“A single, extremely small strawberry,” he confirms with a grimace. “Both their mouths were on it. I’ve been traumatized ever since.”

“Some things just shouldn’t be shared. I almost broke up with one of my exes after he suggested that we try out the Lady and the Tramp noodle thing. Like, yeah, it’s cute when dogs do it, but that’s because the dogs are cute. For some reason, he didn’t get it.”

Cyrus’s brows crinkle. “You almost broke up with him? I would’ve asked to break up on the spot.”

“I didn’t get a chance to, because he dumped me first,” I tell him, then wish I’d just lied. You don’t go running to the enemy to point out the wound on your back, even if the wound itself is more aggravating than fatal. Especially not when there’s an older, deeper wound inches below it from when the enemy pressed in with a knife. That one had felt fatal.

“Who would dump you?” Cyrus asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s mocking me; he sounds like he’s genuinely baffled. But for all I know, it’s a trap.

I shrug. “It’s whatever. I don’t even remember his name.” His name was Brian. He had been sweet on our first date, the perfect gentleman, complimenting my hair, my outfit, my smile. But with every date we went on after, I could feel his interest slipping away as he slowly realized, like other guys did, that I didn’t have much to offer other than my appearance. I didn’t have any passions, and I didn’t always understand his jokes right away, and I would ask the dumbest questions when I wanted to sound smart, like, What year was this restaurant founded? As if he would know or anyone would care.

“We should get back to the riddle,” I say, a little too loudly. “Do we think it’s wedding related somehow?”

“The word wedding is already included here,” Cyrus says. “I feel like that’s too obvious.”

“Well, three of the four things are red.”

“No,” he says, in the hushed voice of a hero from an action movie upon discovering who the real villain is. “Four of the four things are red.”

The wedding dress. I had been imagining a white veil and white tulle, but then I remember the qipao my cousin wore for her wedding, and my mind continues racing forward, gathering up clues, leading me to: “The cushions. That one over there.”

We both turn to the only red cushion on the chairs. The ghosts spring back into action, screaming and scrabbling at the space around our heads, but Cyrus dodges them and searches around behind the cushion, his features hard with concentration, then brandishes a key. It’s a dull bronze, slim and barely longer than my pinkie finger, the ridges already starting to rust.