“I figure, we’d let the night take us where it wants.” I stop at the passenger side of my truck and open the door for her.
She gives me another side-eye but doesn’t hesitate to hop into my truck.
I flip on her seat warmer and crank the heat up as I back out of my parking spot. “What did you think of your second college tradition?”
“How did you find out about tonight? I must have asked a hundred people, and no one had any idea what I was talking about.”
“That’s classified information.”
“How do we find out about the next one?”
“It’s on Halloween.”
“You already know?” Accusation coats her voice. “Where is it? What does it involve? Is it as secretive as this one tonight?”
“You don’t want to know,” I tell her.
“I do. I want to go.”
“You like the surprise,” I remind her.
“We nearly missed tonight. If a couple of girls hadn’t walked by us, we never would have made it.”
“I was supposed to be there. If the last meeting hadn’t been called, I would have been there.”
“What if you have something else come up for Halloween? A hot blonde invites you to casually date that night?”
I cut my eyes to her, trying to gauge her tone, only sardonic enough for a quip not quite to DEFCON jealousy. “I’ll be there.”
I turn into a neighborhood that has Hadley leaning forward, peering at the houses. “Wow. They went all out.” She points at a large brick house, the front yard filled with Halloween-themed inflatables and skeletons that nearly reach the third-story roof. Cobwebs are strewn across every shrub and most of the porch which has gruesome body parts hanging from the eves. “I don’t think I would have been brave enough to approach that house as a kid. Lanie loves scary stuff. Horror movies, horror novels, haunted houses—she’s there for all of it.”
“Not you?”
She shakes her head. “Halloween was always my favorite holiday, but I liked the pumpkins and corn mazes and apple picking.”
“So you were born eighty is what you’re telling me?”
She laughs. “Or with a great sense of survival. What’s your favorite holiday?”
“Thanksgiving.”
“Really? Because your grandma made you chocolate crème pie?”
I glance at her, surprised she remembers the detail. “My mom grew up on a farm in southern Indiana as one of six kids, and that’s where we’d go every Thanksgiving. All our aunts, uncles, and cousins would come. They have five hundred acres of corn, so we’d go out and play in the stalks, scare each other shitless, and then go inside and watch football and eat until we had to be rolled to bed.”
“I don’t know what is more shocking, the idea of five hundred acres of corn or someone not liking pumpkin pie.”
I sputter through my laugh. “What did your family do?”
She shakes her head. “The complete opposite of yours.”
“No cornfields?”
She grins. “Holidays were an extra day for my parents to work and my mom hates cooking, so we usually ordered food or went out.”
“No parade? Football? Breaking the wishbone?”
Hadley shakes her head. “As we got older, Geoff, Lanie, and I would go to the movies and then hit all the sales for Black Friday at midnight.”