Chapter 32
Morgan
“You know he didn’t mean what he said.” Zach follows me from my car up the concrete path where I’m prohibited from gardening.
While I wish his comfort reassured me, instead I can’t help remembering how often my ghost has repeated similar sentiments.
Sawyer has feelings for you, he just won’t say it. He’s just scared. He’ll come around.
Will he, Zach?
The echoed consolations make them feel like Zach himself, floating up next to me on the walk to my old apartment—transparent.
Sunset is scorching over West Hollywood when I open the rusty metal gate. It’s comically gorgeous, the sky on fire, showing off in shameless mockery of my miserable homecoming. We parked on the street, not far, funny enough, from where my first hookup with Zach occurred.
“It doesn’t matter,” I reply. “I meant what I said.”
On the drive home, I dug deeper into my heartache. I reminded myself why I never get committed. To cities, to people, to romantic versions of myself. I remember the upside-down gift of my unabashedly migratory lifestyle—it keeps me from this.
Zach, for his part, remains uncharacteristically serious. “No. You didn’t. You should have some compassion for the guy,” he replies. “Imagine what he’s going through.”
I’ve never heard Zach this accusatory. Not just frustrated with his own paranormal limbo. Not just irritated when I won’t watch Netflix with him instead of performing my paid employment. Zach has been reprimanding me the entire way over while I ignore him.
“I’ve had compassion,” I shoot back. “I’ve been nothing but compassionate. I didn’t ask to be the thing that ruined his fucking life. I didn’t ask for any of this.”
Zach vanishes momentarily. He rematerializes suddenly on the stairwell in front of me, startling me.
“Sawyer said he loves you,” Zach insists. “Does that mean anything to you?”
When my heart rate slows from Zach’s disappearing stunt, I glare. “Yeah,” I retort. “Then he kicked me out of his house and his life. That means plenty.”
“It shouldn’t,” Zach insists.
I do not need this right now. What I need right now is mint chocolate chip ice cream and non-haunted time to scroll puppy videos on social media and cry. Not the ghost I can’t get rid of reminding me of every hurt I would like to ignore.
Instead of debating Zach, I walk right through him.
When the unpleasant cold ebbs from my skin, I round expectantly only for Zach to disintegrate while regarding me with disappointment.
Whatever.
I continue up the stairs with heavy footsteps. When I unlock the door with my old key, I find Savannah washing dishes inside. She looks up sympathetically. “Hey, you okay?”
I told her everything over the phone on the drive. Sawyer, Kennedy, everything. “I will be,” I reply honestly.
Savannah smiles weakly. “Still haunted?”
Entering my old temporary home, I drop my keys in the entryway dish. The routine is painfully familiar. Like I never left. Thanks, universe, for the reminder of just how insignificant my weeks with Sawyer were.
“You have no idea,” I say. The words come out so heavily even I wince a little.
When Savannah has no reply—she holds the soapy pan she was working on, watching me worriedly—I heft my suitcase in the door and resolve to lighten my disposition.
“I won’t be here long, I promise,” I reassure her, knowing commiseration was not the reason Savannah inquired into my supernatural state.
She looks conflictedly relieved. “Where will you go?”
The old furnishings of my bedroom greet me when I drag my suitcase inside.
They’re exactly how I remember, yet distant.
Just because I know this place does not mean it feels like home.
It’s horrible how quickly somewhere else did—somewhere with a pottery wheel in the corner and a monstrous garden outside.
Noticing my old windowsill, I realize I forgot my purple coleus.
“Anywhere,” I say. Then I shut the door.
Zach rematerializes when I unzip my suitcase. I’m grateful for the effort not to surprise me this time. He watches me, dismayed. I ignore him.
Leaving everything else packed, I pull my laptop from my luggage. Without hesitation, I open my computer on my old desk and set to work.
I search landscaping job listings in other states. I scroll, hunting for wherever is hiring soonest. I don’t care where. New Hampshire, New Orleans, Newport. New Morgan, new life. It’s the only way I know to escape the hopelessness settling over me.
Zach’s distraught expression, shimmering semiopaque in the corner of my vision, makes me feel guilty for giving up on his unfinished business.
But why should I derail my life for someone else again?
Look where that got me today. I probably wouldn’t even help Zach.
I would just ruin someone else’s life—or afterlife.
“Looks like you’re stuck with me,” I say. “Surely you could do worse, right?”
Zach floats forlornly through the wall in reply.