Page 86 of Blood Lovers

And guess who is right there ready to interrupt my fantasy. “Joshua. Nice to see you again.”

“Come over here. Let me introduce you—”

And… now I’m stuck. I spend the next hour carefully watching the clock to make sure we escape before noon, while being simultaneously introduced to every person in town.

Syrsee is dragged off only a minute or two into the greetings by Emily, because she has to meet all the females, and apparently one does this segregated by sex in the White River First Methodist crowd.

They are trying to make us stay for church. This becomes clear right around ten AM, and painfully obvious by eleven fifteen.

Syrsee interrupts Emily mid-sentence. “Well, thank you all for a lovely breakfast. But Ryet and I have work to do.” She beams a smile at me. “We’re going to pull up the carpet in his cottage today.” She pats my upper arm. “Aren’t we, honey?”

“You bet.” I beam my own smile back at her.

And before Emily, or Joshua, or anyone else in the town can talk us into church, we’re out of there.

Syrsee starts laughing as we walk back to her place. “Was I rude?”

“You were not. It was a trap, right?”

“Agreed. From now on, we can’t get our food at the pantry or eat the delicious Sunday breakfast.”

“Fuck.”

“I know. It was good.”

Syrsee hooks her arm in mine and we smile all the way down the street. But instead of diverting to the alley where the stairs to her apartment are, she leads me towards the front door of the hardware store.

“What are we doing?”

“Pulling up carpet, remember?”

“Oh.” I chuckle a little. “You were serious.”

Syrsee frowns and points to the door. “Well, shit. It’s closed.”

“Of course it’s closed. It’s Sunday and the entire town is in church.”

“Do you find that a little…”

“Culty?”

“Yeah.” She looks up at me, chuckling, her eyes dancing with delight. “That’s exactly the word I was looking for.”

I glance back down the road where the church is, then look back at her. “They’re weird, right? I’m not just being a dick because I don’t believe in religion?”

“It’s not you.” She hesitates, like she wants to say something more, and she does say more, but somehow, I just know it wasn’t what she was originally gonna say. “This whole town is weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

“No school.” She holds up a finger, ready to tick shit off a list. “No doctor. No grocery store. No…” She glances around town. “No bar, no bowling alley—”

“Bowling alley?”

“What else do people do in a town like this?”

My smile grows exponentially.

“There’s literally nothing here but a dubious gas station, a diner that’s never open, a hardware store, and a church filled with culty people. Why do we live here again?”