Page 54 of Restored By You

We break apart and I press my lips together to fix the lipstick. “We’re coming!”

Tyler’s by the door in the Scream costume he swore up and down was the only cool costume. He’s wearing the black robe and his Ghostface mask is shoved up on top of his head so he can see his phone. He’s got a pillowcase for candy, because he refused the bucket I offered. But he’s here. In costume. Waiting impatiently by the door.

And acting like a kid for once.

“You look terrifying,” I tell him.

“I look sick,” he corrects, flipping the mask down, then immediately back up because he can’t see. “Can we go? Willa said her family’s already there.”

“Ah. You hear that?” I share a look with Rhett. “Willa’s waiting.”

Rhett chuckles, clapping Ty on the shoulder on the way to the door, entirely too amused. “Come on, killer. Let’s get you to your girl.”

“She’s not my—” Tyler groans, following us out. “I hate both of you.”

He doesn’t. And the fact that he can say it now, easy and eye-rolling instead of sullen and armored, makes me smile the whole way to town.

Main Street looks like a Norman Rockwell painting got into the Halloween candy. The whole strip is strung with orange lights and cornstalks lashed to every lamppost, hay bales and carved pumpkins clustered outside each shop door. Kids swarm the sidewalks in a blur of superheroes and witches and at least three other Ghostfaces that make Tyler mutter under his breath. Cup O’ Joe has a cider station out front. The hardware store has a fog machine going. Somewhere a speaker is playing Monster Mash and a gaggle of parents are pretending they aren’t the ones who requested it.

I’ve been to Halloween parties that cost more than some people’s cars. Rooftops in the Hills, open bars, celebrity DJs, everyone in couture…

None of it ever felt like this.

“There they are,” Rhett says, and I follow his gaze down the block, and—oh.

Oh, no. Oh, this is perfect.

The Montgomerys have colonized the entire stretch of sidewalk outside the bakery, and they are, as a unit, a lot to take in.

Butch is in full football pads and a jersey, while Cassidy bounces beside him in a cheerleader skirt shaking actual pom-poms, and baby Gage rides Butch’s shoulders in a tiny padded football costume, gumming a foam finger. Duke and Maci have gone full farmer, overalls and flannel and straw hats, and Olivia is the roundest, reddest strawberry I have ever seen, toddling between them being adored by strangers.

Clayton’s got half his face done up in grey corpse makeup and a bolt through his neck, delightedly scaring passing toddlers. And Julie is…

“Is your mom dressed as Betty Crocker?” I ask.

“Every year,” Rhett replies. “Same apron since I was a kid. Do not ask where she got it or we’ll be stuck here for an hour.”

And then, unmistakably, an inflatable T-rex—roughly seven feet tall, arms uselessly tiny, waddling down the middle of the sidewalk toward us while children scream with joy—heads our way.

“Levi,” Rhett and I say at the same time.

The dinosaur throws up both stubby arms in greeting and nearly falls over.

“Shea!” My name cuts through the music, and then Callie’s barreling toward me in a pin-up dress that’s the mirror of mine—hers in electric blue with white polka dots, red scarf, red lips, the whole thing. “You look amazing. Oh my god, we’re the cutest people here.”

She grabs my hands and we do a little squealing spin right there on the sidewalk, two grown women in stockings and it’s so stupid and so joyful that I don’t even care who’s watching.

At the end of Callie’s leash, Hulk sits patiently with a headband of green Shrek ears and his working vest, which Callie has decided is close enough to an ogre’s waistcoat that she’s been calling him ‘Sir Shrek’ all evening.

“He hates it,” Callie says fondly, scratching his ears around the headband.

Hulk sighs the sigh of a thousand indignities.

Behind her, Beau strolls up in jeans, a long-sleeved thermal pushed up to his elbows, boots, and his usual unhappy expression with, as far as I can tell, no costume whatsoever.

“Let me guess,” I say. “You’re a scary man who won’t dress up.”

“I’m a veteran on his day off,” Beau says flatly, and hooks an arm around Callie’s waist, pressing a kiss to her temple that softens his whole face for exactly one second before the scowl resets.