Chapter 1 #2
Then there was the whole shit with Michael.
I didn’t plan on breaking our engagement, obviously.
I just got in over my head. I was desperate to prove I’d dropped out for the right reasons, to prove I was self-sufficient, to prove I was on my own path—which, funnily enough, were the wrong reasons for overcommitting myself to Michael Hanover-Erickson, who was seven years my senior.
It took my panicky retreat from the life I planned with him for me to understand what I know now. When I commit, other people get hurt. Keeping my relationships casual isn’t just fun or easy. It’s mercy.
When I fucked everything up with Michael, my parents were there. Despite everything they put into my happiness, the promises I made them—the promises I made everyone—when I needed to run, they understood, or pretended they did. They were ready to waste more money and effort and compassion on me.
It’s enough to make a girl feel like a living, breathing problem instead of a daughter.
Enough to keep her from visiting home very often, which ironically—or helpfully—only makes her feel even less entitled to demand more help from people she’s burdened plenty.
If I could pay for therapy, I’d go. But I’d start with paying rent first.
I close my eyes, exhausted. The weight of my housing problem quietly overwhelms me. I literally don’t know what I’m going to do.
Which is when I feel the familiar tingling sensation of someone’s hand hovering over my shoulder. Except I know there’s no one. My room—my entire apartment, unfortunately—is completely empty.
Sort of.
I shiver. “Can you please just try to be less creepy?”
Opening my eyes, I know what I’m going to find.
He’s seated next to me on my bed, leaving my floral comforter undisturbed by his weightless presence. He’s maybe six one, stocky, sort of boyishly handsome, with floppy chestnut hair he flips from side to side and unshaven stubble. Forever unshaven, now. I doubt he cares.
Next to me in my empty room sits the ghost of the last man I went rock climbing with.
“I prefer spooky to creepy,” Zach says. “It’s not like I watch you when you sleep.”
He doesn’t sound indignant despite my characterization. If there’s one minuscule silver lining in my haunting situation, it’s this. I have, somehow, wound up with the chillest ghost in the history of hauntings.
Obviously it’s a small comfort when his incessant shenanigans have cost me my dating life, my favorite noodle restaurant, and now, my roommate and my financial stability. “Why were you tormenting Savannah?” I demand.
Whenever Zach feels an emotion, his entire face responds.
Right now, indignant incredulity rounds his blue eyes and shoots his eyebrows up.
“I wasn’t!” he insists. “I swear. You know I can’t control this stuff.
I love Savannah,” he says to me about the woman who’s never spoken to him because she never knew him in life.
“Even if it stung when she called me ‘it,’ ” he complains. “I’m not an ‘it.’ ”
“You’re so an ‘it,’ ” I shoot back in frustration.
“That hurts, Morgan. That cuts me deep.”
“Nothing cuts you deep. It would go right through you.”
Amused by my admittedly good comeback, Zach grins.
I groan. “Could you just go haunt someone else? I mean, we had a nice enough first date, but I wasn’t even planning to go on a second date with you. No offense,” I add.
Zach shrugs with equanimity.
Our first and only date was three months ago. We went rock climbing. I wore the shoes in my closet without fretting over supernatural phenomena. Imagine that! I made out with him in my car afterward, but I never felt the need to see him again.
I doubt he did, either, but I suppose we don’t know for sure, because apparently, he died shortly thereafter. Shortly after that, he appeared in my bathroom mirror and scared the holy living fuck out of me.
“There have to be people who knew you better who you could spend your afterlife with,” I press him.
Now Zach looks petulant in the fake way he does, like frustration never fully reaches his happy-go-lucky vibe.
“Like I want to spend eternity with you!” he shoots back.
“But for whatever reason, we’re stuck together.
Our shitty date is the only thing I can remember.
If you had bothered to learn my last name, then maybe we could look me up and find my family. ”
I wilt. Okay, Zach has me there.
Frankly, I did not expect my noncommittal dating style would leave me with the surname-less specter who is presently, if unintentionally, ruining my life. “Hey, I’m sure I learned your last name,” I reply weakly. “I just…forgot it.”
Zach shakes his head in consternation. “Honestly, you deserve to be haunted,” he declares. “I literally died. It’s like you don’t even care!”
The light bulb over my bed flickers. One of my houseplants wobbles on my desk, perilously close to the edge. I grab the pot mid-wobble and return the small philodendron to securer purchase.
Zach doesn’t seem to notice. While he never haunts maliciously, sometimes his emotions don’t show only on his face.
“It’s very sad you died,” I say. “To…other people. I’m sure.”
Zach glares. I wince. I deserve that.
“No, look, I am sorry, Zach. I know it’s unfair,” I say. “It’s just also unfair that I’m being haunted.”
The legs of my bed shake, knocking sharply on my fake hardwood like we’re going to levitate.
“Less unfair,” I qualify hastily. The clattering stops. “But still unfair.”
My correction satisfies him. He’s nodding in half understanding when I hear footsteps from my living room.
Heart leaping, I start for the door. Even if Savannah is only returning for her clothes or computer charger or something, maybe I can convince her a little involuntary Netflix isn’t the end of the world—
“Morgan?”
The voice is not Savannah’s. It’s one I’ve never heard.
I stop short in my open doorway, recognizing Dan from his Tinder picture.
He’s shaved his hipster mustache—god bless—and I honestly have no idea why he wore that lovely brown leather jacket for a rock-climbing date.
Nevertheless, I haven’t had sex in thirteen weeks, and Dan’s noticeably large hands have me hating the supernatural.
He’s standing uncomfortably next to our entryway table with the empty glass dish where Savannah keeps—kept—her keys. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do with himself, which makes two of us. Or two plus one ghost.
“The door was unlocked,” he explains. “Sorry.”
Overcoming my surprise, I soften. It’s sort of sweet he didn’t just drive off, given I’m now fifteen minutes late.
My gratitude dies when Dan cranes his neck to look behind me. I know what he won’t find. Nobody can see Zach except for me.
“Um, were you talking to someone?” He sounds suspicious, which is fair. I was talking to someone.
“Seriously, Morgan?” Right on cue, Zach pops up next to the oblivious Dan. “This guy? He’s wearing a company T-shirt.” Zach points to where—Yes, fine—under his leather jacket, Dan’s gray shirt shows the logo for Cynergy Systems. “You can do better,” my ghost insists.
“Nope!” I say cheerfully to Dan. “Just talking to myself! I’m ready to go now!” I double back into my bedroom, where I grab my phone.
“Who’s Zach?”
I freeze in my doorway.
“This should be good,” Zach interjects. “Who is Zach? Inquiring minds!”
Rounding slowly, I face Dan, praying the next few seconds deliver me something wholly sensible, completely innocent, and entirely non-supernatural to say.
Nothing comes. So here goes nothing. “Would you believe me if I told you my apartment is haunted and…he’s my ghost?” I smile, going for quirky and bashful. It’s Los Angeles. The men here love that, don’t they?
Dan frowns. Not this one, apparently. “That’s a new one. Look, if you have other guys you’re seeing, that’s fine,” he says. “I’d just like to know.”
Fine. The word sounds like a closing door. “No, really,” I insist. “I went on one date with Zach and it didn’t go anywhere.”
In the dim entryway of my sparse living room, Dan shifts uncomfortably. Zach imitates him, unseen, then pantomimes pulling on his own leather jacket. I shoot my ghost a glare.
Come on, Dan, I consider joking, I can’t be the only LA girl you’ve ever met who swears the supernatural is ruining her dating life!
“So, he’s your ex?” Dan ventures.
“Yep!” Zach says proudly.
“No. He’s dead,” I correct.
Zach shrugs like, Fair.
Unfortunately, Dan’s suspicion only deepens.
“Morgan, I think this guy is going from thinking you’re a cheater to a murderer,” Zach comments. He walks directly through Dan, coming to lean his weightlessness on the entryway end table.
“I didn’t kill him!” I hasten to clarify.
“I don’t know how he died, actually.” Hearing myself say what someone who did kill their ex would say, I cringe.
I strategize fast. “If you give me one second, I could call my roommate back here,” I offer—okay, I plead.
“She’ll corroborate that this place is, like, super haunted. ” It’s the least Savvy could do, right?
“You know what…” Dan starts, and I have this shining moment of relief, like the Santa Monica sun parting from the surprisingly common California clouds—Dan’s a nice guy, company shirt notwithstanding!
He’ll laugh it off and we’ll enjoy rock climbing!
And other pastimes!—and then his expression closes off.
“I think I probably should go before I get a parking ticket.”
Something quiet curls up in me.
“Yep. Sure. Sounds good,” I say, knowing what he means.
“Um. Yeah,” Dan says. “See you, Morgan.”
He closes my front door when he goes—the second person to leave my apartment for ghost-related reasons in the past five minutes.
Retreating into my room, I’m surprised how upset I feel. I collapse heavily onto my floral comforter. I wasn’t writing wedding vows in my head for Dan from Tinder, obviously. I just feel lonely enough without the fucking spectral interference.
It’s why I throw myself into my dating life.
Whenever the loneliness gets unmanageable, I put myself out there.
Whenever the idea of commitment—of something real and loving and enduring out there for me—creeps in like a vine to wrap around my hopeful—not optimistic—heart, I plant those hopes in the possibility of a Dan or a Lee or a Michael.
Now my haunting has ruined even that.
When Zach flickers into visibility next to me, he has the grace to look somewhat guilty. “Honestly, I think I saved you on that one,” he musters. “He was going to be a dud.”
“You’ve driven off the last five duds,” I shoot back.
Zach shrugs slowly. “You need higher standards.”
I round on him. “You do know you’re dissing yourself, right?”
When Zach grins, called out once more, I stomp into my room’s bathroom, where I frustratedly fill the drinking glass I use to water my houseplant collection. When I’m stressed or pissed, tending to them is one thing I’ve found helps.
“Why do you even care?” I continue in exasperation. “Let me date my shitty men in peace.”
“I’m bored!” Zach protests. “What else am I supposed to do? You know, maybe you should try a second date for once,” he counsels.
I scoff while carefully moving my watering glass to the philodendron and her counterpart, the spider plant, each content in its ceramic home on my desk.
They’re my closest living companions, which is fucking sad, frankly, but sort of comforting. They’re pretty forgiving. If I forget to water them sometimes, I just make it up to them later. They come with no dropouts or graduations. No breakups or engagements. Easy, low-key commitment.
“I draw the line at advice from a dead guy,” I say, chastening Zach.
He puts his hand over his nonexistent wounded heart. “Harsh!” he complains. “I’m going to rip your shower curtain off for that one.”
Sure enough, from the small bathroom where I filled my glass, I hear the tearing of polyester fabric and fearsome clattering.
Not just clattering, though. Out of nowhere, I hear something else. The opening strains of “Call Me Maybe.” It’s not out loud. It’s more like it’s forcibly stuck in my head.
I groan in frustration. Now, I have no objections to “Call Me Maybe”—except when my ghost ex is using Carly Rae’s certified bop to torment me.
It’s Zach’s favorite song, he explained, and he’s capable of running it through my head using his ghost powers, which he conveniently employs when I’m committing grievous misdeeds like concentrating on work emails for several hours instead of entertaining him.
“You’re ruining this song for me,” I inform him sternly.
“Be honest and take some accountability,” he replies, unmoved.
I shake my head while I water the pair of Zamioculcas zamiifolia on my windowsill, their gorgeous waxy leaves shining in the uncharitable overhead lighting of my unaffordable room.
No, I decide. No more ruined dates. No more fucking “Call Me Maybe.” No more roommate crises or ripped shower curtains.
I do need accountability—for my haunting.
“You don’t know me,” I declare. “Savannah was right.”
No more comfort-watering. No more languishing on my bedspread like a fainting Victorian lady, either. No more contending with the eldritch horrors of my closet whenever I want my goddamn rock-climbing shoes. Zach watches me warily as I face him, flush with new resolve.
“I’m getting rid of you,” I say. “I’m going to exorcise you from my life once and for all.”