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My belly clenched with something I didn’t want to examine too deeply. I managed a weak scoff. “He’s the one who left straight after.”
“Well, maybe he… Maybe his fuckboy muscle memory kicked in, and he just found his legs carrying him outside even though he actually wanted to stay.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dude.”
“We don’t know how dullahans work!” Nev protested. “They’re rare. Maybe sometimes they work more like… reanimated corpses. Just going through familiar motions without conscious thought.”
My face screwed up. “Dude,” I repeated. “Please don’t call someone I’ve hooked up with a reanimated corpse.”
“Okay, yeah, that was pretty offensive to all parties involved,” Nev relented. “I’m just…”
“Clutching at straws?” I offered dryly. “For some unknown reason.”
“I just don’t want this whole thing to have been a really shitty experience for you.”
I sighed. “I know. And it wasn’t. Really. I, uh, enjoyed it. The… sex part of it. At the time. So… that’s something.”
“Okay.” Nev still sounded worried. “I’ve just got to work, so I have to go in a sec.”
“’Kay.” I straightened and turned to grab my coffee.
“What are you going to do if he knocks on your door? Or tries to talk to you at work?”
My belly fluttered with intense nerves. “Ignore him.”
“How are you going to do that… professionally?” Nev asked doubtfully.
I pursed my lips. “He’ll be busy today because of the show later. So will I. And I… I’m pretty sure he’ll give up, anyway. He doesn’t care that much. He’s just butthurt because I’m not salivating over him or whatever. He’ll move on to someone else soon.”
“Mm.” Nev didn’t sound convinced.
“Seriously.” I managed a wry smile, but I wasn’t all that amused. “Fuckboy muscle memory, remember?”
He sighed. “Yeah. Fuckboy muscle memory.”
I was full of anxious energy when I got off the phone to Nev. There were still several hours before I had to be at work, and as I stood in my kitchen, fidgeting restlessly, I considered going in early just so I had a distraction. But if Ewen was there, I didn’t want to spend any more time in the building than necessary. Just in case. At least here I could lock the door. There, I was exposed. Vulnerable.
Making a decision, I abandoned my undrunk coffee and went upstairs to change into workout clothes. A few minutes later, I was walking at a brisk pace on the treadmill in my garage, starting to get warmed up while I scrolled to the latest episode of the Super Effing Creepy podcast on my phone.
I hit play and dropped it into the cupholder, then increased the treadmill’s speed to an easy jog. Some of the tension melted from my frame instantly. It had been a while since I’d bothered to run, and I knew I’d feel calmer and more relaxed by the end of it.
After the podcast’s opening theme music had played, one of the hosts, a faun called Edgar, started speaking. “Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of Super Effing Creepy, the number one podcast for supernatural true crime aficionados. Thanks for joining us, ghouls and gargoyles. Meryl, how are you doing this week?” he asked his co-host, Meryl the banshee.
“Yeah, I’m great, but oh my gosh, Ed, you’re not gonna guess what my cat did the other day—”
I grabbed my phone to skip ahead ten minutes, like I always did. I wasn’t interested in the preamble of the two of them chatting about their lives until they got to the good part.
“…want to go first this week?” Edgar was saying when I hit play again.
“Yeah, I’m really excited for this one,” Meryl replied. “Okay, so you know a while back I talked about the Bratwurst Bandits?”
Edgar huffed in amusement. “Oh yeah, yep, the, uh… those two little guys who carried out a string of robberies in the nineties?”
“That’s the one. So I was thinking about them again last week—I mean, not surprising. It was such a weird case, and they were never caught. And I ended up falling down a rabbit hole online and discovering that”—she paused for dramatic effect—“they may have popped up again a decade later.”
“Ooh. I’m intrigued.”
“Uh-huh. So my case this week, Ed, is about the notorious duo who tormented residents in the Midwest in the early noughties. I’m going to be talking about the Hot Dog Hooligans.”
