There’s a cursed doll that plays “hide and seek.” Its owner dies ten days after it hides. I’m on Day Nine…

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn.

The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.

Where is the boy who is dressed all in blue?

He’s counting the days, he’s hiding from you!

Is he in the meadow? Or under the bed?

Ten days he’s gone missing—oh whence has he fled?

They’ll find him beside you—stone, cold, dead.

*         *         *

So, there’s this doll. Little Boy Blue.

It was found with an old nursery rhyme scrawled on yellowed paper tucked into its checked blue gown. And ever since the doll was sold at an auction in 2002, fatal misfortune has struck each of its owners. A woman named Frances died by a fall. A collector named Santiago by a car crash. And most tragic of all—a four-year-old died by drowning in the family pool. In each case, the doll went missing for ten days before the fatal accident occurred… and was found beside the corpse.

But were these deaths the result of a curse—or coincidence?

The doll’s newest owner, Theo, bought it online under the assumption that it was just a hokey bit of paranormal paraphernalia to share at a party. Even when the doll disappeared from its locked case, he assumed one of his fellow partygoers had pranked him. But as the days ticked by, his dismissal turned to concern. He realized from cameras that no intruders entered or left his home during the hours of the doll’s disappearance. Furthermore, the only key to the glass case remained in his pocket at all times. And finally he called me, Jack, a paranormal investigator, to help find the doll.

Return it to its case.

But time is running out—he hired me on day nine.

Tomorrow, he dies on day ten.

*         *         *

The first thing I examine is the glass case.

I trace my hands along the exterior, and the laminated warning taped to the front crinkles under my fingers:

DO NOT OPEN THE CASE.

DO NOT TOUCH THE DOLL.

ALWAYS KEEP THE DOLL ON CAMERA.

Theo, hovering over my shoulder, looks exactly like the sort of dude who dies first in a horror movie. Which sounds harsh until you hear him boast. Stuff like, “Bring it Lil’ BB,” and “Let’s see how you like a taste of this genuine samurai sword.” For context, he’s a white guy, gripping the two-handed sword in one hand like an anime character, and with every torturously mispronounced word (“I’m trained in the way of buh-SHE-do”), I find myself rooting harder for the doll.

I should probably stop judging… though his pronunciation is bull-shit-do and what he’s actually saying translates to “I’m trained in the way of the way of the warrior.” I grew up speaking Japanese. Badly, as the son of an immigrant. But not as badly as Theo.

The kid’s only 23 though. And it’s not as if my 20’s weren’t cringe. Pretty sure I even posted a samurai pic on my old Insta, under the classy handle Jack_Kingofforever.

In any case, the lock hasn’t been picked. The door can’t be jangled loose. I trace my fingers along the frame and say, “Either it magically popped open, or…”

“Or someone unlocked it, like I said?” Theo finishes.

I nod.

“I knew it! That chucklefuck Steve and his pranks!”

“It’s not Steve.”

“Then who, bro?”

Theo blinks wide green eyes at me, and he looks like one of those photos you’d see on a milk carton way back when, or a webpage that at second glance you realize is an obituary. There’s just an aura of tragedy. And while the glass case is devoid of any supernatural energies…

Theo here practically radiates bad mojo. He’s swimming before my eyes, hard to see through the vertigo.

“Who?” he repeats. “Who took Lil’ BB? You got any ideas?”

“One,” I say.

“And that is?”

“You opened the locked case.”

*         *         *

Theo both opened the case with his own key and is destined to die by his own hand (and perhaps by his own samurai sword). His haunting has all the hallmarks of possession. The doll likely puts its victims into a trance, during which they hide Little Boy Blue. From there, everything unfolds as in the rhyme: ten days pass. Little Boy Blue cannot be found. On the tenth day, the victim (again in a trance) retrieves it from the place they’ve hidden it, and under its influence… an old woman falls from a ladder, a collector crashes his car, a little girl jumps into a pool. And Little Boy Blue is found beside them—their bodies stone, cold, dead.

Just as Theo will be… unless I can come up with a brilliant plan to save him.

*         *         *

Unfortunately, I have only a mediocre plan.

My plan is get Theo as far as possible from wherever he’s hidden the doll and hold him hostage while waiting out his tenth day. Meanwhile my smarter and better half, Emma, will take the lead in finding the killer doll.

In the pre-dawn grey of morning, Theo and I cruise for miles and miles, pausing only to grab supplies at a Walmart before continuing to a secluded Airbnb cabin perched in the desert amid scrub and endless pale blue sky. While the cabin itself is rather industrial looking, with a steel roof and cinderblock walls, the interior is cleanly furnished with a futon, a small table set, a kitchenette—and crucially, some pretty solid chairs.

“Bed or chair?” I ask him.

“Chair.”

“You sure?”

He plops himself down in one of the hard-backed table chairs, and I hold out a package of Depends. When he glowers, I remind him that he will be my hostage for twenty-four hours, and the bathroom is statistically the second most dangerous room in the house, with one American dying in there on average every day. “If I untie you to take a piss, you could wash your hands, water splashes on the floor—oops. Slip. Fall. Dead.”

“Jokes on you, my guy. I never wash my hands.”

“Ok, buddy.” I say “buddy” like a bouncer as I give him some relevant context: “You are going to die. Not maybe. Not probably. You are going to die the way a man who has jumped out of a plane without a parachute is going to die. My plan? The plan to save your life? That’s your parachute. And every deviation from that plan is you cutting the fucking strings. So you’re gonna put on that diaper, sit in that chair, and quit givin’ me crap—unless it’s in the diaper ‘cause that’s what it’s there for.”

“Fuckin’ unreal,” he mutters.

But he takes the Depends, and after a few minutes emerges from the bathroom with the diaper crinkling under his sweatpants, and for all his bluster it’s the moment I realize how scared he truly is.

*         *         *

“Bad news, Jack,” Emma says over the phone.

She finally received a call back from the Archive of Arcane Artifacts—the occult museum that originally owned Little Boy Blue. The museum’s director admitted that the doll was advertised online to garner attention, but that other vintage dolls from the museum’s collection were to be sent to buyers. An uninformed staff member shipped Little Boy Blue to Theo by mistake. Unfortunately, the museum’s director could offer no solutions or new information beyond what we already know. Everything they have on the doll is from the notes of the collector Santiago N., who passed away in a car crash caused by Little Boy Blue twenty years ago.

With the Archive unable to assist, Emma’s been looking into famous dolls like Annabelle and lesser-known ones like Okiku (said to be possessed by the ghost of a teen girl and have continuously growing hair), as well as esoteric rituals and practices centering dolls. The problem, she tells me, is that we don’t know whether Little Boy Blue is haunted, like Annabelle and Okiku, or cursed, as with witchcraft or voodoo.

“What does it matter?” I ask. “Haunted or hexed, isn’t it all just flavor text?”

“NO. No, you’re not listening. My fear is the doll is less like Chucky, more like a monkey’s paw. Like maybe it attracts misfortune. Which might mean everything you’re doing, all these measures to prevent Theo’s death, might actually wind up causing him to die.”

Shit.

I think about what I told Theo about the parachute. Think about how if he’s incredibly unlucky the metaphorical lines might entangle and choke him, and he could die wrapped in the very strings I told him not to cut. Because one thing you can’t fight is fate…

“Try not to kill Theo,” Emma suggests helpfully. “I’m going to keep searching and hope we can find the doll before it finds him.”

*         *         *

Theo sits zip-tied to the chair while I’m stationed at the desk, keeping watch on my laptop. The screen displays four camera views: bright red door, dusty sun-bathed road, patio with grill and firepit, tin-roofed cabin perched in the desert. I’ve set up surveillance in case Lil’ BB defies expectations and comes skulking through the desert to sneak up on us, though I consider this the least likely scenario for our face-off with the killer doll. Theo’s last sighting of it was at 9am nine days ago. Both of us stare at the clock on the wall in the final few seconds as the hands tick forward to 9am—beginning his tenth day. I hit a countdown timer on Theo’s tablet: 24:00:00, 23:59:59, 23:59:58, etc.

And we’re off.

*         *         *

Incidentally, by now, I absolutely should know where the doll is. I have all the information I need to figure out where it is hiding.

I could blame a lot of things: sleep deprivation, the weird rockiness between me and Emma lately, fears for my future marriage, the fact Theo is unequivocally my most annoying client—which sounds harsh unless you’ve spent the past three hours listening to his terrible startup ideas (“Humans look for love on apps, so like, why not doggos? ‘Puppy Love’ was conceived to fill the dog dating-app void…”).

But the truth is, the person I am most annoyed with is myself. I’m missing something, something that I know in hindsight will be the kind of obvious like when you wonder where your sunglasses are and they’re already on your face, throwing shade…

I don’t want Theo to die.

But I especially don’t want him to die because I’m an idiot.

*         *         *

Two hours into Theo’s final day, and I really wish I’d swapped jobs with Emma. She’s much better at research than me, but she also has a higher tolerance for idiocy (I give her a ton of practice)—whereas I, hypocritically, can’t stand other people’s dumbassery.

Bro keeps inundating me with YouTube videos. He’s got his phone in one hand, his wrists zip-tied to the arms of the chair, and he’s casting to the TV. The latest vids are from a channel called “Jon drinks water” that somehow has more than 70,000 subscribers, and all I can do is marvel at how much money and resources and time have gone into micro processing and near-instantaneous satellite communications all so we can watch an average-joe take gulps from water bottles. It’s the most low-effort channel in existence. I am both gobsmacked at the insane popularity of Jon drinks water and deeply offended at the longevity of a series that spans over a decade from #1 to #10029.

Just when I think we’ve reached the limit of human stupidity, Theo asks, “Wanna see what’s even dumber?” and before I can refuse, he opens up reaction videos to Jon drinking water.

We are now watching YouTubers watch Jon drink water.

If I were God and I had made this world this is the point at which I would flood it. Except then Jon would probably just make more videos, a lot of them, of him drinking all that water.

*         *         *

“Dude I am so stiff can’t you just like uncuff me for a second? Just let me walk around?”

“Bro I will give you fifty bucks to uncuff me for five minutes.”

“Bro… bro, can you scratch my nose? It really fuckin’ itches!”

“How much time left?”

“Dude, are those doritos? Gimme… what of course I’m not gonna choke! Let me have one!”

“I need my nose scratched again.”

“If I can’t eat, you can’t eat. It’s only fair if you’re gonna make me suffer here. I won’t pay a fuckin’ cent if I gotta watch you eat… Put that shit away.”

Four hours in, and where the fuck is Little Boy Blue?

I need it to come and kill Theo for me.

*         *         *

Six hours in, and Theo is now accusing me of “torturing” him.

He is threatening to withhold payment unless I untie him so he can stretch. His life is (maybe?) more important than my payment, so despite his threats, I continue to hold him against his will. Though with every passing moment, I am more ready to unlock the door, swing it wide open, and escort Lil’ BB in myself.

In retaliation, Theo introduces me to “Jon drinks water popping 500 balloons.”

*         *         *

Theo is now actively attempting to free himself while watching YouTube videos about how to escape a kidnapping situation.

“Just wait,” he growls. “As soon as I get out, I’m gonna take a piss, then I’m gonna punch your fuckin’ face in.”

His need to use the toilet and the stiffness of his ass from sitting in the chair have made him really ornery. He bends his head down to gnaw at the zip-ties.

Since he’s already declared I’m going unpaid, I grab a bag of chips and toss ‘em into my mouth like popcorn.

*         *         *

Seven hours in and Theo has finally given up the struggle, his head lolling against the pillows I’ve propped around him. It’s mid-afternoon, and I assume he’s napping… until I hear soft sniffling and realize, with some surprise, that he’s probably crying. And suddenly he pipes up: “Hey, have you ever talked to ghosts?”

My glazed eyes are staring at the outdoor surveillance cams. Nothing has moved except the sun and shadows. “Once. It’s pretty rare for them to talk.”

“’Cause like, I was thinking…” Sniffle. “… like if hauntings are real, and if like, spirits are real, then that means we must have souls, right? So like when I die, I’ll see my dog?”

And suddenly I’m struck by what an asshole I am. Here I am, bemoaning this kid’s Youtube tastes and his threats and his tantrums when it’s all because he’s scared as shit—scared he’s going to die, scared that I’m not taking this seriously. I’ve been so exasperated, treating him like a pain in my ass, but all his babbling about his startups isn’t because he assumes his ideas are good—what he’s really wondering is whether he’ll live long enough to attempt to make them. And as stressful as his confinement is, not only is it a million times worse for him than for me, but he’s in so many ways still just a kid. A scared kid who just wants his dog, the dog that probably inspired his stupid app and fuck me. “Look, Theo,” I tell him, “I’m sorry, but your dog’s gonna hafta wait a little longer to see you. ‘Cause you hired me so Lil’ BB’s not getting to you, OK? I promise.”

“Yeah? You’re that good, huh?” The ghost of a smile.

“Yeah.” I can’t look him in the eye. Looking at him—it makes my heart race and my eyes burn. Makes the nausea clench my belly. I think it’s the fear I might be lying about being able to save him.

“… but you said you dunno what makes it work.”

“Nope.”

“So what you’re doing, all this torturing me, basically, might cause me to die.”

I hate the chill that slinks up my spine when he says that. “Maybe,” I reluctantly admit.

“So you should let me have a chip.”

Dumbass kid. “Nope.”

*         *         *

Eight hours in, and I’m about to be #teamLilBB

I made the mistake of letting Theo use his phone, and now he’s threatening to call 911 if I don’t untie him.

“This is fucking KIDNAPPING, man, it’s a CRIME you’re holding me hostage against my will FUCK YOU if you don’t untie me I’ll call the cops and have you arrested AND I won’t pay you they’ll throw you in fuckin’ prison for this—”

Fuck this kid and his dead dog, too. I untie him.

*         *         *

“You did WHAT??” Emma is livid on our video call.

“It’th not hith fault, I made him!” Theo announces from where he lounges on the bed, munching on chips and getting crumbs everywhere. He swallows and adds, “I threatened to call the cops. Look, it’s fine. I’m fine. It’s probably all Steve’s prank! We’ll just chill here for sixteen more hours—”

“It is not fine. Jack, you need to tie him up right now! Christ, I’m heading there.”

“Hey can you pick up a pizza on your way?” I ask.

“I’ll take a supreme and a cheese,” pipes up Theo.

Emma mouths at me to call her back privately. Now. She hangs up. I tell Theo I gotta use the toilet and he has to be zip-tied while I’m in there, and he makes a face and mutters, “Dude, how much coffee did you drink? Maybe you should wear the diaper.”

Emma is gonna have a lot of questions when she arrives to find this kid already dead.

Anyway I manage to get him back in the chair, Theo tolerating the zip-ties so long as I agree to unbind him after, and I call Emma back.

Her nose wrinkles. “Ew, are you on the toilet?”

“Yes. Babe, just tell me what—”

“OK, listen. You have to keep Theo tied up. I talked to Santiago’s widow—his death wasn’t an accident.” Santiago N. was the collector who procured Little Boy Blue and displayed it in his shop for years until he died in 2006 in a car wreck. Emma continues urgently: “He intentionally veered into oncoming traffic.”

I take a breath as I consider this. So Santiago got behind the wheel, presumably while carrying the doll, and caused his own crash? That fits my hypothesis of how Theo removed Lil’ BB from its case under the haunting’s influence. And looking back at the previous incidents—the fall from the ladder, the drowning from the pool—those deaths also fit the pattern of victims causing their own “accidents.” So as long as we don’t allow Theo to retrieve the doll and initiate his own death, he’ll be safe.

“So we just keep him restrained until—”

“Until when? Jack, how do we know when it’ll stop?” I can feel the migraine creeping behind my eyes as she leans in and says, “There’s only one way to guarantee he’ll live. We need to find the doll.”

*         *         *

Emma will monitor Theo while I go search his house. Or at least that’s the plan—until she arrives wreathed in the aroma of Italian herbs and greasy mozz, and Theo absolutely loses his shit. He demands to be released because he will “literally die” if he can’t eat that pizza, so I snip the zip tie on one of his hands and tell Emma I’ll stay until he’s done eating. Midway into his second slice, Theo demands to use the bathroom and claims refusing him violates the Geneva Convention and I think, Not this shit again. I’m getting a real sense of déjà poo.

Surprisingly, Emma agrees to let him use the facilities unsupervised.

From inside, Theo loudly complains (through the door kept ajar at my insistence) about how Emma is so much nicer than I am.

“Good luck with this,” I warn Emma.

When he emerges, he grabs a pizza box and plops onto the bed.

“You’re going to have to get back in the chair—” begins Emma

“Just lemme eat! It’s like torture, for real. My body needs a break.”

He glares as he bites into his pizza, and Emma sighs and looks at me. And because I’m a genuinely bad person, I tell Theo that Emma’s never seen Jon drink water.

Emma’s all business, though, cutting through the kid’s YouTube bullshit and explaining that she’s already searched the house, but wants me to go over each floor and the grounds again focusing on my attunement to the paranormal…

… only I’m not really listening, I’m watching Theo gobble the pizza, grease dribbling from his lips. His fingers stuff the crust into his mouth and then he grabs his soda, guzzles, sets it down and wipes his hand on his shirt and grabs his phone and leaves oily prints. I feel nauseous, bad vibes oozing from the kid as he swims in my vision, and that same hand reaches for another slice.

And suddenly I realize what I’m seeing. And I am such an idiot. Oh my God, such an idiot.

I know how Little Boy Blue killed them.

When Theo closes the lid and sets the box aside, I tell him to sit in the chair.

He frowns. “What’s the rush, bro? Just let me relax a little.”

“Now.”

“Why?” he snaps.

Emma intervenes, cajoling, like a teacher at an elementary school to a kid on the brink of a tantrum. But it’s too late—Theo’s agitated, regardless of whether it’s her or me telling him what to do.

“Why? Why is it SO IMPORTANT I be tied up?” he snaps, and I squint as the vertigo worsens, knowing it’s already too late so I just tell him what I should have figured out yesterday when we met for the first time.

“Theo, what’s in your hand?” I say.

“Huh?” He looks at his phone.

“This whole time, you’ve been eating with one hand, setting down the pizza and picking up your drink, setting down your drink and picking up your phone. In fact you were doing that yesterday, too, when you were swinging around the katana, a two-handed sword, but using only one hand. Why? What’s in your other hand?”

His head cocks like a spaniel’s, and he slowly turns from the greasy phone in his fingers to his other hand, held in a loose fist resting on his chest.

Here’s the thing about the paranormal: by definition it doesn’t belong in our world, so to influence material objects takes a lot of energy. To make the doll get up and run around—that would be an impossible feat for most ghosts. That’s why it’s so difficult to find physical proof, because the paranormal rarely impacts the physical world beyond flickering lights or the occasional temperature drop. In fact, the most common kind of paranormal influence is psychological. Effects on perception, judgment, decisions. Like veering into traffic because you see yourself in the wrong lane. Like losing your balance on a ladder because you’re suddenly struck by vertigo. Like stumbling into the pool because you think the surface is concrete. It can make you see something that’s not there…

… Or not see something that is there.

That miasma of bad mojo around Theo—I assumed what I was sensing was his impending doom. But Little Boy Blue’s influence, though strongest on its victim, also influences everyone else in proximity. And so all of us—me, Emma, Theo—are not seeing the same thing. That’s why my skin’s been crawling so much, my eyes watering. Especially when I look at Theo. Especially when I look at his closed hand. It’s what the last lines of the rhyme have been telling us all along—whence has he fled?

They’ll find him beside you.

“The reason everyone dies with the doll beside them is because they’re carrying it,” I say.

They carry the doll for ten days. Nobody sees. (A camera would, and I’m kicking myself for aiming my surveillance cams outside instead of in here.) On the tenth day, the doll’s delusions kick into high gear and drive its owner to their death.

I hold out a hand and step closer and say, “Give me the doll.”

Theo just stares at me, green eyes going almost impossibly wide.

And then he screams and, still holding his closed fist to his chest, he flings the pizza box at me.

*         *         *

It’s impossible to know what Theo sees as he springs from the bed, glancing frantically between the door and window, looking like nothing so much as a panicking dog scrabbling for an exit.

“Theo STOP! Stop moving!” Emma shouts.

But he doesn’t hear her and we have no choice. We have to take him down.

This, THIS is why I didn’t want to untie him, not even for a moment, not even to use the bathroom. Because now we have a 6’2” hallucinating maniac who might bolt for the door, might bolt for the window, might even bolt straight for the wall and bash his brains out against the cinderblock. Unless we stop him right here his delusions will drive him to run off into the desert, or leap in front of a car or swan dive off a cliff. Emma and I cannot let him leave.

While Emma keeps trying to talk him down, I raise my fists.

I’m a natural-born coward, not made for fighting. But when I was around Theo’s age and still early in my transition, I didn’t yet have the beard or the muscles or the chiseled abs (Yep, definitely have those now, would I lie to you?). What I did have was a mouth that made very bad choices for my face. There was this one time in particular I had the shit kicked outta me, so afterward I found my way to this MMA gym. It was all dudes who’d been doing taekwondo since they were toddlers. They told me they required some background in BJJ, kung fu, etc., so I explained my situation—that my parents never allowed me in martial arts because it wasn’t appropriate for a “girl.” So I’d never been taught to throw a punch but was now getting quite the education in receiving them. Could they teach my fists to back up my mouth?

The instructor sympathized. He was a gay marine, and understood what it meant to be targeted. He also warned me later, “Bruce Lee couldn’t back up your mouth. Maybe wise up and be less of a wiseass, huh?”

Long story short I trained long enough to learn what I needed. So now, when a panicked Theo takes a swing, I duck. He telegraphs his motion so clumsily it feels almost too easy to catch his arm on the next punch, twisting my back to him and dropping to throw him over my shoulder. Slamming on the floor knocks the wind from him. I bark at Emma but she’s already here, jerking and tugging at something in his fist, and Theo writhes while I pin him. There’s the rrrrrriiiiiiip of fabric and suddenly Theo goes limp. Emma tumbles backwards. She scrabbles into the wall and I swear I hear her skull ring as she hits it.

Cursing, I yank a ziptie from my back pocket and bind Theo’s wrists together while Emma curls in a fetal position.

“Did I hurt her?” he keeps asking. “Did I hurt her?”

I scurry to Emma who whimpers like a whipped dog with her arms pinned against her chest. But Emma—brave, brilliant Emma—she twitches, shrieks, and hyperventilates, but she does not let the doll trick her into running.

I retrieve a jackknife from my bag, then move behind her and wrap my arms around her almost as if in an embrace. I grab her forearms, gently but firmly, and tug.

Emma resists.

I have to grip her extremely hard to force her arms away from her body, and she cries out as I pin her beneath me, arms splayed out in front of her. I grab the jackknife and stab it into the spot where my vision wavers the most, right by her clenched fists. Emma (or the doll?) screams, and something squirms under the blade. It feels like I’ve impaled an animal, like something alive, flailing on the end of that knife, even though I know the sensation can’t be real. And I lift the blade and it bucks and jerks in my grip. In my vision the tip of the knife is swimming and I glimpse flashes of a child writhing as I rush to the firepit outside to throw the whole squiggling and squirming mess in. I grab lighter fluid from beside the grill and pour it around the knife and then I light it up.

As the flames rise, I record the scene on my phone.

Later Emma and Theo will both tell me the doll showed them the same thing: me attacking them. Likely because it wanted to neutralize me as a threat. Now, the sense of nausea churning in my belly gradually settles. The chill that was prickling my skin burns off in the desert heat. My vision clears, and I see the flames devouring the doll, scraps of blue cloth turning to black, its tiny inked mouth widening and curling as the fire consumes the cloth and stuffing until there is nothing but ash.

*         *         *

Through the haze of cheap beer and tequila, Theo and I wear headbands and pose with katanas and take selfies in front of the laughing, babbling crowd. We’re celebrating, Theo recounting the Lil’ BB story to his friends, showing off the glass case, the website and doll photos, even the Depends. And after hours of accolades and cheers and slaps on the back—man, it feels good!—afterwards, I go outside and light up a joint under the stars in the desert air, breathing the buzz into my lungs.

I sit there awhile and watch the scintillating sky and try to grasp at that elusive sensation, happiness. We’ve just ended a terrifying hundred-year-old haunting. So why do I feel like a sour note?

(Probably because it would’ve been a lot less hassle if I’d just aimed a camera at the kid from the get-go. Frigging amateur hour…)

The door slides open behind me, and Emma sidles next to me.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” I say, and offer her the joint but she declines. And we just lean together in silence for awhile, and eventually I ask her, “Hey… we good?”

“Of course! Why do you ask?”

“I dunno. You seemed pretty annoyed at me during most of this trip.”

“That’s because you were being annoying.”

“Okay. Well… before today, too.” I don’t know how to say what I’m trying to say. She pulls away from me so she can study my face, and I tell her, “It used to be easy to make you laugh.”

“Babe! You still make me laugh. But… you know.” And then she catches me off-guard, in that blunt way this girl sometimes has that feels like a sucker punch when she says, “The honeymoon phase doesn’t last forever.”

And all I’m thinking is, She’s past the honeymoon phase?

We haven’t even had our actual honeymoon. I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised—she’s been keeping count of how many days I leave my socks on the floor (old bachelor habits die hard). Still, to hear her say it out loud pulls me up short, and Emma must see that in my face because she launches into a lecture about love, about togetherness, about “stable romance”—whatever the fuck that means.

“… Instead of infatuation and butterflies like on your first date,” she says like I’m the slowest student in her Intimacy 101 seminar, “it’s like… like dressing in pajamas instead of dressing up. Being comfortable, because you’re with the person you ask every night, what do you want to do for dinner, for the rest of your lives.”

“I pretty much always let you pick,” I say, partly because I’m still processing, but also Emma’s the one with dietary restrictions. I add, “Usually after you present me with choices. But they’re false choices because you secretly know which restaurant you want, and I have to guess and if I guess wrong then you suggest the other one so we go to that one and then I think… why not just tell me the one you want in the first place?”

Emma is glaring. “Ok, fine, I do do that,” she admits. “But you always say you don’t care, but you secretly have preferences!”

“Of course I have preferences! It’s just… my biggest preference is that I get to eat with you, so.” I shrug, and pull her closer and add: “That’s what I want. You ask me what we do for dinner. You give me false choices. I tell you what I want, you choose anyway, and we go together. For the rest of our lives.”

Emma smacks my arm, but her eyes are shining, and she leans up and kisses me.

Maybe I’m just not done chasing highs yet, but to me there’s no star brighter than this girl in my arms.

But for tonight, we’ve defeated a hundred-year-old doll, everyone is alive, and we’re riding high in victory. So at least for now, I guess, we can worry about forever another day. It ain’t going nowhere.