Chapter 23
Morgan
Life returns to normal for the next week. Or as normal as possible when you’re living with a ghost in the guesthouse-slash-pottery-studio of the guy you find completely and entirely confusing.
Sawyer and I each pretend nothing is different or weird or complicated.
I pretend I didn’t feel guilty, intense desire while I bandaged the sturdy chest of the wounded widower who wants nothing but his past to return to life.
I pretend I didn’t wonder, even for a split second, whether I felt the ghost of want in Sawyer’s eyes when he noticed me checking him out—which, fine, I was—or in his gentle hand on my back.
I wait in vain for Ariana to reply. I go to work every morning, leaving Sawyer instructions on how to manage the soil, rock, and turf deliveries I’ll need for the next stages of the yard renovation.
Every day, when I come home from my exhilarating workday of sorting out flagstone reschedules or itemizing fertilizer receipts, I find he’s made more progress on the house.
He cleans the overgrown plants from the side path and pressure-washes the wall.
I’m silently grateful he leaves the climbing bougainvillea untouched.
Inside, he patches and paints. He seems possessed by productivity.
Seems. I suspect it’s not merely the renovative excitement driving him. No, I’m pretty sure Sawyer wants everything finished so I can get out of here.
He avoids me like I’m the one who caused the indoor earthquake in his pottery sanctuary. He doesn’t text. He doesn’t use the pottery wheel. I find no handwritten notes left on my door.
I pretend—to myself, because I don’t exactly have time or money for socializing right now—it doesn’t make me lonely. It shouldn’t. I’ve known Sawyer for, like, two months.
And yet…
My purple coleus on the windowsill flourishes in the sunlight. I remember sometimes how little it needs to subsist—sun, water, soil—but if you remove even one of those precious resources, it withers into nothing.
I don’t know why he’s keeping his distance.
Sure, I felt a spark with him after the Zach attack, but there’s no way Sawyer felt the same.
Even if he did, nothing would ever come of it.
I don’t get involved with emotionally unavailable men—at least, not intentionally—and a guy grieving his fiancée is pretty much the pinnacle of emotionally unavailable.
Whatever. It’s fine. I probably will be gone soon, once we resolve Zach’s unfinished business. I’ll find my way to some new city, some new job. Sawyer and Zach will become ghosts only of memory. I decide to practice now and just leave Sawyer alone.
Or so I’m planning until Zach slams my laptop shut while I’m unwinding for the night with my favorite reality show.
“Okay, I’m sorry I was watching without you,” I preempt him. “I didn’t know if you were materializing tonight—”
“No,” Zach says, then reconsiders. “I mean, yes, that was uncool of you. But you need to go into the main house,” he demands.
The urgency is surprising on Zach. But I’m stubborn. Sawyer has made himself clear. What’s more, my favorite couple was just getting back together in the episode I was watching. “No, I don’t,” I reply.
“Yes. You do,” Zach urges me. “Sawyer is being weird.”
“He’s always weird,” I say.
Zach paces, walking through the kitchen table in his distraction. “Not like this,” he counters. “Stop avoiding him.”
I reopen my laptop, patience dwindling. I had to deal with two double-bookings today. I just want to watch my show. “For your information,” I say, “Sawyer is avoiding me.”
The leaves on my coleus shake. A gust blows through the guesthouse, nearly knocking my computer off my lap onto the floor. I catch the MacBook just in time.
“I’m worried about him,” Zach says.
Recovering from the nearly disastrous MacBook incident—for real, if I lose my connection to reality TV, I will lose my connection to reality in this isolated guesthouse—I find Zach’s semitransparent eyes. He really is worried. Nervousness creases his uncreaseable forehead.
It’s hard to worry a ghost. If Zach is concerned, something must really be wrong with Sawyer.
Resigned, I stand. “Don’t watch without me,” I warn Zach, who I notice floating nearer to my open laptop.
Stepping out into the night, I hear my show start to play over the rustling palms in the dark sky.
Glaring, I stomp from the studio toward Sawyer’s house. Even with the improvements Sawyer has made, the dark house remains sort of spooky. Silver Lake is in the hills surrounding Los Angeles, where light pollution is minimal and sparse streetlights provide only pinpricks in the pitch.
In the night, the foliage casts ominous shadows on the ground. The insects humming in the hedges sound a little close for comfort.
I hasten across the patio, remembering ruefully how, mere minutes ago, I was watching my favorite couple. On their honeymoon episode! How could Sawyer, honestly? Why couldn’t he act weird any other night?
I knock on the kitchen door, impatient. There’s no answer. Only indistinct humming from inside.
When I press my ear to the door, I hear it clearer. Music playing in the house. Muffled, the melody is warped and—well, I shouldn’t say haunting.
I knock again. Nothing.
Peering into the kitchen, I find the room dark. Nevertheless, the music pervades. Despite myself, chills having nothing to do with the California night shiver down my arms. Something is weird here. I’m just not sure it’s Sawyer.
I knock once more, and still he doesn’t emerge.
He’s probably fine, I think, reassuring myself. In fact, I’m sure season five, episode twelve of The Honeymoon Experiment would concur that Sawyer is definitely, undoubtedly, one hundred percent fine.
Unfortunately, I can’t quite convince myself. Zach’s words—my ghost’s very real concern—linger with me. I jog the handle, but the door is locked.
Okay, I decide, nothing I can do. My sweatpants don’t have pockets, so I left my phone in the guesthouse. Not that I expect Sawyer would reply if I message him saying, Hey, Zach thinks you’re being weird, even though I told him that’s just what you’re like. But I have to try.
I start my retreat—
The chill of the night deepens, shocking my neck. The feeling freezes me where I stand.
I hear metallic clicking behind me. Then Sawyer’s kitchen door creaks open on its own.
Through my supernaturally repaired window, I can still see Zach making himself very comfortable on my bed. The mysterious unlocking wasn’t his doing.
I turn to face the open door. The darkness seems to invite me inside, the music’s murmured melody drawing me deeper.
Pulling my sweater close around my shoulders, I step into the house. Obviously, this is the part of every horror movie where the angry spirits kill their first victim—a pretty but foolish young woman. Believe me, I’m screaming at myself to turn around.
Instead, I continue into the kitchen, past the unlit stove where I cooked dinner last week. The music swells louder. I recognize the melody now—“A Sunday Kind of Love.”
Kennedy’s favorite.
Sawyer said at the support group it’s the song her ghostly presence would leave in his head. The ethereal, romantic melody filling the dark house is unnerving. Holding on to determination combined with curiosity, I fight down the fear quickening my heartbeat.
Fortunately—I mean, I hope it’s fortunately—light shines from the living room. I walk slowly forward, not knowing what to expect.
What I find is Sawyer.
He sits on the couch, head in his hands. His posture is hunched from the weight of some enormous invisible load. He looks defeated or defensive.
The music emanates from the old record player in the corner. On the TV, Roman Holiday plays. The sounds clash chaotically, filling the room with Etta James’s voice over Audrey Hepburn’s. On the coffee table in front of Sawyer, two wineglasses wait untouched.
I dare to speak. “Sawyer?”
He looks up, startled, his eyes bloodshot. He didn’t notice me come in over the cacophony. He blinks, disoriented, like he doesn’t recognize me. Or—
Or I’m not who he was expecting.
“Sorry,” I say hurriedly. If Sawyer isn’t visibly possessed or something, I’m eager to leave him to whatever is going on here. “Zach told me I had to check on you. But you seem…good! Great! Totally normal. So I’ll just go.”
His rough voice stops me. “What if she’s already gone?”
The sheer pain in his words pierces my heart. He looks stripped. Ruined. In an instant, I know I can’t leave him. Not now. Something is possessing him—just not something supernatural.
“What if I was…too distracted to notice?” Guilt warps his voice. He can’t look at me. Instead, his gaze clings onto the wedding invitation framed in the entryway.
I move hesitantly closer to Sawyer. Sawyer, who remembered my purple coleus. Sawyer, who volunteered to help Zach’s father process his grief for no reason except his own empathy. “I don’t think she’s gone,” I say honestly, meaning Kennedy. “I think she just let me into the house, actually.”
This transforms Sawyer. Rising quickly from the couch, he rushes into the kitchen. I wait, hoping for Sawyer’s sake that Kennedy gives the wind chimes a go.
When Sawyer returns to the room, however, he’s visibly dejected. “It was probably just a draft,” he mutters. He returns to the couch, where he seats himself heavily.
Everything in me is crying out to leave him be. I don’t, though. I push past the voices in my head, the ones whispering, Commitment-phobic, and He doesn’t need you, and You’ll just make it worse. I sit down next to him.
I don’t know if Sawyer needs me. Sawyer didn’t know if Mr. Harrison needed him. It didn’t matter. He deserves the best, clumsy, shitty consolation I can give him. The comforts I can piece together and meld with the gold of good intentions. Kintsugi kindness.