Ficorpio
Chapter 1
I was the male ghost at the escape room. When a young couple stumbled into my trap, the guy grabbed me and ran.
I screamed my head off. He kissed me to shut me up.
“Don’t be scared, sweetheart. I’m here.”
Who the hell was his sweetheart?
He’d grabbed the wrong person!
I was a man!
And nobody had told me that playing a male ghost came with losing my first time.
To another man, no less!
If I weren’t desperate for money, why would a college student be working part-time as a ghost at a horror escape room?
I took my job seriously. The moment the young couple reached me, I threw open the Red Stage Curtain and let out a bloodcurdling scream right in their faces.
It worked. Both of them were terrified.
I was still congratulating myself when the guy ignored his girlfriend, who was still screaming, and grabbed me before taking off.
What the hell, what the hell, what the hell…!
Why was he dragging me along?
For the first time in my career as a ghost, I was the one being scared by a customer. He pulled me through the darkness while I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“Ahhhhhhh—!”
Was he going to hit me?
I was only doing my job! I had to scare you! Hey, big brother, don’t take it personally!
Before I could explain, he spun around and kissed me.
He pinned me against the wall. My brain crashed as his lips moved against mine with merciless force.
Then he said,
“Don’t be scared, sweetheart. I’m here.”
“Who said I was your wife? You grabbed the wrong person!”
“I’m a guy!”
I couldn’t make out his face in the darkness. I tried to push him away, but I couldn’t match his strength. He held me against the wall and kissed me for half an hour straight, until my legs went weak.
By the time he finally pulled away, I’d already given up struggling. I slid down the wall and crumpled onto the floor.
He’d kissed me until I cried.
When the game ended and I got a good look at his perfectly sculpted, effortlessly handsome face, I understood.
That half hour had been the attraction’s time limit—not his.
Before leaving with his girlfriend, he apologized to me with an utterly calm expression.
“Really sorry, man. I kissed the wrong person.”
With me sniffling in front of the owner, it made me look like some tearful little wife.
His face looked like it belonged on a movie star. I wiped my eyes.
“It’s fine, bro. I didn’t exactly lose out. I just feel bad for your girlfriend.”
You picked the wrong guy to mess with. I’m soft as cotton, you know~
As he was leaving, I thought I saw things. For a fleeting moment, it looked as though the guy had thrown me a subtle, suggestive wink.
I cried the entire way back to campus.
By the time I reached the dorm, my roommate noticed how red my eyes were.
Noah eyed me warily.
Chapter 2
“What kind of part-time job are you doing out there? Why do you look so humiliated? Like you’ve been…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Ravaged.”
“Do you have a gambling-addicted father, a chronically ill mother, a younger sister struggling through school, and a completely broken version of yourself?”
I rubbed my eyes.
“No. I got sand in them.”
When I opened them again, I saw the man who had just kissed me.
He was on my roommate’s phone screen.
One of the guys held up his phone and waved it in front of everyone in the dorm.
“Have you seen the campus confession board? This guy doesn’t even go here, but at least a dozen people have already submitted posts about him.”
“Damn, he’s got that bad-boy look.”
“Holy crap. He’s gorgeous enough to be a movie star.”
“Where? Let me see, let me see!”
My roommate, Noah Reed, was a self-proclaimed straight bottom. He stared at the photo with hearts practically shining in his eyes.
“He’s so hot even a straight guy like me is falling for him! I want to call him husband on sight. God, I want to date him.”
I pressed my lips together, pulled off my shirt, and hung it over the edge of my bed.
“Don’t bother. He has a girlfriend.”
Noah immediately crowded closer. “Wait—how do you know that? You know him?”
“No. I’ve just seen him with his girlfriend.”
I changed into comfortable athletic clothes and headed downstairs to grab some food. The moment I stepped out of the dorm, I saw the man from the photo in the flesh.
Adrian Sterling wore the same kind of simple athletic clothes I did, though somehow they looked far better on him. He stood outside as if he were waiting for someone.
The instant he saw me, his eyes lit up. He rushed over and caught my hand.
“Finally! I’ve been waiting forever for you.”
Apologize?
I pulled my hand from his palm.
“It… it’s fine, really.”
The man awkwardly lowered the hand he’d been holding out.
“I really am sorry about what happened earlier. How about I buy you dinner?”
I had a serious fear of fashionable men. Even in athletic clothes, he paired his outfit with a single earring, and a faint trace of cologne clung to him. He looked like he belonged to an entirely different world from mine.
I edged away and gave him a perfunctory answer.
“Sure. Maybe sometime, when we’re both free…”
“When is sometime? Why wait for the perfect day when today will do?”
So I took him to the dining hall at my university.
His name was Adrian Sterling. Eating with him, I got a firsthand taste of just how many heads he could turn. I was sweating by the time I finished my meal.
Still, he was a decent guy. Like me, he hated cilantro.
By the end of dinner, the awkwardness between us had faded. We found we actually had plenty to talk about, and we even added each other on our phones.
Chapter 3
Adrian said it was proof that sometimes you had to meet through a misunderstanding before you could become friends. More friends meant more possibilities, he claimed.
After dinner, he walked me back to my dorm. That night, just before I went to sleep, I received a text from him.
[Good night.]
Huh?
Something about this felt off.
There were six guys in my dorm, counting my lifelong childhood friend. Not one of them had ever sent me the words good night before bed.
Wasn’t saying good night between two men a little too intimate?
Then I looked at Adrian’s impossibly fashionable profile picture…
Maybe this was just something stylish people did. Maybe guys like him routinely wished their friends good night.
So, to be polite, I sent one back.
The next morning, I woke to another message from Adrian.
[Good morning.]
I stared at it for a long time.
Did fashionable men all act like this?
Not wanting to expose how hopelessly uncool and provincial I was, I sent him a good morning in return.
And that was how it went for the next several days while Adrian was back at his university attending classes. Every day, we exchanged good-morning and good-night texts.
There was no other conversation at all. Just one neat, unmistakable line of repeated greetings.
Then, on Friday evening, Adrian texted me.
[Are you free? Want to grab dinner together?]
Everyone in our dorm who had a partner had been desperate to leave with them for the night. Most of them were probably checking into a hotel together. So where was Adrian’s girlfriend?
[You’re not spending the evening with your girlfriend?]
[She had something to do. I’m bored on my own. There’s no one left in the dorm, and everyone else has someone to keep them company.]
Adrian and I got along well enough, but we still weren’t that close. I hesitated.
Then he sent another message.
[My dorm is so dark. I think the power’s out.]
That sounded miserable, so I agreed.
Adrian took a rideshare to my university soon afterward. He said he wanted to try the fried crawfish tails from a place outside campus.
I was still wrestling the shell off my fifth crawfish tail with my teeth when Adrian dropped several peeled shrimp onto my plate.
“You were taking so long, so I peeled some for you.”
Well, damn. Guys with girlfriends really were considerate.
“Thanks!”
Adrian smiled and filled my glass with another drink.
“Then shouldn’t we have one?”