Where The Heart Is: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations story

off, choking on sudden tears.
A stunned silence followed. When Ron spoke again, his voice had gone soft with sympathy. “Hang tight, okay? We’re on the way.”
“’Kay. Thanks.”
“No problem. Love you, man.”
Dean couldn’t speak past the tightness in his throat, but Ron had already hung up anyway. Snapping his phone shut, Dean sat in the thin winter grass by the road to wait.
Alone in the gathering dark, Dean drew his knees to his chest, put his head down and let the tears come.
Chapter Thirteen
    Dean narrowed his eyes at the paper in his hand. Tapping his pencil against his knee, he frantically wracked his brain for an answer. Nothing came to mind.
“Time!” Kerry called.
Damn. Scribbling the first word he thought of before Kerry noticed, Dean set the pencil down and clasped his hands over his paper. Ron glanced at him, and he flashed the blankly cheerful smile he’d been using ever since he’d left Sommer’s place two days before. The worried crease between Ron’s brows deepened.
“Okay, Dean,” Kerry said. “You’re first this time. ‘Things that come from vending machines.’”
“Um. Okay.” Dean scanned his sheet, and cringed. “I said ‘bacon’.”
Kerry’s friend Morgan, sitting beside Dean on the sofa, snorted with laughter. “What the fuck? Bacon ? How do you get bacon from a vending machine?”
“BLTs,” Morgan’s husband, Tom, suggested. “I got a BLT from a vending machine at the airport just last week.”
Zoe, a pretty blonde from Ron’s work, giggled. “That doesn’t count, doofus.”
Dean listened to the resulting argument with only half an ear. He couldn’t care less if he got the point for “bacon” or not. He was sick of smiling and pretending to be happy. He wished the two other couples who’d come over to Kerry and Ron’s house for dinner would go home, so he could mope like he wanted to. All he could think of was Sommer. Even Scattergories, normally his favorite game, couldn’t hold his attention against his fantasies of what he’d do differently if he could live that fateful evening all over again. The thing was, he firmly believed he’d done right by telling Sommer the truth, so he wasn’t sure what he’d change, exactly.
Maybe just the fact that I left , he thought, staring morosely at his paper. You should’ve stayed, idiot. You should’ve waited until he’d settled down some, then tried to talk it out.
Of course, the fact that Sommer hadn’t come over or called or anything spoke volumes. Dean couldn’t bring himself to beg for Sommer’s attention, even if part of him ached to do just that.
He shifted in his seat. The cock plug he hadn’t once taken off sent a shiver through him, and for a second he felt once again that wonderful sense of belonging. He wrapped it around him like a cloak.
“Okay, ‘bacon’ is officially allowed,” Kerry announced, breaking Dean’s reverie. “Morgan, it’s your turn.”
Before Morgan could give her answer, the phone rang. Ron jumped up. “Y’all go ahead, I’ll get it.”
Dean watched Ron jog into the kitchen to pick up the phone. Beside him, Morgan gave her answer—bubblegum. He had to smile when Kerry let loose a string of colorful curses. That was the advantage to giving weird answers; yours weren’t canceled out by someone else having the same one.
Ron appeared in the kitchen doorway, one hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Dean, it’s for you.”
Dean’s heartbeat stumbled, skipped and started galloping a mile a minute. Pushing to his feet, he hurried to where Ron stood. “Who is it?” He knew who he wanted it to be, but he didn’t dare get his hopes up.
Ron gave him a cautious look. “Sommer.”
Dean closed his eyes, drew a few deep breaths and opened his eyes again. “It’s Sommer?”
“Yeah.” With a quick glance at Kerry, Ron led Dean into the kitchen. “He sounds kind of freaked out, but he wouldn’t tell me what’s wrong. He said he had to talk to you first.”
“Oh. Okay.” Dean reached for the phone, his hands trembling.
Ron patted Dean’s shoulder. “Take as much time as you need.”
“Thanks.” Waiting until Ron had left the room, Dean lifted the phone to his ear. His insides churned. “Hello?”
“Dean. Thank God. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to talk to me.”
Sommer’s voice sounded high and shaky, as if he was on the edge of panic. Worried, Dean moved to the other side of the room to lean against the counter. “What’s wrong?”
“I saw the ghost