"Did you know this song might be about an orgy?" I asked the witch standing next to the punch bowl, pointing toward the speaker.

"What?" she shouts, using tar-black talons to pull her willowy silver wig away from her ear.

"The song—'Monster Mash.'" I point toward the speaker again.

"What about it?" she asks, louder.

"An orgy!" I yell just as the music comes to an abrupt stop—my friend and host of the evening, Sarah, hopping onto a dining chair to address her guests.

"No, thanks..." Witch woman sends daggers my way as she slowly turns around and walks, funnily enough, toward the archway decorated in bloodied weapons.

"You should be so lucky," I mutter under my breath as I fill my cup with an undisclosed neon-green substance, successfully avoiding the floating candied eyeballs.

Sarah, my lifelong best friend, is giving her yearly thank you so much for coming to my Halloween party; it's the only thing I care about speech while I'm debating about whether anyone is secretly keeping track of how many hot-dog-mummies I've eaten thus far.

Nah. And so I reach for another.

"Aye, aye, Captain Winnifred!"

Fuck, I've been spotted. I drop the mummy into my drink and cover the top of my cup with my hand.

"You okay?" Caleb, Sarah's husband, asks, eyeing my cup with suscpicion.

"Never been better," I say sweetly. "It's another successful year," I say, admiring their home, decorated with professional precision.

Caleb does the same, and when his expression turns to subtle pride and admiration for his wife's work, I place a bet to the universe that the next three words out of his mouth will be...

"Anything Sarah wants," we say in unison. He smiles into the top of his beer with a hint of guilty shyness, but mostly resolve. Sarah and Caleb met in the ninth grade. He's been carrying her textbooks, literally and metaphorically, since.

I love Caleb. He's like a brother to me. A brother-in-law if Sarah and I were actually sisters like we used to boldly claim (see: lie) in school. Turns out, according to a DNA test a few years back, we're fourth cousins once removed. Sarah simply says we're cousins now, when given the chance.

"You know, my friend Robbie is here. I thought I might introduce you," Caleb says after a long sip of his beer.

Yeah, absolutely not.

I've been successfully avoiding the guys Caleb wants to set me up with since my date with his buddy from work. Winston cried while describing his—very much alive—mother and the "beautiful bond" they shared. He also brought me an orchid, which could have been a sweet gesture—I do love plants. Unfortunately, it was in a large ceramic bowl with rocks and bark, and it weighed a ton. I couldn't just put it on the ground, lest a server trip over it and meet an untimely death, so it had to sit on the table between us—blocking our view of each other. Then, after a dull dinner, I had to carry it home with me, clinging to it in the back of the taxi as I wrote a kind but firm let's-not-do-this-again text.

If anything, that date only solidified my desire to remain causal and stick to dating apps where I could properly vet the men for myself.

"Maybe later," I answer Caleb. "I'm just waiting to talk to our hostess." I tilt my chin towards Sarah, who's dressed as the Princess Buttercup to Caleb's Westley.

"Okay, fine. This one is different, though. He even has a dead mom," Caleb adds far too excitedly.

"Oh, bonus!" I say, matching his energy. "I love when their mom is dead. It makes this so much easier around the holidays."