WHO: @garrickc WHERE: outside doughfellas.
The street smelled like old grease and oregano, and Romy kind of loved that. It was the kind of scent that clung to her hoodie long after her shift ended — a perfume of minimum wage and marinara that said I’ve survived another day without crying into the dough trays. Progress.
The past week had been a blur — or maybe a slow-motion wreck. After the gala, after the blood, after the vampires stopped being metaphor and started being real, she’d gone quiet. Vanished, kind of. Just needed time to sit with the fact that her childhood nightmares were apparently autobiographies now. That monsters were real, but so were the people fighting them. So were the ones caught in the middle. She hadn’t known where she landed yet, but work was a start. Fold napkins, serve slices, don’t look too long at the guy in the corner booth in case he’s got fangs — you know. Coping.
So when she pushed through the back door of the pizza joint, bag slung over her shoulder and hair tied up with the same scrunchie that had survived three existential crises, she wasn’t expecting to see him. Not under the buzzing parking lot light. Not in that jacket that looked like it had been through at least one hurricane and a bar fight. But there he was — Garrick, leaning against reality like it hadn’t already tried to knock him flat.
Romy blinked once, twice. Then the corners of her mouth lifted, slow and almost surprised. “Well, if it isn’t the ghost host himself,” she called out, jogging a few steps to catch up. “Either the universe missed our weird little conversations, or I’m hallucinating from mozzarella inhalation again.” She adjusted the strap of her bag and grinned up at him. “What do you think? You real this time, sailor? Or are you just another one of Port Leiry’s spooky bedtime stories?”