Page 93 of Bloom in Darkness

Bryn glances over his shoulder from the stove, spatula still in one hand, while Caelan mutters something under his breath. “How many?” he asks, looking between us like he already knows he is about to regret getting involved.

Caelan opens one of the bags of cobwebs and frowns at the contents as a wad of white plastic catches around his fingers. “I don’t know. I’ve never counted because I’ve never needed to.”

“So zero.” I put my pencil down when Bryn tries to help by saying they have pumpkins sometimes. A few questions gets us as far as real pumpkins that usually sit there undecorated and only occasionally get carved. “I’m personally offended. I live with two grown men who own three different kinds of expensive coffee equipment and somehow neither of you owns a fake skeleton.”

Bryn turns from the stove and looks at Caelan, still holding the spatula over the pan. “Do we need one?” he asks with enough seriousness that Caelan immediately looks suspicious.

“No.” Caelan points the little plastic ghost at Bryn before I can answer, then turns the same warning look on me. “Don’t encourage this. One box is already becoming a discussion.”

“Yes,” I say over him. Bryn nods like the matter has been settled, which is exactly why I love him. Two more boxes arrive Thursday, four show up Friday, and by the following Monday there are three stacked beside the front door, two on the porch, and another in the dining room because Bryn brought it in before work and forgot to mention it.

Caelan comes home late that night, opens the front door, and walks directly into the sheet ghost I hung from the ceiling. He swears loud enough that I nearly fall off the step stool laughing, then grabs the sheet and yanks it away from his face. “Astra. What the fuck is that?”

I hold onto the top of the stool and try to breathe while he glares up at me through the hanging sheet. “It’s a ghost. You know what a ghost looks like.”

Tiny black felt eyes stare at him from the sheet in his hand. His mouth flattens. “I know what a ghost is. I wasn’t expecting one to attack me in my own foyer.”

“You’re being dramatic.” I climb down while he looks past me at the rest of the foyer. Fake cobwebs stretch along one wall, black bats climb toward the staircase, and orange lights are wrapped around the banister, although only half of them are plugged in because I ran out of extension cord. Three boxes are open across the floor with packing paper, plastic spiders, and enough tiny pumpkins to put one in every room twice.

Caelan slowly takes off his coat and surveys everything again, his gaze stopping on the half-lit banister and the pumpkins scattered across the floor. “What happened while I was gone?”

“You had no Halloween spirit.” I kick a piece of packing paper out of the way. “I fixed it before the situation got worse.”

“I had a house.” Caelan steps over a plastic spider with the toe of his shoe and looks toward the staircase again. “A normal one, even.”

“And now you have both.” I smile at him just as Bryn appears from the living room carrying another strand of lights, which does absolutely nothing to improve Caelan’s expression.

Bryn holds the strand up between both hands and stretches it once as if that might change the length. “These are too short for the front windows. We need another set.”

Caelan stares at him for a full second, then looks at the lights in Bryn’s hands. “You’re helping him with this now?”

Bryn looks down at the lights, then toward the uncovered front windows. “He needs longer ones. These won’t reach both sides.”

I point at Bryn before Caelan can answer. “See? Supportive. This is what a healthy household looks like.”

“Enabler.” Caelan steps over a box, catches me around the waist before I can climb back onto the stool, and pulls me down against him. “You’re not hanging anything else tonight.”

“I have six bats left, and they’re supposed to go over the archway.” I lean back against him and kiss his jaw. “You’re very controlling about seasonal decor.”

“I’m controlling about you falling off furniture.” Caelan keeps one arm around my waist while Bryn comes up beside us to inspect the archway.

Bryn studies the archway for a few seconds, then reaches up and tests the height with one hand. “I can hang them. You don’t need the stool.”

I grin at Bryn. Caelan closes his eyes and lets out a long breath against the top of my head. “Of course you can. Why would either of you make this easier for me?”

The next afternoon, Bryn comes home with a pumpkin that takes up most of the back seat of his truck. I stand in the driveway with my hands on my hips while he lowers it to the ground. “I said I wanted a big one.”

Bryn runs one hand over the side of the pumpkin and checks the stem like he is buying produce for a restaurant. “It’s big. Good shape. You said you wanted one we could carve.”

Caelan comes onto the porch behind me and stops at the top step, his attention dropping to the pumpkin taking up half the driveway. “What the fuck is that supposed to be?”

“My pumpkin.” I follow Bryn as he lifts it again and carries it toward the porch. “Where did you even find it? And how much did it cost?”

“Farm stand.” Bryn keeps walking with the pumpkin braced against his chest and ignores the second question so completely that I know asking again will get me nowhere.

Caelan points at me before I can ask again, already smiling because he knows exactly where this is going. “No. You don’t get to ask that after the blanket incident. You lost price-question privileges.”

“That blanket was soft.” I keep pace beside Bryn while he carries the pumpkin toward the porch. “Also, I use it every night, so that was an investment.”