. “Why my good friend is suddenly going googly eyes when he’s normally Mr. Friendzone?”

“If you want to keep thinking of me as your good friend, maybe you can choose a better time to talk about this with me,” Ryan said through tight lips.

“Oh. Oh. Ohhhhh,” William winked. “Shit. I’m cockblocking right now, aren’t I? I’ve always liked to think of myself as a… What’s the opposite of a cockblock. A cockgate? No, that sounds like a scandal. A cockpass? A cock enabler?” He tapped his chin and wandered toward the door, muttering more options to himself as he left without so much as a goodbye.

Ryan shook his head. “Have you known him long enough that I don’t need to apologize for that?”

“Yes, unfortunately. His grandma-in-law is one of my regular students.”

“Well, I never did explain what I was looking for. I need someone to make posters and do some prop design kind of stuff for this Halloween thing I’m throwing. It’s a big company party for everyone at my bakeries and at Galleon. It wouldn’t be a big deal. Nothing too formal, but I wanted it to have a personal touch instead of buying something pre-made.”

“How many people are we talking about here?”

“Well, I’ve got about thirty employees. And Galleon is a little bigger than my crew. So… Call it about two thousand and thirty people?”

I felt my eyes go wide, but tried to play it cool. “I see. And would I be working directly under you?”

“If that’s how you like it,” he said. There was a moment of silence as the corner of his mouth twitched up in amusement.

I felt my cheeks burning hot, but nodded my head. “Under you is good. I mean, any way would be good.” I squeezed my eyes shut and lowered my head. “The job sounds good. Thank you.”