Shiver : 13 Sexy Tales of Humor and Horror

Candy, Dentures, and Way Too Much Spandex by R.S. Grey

“There’s been a murder in Paradise Springs!” Sandy exclaimed, clapping her hands wildly in the front row of the residents’ meeting.

“Well there will be,” I clarified, trying to calm the outburst that was sure to ensue.

Sandy’s grin gave away the fact that the theme for the Paradise Springs’ Halloween party had been decided in her favor. The small living room erupted into shouts as other residents clamored to be heard. As the head of the party planning committee, it was my job to make sure these meetings ran smoothly.

“I don’t think a murder mystery party will be fun for everyone,” a resident shouted.

“What’s wrong with doing the Hawaiian Halloween party again?” someone else yelled from the back. “Why does Sandy always get the final say in these things?”

I was standing at the front of the room, surrounded by drapes that hadn’t been updated since the 1950s and couches that always had a certain stench to them. I tried to get everyone’s attention, but it was no use.

I thought being a nurse would be glamorous. While I studied on nights and weekends in nursing school, I’d picture myself walking through the halls of a hospital in perfectly fitted scrubs. There’d always been an imaginary fan blowing my hair back, and I’d point to someone and wink as I walked by them in slow motion.

Sadly, reality hadn’t worked out that way. I’d graduated from nursing school during a year where the job market was flooded with new applications. As a mediocre human being with average grades and of average height, I’d wound up as a nurse at Paradise Springs, a premiere retirement community, or so it was described on the information packet.

“Everyone, calm down!” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the group.

There was no use in even trying. It was the start of October, and we’d just voted on what the theme would be for Paradise Springs’ Annual Halloween Party. And no, apparently “Halloween” isn’t a theme in and of itself. I’d had my head chewed off for suggesting such a ludicrous idea when I first started my job two years ago.

Last year’s theme was “Christmas in October”, and our Jewish residents had protested outside of the party with signs and tastefully done sugar cookies that involved decapitated Santa Clauses. For dramatic effect, they separated the heads and the bodies onto two plates. The year before that, it was a “Hawaiian” Halloween. They’d tried to stuff a live pig, but it escaped and ran around the community for two days before Animal Services had finally come in to catch it.

So you can imagine my surprise when the residents voted on a theme for this year’s party and it actually made sense.

This year we would do a Murder Mystery Halloween Party.

“How much does it even cost to hire one of those fancy party crews?” one of our residents asked. “You know, the ones who come in and set up the murder mystery for you.”

I glanced down at my clipboard where I’d circled the party’s total budget in red pen three times. I wouldn’t let them sweet-talk me into breaking it again this year. Last time it ended up coming out of my paycheck.

“Guys, we have $100 to spend on the entire party. That includes food, drinks, and decorations. I don’t think we can hire a party crew to come in and host the event.”

“What about having George write a script for us?” Anne asked from the front row. I smiled down at her, glad to have an ally during these monthly resident meetings.

“Oh please,” Sandy responded haughtily.

“What? I think he could do a great job,” Anne insisted, swiveling around in her chair to turn her green eyes on Sandy. The two did not get along very well, but I was team Anne all the way. You would have been too. She looked like a cooler version of Queen Elizabeth, and she was my best friend.

George, who had remained silent until that moment, stood up and straightened his black-framed glasses on the tip of his nose.

“I accept the role and will gladly write a murder mystery! The likes of which could grace the Broadway stage,” he said, holding his chin up high and exiting the room while we all watched him, confused as to why he was leaving considering the meeting wasn’t over yet.

“Are you kidding me? Him?” Sandy asked, pointing to the doorway that George had just exited.

“He’s worked in theater his whole life, and it’s not like we have any other options,” Anne protested.

I glanced around the room, toward the other silent residents, but no one seemed to want to volunteer to argue with Anne or Sandy.

“Okay,” I sighed. “It’s decided. We’ll have a murder mystery Halloween Party,” I said, setting the clipboard down on the table behind me. “I’ll talk to George about the script and make sure it’s ready in time.”

“Now, let’s talk about the food,” Sandy said, rubbing her hands together like she was planning something diabolical.

That was the point where I pretty much tuned out. It’s strange that nowhere in my nursing training had they discussed proper party planning techniques. Oh yeah, because they’d assumed I’d actually be a nurse. I mean, I did do some nursing duties, but when I first started at Paradise Springs, they’d been majorly understaffed. Management had asked me to help coordinate a few things, and I agreed without a second thought. As the months passed, and they continued to be understaffed, I fell even more into my “jack of all trades” role.

“No! No! I said Halloween Chic, do you think marshmallows made to look like spiders is chic, Mary Joe?” Sandy’s harsh words pulled me out of my daydream.

“Okay, alright.” I held my hands up in the air like an orchestra conductor. “Let’s settle down, everyone.”

Thirty minutes, one pair of missing dentures, and one hysterical Mary Joe later, I finally walked out of the meeting with Anne by my side.

“Boy, I tell you, that Sandy is a piece of work,” Anne said, taking her glasses off so that they hung limply from the lanyard around her neck.

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it, though. The party will be a hit, and George will make a good script,” I said as we rounded the corner toward Anne’s room.

“I hope so. My grandson will probably be attending the party,” she said, sliding her gaze to me from beneath her lashes. I knew what she was doing, and still, I was helpless to stop the blush that always crept onto my cheeks whenever she mentioned her grandson, Sawyer. A vision of his handsome appearance popped into my head before I could tamp it out.

“Yeah, well, I’ll probably have a date, so we can introduce them,” I said, flailing for a response and landing on one that had no basis in reality.

October 31st arrived much faster than I had hoped it would. My plan had been to transform into a cooler, sexier version of myself before the Halloween party so that I could impress Sawyer, but as I stared at the mirror inside the employee bathroom of Paradise Springs, I decided I hadn’t even come close.

My pale blonde hair was styled in a pixie cut, and my brown eyes were rimmed by lightly mascaraed lashes. I mostly looked like a grown-up version of Tinker Bell, which I knew from experience, was not every adult male’s fantasy. On a scale of one to Kim Kardashian, my curves and sex appeal fell at about a one.

I sighed and exited the bathroom, knowing I was already ten minutes late starting my rounds. I had a few residents who were assigned to me as patients. Most of them didn’t need constant supervision, but it was still policy that at the start of my nursing shift I was supposed to check-in with all of the residents on my watch.

First up was always Sandy. I made it a point to get her over with at the very beginning.

“Sandy, are you done getting ready for the Halloween party?” I asked, knocking gently on the cheap chipboard doors that dotted the hallways of Paradise Springs. I didn’t want to knock. Given the choice, I would have walked right on by Sandy’s door, but I had no choice.

Let me warn you. Sandy is the opposite of a fine wine. Instead of getting better with age, she’s only become crabbier. And don’t you dare pity her. She wasn’t like some of the patients here who were irritable because they were experiencing chronic pain or some other serious illness. No, Sandy was fit as a whistle and was the resident ringleader at Paradise Springs. She ruled that nursing home cafeteria with an iron fist, and she even scared me a little bit.

“Oh yes, I’m ready,” she sang with her shrill voice.

I wish I could go back in time and throw bleach on my eyes before opening that door, but alas, time travel hasn’t yet been invented. So instead, I opened the door to see Sandy standing in a head-to-toe black spandex jumpsuit that was only half zipped in the front.

You know who shouldn’t wear spandex? 80-year-old women.

“AHHHHhhhhhh.” I couldn’t stop the scream that erupted from me, but midway through I felt bad so I tried to turn it down a notch.

“I know! Have you seen a cat woman this sexy before?” she asked, staring at herself in the mirror.

I couldn’t answer that question because my eyes were trying to retract into my brain. She spun around in a circle for emphasis, and I just stood there, too shocked to comment.

“Sandy, are you going to zip it the rest of the way?” I asked, trying to sound gentle and not judgmental, but, I mean, her left boob was just hanging there, flapping in the wind. And while I see a lot of body parts in this job, usually they aren’t just out there for anyone to see.

She glanced down. “Damnit, the left one keeps popping out.”

Andddd, my life is now complete.

“Alright, well you tuck that back in there… and I’ll see… go… the party starts in thirty minutes!” I dashed out of that room like my life depended on it, not bothering to form a complete sentence prior to my departure.

I know what you’re thinking and, yes, my job as a nurse in a “retirement community” is pretty glamorous. What twenty-three-year-old wouldn’t want to spend their Halloween night supervising a bunch of crazy old people? I didn’t need friends or a boyfriend when I had these guys to keep me company.

I kept walking down the hallway in pursuit of my next resident, trying to scrape the image of Sandy’s boob out of my mind. Before I could turn the corner toward Anne’s room, I saw Gertie— one of Sandy’s side-kicks— walking straight toward me with a friend. She was a small woman, seemingly even tinier every time I saw her. Her back hunched over at a chirp angle, but she wore bright colored muumuus and always had her hair styled into cute, white curls.

“Oh Ruby, you look like a prostitute in that outfit,” Gertie hissed as she passed me in the hallway with her walker.

I glanced down at my navy blue scrubs and Nikes. “Gertie, these are my work clothes… I’m not even dressed up for Halloween.”

Gertie’s friend, who was walking beside her with a walker of her own, patted her on the back. “If she wants to dress up like a slutty nurse, let her. She’s young. These kids are so reckless these days.”

They kept walking off in a tizzy, shaking their heads at how deplorable I was dressed.

“I’m literally in my normal work scrubs!” I yelled after them, only then realizing that they couldn’t even hear me anymore.

I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes, repeating the phrase “I love this job, I love this job,” over and over again in my mind.

This was going to be a long shift. I had actually been looking forward to a quiet night at home in my apartment. I was going to make some popcorn and talk myself into buying Halloween candy for kids, but then eat it all myself since no one trick-or-treats in an apartment complex. It would have been perfect.

Instead, I’d picked the short straw at the beginning of October and had landed Halloween duty. But, I’d come prepared this time. I had two years of Paradise Springs under my belt, which is why I had the following items inside the pockets of my scrubs:

— Band-aids

— a roll of butterscotch Lifesavers

— a pair of small latex gloves

— two condoms

— a small bottle of disinfectant

One couldn’t be too prepared during the Halloween shift at Paradise Springs. I was running through the possible outcomes of the night in my head when I knocked on Anne’s door. Anne was always my favorite stop during my rounds. I’d camp out in her room during my shifts, explaining that she needed some extra TLC. In reality, we would sit on her bed flipping through rag magazines and gossiping together.

When I knocked and entered her room that day, she was sitting at her small vanity getting ready for the party. I breathed a sigh of relief as I pushed through the door and closed it behind me. Her vanity was small and old, a relic from her house. It didn’t seem to belong in the sterile room when she’d first moved in, but we’d decorated her room for months, making it feel homey and comfortable. Now there were a series of framed photos that hung on the wall beside her vanity: her and her late husband, her and her grandchildren, and even one of her and me together.

“Hot mama alert!” I said as her gaze met mine in the mirror.

“I thought you said you were going to dress up,” she frowned.

I reached to grab the pair of ears out of the back pocket of my scrubs. The moment I positioned them on top of my short pixie cut, Anne smiled.

“There, much better. Those mouse ears really suit you,” she said, adding a bit of blush to her cheeks. If I had any say in how I aged, I hoped I would look like Anne. She was beautiful with emerald green eyes (just like her grandson), white hair that she always spun into artfully done up-dos, and just enough wrinkles to give her a wise appearance.

“Are you saying I’m mousy?” I joked, narrowing my eyes on her as I moved to take a seat on the end of her quilted bed.

She laughed. “No. You’re cute, like a little mouse.”

“Whatever you say,” I smiled. “What are you supposed to be anyway?”

I glanced down her royal blue dress that wrapped around her in tight folds. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t place it as any costume I’d seen before. A gold statement necklace wrapped around her neck and hung down her chest.

“I’m not dressed up as anything. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do since George will be giving us characters to play in the murder mystery. I thought it’d be too confusing if I was in costume as well.”

I nodded. “That’s a good point. Too bad Sandy is already dressed up as Catwoman.”

Anne’s mouth dropped open. “Is she really?”

“Yes, and Gertie called me a whore in the hallway.”

Anne started laughing then, and the skin around her eyes crinkled as her grin overtook her features. When she finally took a deep breath, I asked her a question.

“Hey Anne, is it really a good idea to do a murder mystery in a nursing home?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

I pressed my lips together as I tried to work out the precise way I should word the next sentence.

“It’s just that… some of you are older… not you, Anne, but you know.” I was flailing around like a fish on a hook.

She laughed and clapped her hands together. “You mean because one of us could actually die!?”

Well at least she thought I was a hoot. You see what I just did? “A hoot.” When you work with old people for two years, you start to adopt their language. I would have never said “hoot” before becoming best friends with Anne. Yes, I am friends with an eighty-two-year-old. But, let me tell you, she can kick my ass. They did a self-defense class one time at Paradise Springs right after I was hired. Apparently, there’d been a break-in and they wanted to make sure everyone knew some basic skills on how to defend themselves. (Seriously, who breaks into a retirement home? Apparently, the criminals didn’t take anything except for some chocolate pudding from the kitchen. And I’ll admit, if I no longer worked at Paradise Springs, I’d break in for that chocolate pudding, too.)

Anyway, yeah, Anne was my partner for the self-defense class. She was putting me in a choke-hold, and when I thought I was going to pass-out, I tried tapping out like the instructor had shown us. Anne wasn’t listening during that part, so she thought I was just encouraging her to strangle me harder. No, yeah, please keep going. I want to die at the hands of an eighty-two-year-old today.

And that’s the story of how Anne almost killed me.

After that, we’d become inseparable.

“Well, I for one, think it’d be hilarious if someone keeled over today. It would make the murder mystery feel real.”

I burst out in laughter, holding my hand over my mouth.

“Anne, if you’re killed,” I began in a mock serious tone, “I swear I will avenge your death and find your murderer.”

She laughed, and then turned around on her chair to face me.

“You’ll have Sawyer to help you solve the mystery. He’s supposed to be here any minute.”

My heart rate picked up at the mention of her grandson, but I tried to sound casual as I asked my next question.

“Oh, is Sawyer going to be here tonight?” I glanced down at my hands spinning circles on her hand-made quilt. I didn’t think I was fooling anyone, least of all, Anne. Even still, something kept me from admitting my serious crush on him.

“Yes. He promised me he’d stop by before he went to another Halloween party. I thought I had already mentioned this to you?”

She had, but I didn’t want to appear too obsessed with him. “Do you think he’s bringing a date?”

The edge of Anne’s mouth tipped up. “You know, I’m not sure. He broke up with that Lisa girl. Did I tell you that?”

My eyes practically bulged out of my head. “What?! No, you didn’t tell me that!”

She smiled. “Surprise.”

The first time I saw Sawyer, I’d only been working at Paradise Springs for two weeks and I had urine in my hair. Not my urine. No. I was going through rounds during my shift and making sure that everyone was doing okay. I’d just left Mr. Tennon’s room, where he’d thrown a fit about getting a sponge bath. He was one of the high maintenance residents, and I was still learning how to handle him (I’d learn six months later that if you enticed him with the promise of an episode of Baywatch, the man would do anything you wanted).

Anyway, I was helping Mr. Tennon take off his clothes and as I dipped down to pull his pants over his ankles— I felt it. Urine seeping into my hair and running down the side of my face. I tried my best to stay calm, it’s not like he meant to pee on me. I knew incontinence was something that came with the territory, but it was a low blow to my self-esteem either way.

Becoming a nurse seemed so much more heroic and adventurous when I was studying in school. I thought I’d be caring for gunshot victims and yelling things like “10 ccs stat!” and “We’re going to have to intubate!”

Instead, I was standing in Mr. Tennon’s bathroom with my head under the sink faucet, taking deep breaths and trying to calm my anger.

My hair was still wet and I was patting my face with some scratchy paper towels when I finally stepped out into the hallway to check on my next resident. But, the moment I shut his door behind me, I wished I’d just stayed under the urine stream.

Because he was right there. The man that I would pine after for the next two years:

Sawyer.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, gripping either side of my shoulders to steady me. I’d almost walked directly into him when I’d exited Mr. Tennon’s room.

His hands dropped back to his sides as I turned to take him in. He was tall, taller than me by a couple inches, so I had to tilt my head back to look up into his emerald green eyes. Those eyes were connected to a face that was friendly, open, and handsome. It wasn’t perfect in the traditional movie star sense, but it made me pause all the same. His brown hair was a little too long on top, and his thin layer of facial hair made him look older than he was.

“I… have to get urine out of my hair,” I stammered like a simpleton before staring at him for two more seconds and then turning to bound down the hallway.

After that first day, I chopped my long hair off into a pixie cut and wore a shower cap whenever I was undressing Mr. Tennon.

The second time I saw Sawyer, I was sitting in Anne’s room during my lunch break. We were sharing a chicken salad sandwich and watching daytime television when there was a knock at the door. Anne told the person to come in, and as the door opened and Sawyer walked in, my mind froze.

I hadn’t known he was at Paradise Springs for Anne the first time I bumped into him, so to suddenly glance up and see him standing in her doorway really threw me for a loop.

“Oh, Sawyer! I wasn’t expecting you so soon!” Anne pushed up off her bed and went to greet him as I sat in complete shock. Their hug gave me a quick second to take him in without them noticing, and boy, did I take him in. He was wearing black converse, jeans, and a soft-looking t-shirt that fit him well. He looked to be a little older than me, but it was hard to tell.

“Yeah, I was able to cut out from work early,” he said, dipping to kiss her cheek. It wasn’t until he pulled away that his gaze finally settled on me.

The normal reaction would have been to keep eye contact and smile or wave. Instead, I dropped my gaze to Anne’s quilt and ignored his presence all together.

Did he remember me as urine girl?

“You got a haircut,” he said, drawing my attention back up to him. He was smiling as he crossed his arms, not in a rude way, but in a relaxed, easy-going sort of way.

“Yes,” I answered meekly.

“You know Ruby, Sawyer?” Anne asked, glancing back and forth between us.

I pushed off the bed and straightened my scrubs.

“No, I ran into her a few weeks ago, but we didn’t get the chance to meet,” Sawyer explained. “She ran off too fast.”

At that fact, Anne turned toward me with a look like she was about to reprimand me.

I squirmed in my shoes. “That was the day that Mr. Tennon had an accident on me, so I was in a rush,” I explained, knowing she’d recall that sordid tale.

Her brows nearly shot up to meet her hairline and her laughter rang out around the room. “What an interesting first encounter,” she said between laughs.

Interesting didn’t even begin to cover it.

“Well, I have to get back to work,” I said quickly, brushing past them and out of the door before anyone could continue the embarrassing conversation.

The third time Sawyer came to visit Anne, I finally got the chance to talk to him. I was down in the kitchen fixing a meal to bring up to Sandy, who didn’t “take her lunch in the dining halls” like everyone else. I was preparing her plate with all the specific things she’d requested (“I like a little bit of mustard on my sandwich, but not too much, and make sure the mustard is touching the turkey and not the cheese or I won’t be able to eat it”). Sawyer had come into the cafeteria to get some frozen yogurt for him and Anne.

I saw him out of my periphery, but I didn’t work up the courage to look at him.

“Ruby?” he asked with a confident half-smile.

I peered up at him as if shocked to see him. “Oh, hello!” I said, my voice an octave higher than it usually was.

He smiled wider. “Hi, I’m Sawyer, Anne’s grandson,” he reminded me.

He even reached his hand out to shake mine, that’s how polite and adorable he was. I was completely out of my element.

“Oh, yeah, I remember,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand and cringing when I saw a bit of mustard on my thumb. I pulled back just before our hands touched. “Mustard,” I said, reaching for a napkin and wiping it away.

He laughed as I held my hand out again.

“Want to try it one more time?” I asked, mostly because I just really wanted to touch him.

We shook hands, bouncing them up and down for what felt like five minutes before either one of us thought to pull away.

“I was going to tell you that I liked your new haircut the other day, but you ran off too quick,” he said as he put his hands in his back pockets.

“What — me? This — hair?” I could apparently say words, but stringing them into a coherent sentence was another thing all together.

Sawyer laughed and glanced down to his feet before turning back to the frozen yogurt machine.

“Well, I better go get some yogurt for my grandma or she’ll kill me.”

I cleared my throat and turned back to Sandy’s sandwich. “Okay, I’ll see ya.”

He gave me one more smile before leaving.

And that’s how it went for the whole first year that I knew him. He’d visit Anne at least once a week, usually on Thursdays. So for one year, every Thursday, I put on a little bit more mascara and made sure I didn’t have anything embarrassing in my teeth in the hopes of running into him. I’d try to bring him up to Anne as casually as possible and try to plans subjects we could talk about if he came to visit so that I wouldn’t look like a blubbering idiot.

Then one year after I first met him in the hallway, Anne broke the news to me that he had a girlfriend and my school-girl crush started to crack. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter that he had a girlfriend since we hardly knew each other. But most days I’d wander through my shift at work and think about what it would be like if he suddenly appeared in front of me, single and ready to mingle.

It wasn’t easy to push him out of my mine, and I hated to admit that my crush had grown even more in the last year, but I’d kept it to myself.

It was hard to face him when he came to visit Anne. Every time I saw him, I feared his girlfriend would be by his side, but she never was. The whole time they dated, he never brought her to Paradise Springs.

But apparently now he was SINGLE again, and Anne decided to break that news to me three seconds before his arrival for the Halloween party.

Just great. I had no planned conversations, I hadn’t practiced talking to myself in the mirror in months, and I could have at least stashed my mouse ears under Anne’s bed.

I was going to have to kick some grandma ass.

Or yeah, maybe she’d kick my ass again. I wouldn’t test her.

I stood at the top of a ladder trying to hang balloons from the ceiling in the dining hall. The party was due to start in an hour, but no one had signed up for the decoration committee, which had left me as the only back-up available. I’d already blown up two dozen balloons and was feeling the effects of depleting all of my oxygen stores, but the old people needed balloons, because y’know maybe this would be their last Halloween and who was I to stand in the way of their death and one last night of geriatric partying.

My head felt woozy, and I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to catch my bearings.

“Sweetie, you don’t look so good up there,” Anne called as she held the ladder for me. I was a good ten feet off the ground, and the longer I hovered in the air, the more I realized that I should have blown the balloons up on the ground.

“I’m fine, I just feel lightheaded,” I assured her as I tied off the balloon and reached up on my tiptoes to tape it to the ceiling. You know what looks like crap? Balloons stuck to the ceiling in random spots. Once again, I thought of how strange it was that my nursing curriculum had failed to teach me party decorating considering it made up 50 % of my job. The other 50 % consisted of urine. So much urine.

“Grandma, they have you on ladder duty?” A deep voice asked from a few feet behind me. I twisted around with enough force to cause the ladder to twist out of Anne’s grip.

“Ahhhhhhhhh,” I screamed as I tried to grab onto anything around me, but I was only coming up with empty air. My life was flashing before my eyes as that ladder slowly toppled toward the ground.

“Byyyyeeee Annneeeeee,” I said in what felt like slow motion speech, just as I fell into strong arms.

“Whoa,” Sawyer said as he steadied the two of us. “Are you okay?”

AM I OKAY?!

I am in the arms of my lover. My unknowing lover. I’ve never been more okay.

“I fell,” I said lamely.

A smile broke out across his face, and I caught an up close view of straight, white teeth. “You did, and then I caught you.”

I nodded, connecting the dots.

“You’re really strong,” I pointed out, appreciating his physique. “Like the hulk.”

He laughed and then slowly set me back onto my own two feet. If I had thought faster, I would have feigned injury to stay in his arms. Oh weird, my leg just fell off, so why don’t you just carry me around all day? That would have worked like a charm.

“Sawyer! You made it!” Anne sang as she swooped in and gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I took the moment to take him in, appreciating his soccer jersey and jeans.

“Hey grandma,” he said before meeting my eye. “Hey Ruby. Cute ears.”

I instinctively reached up to feel the fuzzy, gray mouse ears. I’d forgotten I still had them on.

“Oh hi — thanks,” I said.

“What’s with the jersey?” Anne asked, eyeing his choice of clothing with an air of judgment.

Sawyer reached down to hold the loose material between his fingers. “It’s the only thing I had at my apartment that would work as a costume.”

“So — you’re a soccer player?” she asked, trying to connect the pieces.

He shrugged. “I guess. This is Liam Wilder’s jersey. He’s a forward for the LA Stars.”

Anne narrowed her eyes on him. “That doesn’t count as a costume!”

“I think it does,” I protested. The words were out before I could stop them. Anne shifted her gaze to me and raised her brow, shocked that I actually contributed to the conversation. Sawyer gave me a wide grin.

“There you have it. You’ve been outvoted, Grams,” he said, patting her shoulder.

It was always about this time in my encounters with Sawyer that I would excuse myself to get back to work, so I took a slow step backward, hoping Anne wouldn’t notice.

“No. No, don’t even think about,” Anne said, holding up her hand.

“What? I have to get back to my shift.”

“Bullshit.”

Sawyer’s eyebrows shot up. “Grandma! Let her get back to work.”

Anne shook her head, staring at me with narrowed eyes. “If Sawyer hadn’t just walked in here, you would have stayed and continued to decorate with me for another thirty minutes. You always just skiddadle as soon as he arrives.”

My mouth fell open in shock. No she did not just call me out.

“Grandma,” Sawyer warned again.

I couldn’t even look his way at that point because the old ho-bag had essentially just spilled all the beans for me.

“Oh, what’s that?” I said, cupping my ear and pretending to hear something. “Yup, I think Mr. Jenkins is calling for me down the hall. Oh, yup, he just broke his hip. Oh wow, no, both hips. I better go check on him.”

“Ruby!” Anne called as walked to the door.

I stuck my tongue out at her when Sawyer turned around. She and I would have a major discussion later, and I’d be sure to stay at least a few feet away from her so she couldn’t put me in another choke-hold.

When I cleared the door to the dining hall, I stood there for a moment, wondering how long Anne had known about my crush on her grandson. I thought I’d been so sly; I’d never directly asked her about him. I’d wait for her to bring him up and then just piggy-back off of her discussion. I thought I’d covered my tracks flawlessly, but apparently not.

I leaned against the wall, trying to collect my thoughts.

Okay, Sawyer is here and you will have to talk to him, I told myself.

Sure, most of my encounters with Sawyer had been terrible in the past, but I was going to change all of that. Today, we would have an actual conversation that didn’t consist of me slurring my words as I shuffled past him. I’d speak slowly and clearly and be the most charming version of myself. Which might only be about one-fourth as charming as anyone else, but it was the best I could do.

“Come in, take a packet,” I said, standing at the door of the dining hall beside George as residents started to trickle in. “Come in and grab a packet.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said with a touch of attitude as she strolled in wearing her spandex costume.

Gertie walked in a second later, taking a packet and giving my work scrubs another tsk tsk. I groaned and tried to ignore her, continuing to pass out packets as people strolled in.

I’d done my best to transform the dining hall into a Murder Mystery set, but since I didn’t really know what that meant, I just went with orange and black streamers, balloons, and a bowl of punch with plastic spiders floating on top. As I finished up decorating (once I was sure Sawyer and Anne were gone), George was in a tizzy about how his script would play out. He paced around the dining hall while I set up, repeating the same concerns over and over again.

“What if no one is committed to their characters?” he asked as I dropped spiders in the punch bowl.

“They will be,” I’d replied, taking a step back and slipping on some of the punch that I’d spilled on the floor by accident. I landed flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling while I caught my breath. George didn’t even notice.

“I just want everyone to immerse themselves in the story. If they don’t, this will just be a train-wreck,” he said with a dramatic flare of his hand. All the while I was lying on the ground.

I’d been lucky to survive the afternoon, and I was still trying to console George as Anne and Sawyer walked through the doorway. Sawyer smiled at me as he walked by. Anne paused, watching him take a seat in the middle of the room, before turning to me.

“Are there enough packets left for everyone to participate?” she asked, glancing between me and George.

I looked down at the packets in my hand. There were still four left. Which meant out of the twenty people who’d already arrived, only two of them decided they wanted to participate in the game.

“Why yes, Anne, there is enough,” I said, holding her eye contact as I passed her a packet.

The edge of her mouth lifted in a smirk. “You aren’t mad at me, are you?” Her tone gave her away. She knew I was annoyed with her and she was playing the innocent old woman card. It wouldn’t work on me.

“Nooooo.” I exaggerated the o’s until I knew that she knew she was in deep shit.

She leaned in closer and whispered so that only I could hear. “I’ve lived on this earth for a very long time and I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to cut the shit. You’ve been eyeing my grandson for the past two years and both of you are too scared to do anything about it.”

I scoffed, even holding my hand over my heart for emphasis. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mmhm,” she mumbled as she pulled away from me. “George, make sure Ruby gets a packet. She’s sure good at acting today.”

Had she not been my best friend and eighty-something years old, I would have flipped her off. Damn that, Anne. I couldn’t ever stay mad at her.

The rest of the attendees finally strolled into the dining hall, and by 7:30 P.M., George and I were standing in front of the room with two packets remaining.

“We need two more resident volunteers before we can start,” I said, waving the packets out in front of me like I was trying to auction them off.

The sea of residents stared at one another, waiting for someone else to volunteer. Out of twenty of them, there’d only been four volunteers so far: Anne, Sandy, Gertie, and Mr. Tennon. George would have volunteered, but he was out since he knew the plot.

“Seriously, someone has to volunteer or we’ll all just sit here,” I said, trying to get the ball rolling.

Sawyer glanced around the room before he finally shrugged and stood up.

“If it’s okay with everyone, I’ll play,” he said.

Anne clapped wildly, but no one else cared to comment as Sawyer stepped toward me.

“You should play, too,” he said with a devious smile as he slid the packet out of my hand.

I didn’t want to be a part of the murder mystery. I think I even specifically opted out of it on numerous occasions, but we were still down one player and if no one wanted to volunteer, I didn’t really have a choice.

I glanced around the room one more time, even holding eye contact with a few residents to make them squirm in their seats.

“Okay, fine, I’ll be the last person. Let’s do this,” I said, opening up my packet and peeking inside to find a script, a small description card, and a few props.

George clapped his hands and shouted, “Players, go read your cards and put on anything provided for you in your packet. We’ll meet back here in five minutes to start the game.”

As I made my way toward the bathroom, Sawyer caught up to me.

“Who are you?” he asked with a small smile.

“Detective Maverick,” I said, reading the front of the packet.

He nodded. “Apparently I’m Jim Fitzpatrick, the son of Gwyneth Fitzpatrick.”

I laughed at the silly expression he was making. “Thanks for volunteering by the way. I thought we were just going to sit there all night.”

“Yeah, no worries. I have a Halloween party to go to, but it doesn’t start until later,” he said with a shrug.

I thought about what I had planned for later. The options were: reading, watching a scary movie, and eating enough candy to go into a coma. I’d most likely do all of the above. Of course, I didn’t dare tell Sawyer that.

“Oh yeah, me too.” I nodded with what I hoped was a cool, nonchalant expression.

He smiled as we turned a corner toward the bathrooms near the dining hall. “Well then, let’s solve this mystery.”

Ten minutes later, the five of us were standing up at the front of the dining hall with our scripts in hand and our props attached to various parts of our bodies. George strolled across the stage in front of us, announcing the players to the crowd of on-lookers who would be helping us solve the mystery. I browsed over my script as he read aloud.

SETTING: An old estate in the heart of Savannah, Georgia.

THE PLAYERS

Gwyneth was played by Sandy in her latex Catwoman suit. Seemed appropriate.

Jim was played by Sawyer. He still had his soccer jersey on, but now he’d added a cane, pipe, and monocle as well. Jim Fitzpatrick was apparently very stylish.

Hannah was played by Anne, who was carrying a paint palette and a paint brush. She’d added a few streaks of paint to her hair which I thought was a cute touch.

Antonio was played by Mr. Tennon, who I knew from experience was probably sporting some whitey-tighties beneath his suspendered pants. Meow.

Izzie was played by Gertie,who did not look pleased to be wearing a skimpy maid’s outfit over her pants and blouse. She had her arms crossed over her chest in an attempt to conceal the feather duster in her hand.

Detective Maverick was played by me. That’s right. I opened up that packet to find a thick mustache stuck to a gold police badge, a pair of aviators, and some plastic handcuffs. I’d stood in the women’s bathroom after sticking the mustache on, trying to find any sort of humor in the entire situation. It was so thick, and brown, and did I mention thick? I waggled my eyebrows for emphasis. That’s right, Sawyer. I hope you like your girls with big ol’ mustaches. I’ll admit, once I put the aviators and badge on, I’d fallen into my character. Heck, I even started walking with a bit more swagger.

Anne couldn’t look at me without cracking up, but that might have been because I kept telling her she had the right to remain silent as we walked back to the dining hall.

“You look like an 80s porn star,” Gertie said to me with her lips pressed together and her head shaking back and forth.

I wanted to ask her how she knew what an 80s porn looked like, but Sawyer walked out of the bathroom right then and I didn’t think we were close enough yet for me to say the word “porn” in front of him. At least not while looking like a male porn star. That might have been overkill.

“Okay! Does everyone understand who is playing whom?” George asked, walking in front of us and going through the names again.

“I’m confused,” one resident said, raising his hand. “Why is Sandy in a cat woman outfit if she’s supposed to be hosting a dinner party?”

George crinkled his paper and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Yeah — this is confusing,” a few other residents chimed in until George had to go through and explain the scenario again to everyone.

“Pretend that everyone is in proper costume and that they aren’t your friends. They are now characters in a murder mystery.”

While George rambled on, Sawyer leaned closer to me and pulled the pipe out of his mouth. “I think you should wear a mustache all the time. It looks really good,” he joked with a sly smile.

I stared straight ahead. Sawyer is joking with you. Be funny. Be funny or so help me.

I stroked the fake hair above my lip and turned to him. “That monocle doesn’t look so bad either.”

“How long did it take you to grow that cool ‘stache?” he asked.

“About ten seconds,” I joked. “What’s in the pipe?”

“Just some manly tobacco or something,” he said, repositioning his monocle so that it wasn’t poking him in the eye.

We were joking, right? So why did it actually feel like we were flirting with each other?

“Are you the murderer?” I asked with a smile.

He laughed, shaking his head. “Wow, Detective, you’re really straight forward. There hasn’t even been a murder yet.”

Oh right, I’d forgotten how the game actually worked. Maybe I should have been paying attention to George after all.

“Okay!” George said, clapping his hands and walking over to the doorway of dining hall. “I’m going to flip this light switch and then the game will begin. Does everyone understand the rules?”

There were still a few murmurs in the crowd, and a few random words were thrown around, like “dentures” and “fiber”, clearly indicating the level of confusion felt throughout the room (were we all still on the same topic?), but George chose to ignore them and flipped the light switch anyway.

When the lights cut out, Sawyer’s hand brushed mine and I glanced over to try to see him in the darkness. There was no use; my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark yet.

“This monocle doesn’t have night vision,” he whispered next to my ear.

I burst out laughing, ruining the seriousness of the scene.

“Get into your characters!” George bellowed across the room before flipping the light switch back on a moment later.

When he did, we found not one, but two bodies, lying on the ground.

The game had taken a dark turn.

Gwyneth Fitzgerald, aka Catwoman Sandy, was lying on the ground with her limbs artfully spread out around her. She’d been murdered and we were supposed to be concerned about that, but everyone was focused on the fact that a random audience member, Beatriz, was also lying on the ground, blinking her eyes and staring up at the ceiling.

“Uh, Beatriz?” I asked, stepping forward.

“What’s going on? Were there two murders? This is confusing,” Anne asked, glancing back and forth between the bodies.

George flew into action, practically fuming. “Beatriz, why are you lying on the ground? You aren’t supposed to be dead. You aren’t even a character in the game.”

Beatriz propped herself up on her elbows, her dyed red hair now sticking up all over the place.

“Oh, I was confused about the rules,” Beatriz began to explain in an old, scraggly voice. “I played a game once when there were random murders and then we had to guess—”

George cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Beatriz! This is not that game and there was only one murder tonight.”

“Stop trying to steal my thunder, Beatriz,” Sandy said, temporarily breaking her character.

Even in death, Sandy was a bully.

“People! Let’s focus. Beatriz, please take a seat and we’ll keep going as planned,” George said, dabbing the sweat from his forehead. He was losing control of his cast, and I could tell it was stressing him out. “Everyone take our your cue cards and read what you’re supposed to do first.”

I pulled out a note card that had a #1 printed at the top, and read the first instruction: Detective Maverick, you arrive on the scene after Hannah Fitzgerald calls you. Make sure you examine the body for clues.

I turned to Anne, Hannah Fitzgerald, and waited for her to read her cue card.

“Oh dear,” Anne began, with mock seriousness, as she read straight from the card. “Gwyneth Fitzgerald has been murdered in her own home during her own dinner party. We have to call the police!”

I had to bite my hand to keep from laughing while she read the words. But when Sawyer nudged me forward, I realized everyone was waiting for me to start reading from my card, considering I was the police.

“Don’t worry, I’ve arrived!” I said, only remembering that my character was supposed to have a thick Scottish accent after I started, so I quickly worked it in. “Don’t fret, lads and lassies. I’m here to solve the case!”

“I couldn’t understand any of that,” Sawyer said with a laugh.

“You didn’t sound Scottish, Ruby, you sounded like you were from the Middle East,” George said, rolling his eyes.

I pressed my mustache back into place and tried again.

“Heeelllooo evverryonnee, I’m Deteccttivvee Mavverriickkk.” I mostly, sounded like a drunk version of Shrek.

“Nope. No. Now you’re just talking really slow, Ruby,” George said, interrupting me. “Damnit, just scratch the accent all together!”

I shrugged and stepped forward to examine Sandy’s body. It was kind of awkward since she wasn’t actually a dead person and she was blinking up at me while I circled around her. Her character’s blonde wig was still on straight, a strand of pearls hung around her neck, and a big fake, diamond ring hung on her bony finger. Nothing seemed out of the place except for the fake knife lying directly next to her head with blood on it. At least, I thought it was blood. It smelled like ketchup. I pretended to be horrified either way.

“No!” I gasped, pulling out the gloves that I’d spied in my packet earlier and slipping them on so I could pick up the knife and hold it up for everyone. “She’s been stabbed to death!”

Everyone gasped and Sawyer even screamed “Nooooooooooo,” for emphasis. George applauded him for being committed to his character. I laughed until our eyes met, and then I quickly looked away like a nervous school girl. You’d think my badass detective outfit would have helped with my nerves. I really thought I was pulling off the mustache look rather well, but still, one look from Sawyer and I was like a shy three-year-old.

After I confirmed that there weren’t any more clues surrounding Sandy (Gwyneth), we all looked to George for our next piece of instruction. He shoved his hands into his argyle sweater and sighed. “You’re supposed to put together the clues and figure out where to go next.”

“Oh right,” I said, glancing back down at the knife in my gloved hand.

I frowned at my lack of intuition about where to go next. I wasn’t an actual detective, people.

“Is there a card that tells us where to go next?” Sawyer asked, stepping toward me and kneeling down so that I caught a whiff of his cologne. Let me tell you, it was not that cheap stuff that makes your nose fall off. It was light and masculine and it made me forget that we were in the middle of a nursing home.

“No! You have to think,” George replied, enunciating “think” like we were a couple of simpletons.

“Alright well, we have a knife, and…” my sentence trailed off as I realized I had nothing else to contribute.

“And where do you get knifes from?” George gestured in a circle with his arms, trying to get us to fill in the answer.

“The kitchen!” Sawyer and I yelled in unison, smiling at each other as we got to our feet.

“Okay, let’s go check the kitchen for clues,” I said to the other characters in the game.

“How about you two go check it out and we’ll all hang back here and search for more clues,” Anne suggested. I glanced toward her, trying to decide if she was being sly in trying to get Sawyer and I alone.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Sawyer said, looking toward me to lead the way.

I nodded silently, heading toward the kitchen, but not before looking back at Anne. The little devil winked at me.

Sawyer caught up to me as I exited the dining hall. “This is better,” he said. “They’d just slow us down anyway and we’re on the trail of a murder.”

I laughed. “A made-up murder.”

Sawyer guffawed. “You’re Detective Maverick. You’ve never had a case you couldn’t solve.”

I thought for a moment, wondering if I was going to shy away or if I was going to show him my true personality. I decided there was no point in trying to be cool. I was still wearing my mouse ears, after all, let’s not try to kid ourselves.

I stopped walking and turned to him, pointing toward his chest. “You’re damn right, and this one won’t be my first!”

Just before we pushed open the shiny, swinging door that led to the massive kitchen of Paradise Springs, Sawyer put his hand on my shoulder.

“I have a confession to make,” he said.

My heart rate picked up at his serious tone. Was he about to confess his love for me? Right here in the doorway to the kitchen with the smell of potato salad in the air?

I cleared my throat. “What do you have to confess?” I asked, purposely keeping my gaze on the metal door in front of us.

“I think I know who the murderer is,” he said.

“What? No! Don’t tell me,” I said, holding my hands up to my ears to block out his voice.

He laughed and reached over to pull my hands away. “I won’t tell you, and anyway, I don’t know for sure.”

“Maybe you should have been the detective,” I joked.

He thought for a second, narrowing one eye on me before announcing, “Nah. You make a cute detective.”

Cue internal breakdown. Sound the trumpets. Open the gates. He thought I was cute!

“Desserts going out!” a voice shouted behind me just as the metal door leading to the kitchen swung forward. I didn’t have time to move before the door slammed into me so hard that my face smashed into Sawyer’s chest and he had to reach forward and catch me.

“Oh no! Sorry! Sorry! I just hit you, didn’t I?” The cook was overly enthusiastic with his apologies, and Sawyer’s hands were a little too tight as he attempted to steady me.

“Are you okay?” Sawyer asked, bending low so that his eyes were level with mine. The entire situation was almost too endearing to handle.

I nodded, wishing he’d pull his hands away before I did something weird, like bend down and lick them.

“Your mustache is all crooked,” he said with a smile, reaching up to straighten it on my face. Oh great, his fingers just accidentally brushed my lips. I was practically salivating in the hallway with a random cook looking on.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I? You really shouldn’t just stand behind that door. That’s a safety hazard,” the cook said, starting to ramble on like I was a complete idiot for idling behind a swinging metal door.

I shook my head clear of thoughts about sexing Sawyer in the hallway and turned to the chef.

“We were on our way into the kitchen for the murder mystery game,” I explained.

The chef glanced over our costumes, as if seeing them for the first time. Before that moment, he probably just thought I was a girl wearing a mouse ears, aviators, and a fake mustache for fun.

“Oh, right, right. You can go on in, just don’t get in anyone’s way,” he warned before stepping around us to deliver the platter of food that he was carrying.

I watched him walk away for another second before Sawyer pressed his hand to my lower back and gently nudged me forward.

“Let’s go, Detective,” he said.

The sounds coming from the kitchen made me assume that it was packed inside, but when we stepped in, it looked like most of the staff had gone home for the day, probably to celebrate Halloween with their families. The kitchen was large and industrial with clean, metal surfaces and a few oversized refrigerators. Along the back wall there was a massive assembly line of dishes being run through a machine to wash and dry them. A man stood at the very end overseeing the process. He nodded his head in greeting at us before going back to his task.

“Where should we look?” I asked, continuing to glance around the space. Shouldn’t the clue have been obvious considering we weren’t actual detectives and this was just a game? I wanted to ask one of the men in the kitchen, but the man had warned us to stay out of everyone’s way.

“You take that half,” Sawyer said, pointing toward the industrial washer. “And I’ll take this half.”

Before he could even finish his instructions, my eyes landed on a large knife block sitting in one corner of the kitchen. It held dozens of kitchen knives, but there was one slot notoriously empty at the very bottom of the block.

“Ah-hah!” I said, pointing toward it, at once proud of myself for being an actual sleuth, but also concerned that George had incorporated an actual knife into our murder mystery game.

“What is it?” Sawyer asked, his gaze following my outstretched finger.

I didn’t bother responding. I headed toward the knife block like a detective on the trail. Which I guess I actually was. Hah.

From across the kitchen I’d only seen the knife block and the empty slot, but as I stepped closer to the chromed surface, I noticed a folded note stuck beneath the heavy wooden block. I twisted around, unsure of whether or not the letter belonged to a staff member in the kitchen or if I had actually found another clue for the murder mystery game.

“Do you think we should touch it?” Sawyer asked from behind me. I jumped at his voice, not realizing how close he was to me. When I glanced over my shoulder, our mouths were only a few inches away from one another and my shoulder hit his chest.

“I think it’s our next clue,” I said, feeling more confident about it once I peered back around and saw that the handwriting on the front looked like George’s.

Sawyer reached forward and tilted the block back so that I could slide the letter out.

I read it aloud as Sawyer searched around the area for any more clues.

I flipped the note over, looking for more hints, but the back of the paper was blank.

“Who is Jerry P. Lane?” Sawyer asked, resting his hip against the chrome countertop after concluding his search for more clues. The letter was the only thing we had to go on.

“I don’t know, but he’s a lawyer and he was going to update Gwyneth’s will. Maybe the will had something to do with her murder.”

Sawyer’s lips split into a shit-eating grin. “Of course it does. I think every murder ever has had to do with a will.”

I laughed and shook my head, rereading the letter once more.

“Where should we go next?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. “We can either go back to the room and tell everyone what we found, or we can try and find office 113.”

Office 113. I liked that idea. It meant I got more alone time with Sawyer, and I also didn’t have to stare at Sandy in a Catwoman outfit any longer than necessary.

“Okay. George might have just meant the office at Paradise Springs, so we can head there,” I said.

Sawyer nodded and put his hand on my lower back again to guide me toward the kitchen door.

“We make a good team,” he said with a confident tone.

I tried to concentrate on walking through the door to the kitchen without having the metal chrome smack me in the face, but there was a question nagging me, and before I thought better of it, I decided to bring up the subject while I was feeling ballsy.

“So, Anne told me you and your girlfriend broke up?” The second the question was out, I instantly paled. Could I have asked that in a smoother way? Or should I have just kept my mouth shut? We weren’t on a date, or even hanging out as friends. No, instead we were walking around a nursing home solving a pretend murder. Oh wait, I’m sorry, retirement community.

Sawyer’s face twisted into a funny expression before he answered. “Does my grandma blab about my love life to everyone?”

“No! She’s not like, ‘Hey everyone, Sawyer is single and ready to mingle.’ She and I just talk a lot,” I shrugged, trying to play it cool.

Sawyer laughed. “Ah, well she always talks about you to me, so I figured it probably worked both ways.”

I smiled, imagining all of the insane things Anne probably told Sawyer about me.

“But yes, I’m single,” he added as we turned down the corridor that led to the main office for Paradise Springs. It would probably be locked since it was after hours, but maybe there was something waiting for us on the door. “What about you?”

My heart stopped. “Me?”

He nudged my shoulder, playfully. “Yeah, are you seeing anyone? My grandma never gives me any details when I ask about you.”

My heart stopped again. Am I dead?

“You ask Anne about me?”

“You’re really good at answering questions with more questions,” he laughed, his eyes locked on me for a moment before they drifted to something behind my head and his brows tugged together.

I spun around to see what he was looking at, and that’s when I saw a small piece of paper taped to a janitor’s closet. On it, someone had scribbled “Office 113”.

The hallway surrounding the janitor’s closet was dead quiet. The normal sounds that accompanied life at Paradise Springs were absent.

“Why does it feel like an actual murder has happened?” I asked, stepping up to the brass-handled door, suddenly too nervous to open it.

“Are you scared?” Sawyer asked, stepping beside me to reach for the handle so that our arms brushed together. Goosebumps bloomed across my skin as I nodded.

“A little. George is a bit out there, and I have no clue how serious he took this whole game,” I admitted. “I feel like something is going to jump out at me as soon as we open the door.”

Sawyer took a pretend puff of his pipe, studying the door. “I’ll check it out first then.”

His tone was confident, as if he was taking the game as seriously as I was.

“Step back, Detective,” he said, the slight upturn of his mouth pulling him out of character.

When he turned the handle and pulled open the door, the small space was pitch black. The scent of cleaning products and cardboard storage boxes stung my nostrils as he pulled the door open even wider.

I reached out to touch his shoulder just before he stepped inside. He turned to look back at me, his green eyes catching hold of mine.

“Be careful,” I mocked in the same tone a wife would use when she sent her husband off to war.

Sawyer dipped his head and stepped inside, his shoes hitting the tiled floor with a soft clap. He dipped out of site for a moment, and then his head popped back into view when he pulled the long cord to turn on the overhead light.

“Oh,” I sighed, a bit disappointed with the contents surrounding him.

Brooms and buckets and boxes were piled up high in the corner. Not a decaying dead body or a spooky ghost like I’d been anticipating.

Sawyer turned in a circle, inspecting his surroundings, before his eyes fell to something at his feet. He squatted down to grab it and I leaned forward, trying to see what it was. When he stood back up, he had a piece of silky material in one hand and what I recognized to be a tube of lipstick in the other. I reached forward for the tube, opening up the lid to see a bright red color. When I glanced back to Sawyer, he’d unfolded the silky material and was holding it between his thumb and pointer finger with both hands.

“Oh my god.”

It was a banana hammock, a bright yellow banana hammock, and when our eyes met on top of the material, we both completely lost it in a fit of hysterics.

“Don’t touch it! What if that isn’t even a clue and you’re just touching some random janitor’s underwear!” By that point I was practically on the ground laughing so hard. Sawyer instantly dropped the material and it fell the ground, still splayed out enough for me to read what was on the front: Sexy Thang. Yes it said “thang” as in “thing”, but with an A instead of a I. Oh boy, I really hoped it was a clue for our murder mystery game or I wouldn’t be able to make contact with any of the janitors for a few months at the very least.

“You still have your gloves on,” Sawyer pointed out. “You carry the underwear back and I’ll take the lipstick.”

I groaned, but reached down for the thong anyway.

“What if it belongs to George,” Sawyer asked, making the disturbing images playing in my mind even more disgusting than before.

“No! Stop,” I groaned, closing my eyes as if that would help.

Sawyer laughed, enjoying my misery far too much.

We were almost back to the room when Sawyer glanced over to me. “You never answered my question from earlier,” he pointed out.

“What question?” I asked, even though I knew what question he was referring to.

“Are you single? Or are you seeing someone?”

I blew out a puff of air and decided to give him a straight answer. “Single. Super single. I don’t think people get more single than me. Your grandmother is my best friend and the last person she tried to set me up with was forty years older than me and was getting fitted for dentures.”

Sawyer burst out laughing, forcing me to crack a smile. If I couldn’t laugh at my sorry excuse for a dating life, then who could? Oh right, everyone.

“Well, once you solve this case, you’ll have people banging down your door for dates.”

I rolled my eyes playfully. “Yeah, but no one will be able to understand my life as a detective. They’ll want to pin me down and force me to start a family. They won’t understand my craving to get out there and clean up the streets.”

Sawyer nodded. “Ah, yes. The life of a detective.”

“I didn’t choose the detective life. The detective life chose me.”

His smile widened. “Maybe when you get tired of the grind, you can come see me.”

We were skirting toward dangerous territory, and I wasn’t sure where our jokes ended and our true feelings began.

“You’re too young to wait for me. You deserve to have someone who can be there for you now,” I mocked with a serious tone.

“Don’t you tell me what I need,” Sawyer quipped.

I couldn’t keep it together after that. I cracked up and shook my head as we turned the corner into the dining hall.

“Finally!” George called.

“There you guys are,” Anne sang.

“We’ve been sitting here for an hour waiting for you guys,” Sandy groaned, still sitting on the floor, but looking less like a corpse than she had when we’d left.

Everyone was talking over one another as we walked in, clearly annoyed with how long we’d been gone.

“I’m sorry! We were on the trail and we couldn’t stop. But we found some clues,” I said, gesturing to Sawyer to lay them down on the table in the front of the room.

In a perfect row they all sat there together: the bloody knife, the letter from the lawyer about the will, the tube of red lipstick, and the awesomely out-of-place banana hammock.

“What? What is this thing on the end? It looks like a headband or something,” Anne said, reaching down to pick it up and already aiming it for her head.

“No!” I yelled, stepping forward to yank it out of her hand. “Anne, that goes on someone’s butt. It’s underwear.”

Her eyes grew two sizes as she realized her mistake. Sawyer couldn’t stop laughing for a solid minute.

“There’s still something missing,” I said as I strolled up and down the table, eyeing the evidence and mulling it all over in my head. Someone wanted Gwyneth dead so that they could reap the benefits of her will, but who? I ran through the evidence in my head again.

“Yeah, I have nothing,” I said, throwing up my hands in defeat and turning around to look around the room. No one else seemed to know what was going on either, and a part of me, a very big part, suspected that maybe George hadn’t actually made it so the case could be solved anyway. He probably just wanted to lead us on a wild goose chase to teach us the art of acting or some bullshit like that.

“Has she had that purse the whole time?” Sawyer asked, drawing my attention over to Sandy, aka Gwyneth, who was still sitting on the floor. Directly next to her there was a small brown leather purse. I’d noticed it earlier, but I hadn’t realized that it was part of the game. I thought she’d just brought her purse with her.

I glanced over to George to see his eyes light up, and I knew that Sawyer was on the right track.

“Get the purse!” I shouted dramatically. Sawyer grabbed it and flipped it open as I watched over his shoulder. The only thing inside was a small folded piece of paper. The contents of which were the final clue we needed to solve the mystery.

The letter inside of Gwyneth’s purse was short and straight to the point.

“Oh my god! Gertie you are such a hussie! Or rather, your character is,” I said, pointing to the older woman who was wearing a sly smile. Our suspicions were confirmed even more when we saw that Gertie was wearing bright red lipstick in the exact shade that we’d found inside of the lawyer’s office, aka the janitor’s closet.

But still, the underwear didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the evidence.

Not until I ran through the character cards again inside of our packets.

“Latin underwear model!” I read aloud, watching as Sawyer connected the pieces at the precise moment I did. “They were in on it together!”

Gertie threw her head back dramatically and rested the back of her hand on her forehead like a bad soap opera actress. Her maid’s outfit only made her appearance even better.

“You have no proof!” Gertie protested with a dramatic flare. “Antonio is my lover, not Hannah’s and we’re going to run away together! There’s nothing you can do to stop us!”

“That’s what you think.”

I reached into my packet to pull out the very last item: a pair of plastic handcuffs. I circled one around Mr. Tennon’s wrist (Antonio Ricardo) and one around Gertie’s wrist (Izzie Jenkins).

“You have the right to remain silent, anything you say, can and will be used against you in the court of law.” I paused and looked up at Sawyer. “Is that how it goes? I really want to sound like a detective.”

He laughed, pretending to puff on his pipe. “I honestly don’t know, but we solved the murder and I think it’s time to celebrate.”

After we took a group picture with big cheesy grins, everyone stuffed their props back into the packets and headed toward a table of refreshments set up along the back wall of the dining room. There was lemonade and coffee on one side and little finger sandwiches, cookies, and bite sized candy on the other.

I tossed a few things on my plate and then went to sit down, ravenous from all of my detective work.

I didn’t notice Sawyer approaching me until he sat down across from me at the table.

When I glanced up, he feigned shock. “You were a girl this entire time?!”

I laughed and shook my head as if he were ridiculous. Which he kind of was. “I know. It’s scary how well I can pull off looking like a dude.”

He winked and then took a bite of his cookie, and by bite, I mean he ate half the cookie and then wolfed down the other half immediately after. I would eat cookies like that too if I could have gotten away with it. Sandy would have called me a lesbian if I ate that quickly. Which made me think, Sandy probably didn’t even know the definition of a lesbian.

“So are you going to head to that party of yours soon, Sawyer?” Anne asked as she sat down on the empty seat beside me at the table.

I purposely kept my eyes trained on my plate while he answered. He would have seen the hope in my sad, non-aviatored eyes.

“Um, actually, I thought I’d hang out here for a little while longer. I wasn’t really looking forward to that party anyway.”

“Oh, is that right?” Anne asked with a curious tone. “I’m sure Ruby would love that.”

I cleared my throat, shoved half a cookie inside of my mouth, and then just shrugged as if I didn’t understand English and therefore couldn’t contribute to their conversation.

“I think I finally won Ruby over tonight. She avoided me like the plague for two years, but you bond really quickly with someone when you’re holding janitor’s underwear and hunting down murderers.”

I laughed and swallowed down a sip of lemonade before clarifying. “I thought they were janitor panties, but it turns out they’re just part of George’s collection.”

He grinned at that and took a bite of his tiny sandwich.

“Is that true, Ruby? Did you finally bond with Sawyer?”

The way she said the word “bond” made it sound like we were having weird cult sex together. So, I decided to play along.

“Yes, Anne, I bonded with your grandson. Does that make you happy?” I could tell from the mischief in her eyes that she had caught onto my sarcasm.

“Well, I’m really tired, so I’m going to head to bed, but you guys should bond for however long you want,” she quipped, pushing up out of her seat and kissing each of our heads before heading off toward the exit. The party wasn’t even close to ending, but Anne had probably had her fair share of Sandy and Gertie for the day. I can’t say I blamed her.

Sawyer caught my eye. “Were you just talking to my grandma about sex? It really felt like it, and I’m not sure if I need to go purge that from my memory or not.”

I laughed and kept the truth to myself, taking another sip of lemonade without answering his question.

The shrill ring of a microphone pulled my attention to the stage just as George began speaking to the crowd lingering around for refreshments.

“It’s time to start the next phase of our party,” he announced, taking off his thin glasses and placing them in the front pocket of his argyle vest. Oh no, shit was about to go down.

And boy, did it.

It started innocently enough, some music played over the loud speaker in the dining hall. Just a little jazz at first. A few couples started to stand up and slow dance, shifting their weight back and forth to the smooth beat. But then someone turned on a local radio station that played everything from rap to Taylor Swift.

That changed everything.

For the next hour, I was on official “grind-prevention” duty. As soon as Jay-Z started playing over the speaker system, the space between dance partners lessened more and more.

“Okay, alright, let’s leave room for Jesus and for Muhammad and for Buddha and whoever else we can shove in there,” I said, stepping between Mr. Tennon and Gertie. I’m all for bootie dancing, but I draw the line when Mr. Tennon started spanking her on the ass.

“So does your job mostly consist of preventing public intercourse?” Sawyer laughed as I joined him at the punch bowl.

I cracked up. “Yes, and I don’t even do a very good job of it,” I said.

Sawyer turned to me, pinning me to the spot with his green gaze. “Do you mean to tell me—”

His question drifted off as I started nodding my head. “Apparently sexual prowess peaks at around eighty-five,” I joked.

Sawyer tipped forward, holding his stomach as he laughed. “So we have a really long way to go then.”

I smiled with the edge of my mouth, surveying the sea of people around me. “A long way.” Just as I finished speaking, I saw Mr. Buchanan sit down at the piano.

“Oh no,” I murmured under my breath and turned to set my cup of punch on the table behind me.

“What’s wrong?” Sawyer asked, trying to follow the path of my gaze.

How do I explain this as quickly as possible?

“Do you see that man that just sat down at the piano?” I asked. Sawyer nodded. “Well, he’s lost all of his hearing. For some reason, within the last year, he’s gotten it in his head that he’s a piano prodigy.”

Sawyer nodded. “Is he any good?”

As if on cue, Mr. Buchanan pressed down on a couple of piano keys will all his might so that a loud “wompppppp” was heard over the rap music.

“Oh,” Sawyer said, seeming to find his own answer as Mr. Buchanan continued to thud awkwardly on the keys, creating a tune that made me want to claw my ears off.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Sawyer before walking over to the piano and waving to get Mr. Buchanan’s attention.

He couldn’t read lips very well, so I spoke slowly and used my hands to help him figure out what I was saying. “Do you want to go dance with me?” That’s the only thing I could think of to get him away from the piano without hurting his feelings.

I had to ask him the same thing three times, eventually even reenacting a little waltz before it clicked for him. He beamed up at me, shut the lid of the piano and then reached out to lead me toward the dance floor. He held one of my hands confidently in his and then gently placed the other hand at my hip. I glanced up at his eyebrows, white, bushy, and overgrown, but beneath them there were crystal blue eyes with smile lines around them.

He led me around the dance floor at his own pace since he couldn’t hear the music anyway. It was kind of hilarious doing a waltz to a Nicky Manaj song, but Mr. Buchanan didn’t care, so neither did I.

Just as he was about to dip me down for our grand finale, I saw Sawyer approach us out of the corner of my eye.

He tapped Mr. Buchanan on the shoulder and then did the universal gesture for, “May I cut in?”

Mr. Buchanan nodded and handed me off with one last warm smile. Sawyer held me the same way Mr. Buchanan had, but he stood a little closer to me, his grip a little more warm and possessive.

“I’ll dance with you, but I’ll warn you, there’s no way you’ll be better than Mr. Buchanan,” I said with a smile.

As if to prove me wrong, Sawyer spun me out quickly and then twirled me back against his chest.

“Challenge accepted.”

An hour later, after some truly terrible dance moves and two more glasses of punch, we stood at my car, encased in the moonlight surrounding us. Usually I tried to get in my car as fast as possible after a late shift, but I wanted linger as long as possible with Sawyer.

“Thanks for helping me clean up,” I said with a small smile, trying not to look up into his eyes.

“Thanks for putting another murderer behind bars tonight, Detective.”

I laughed and glanced down at the cup of punch in my hand.

“Here’s to a night of getting to know each other, pulling apart gyrating geriatrics, and handling banana hammocks. I can’t say I would have wanted to do it with anyone else,” he said, holding out his cup of punch for a toast.

I laughed and clinked the lip of my cup with his before meeting his eye and taking a long sip.

“I liked that toast,” I said.

He smiled.

“Well I guess I should get going,” I replied, conscious of the awkwardness surrounding us.

“I have one last thing to ask you before you go,” he continued, taking a step closer.

“Oh?” I asked, tilting my head back to meet his eyes.

“Would you rather have me kiss you right now or when I come back to visit my grandma on Thursday? You get to pick.”

My heart kicked up a notch as his words sank in. I couldn’t believe how much had changed in the matter of a day. I’d had a crush on this man for two years. TWO LONG YEARS. And now he was just casually talking about kissing me.

I must have drifted into my own thoughts for a moment because Sawyer asked, “Is it that hard of a decision?”

I laughed and shook my head, letting my empty cup fall to the ground at my feet.

“Easiest decision I’ve ever made,” I said before lifting up onto my tiptoes and placing a kiss directly on his lips.

(And don’t worry, I picked my cup up later. I’m not a litter bug, jeez.)

I am a lover of books, chocolate, reality TV, black labs, and cold weather. Seriously, if I had it my way I would be curled up on the couch with all of those things…Every day. I live in Texas where I spend my free time writing and reading. My favorite authors are Mindy Kaling & Jonathan Safran Foer. I’m a comedy geek and love all things ‘funny’. Women like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Mindy Kaling are definitely the biggest inspirations for my writing, though I think my work tends to skew a bit smuttier than theirs.

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Scoring Wilder

With This Heart

Behind His Lens

The Duet (Due out November 10th)