“I can’t believe it’s almost Halloween,” I sighed, blowing smoke out of my lungs with my words.

“I know right?” Gerard replied from beside me, similar smoke swirling in twisting rings and tendrils from between his lips.

“I can’t even grasp how long I’ve been in Jersey at this point. It’s weird, it almost feels like I’ve been here all along,” I mused to myself, almost forgetting that Gerard was beside me on the steps in the back hallway. I tended to do that more and more now, forget Gerard was near me or standing beside me. I just assumed he was, which he always was and I guess that turned into something as natural as breathing. So I tended to forget he was there sometimes, but not in a bad way. And he never seemed to mind, he got when I was speaking to him or just speaking aloud to no one. This wasn’t one of those latter instances.

“I think a part of you always has been. You said yourself this journey was to find yourself. And whether you’ve found it here or we’ve just monopolized your ability to have free will and forced you to stay, I think that you’ve been here all along. I think you were just waiting for the rest of you to catch up,” Gerard supplied, all the while continuing to look straight forward.

I simply shrugged my shoulders in response, there wasn’t a way to answer that response really. Because it was more or less exactly what I had been thinking all along. Or at least I had been thinking lately.

“Alright, I gotta go back to work,” I sighed, standing up to throw out my cigarette butt in the waiting trash can at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey that reminds me, you know Frankie’s birthday is Halloween right?” Gerard asked standing up to follow my lead back out into the real world that was Reta’s diner.

“No. Well maybe, I think I heard it in passing from someone at some point,” I replied, trying to search my memory for when I had heard it exactly for it to even sound remotely familiar.

“Well it is, and the closer it gets to Halloween the more and more and more you’ll hear about it. Frankie is like a little kid when it comes to his birthday,” Gerard warned, a hand reaching to touch my arm before I went in the back way through the kitchen.

“So you mean Frankie is just like he always is?” I smiled thinking about one of the strangest people I had ever met that was fast becoming one of the things I cherished most in this world.

“Pretty much. So you know that means we have a show annnd a party afterwards right? Being the nerds we are we kinda revel in Halloween and it being Frankie’s birthday just gives us a better excuse. It’s straight up costume only, no party poopers allowed sort of thing. Do you think you’d be able to get off in time to get to the concert? Sheels and Star are even coming, it’s our big to do around here for us,” Gerard asked hopefully, his hand still on my arm.

“For you and Frankie dahling I’d do anything,” I drawled in my worst accent possible.

“What about my brother eh?” Gerard asked, wiggling his eyebrows like some deranged acrobatic act.

“Him too,” I winked back at Gerard dramatically and watched the color drain from his face as it scrunched up in disgust.

“Ack! No making Way babies!!!” Gerard spat and gagged at me as he played at vomiting all over the back hallway.

“Fine, fine. But I won’t promise anything. I really have to go now. You got your key to lock behind you?” I asked absentmindedly.

Gerard lifted the single key on the keychain I had bought him for like a dollar a few weeks back so he wouldn’t lose the key. It was silly really, but for some reason it was what I wanted him to put the key on. It was perfect if you thought about it and I knew that Gerard got the play on words or images really. A bagel. A simple plain plastic bagel hung attached to the only other key to my building and my apartment. I thought it was fitting since it was part of what started my whole stint in Jersey so far. Who ever thought a bagel would change my world eh?

“Love you like whoa, gotta go,” I rushed out, blowing a kiss Gerard’s general direction before slipping through the door back to work.
-xXx-
“Sheels!” I shouted as I crashed through the door to Waste of Breath, the brass bells at the top of the door crashing loudly as they marked my entrance. As if the sound of the door and my desperate yell for Sheels wasn’t enough.

“Sheels” I shouted frantically as I started zig zagging through the wracks of clothes, bending up and down looking for any telltale sign of Bob’s older sister and friend of mine.

“What, what, what woman?” Sheela asked she came out of the back, once again carrying a large plate of once tinfoil wrapped baked goods.

I grabbed one off the plate without even looking and shoved the confection into my mouth, whole. Chewing frantically I took a moment to collect myself.

“Thrszz orr gud,” I said with a mouthful of something delicious.

“Thanks. I think. . .” Sheela replied as she took a bite of the one in her hand she had been eating when she had come out of the back.

“These are good,” I replied after I swallowed the mass in my mouth as I grabbed another one.

“Thank you, another boredom creation I’m afraid. I think this time we have chocolate chip cookie brownies and caramel. I made chocolate chip cookie dough with dark, milk and white chocolate chips. Then I made a brownie batter with peanut butter and toffee chips in it and added walnuts. I cut the two together in a pan, then added caramel across the top, cutting that into the mixture before finishing it all off with a layer of shaved coconut. Pretty good for just grabbing crap out of my cabinets,” Sheela said with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Are you sure you’re in the right business?” I asked as I bit into my second one, remembering to not stuff the whole thing in my mouth again.

“Positive. What did you need in such a desperate fashion if you don’t mind my play on words?” Sheela asked as she took the last bite of her current creation and wiped her fingers on her jeans as she placed the giant plate of baked goods down on the counter.

“I need help. You sew, I sew, I need to abuse your hands. But first and foremost you need to help me find and buy yellow. Lots and lots and lots of yellow. And red, very bright red. But mainly yellow, oh yes yellow,” I said with a grin on my face as I leaned my upper half on the counter, my weight on my elbows.

“Yellow you say? Any sort of yellow or are we looking for a specific yellow?” Sheela asked, mimicking my leaning position on her counter.

“A very specific yellow indeed,” I grinned evilly, liking the plan that had hit me while cleaning up at work and had sent me storming here as fast as my feet could carry me.

“And what type of fabric are you looking for?” Sheela asked, her eyebrows wiggling willy like she had already read my mind.

“Anything skin tight,” I purred, seeing the costume forming in my mind and seeing a list of things I would be needing to get. It was nice, Reta still hadn’t allowed me to pay rent so my little stash of money had almost regained it’s original amount if not more. One day I’d pay her back, whether she let me or not.

“Vinyl?” Sheela asked with a wicked grin.

“Vinyl. And boots, I’m going to need boots,” I grinned, liking this plan indeed.

“I think we need to go shopping my dear. Tomorrow. You, me and Star. We’ll go to New York and hit a few places I know. Sound good to you?” Sheela asked with a grin as she picked up another boredom confection and held it mid air.

“I think that sounds like the best idea I’ve ever heard,” I replied with an equal grin on my face as I bumped her confection with my own, like a toast to our evil plan now set in action.
-xXx-
“I never want to go shopping again,” I groaned as I slouched in the back of Star’s car on our way back from New York, almost to the diner in fact.

“I know right? But come on, we got so much accomplished. And we got everything we all needed,” Sheela said with a grin over her shoulder so she could look at me in the back seat.

“We are so going to set the place on fire, no pun intended Jay, when we get to that damn party on Halloween!” Star cheered as she flicked on her blinker to pull into the parking lot my apartment used with the diner.

“That we are,” I grinned, patting the ginormous pile of bags next to me.

“So the deal is that I’ll get my buddy to form and mold our masks, for free nonetheless, and you guys will help me with my costume right? Because I am SO not talented in that department,” Star pleaded as she pulled up to my tiny little outside door.

“That’s about it,” I answered as I opened the back car door and went about grabbing all the bags that were mine.

“Alrighty then, your place tomorrow night after we’re all done with work to cast our faces and take measurements it is!” Sheela said excitedly, clapping her hands together momentarily before coughing and getting herself back under control.

“I think baby sitting Frankie when he was little might of have rubbed off,” I sang evilly as I kicked the door to Star’s closed and hefted my bags up as I looked for my apartment key.

“I will SO kill you!” Sheela yelled jokingly from her rolled down window as Star put the car into reverse.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I called over my shoulder as I unlocked my outside door and opened it.

“Gerard!” I blurted out, shocked.

There looking up at me from the stairs, sitting on the third step, clad all in black with a leather jacket gracing his torso, sat Gerard. And he looked horrible.

“Get your own home slacker!” Sheela and Star shouted out their windows as they pealed out of the parking lot, they must have seen Gerard through the open door. I simply flipped them off over my shoulder as I listened to them peal out, laughing over their loud music. I let the door shut behind me before walking a few steps closer to him, not too close mind you, leaving the door behind me unlocked for the moment.

“Gerard?” I asked softly, not knowing what to do or say at the moment.

“Can I crash on the couch?” Gerard asked looking up at me without getting up.

“Sure you know you can always crash here. Why are,” I started to ask but was cut off by Gerard.

“We got into a fight is all and I didn’t want to stay there. Mikey took her side too. So here was the first place I thought of,” Gerard rambled off, standing and sticking is hands in his pockets as if he didn’t know what to do with his body.

“Oh. Uhm. I’m sorry. Though I was going to ask you why you weren’t inside already instead of out here on the steps. Yeah,” I managed to get out without sounding too lame and confused.

“Oh, I wanted to ask first. I didn’t want to just be randomly on your couch when you got home from being out with Sheels and Star apparently,” Gerard offered as he motioned at my multitude of bags with his head.

“Oh yeah, shopping for Halloween in New York for the day. But Gerard, I wouldn’t have minded if you had been on my couch when I got home. Or in the apartment period. There is a reason why I haven’t taken my key back from you yet, and why you’re the only person with one. Now, lock the door behind me and let’s go upstairs and do nothing for a while. Sound like a plan?” I asked, hiking my bags higher up my arms and turning towards the stairs without waiting for a response from him or waiting to see his face.

I did find myself smiling to myself though as I heard him click the lock on the outside door home in its place before stuffing the key in his pocket with a grunt. His footsteps mimicking my own, though louder and heavier than my own as we paraded up the long narrow staircase that lead to my apartment.

Notes

These next few chapters are for the ever so lovely Dark Violet.
She really knows how to pick a girl up out of a slump.
And I find it ironic that it is her birthday here, and these next few chapters. . .
Well, you'll see.

Thank you Dark Violet!