Chapter Seven
Seven
“A date , huh?” Ramon was a cheerful guy in general, but the glee on his face right now was next level.
“Keep your voice down!” Nick threw a panicked glance over his shoulder, but the door to the kitchen had swung shut behind him. Cassie couldn’t hear them back here unless there was yelling. And neither of them was the yelling type.
“I’m just saying!” Ramon opened the walk-in fridge, checking the stock of everything he’d need for the lunch menu. But he kept talking while he did so; the man was a multitasker. “It’s nice to see you so…” He trailed off as he stepped all the way inside, and Nick was tempted to close the door on him. Just for a couple minutes, until he stopped talking about Nick’s love life.
Instead Nick crossed his arms and leaned a hip against the prep counter. “See me what?” He knew what Ramon was going to say; he just needed to hear him say it.
“You know…” Ramon emerged with a block of cheese and a slab of roast beef, carrying them over to the slicer. “Interested. It’s been a while, you know? Since Madison—” This time he abruptly stopped talking instead of trailing off. Mentioning Nick’s ex’s name around him tended to have that effect.
Nick concentrated on taking a slow, deep breath. Hearing her name wasn’t the arrow to the heart the way it used to be. She’d left him years ago, and she’d been checked out of the relationship for long before that. But nothing hurt like your first love. Especially when you never had the chance to fall out of love. She’d made that decision for them both. Every so often Nick would wake up in the middle of the night and ask himself: Why hadn’t he been enough?
He wasn’t still carrying a torch or anything; Madison had doused it long ago. But it was why he didn’t date anyone he expected to stick around. He was never going to set himself up for that kind of hurt again. He had his café. He had his town, his friends. Most of the time that was enough.
But now…
It’s a date.
A date.
The words haunted Nick all through lunch service (Cassie had stayed, gotten a chicken Caesar wrap, and proclaimed her undying love for Ramon. It was a goddamn sandwich; you’d think he’d made her a five-course meal) and into the afternoon. When he flipped the CLOSED sign on the door, locked up the place, and went around to the back stairs, the words echoed in his head to the rhythm of his steps. It’s a DATE. It’s a DATE.
What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been, obviously. He’d been a desperate dude who just asked out a girl he barely knew. A girl who mooched off his Wi-Fi and his electricity, and whose only redeeming quality was her love of cinnamon.
And her big brown eyes.
And her dark hair, especially that one lock that fell out of her bun to curl along her cheekbone and down to her chin, following a path he wanted to trace with his fingertips.
And that smile of hers, like the sun. Not on a miserably humid day like today, but on one of those rare days in January, when the air was crisp and a hoodie didn’t feel like heatstroke. He wanted to bask in her warmth. He wanted to…
Ugh. Fine. It was worth seeing where this date could lead.
As he unlocked the front door to his apartment over the café, his heart raced with equal parts panic and anticipation. Because it really had been a long time since he’d asked someone out, and maybe he shouldn’t have waited this long. He was really out of practice at playing it cool when it mattered.
He wasn’t sure if his roommate would be there—he kind of came and went as he pleased—and when Nick first opened the door he thought he was alone. Which was good. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about any of it: his love life, his lack of one, and the possibility that he may have just accidentally jump-started something in his personal life.
His phone buzzed with a text. Of course. Time for Elmer to make fun of him. For having a date. For not doing an impressive enough job of asking Cassie out.
But the text was from Vince: Guitar night at Jo’s! Meet there at 7?
Can’t. I have plans . He knew as soon as he hit Send that there would be follow-up questions.
And there were. Plans? You? Since when?
Nick took a slow, deep breath in through his nose as he typed. I have a date . He stared at the words, glowing on the screen. Hitting Send felt like a declaration.
Vince didn’t respond for a long moment, and Nick almost put his phone away when typing bubbles appeared. About damn time! Catch you later .
Huh. Nick had been expecting more questions, but Vince must have decided to go easy on him. Nice.
There was another text waiting for him when he got out of the shower. The one he’d been expecting.
Ghost tour, huh? You don’t get enough of that at home?
Nick huffed out a laugh. Elmer had a point. He looked up from his phone and spoke out loud, addressing the room in general. “I’m home, you know. Don’t need to text.”
It took a couple of minutes. Long enough that Nick wondered if maybe he was alone in his place after all. But then he saw it: the ripple in the air, the way an almost-shadow settled in the battered brown leather recliner in the corner near the window. The recliner that had been here since before Nick’s time. The recliner that Hallowed Grounds’s previous owner had told Nick, under no uncertain terms, to never throw out.
“Yeah,” Nick said to the recliner. “I’ve never been on Sophie’s ghost tour, you know. I figure I should probably know what it’s all about if I’m going to keep shilling it at customers.” It was a poor excuse. Nick knew it. And Elmer sure as hell knew it.
Sure, okay. Nothing to do with the pretty girl who likes your banana bread, even though you make it wrong. This time the response didn’t come as a text on his phone, but more like a voice inside his head: words forming as complete thoughts as opposed to a literal voice. It had freaked him out the first time it had happened, not long after he’d moved into this apartment above the café. In fact, it had almost been a deal-breaker. It had certainly been a deal-breaker for the café’s last four owners.
But Nick remembered Elmer when he’d been alive: the grouchy old man who’d run this place when Nick was a kid. Hallowed Grounds had been a convenient stop on the way to school, and Elmer always had blueberry muffins and banana bread freshly made in the mornings. There had been something about hearing Elmer’s voice again, the nostalgia of it. The memory of when life was simpler, and his biggest problem was math class. The moment that Nick realized Elmer had still stuck around this place was the moment that Nick realized he didn’t want to leave, either.
“Of course not,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Nothing to do with her at all.” He wasn’t sure why he bothered to lie; Elmer knew him too well.
Then the cold kicked in. It always did when Elmer was around, and Nick reached for the flannel he kept slung over the back of one of his dining chairs. Having a ghost for a roommate meant he didn’t have to run the air-conditioning, even in the height of summer. When you lived in Florida, that was a pretty good upside.
This is good. Elmer’s voice bloomed in his head again. You need to get out more. Life is for the living, you know?
“So you keep saying.” Nick moved to the kitchenette side of the studio apartment. He needed to get back downstairs, get tomorrow morning’s prep done before meeting up with Cassie, but he still had some time. “Want some coffee?”
Please.
Nick reached for the can in the cabinet and scooped some grounds into the coffee maker. A half pot was plenty; he didn’t need much more caffeine than that, and Elmer couldn’t actually drink coffee anymore. But Elmer still loved the smell, and if that pleased his ghost roommate, Nick was happy to oblige.
Besides, Nick was in a good mood. He had a date.