Rules for Ghosting

Chapter 10

10

Ezra’s first memory is of the ocean.

The nature of the funeral business has always meant that real vacations, ones where no one left in the middle to manage a crisis, were few and far between. But the summer Ezra is three, Mom and Dad pack him and Aaron into the station wagon and drive to Narragansett for a week at the beach. Aaron takes to the water like a fish, but Ezra hangs back, overwhelmed by the vastness of the ocean, clutching Mom’s hand and refusing to go in past his ankles, until Dad comes back and scoops him up, settling him on his hip and wading into the surf.

As he walks, Ezra clinging to him with arms and legs, he tells him about how waves work, about the tides, about starfish and dolphins and mermaids. Slowly, cautiously, Ezra relaxes his grip.

And Dad tosses him in.

The water closes over Ezra’s head, and for a dizzying, terrifying moment, he’s weightless. Floating.

And then Dad scoops him out of the water, and Ezra is sputtering, coughing, sobbing around the water in his throat.

“You’re fine,” he says, holding Ezra above the waves as he coughs and cries and clings. “See? It was just a second. And now it’s over. That wasn’t so scary.”

When he catches enough of his breath to speak, Ezra says, “I wasn’t ready .”

“No,” Dad agrees. “But that’s why you had to do it.”

He never quite let Ezra sink or drown, but he was always willing to let him flounder, to see if he’d figure out how to swim.

Ezra keeps following him into the water all the same.

Ezra’s takeover of Mom’s role is just one more exercise in treading water. He’s not good at it—these systems are a web of sticky notes and scribbled passwords and software and spreadsheets—but Ezra holds it together to manage payroll and log their invoices and keep the files in order. Dad stops by once or twice, not to offer help but to verify that Ezra hasn’t broken anything. Otherwise, Ezra barely sees him.

So it’s a surprise when Ezra walks into the break room at eight in the morning and finds Dad sitting at the table with a mug of coffee at his elbow, reading the paper.

Ezra’s first thought, lingering in the doorway and feeling like a creep about it, is that he looks better. Some of the puffiness has faded from around his eyes, and he looks as if he’s slept more than a few hours. Ezra hopes he’s moved past the initial shock of his wife leaving, and it’s not just a side effect of the rush of business that has come in over the last few days.

The longer he hovers, the more Ezra feels like a stalker. “Morning,” he chirps, pitching his voice into all the customer service zeal he can muster, striding into the room like he belongs there. Which, he supposes, he does now, and isn’t that just a kick in the tits.

Dad startles like Ezra’s started blaring reveille at him, looking around with wide eyes. “I forgot how quiet you can be,” he says, and it’s the most normal thing Ezra has heard him say in days.

“Sorry,” Ezra says. The last thing the poor guy needs is a heart attack. “Too many years of playing hide-and-seek in the hallways.”

“I hated when you did that. I was always worried one of you would end up closed in a casket somehow.”

“That happened one time . And it was Aaron, which literally everyone should have seen coming.”

This time, Dad chuckles. “I think you probably did see it coming,” he says. “Since if I remember right, he was only in there about five minutes before you got him out again.” There’s something fond and a little wistful in his voice. “I don’t know what he would have done without you.”

Dad closes the paper, and Ezra takes the hint to join him at the table. The look on his face is one that Ezra has never seen on him before—thoughtfulness, uncertainty, concern. Maybe even regret. Ezra feels, suddenly, very conscious of how much he’s changed since the last time he stood with his father in this room: the subtle differences in the shape of his face from the testosterone, the shadow of stubble on his jaw, the way the binder flattens his chest. All the tiny ways he’s learned to change his posture, his expressions, his presentation, carefully taking all the softness of his femininity and folding it away like a winter quilt in summer.

He clears his throat and nods toward his father’s coffee mug, pointedly nudging him out of his staring. “Top that off for you?”

“What?” The question does the job, at least; Dad blinks once, twice, and then leans back in his chair, embarrassment flashing in his eyes. “No, it’s still hot, thank you.” He pauses. “Do you have time to sit for a few minutes? I didn’t—I feel like I haven’t even thanked you, for coming to help.”

“You’re welcome.” He is being paid for the work, not helping out of a pure sense of family obligation.

“Are you settling in okay?”

Ezra considers the potential responses to that and chooses a happy medium. “It’s been okay,” he says. “Different from what I’m used to, that’s for sure.”

Dad nods slowly, thick eyebrows drawn together behind his glasses like he’s puzzling something out. “Aaron mentioned you were able to help with the taharah for Mr. Lowenstein the other day.”

Ezra had never asked the man’s name. “Jonathan needed an extra pair of hands.”

“It happens sometimes.” Dad watches him, eyes thoughtful. “Thank you for doing it. I know it’s not something you enjoy.”

The acknowledgment comes as a surprise. It’s not that no one ever cared, growing up, whether Ezra and his siblings were comfortable picking up tasks around the Chapel. There was just an assumption that it would be done anyway. Ezra doesn’t quite know what to do with being thanked. Especially not twice in one conversation. “I didn’t want him to have to wait for someone else to come. I know how busy things are.”

“Still. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you sprinted all the way to the other side of the life cycle to get away from doing funeral work.”

Growing up in a world that revolved around death, when he was the only one who could see the specters of the dead around him, had sent Ezra running as far from it as he could. He’d thought about becoming a midwife, but one biology class his freshman year of college let him know that he wasn’t cut out for medical or nursing school. Falling into teaching yoga had been more of a fluke than an intentional career move, an eye-catching flyer at his studio turning accidentally into a two-hundred-hour teacher-training course.

It was a friend from the program who told him about her cousin who worked as a birth doula. He’d spent the afternoon after class in a research spiral, and something just—clicked. He was the only masc-presenting person in the full-spectrum training he enrolled in, which got him a few odd looks before he found a rhythm with his cohort. Mentioning that he had a uterus of his own helped, which he’s never quite stopped feeling a little gross about, but it’s not like he doesn’t get it, a little. He has a harder time finding clients than the cis women he trained with, and he works harder for it. Even if he only keeps a few clients at a time, it soothes something in him to be there for the beginning of something, to be focusing on breath and joy and the opening of a book rather than the closing of a chapter.

It’s not that there are never ghosts that show up at births. They’re just usually there to help. They’re the only ones that don’t make him feel cold, the lingering shades of mothers and midwives and nurses, and when he meets their eyes, they nearly always smile.

“Ezra?”

Ezra shakes his head. “Sorry. Just—spacing.” He can’t stop thinking about the wandering ghost he keeps seeing, breaking all the rules like they’re nothing.

The spark has gone out of his father’s eyes, his client-facing mask settled into place, as if Ezra turned for half a moment and the tide rushed in to wash him away. “Well,” Dad says. “Good to know some things never change.”

—

He gets a respite from spreadsheets and ghosts when one of his clients goes into labor later that week. Ezra texts Aaron an entirely insincere apology, leaves Sappho with Ollie—“I knew you only wanted to live here for the free dog sitting!”—and spends the next ten hours doing the work he feels like he’s actually good at.

Between Libby’s curated labor playlist and her decision to sing through most of her contractions, the hospital room is far from quiet. A dreamy calm settles over Ezra all the same, an easing of the discomfort he’s been unable to shake. He channels it into his hands and his voice and the steadiness of his own breath, helping Libby with positioning changes and talking her through her breathing.

It’s eleven hours from the first phone call to the last push, but it’s as smooth a birth as Ezra’s ever attended. The relief of it hits him like a rush—he hadn’t realized, until the cord is cut and Libby’s daughter is contentedly nursing in her arms, how desperately he needed something to go right .

Ezra stays with them until they’re settled in their recovery room, then makes an unobtrusive exit, waving an automatic goodbye to the nurses at the charge desk on his way out of the labor and delivery unit. He’s a familiar enough face here that all of them wave back—including the one only he can see, a tall Black woman in scrubs that haven’t been in style since the 1980s, her glasses propped on top of her head as she peers over the shoulder of one of her still-breathing counterparts. She meets Ezra’s eyes and gives him a now-familiar nod of approval, and he manages not to get caught by any of the others as he subtly inclines his head in return.

It’s five in the morning by the time he gets back to his car, and he wants a hot shower and eight hours of sleep, not necessarily in that order. Based on the sheer number of notifications on his phone, he’s going to have to settle for an hour-long nap and as many shots of espresso as he can puppy-eye the barista at the coffee place near his apartment into putting in a single takeaway cup.

Instead he finds Jonathan sitting on the porch of the house when he gets back, Sappho sprawled on her back beside him, tail thumping enthusiastically against the floor as Jonathan rubs her belly.

She rolls up to her feet at Ezra’s approaching footsteps, yanking her leash out of Jonathan’s loose grip—“ Oof, ” he says—and tackling him down to the driveway, slobbering all over his face in greeting. He needs a shower anyway, so he lets her enjoy herself, powering through his leaden limbs to reach up and scratch her ears. “I missed you, too,” he wheezes, trying to calm her enough that he can push her face to the side and look questioningly up at Jonathan, who’s watching him from his spot on the stairs. “Hi? I’m confused.”

Jonathan gives him a sheepish smile. “You just missed Ollie,” he says. “I guess he was taking a walk and saw something he wanted to go back and photograph? He passed her leash off to me and said he’d be back in five minutes, but it’s been fifteen. I was going to drop her back at your place, but I left my keys in my apartment again.”

“You really need to find a spot out here to hide a spare,” Ezra says, brushing gravel off his pants as he gets to his feet and picking up Sappho’s dangling leash, looping it around his wrist. “Sorry about Ollie. He has a thing for getting the perfect shot. I’ll yell at him once he’s back.”

“No need. We were making friends.” Jonathan reaches out to scratch Sappho’s ears and chin when she gets close enough for him to reach her, and she pants happily into his face at the attention. “She’s a sweetheart. How long have you had her?”

“A little over a year.” Ezra tries not to pay too much attention to how soft Jonathan’s eyes are as he coos at her, or to how strong his forearms look where the sleeves of his sweater are pushed up to his elbows. “I meant to get a smaller breed, something that would be better for the apartment I had at the time, but I saw her at the shelter and…” He shrugs, a What can you do?, and Jonathan laughs.

“Yeah, I bet. A face like this? I’d have caved, too.” He plants a kiss on Sappho’s nose and gets up. For a mercy, he rolls his sleeves down as he goes. “Don’t suppose you’d let me in?”

“Seems like a dick move not to,” Ezra says, fishing his keys out of his pocket and unlocking the front door. Fortunately for Jonathan, it looks like he’d left the door to his actual apartment propped open. “I owe you one.”

Jonathan shakes his head, giving Sappho one last pat on the head. “Consider it a thank-you for everything you’ve done to help me out at the Chapel.”

Ezra blinks, taken aback. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“And yet,” Jonathan says, smiling faintly as he lets Sappho go. “Here I am.”

That smile sticks in the back of Ezra’s head as he makes his way up the stairs to his own apartment, absentmindedly greeting Steve the gnome with a now-habitual nudge of his foot. Sappho’s already pulling at her leash, so he unclips her, letting her pad away while he takes off his shoes. Everything smells like fresh-brewed coffee and—Ezra gives an experimental sniff—maybe cinnamon, and he can hear voices coming from around the corner, slightly muted beneath the soft strains of alt-folk music playing in the living room. He follows his nose to the kitchen, where he finds Lily and Noah sitting at the table, waiting for him.

“Hey.” Lily breaks out in a smile. “You’re not Ollie.”

“No,” Ezra says, a little caught out. “Apparently he ditched her with Jonathan so that he could go take some pictures. I ran into them on the porch.”

Lily looks amused. “Yeah, that sounds about right. How did everything go with your client?”

“Baby girl, ten fingers, ten toes, all that good stuff. Nursing like a champ when I left.” The coffeepot is blessedly full. Ezra fills the first mug he can find, patterned with multicolored mushrooms shaped like human butts, and slumps into the chair next to Noah. “What are you two even doing up? And why does it smell like a bakery in here?”

“We’re making cinnamon buns,” Noah says.

Ezra blinks. “Just because?”

Lily, peering into the oven, scoffs. “Of course not just because! We weren’t going to, like, not acknowledge the fact that you just helped bring a baby into the world. What kind of people do you think we are?”

There’s no good way to answer that. “Libby did all the hard work, I just made sure she and her wife didn’t get steamrolled by the attending OB.”

Lily makes a face. “Ick. Obstetric violence. You hate to see it.”

Ezra hums into his coffee. It’s fortifying. “I’ve seen worse,” he says.

Lily wrinkles her nose. “At least now you’ll have a cinnamon roll.”

And that’s really sweet of her, except…Ezra casts a wary glance at the oven. Noah grins.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “They came out of a box. She’s basically defrosting them.” Lily makes an outraged sound and smacks his arm. “Ow! What? You’re the one who’s always saying you can’t cook!”

“ I can say it. It doesn’t mean you can!”

“You almost gave us all food poisoning last Thanksgiving!” Noah shoots Ezra a despairing look. “She tried to insist that turkey could be cooked medium rare.”

“In my defense,” Lily begins, and then huffs at the pointed slurp Noah takes from his mug. “Okay, okay. I still think we could have avoided the whole Friendsgiving dinner fiasco if you’d just let us order in.”

Curious despite himself, Ezra asks, “Why didn’t you?”

“Max wanted a home-cooked meal,” Noah says. “The rest of us are just masochists.”

“ Anyway, ” Lily interrupts, nudging Ezra under the table with her foot, and he realizes a little belatedly that he’d been starting to doze off into his coffee mug. “How are you doing anyway? I feel like we’ve barely seen you in a week.”

“Fine,” he says, immediate and automatic. He gets two identical looks of skepticism and has a flare of gratitude that Ollie isn’t here, because if he were he’d see through the smile plastered onto Ezra’s face. Has he gotten worse at acting like everything’s fine? Or is it a side effect of being over twenty-five with a nonexistent skin care regimen that every micro-wrinkle of exhaustion is instantly visible? “Really,” he adds. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long few days.”

The timer on the oven goes off.

“Ollie said things were still weird with your family,” Noah says, checking on the cinnamon rolls.

Traitor , Ezra thinks. “They’re not as bad as they could be,” he says, out of long-ingrained loyalty. “But yeah, it’s…weird.”

Lily props her chin on her hand. “Has anyone talked to your mom yet?”

Ezra winces and shakes his head. “I’ll have to,” he says. “It’s been over two weeks. She’s going to think we’re icing her out. But she doesn’t like to admit when she’s wrong, so it’ll probably…” He shrugs.

Lily’s eyebrows have crept nearly up to her hairline. “Sorry,” she says. “Is this the same mom who’s been having an affair for, like, two years?”

“Yup.”

“And she…doesn’t like to admit she’s wrong.”

“Nope.”

Noah sits back down, a plate of cinnamon rolls and a bowl of icing in his hands. “Big yikes,” he says, then bats at Lily’s hands when she reaches for the plate. “These literally just came out of the oven. What is wrong with you? I have met your mom, I know she raised you better.”

“She did, but my dad is a total pushover,” Lily says, flashing a sugar-sweet smile.

Noah rolls his eyes at her, but it’s a practiced sort of fondness. They’ve been friends for years, and this is their second shared apartment. The two of them can point to everything in the apartment and recount its origin story, whatever adventure or inside joke or spontaneous flea market afternoon made them like it enough to bring it home.

Ezra wonders sometimes what it must be like, to be known like that. He has Nina, and Ollie, but he’s never had someone who he could be fully, entirely honest with. Someone who knew all his secrets and wouldn’t make him feel like he was out of his mind for sharing them.

Something nudges against his arm, and he blinks himself back into the room— God, he needs a nap—and stares at the shape in front of him until it resolves into a plate with a well-iced cinnamon bun, still steaming from the oven. He looks up and catches Lily’s smile.

“You looked like you needed it,” she says, so kindly it puts a lump in his throat, and he smiles back, hoping it doesn’t look as watery as it feels.

“Thanks.”

It stirs something at the bottom of his stomach, the way they extend this affection so easily, like it’s nothing at all. It makes him feel unsteady, like a newborn foal struggling up onto its feet for the first time, unsure how to take a first step. Ezra takes a bite of the cinnamon bun to have an excuse to say nothing. It’s delicious, so fresh that it nearly melts in his mouth, the icing sweet and creamy on his tongue, and he holds back a moan as his body remembers that it’s been fifteen hours since he’s last eaten. “Oh my God, these are amazing.”

“I told you I can defrost things just fine,” Lily says a little defensively, but she’s grinning. “Oh, and—speaking of food. What are you doing next Wednesday?”

Ezra blinks. “Uh,” he says. “I have no idea. I’d have to check. Why?”

“We do family dinner the third Wednesday of every month,” Noah tells him. “Both apartments together.”

Ezra pulls another piece off his cinnamon roll, eyes it, and then puts it on the plate. It’s amazing, but if he shoves the whole thing in his face he’s going to throw up all over the floor, which would just be depressing. “Isn’t that what you do every night?”

“It’s optional all the other nights,” Lily says, like it’s obvious. “And phones aren’t allowed, and we actually try to cook something as a group instead of just ordering in.”

Noah snorts at whatever look Ezra must have on his face. “Lily’s allowed to chop vegetables and chop vegetables only .”

“I graduated to stirring last month!”

“On a trial basis. With supervision.” Noah blows her a kiss when she audibly kicks him under the table, then gives Ezra an open, inviting look. “Will you come?”

He hesitates. His default is to turn down activities like this or give, at best, a promise, a maybe, and back out later. They have too much potential for chaos and drama, and whenever there are more than three people in a room, he can never tell who he should be prioritizing to keep everyone happy.

But he can’t quite shake off the yearning he feels around Noah and Lily’s easy closeness, the warmth between them and Ollie and Max, the way the four of them are the sort of family that Ezra’s always known existed. He loves his family, would throw himself in front of a train for them, but he doesn’t think he’s ever relaxed around them like his roommates relax around one another.

“Next Wednesday?” he asks, a little warily.

Lily nods. “At seven,” she says. “We start dropping recipes into the group chat on Monday, usually.”

Ezra should say no. He doesn’t need anyone else to keep secrets from.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll be there.”