Chapter Eleven
Ghost
My triumph over you was absolute.
You sat quietly in my passenger seat as I drove, weakly rubbing the last stubborn traces of oil from your cheeks.
You were thoroughly satisfied, judging by the way you had gone completely boneless against my leather, staring through the window with your eyelids heavy.
Now and then, your lashes lowered completely, only for you to force them back up, stubbornly fighting sleep.
Your clothes were a mess, which made for one hell of a contrast to the version of you I had taken out on this drive.
That Lai had been pressed, polished, and put together.
His shirt had been perfectly ironed and starched, his tie straight, every button secured.
Now your shirt was nowhere to be seen, and your red coat was lazily draped over your bare body.
Your long hair was tangled around your shoulders, and a dark bite mark was forming beneath your jaw that made my engine purr every time my gaze passed over it.
I glanced over at you again, unable to hide the proud smile spreading across my face. You had done well, considering you had barely known how to handle a stick shift when we started. You met my eyes, a soft smile playing over your lips.
I was going to get lost in those blue eyes.
That would not do. A gentleman ought to keep his attention on the road, especially when carrying precious cargo. I looked away and focused on the highway stretching ahead of us, my headlights making the road signs and markers glow.
HEMPSTEAD
EXIT 1 MILE
My engine choked. The sound tore through the quiet cabin, a violent cough followed by a shudder that shook my entire frame. For one terrible second, I nearly stalled in the middle of the highway; my revs dropped, caught, then surged again as I forced myself onward.
You sobered instantly, the peaceful weariness vanishing from your face as you straightened up in the passenger seat, one hand bracing against my dash. “Ghost?”
I did not answer.
The sign vanished behind us, but the words remained burned across my sight.
Hempstead.
It shouldn’t have come as a shock. I knew these roads well; I knew the turn-off like I knew the back of my hand. I just hadn’t expected it to be so close. I hadn’t expected it to cut like a sharp blade, re-opening a healing wound like a vicious little surgeon.
“Is everything okay?” You asked, anxiety creeping into your voice.
I shook my head, then realized what I had done and nodded instead. “I’m fine,” I muttered. Another sign swept into view.
HEMPSTEAD
EXIT 1/2 MILE
I had never not taken that exit, the turn-off that led toward a home that wasn’t my home anymore.
My hands tightened on my wheel. Just a fraction, but you were no fool.
You knew something was wrong. The lie was rattling through every inch of my body.
You could hear my revolutions spiking and dropping without reason, and how tense my suspension was.
“I’ll drive,” you declared suddenly as you pushed yourself over the center console and into my driver’s seat, grabbing the wheel.
I didn’t resist. I couldn’t; I could barely think.
My mind was trapped in the past, where I had watched the large white letters pass above my windshield hundreds of times over the years with John behind my wheel.
My eyes were locked onto them as your steady hands gently turned my wheel toward the offramp.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, tearing myself away from the past to look at you. “Keep going.”
“I can tell somethings got you spooked.” You shook your head and surprised me a little by flicking on the indicator.
“Spooked?” I scoffed, though the sound came out thin and breathless rather than offended. “I am a 1970 Dodge Challenger; I don’t get spooked.”
You glanced away from the road to frown at me. “You’re going to lie to me now?”
“Watch where you’re driving.” I corrected your steering with a light tug, but I didn’t turn us away from the painfully familiar road.
You took the offramp and drove down until the streets thinned out to rural roads, then pulled me onto the shoulder and brought me to a complete stop.
The silence after my engine settled was unbearable.
“Ghost,” you said.
The bitterness I had worked so hard to bury bubbled toward the surface like putrid oil from the bottom of a ruined pan.
I had sealed it beneath pride and anger, hoping that if I behaved as though John had meant nothing, eventually he would.
But thirty years did not simply vanish just because a man signed a piece of paper.
My grief and rage filled my throat and coated my tongue with venomous words that I choked down rather than spit at you. “This…” I began, then had to stop and clear my throat. “This used to be where my home was.”
You looked out through my windshield, studying the narrow country road ahead. Your expression softened in a way I did not appreciate.
“Can we go?” I asked before you could speak.
“Go where?”
The question felt like a trap, though you asked it gently.
“Away,” I answered, trying to hide pain in my voice, hoping you wouldn’t ask questions anymore, that you would floor the accelerator and take me away to where pain and memories could not follow.
“Just take me away from here.” I didn’t ask to be taken home; I had no home, not anymore.
I belonged to you now, legally speaking, but belonging to a man and having a home were not always the same thing.
My home had been in Hempstead with John, but John didn’t want me anymore.
He had taken the insurance payout, signed me over, and left me injured and alone.
I had to forget him. I had been telling myself that every day since the auction.
I had to.
But the look on your face told me loud and clear that forgetting wasn’t on the agenda that night, and I realized, with creeping dread, that the vicious little surgeon that was sharpening the knife was you.
You weren’t going to let the wound fester, no matter how much it hurt to cut it back open.
“You won’t heal without closure,” you whispered as you reached for my shadow. I knew one touch would make me fall apart; I disappeared, sinking deep into the metal frame, leaving you alone in the driver’s seat, my frame shuddering in shame.
“I mean it, Ghost,” you continued, not seeming to take any offense from my cowardice. “I’ve been there. You just gotta face it and move on. Sometimes it’s better to rip the bandage off. Better to hear someone say they don’t want you than spend years wondering why.”
My radio crackled involuntarily. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you really believe that?” You leaned back in the seat, apparently content to argue with my dashboard until I reappeared, your thumb stroking slowly over the leather of my seat.
“Trust me, Ghost. You might keep driving past this exit for another thirty years, and you’ll still wonder what happened every time you see the name. ”
I reformed next to you, hesitant and ashamed. Maybe your words had some truth to them; I’d only ever had one owner. You had far more experience with being abandoned than I did, and despite that, you were still here.
“Let me talk to him.” You began fixing your outfit, pulling the sides of your coat together and adjusting the collar until it sat neatly over your bare chest. You combed your fingers through your tangled hair with little success, wiped the last of the oil from your face with a handkerchief, then inspected the result in my mirror.
“Maybe there was a reason,” you continued. “Maybe the reason is that he is an asshole who never valued you. Whatever it is, it will be better than wondering forever.”
That was what I had been doing, day after day, asking myself the same useless question. Why?
I had been good to John. He’d said he would never sell me, and people made offers; once a week, it seemed, whenever we stopped for fuel or pulled into town.
‘Hey, that’s a nice Challenger you have there.’
John would grin because he knew. Then he would climb behind my wheel, rev my engine, and leave them standing in a cloud of smoke.
He was proud of me.
I had been certain of it.
So why had he given me up?
I knew that without you I’d never find out. I couldn’t drive back and ask, could I?
I closed my eyes for a moment before I gave you a nod.
You nodded back, turning my key and pressing your red boot against my gas pedal. “Tell me where to go.”
I thought back to the last time I drove this road, about a year ago.
It was spring then, too, and the ground was still damp from the melted snow.
It was warm enough, but the warmth felt like a promise between two young lovers, something that could be broken at any time in order to kill all the fresh flower buds that were foolish enough to believe the winter was truly over.
“Number 122,” I offered in a cracked voice as one mailbox after another flashed by.
I knew what John’s looked like: blue with yellow numbers.
It had looked like that for the thirty years we were together.
Once or twice a decade, John sanded it down and gave it a fresh coat of paint. I didn’t doubt it would still be there.
I was wrong.
The old wooden box was gone, replaced by a polished metal one mounted on a clean new post. The numbers were silver, perfectly aligned and entirely without character.
My engine stumbled; you eased your foot from the accelerator as we rolled toward the short driveway.
As we pulled up beside it, my engine shuddered once and died completely.
Something felt very, very wrong here. A mailbox I might understand, but even the house looked different.
I’d known every crack in the paint; I watched them spread over thirty years.
The overgrown garden had pressed against the porch, and a pile of scrap metal grew larger each year as John planned more and more projects, ever the working man.
None of that remained now. The house had fresh siding, the driveway had been resurfaced, the grass was cut brutally short, every blade obedient and identical. The garden had been cleared and replaced by neat little shrubs planted in even rows.
And beneath the carport–my carport–sat a brand-new electric vehicle. Silent. Smooth. White. Soulless.
How dare it?
Something tightened in my throat; that thing sat where I had spent countless evenings cooling after a hard drive, where John had changed my oil, polished my chrome, and cursed at bolts that refused to turn, where rain once drummed against the roof while he sat inside me with the radio playing, hiding from arguments in the house.
My home, occupied by an appliance with tires.
“Ghost,” you whispered, placing one hand over mine. “Wait here.”