Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Now, it’s time to remove the spine.
Using your kitchen shears, start at the parson’s nose and cut up through the ribcage along either side. Don’t throw it out—save this yummy piece for stock!
“What the fuck is a parson’s nose?” I mumbled, glancing back and forth between the video demonstrating how to spatchcock a chicken and the whole, raw chicken sitting on the counter in front of me.
None of it looked like a nose.
Now that we’ve got that part out of the way, flip the bird over, and…
“Slow down!”
The cheery British woman in the video did not slow down and began smashing the chicken flat against the counter with an alarming crack!
I reached for my phone to hit pause, only remembering my slimy salmonella hands at the last moment.
With a sigh, I gave in. “Hey, Siri, what is a parson’s nose?”
The video paused while Siri considered. “A person’s nose is the organ that extends outward in the middle of the face between the eyes and the mouth. It is the first organ of the upper respiratory system…”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
After cleaning my hands off with disinfectant wipes, I Googled what the fuck a parson’s nose was, thoroughly studied the outright dismemberment involved in spatchcocking, and followed suit with my own raw chicken.
The whole process gave me the heebie-jeebies—especially after I’d returned to the tower to find the last of the crime scene investigators packing up their things, leaving me to kick rocks and dirt over the bloodied message that remained so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
I shuddered. What a terrible thing for any creature to die for. Hopefully, it’d at least been quick.
LEAVE
I shook my head, brushing off the weight of what it meant that I’d given the middle finger to the message and returned against literally everyone’s wishes except my own.
But I’d promised Charlie a birthday dinner of roasted chicken with crispy skin and peach cobbler, so there I was, spatchcocking.
With the unpleasantness out of the way, I thoroughly seasoned the whole bird and popped it into the small oven before moving on to boil potatoes.
The cobbler was already baked, set aside on the small kitchen counter to cool, and the ice cream waited in the utility shed freezer, along with all of my other groceries.
“How many weeks are you going to be out here before your next supply run?” the pilot had asked, looking somewhat perplexed at the sheer amount of food I loaded into the helicopter.
“I eat a lot.”
She’d especially eyed the packs and packs of hot dogs, which I had not purchased for a mangy, beady-eyed raccoon. Charlie liked them, that was all.
She’d merely shrugged and prepared to fly out after we unloaded everything.
Just in time, too, because it’d begun to hail a few minutes after she dropped me off.
A slow-moving storm was forecasted to pass through over the next few days, with freezing rain, ice-cold wind, and even snow at this elevation.
Charlie could sit in front of the stove again this evening.
If he showed himself, that was. Which he’d better, because today was his birthday.
With a few minutes left until the chicken was ready, I dug his presents out of my bag.
I had no idea what a good gift for a ghost was.
He couldn’t take anything with him when he left, so I wanted to give him something he could use in the lookout.
But when I stopped thinking of ideas to give a ghost, and thought of Charlie, instead, I knew exactly what to get.
It only took a handful of thumb tacks and a bit of creative jerry-rigging to mount the small solar charge panel, and then the cabin was lit in a magical, soft glow from the fairy lights I strung above the windows all around.
These wouldn’t require power to operate and would stay lit well into the night.
I set the other small box on the desk for him to open later. “Are you here?” I asked into the quiet. The potatoes were mashed, and the broccoli was sautéed. All that remained was to carve the chicken.
No answer.
“Charlie, please come back. I’ve lit a fire and made dinner.”
I paced back over to the note, unmoved from where I’d left it.
I’M COMING BACK
Had he even read it? Had he stood me up?
A half-laugh, half-groan burst out of me. “I will not be ghosted by a ghost. Come out! I spatchcocked a chicken for you.”
“You did what to a chicken?”
I spun around. Charlie stood next to the fire, one hand fingering the blanket draped over the back of his chair. He was mostly all there, in the same flight jacket and pants he always wore, but the color in his face before I left was gone, leaving him gray and see-through.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly.
“You came back,” he replied, shy and quiet. A statement, yes, but also something more.
“I told you I would.”
A promise.
He threw himself at me. Ghostly arms wrapped around my middle, head tucked just under mine. Stunned, it took a few seconds before I realized what was happening, and then I gripped him tightly in return.
He was so cold, but his torso solidified in my arms until he felt real again, and I smelled the faintest hint of sun-warmed cotton sheets.
“I can’t believe you came back,” he repeated, voice thick with tears. “What a stupid, stupid thing to do.”
I chuckled, but held him close. “I’m sorry it took a few days. I got held up.”
The longer we clung to each other, the more solid he became, until I swore I could feel the barest hint of warmth radiating from him.
“I remember,” he whispered into my damp shirt. “Not all of it, but enough. You really shouldn’t have come back.”
I pulled him closer, as if I held on tight enough, he wouldn’t disappear again. “Do you want to talk about it?”
With one last squeeze around my middle, he stepped back and wiped his cheeks. “No. Not right now. I want to be here right now. I don’t want to go away again so soon, if I can’t—if it’s hard to talk about. Later, though?”
He looked up at me, his brown eyes warm and soft and no longer gray. Fuck, he was beautiful with a bit of pink back in his cheeks and tears clinging to his long lashes.
Was it weird to think someone was a pretty crier?
“Sure. Later. Whenever you’re ready.” I cleared my throat, ignoring the confusing way my stomach swooped when he slowly blinked up at me, all vulnerable and needy. “Um, happy birthday!” I said, gesturing to the twinkle lights. “They’re for you. So you’re not stuck in the dark anymore.”
He peered up and slowly spun around to take them in, something like awe on his face. His brown eyes glowed amber in the warm light. “You got me… lights.”
I crossed my arms and uncrossed them, suddenly nervous. “They’re solar powered, so they won’t go out. You can turn them off if you want.”
Charlie surveyed the messy disaster sprawled all over the small counter from my dinner preparation. I palmed the back of my neck. “Uh, yeah. Sorry about the mess. I’ll clean up after. We should eat while it’s warm, though. If you want.”
He turned toward me again, eyes glassy. “You roasted a chicken for me?”
“Spatchcocked and roasted.”
His eyes danced. “You’ve gotta stop saying that.”
I nudged him forward, crowding him toward the stove. “Go on and fix your plate before I spatchcock you.”
He grinned over his shoulder. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
I rolled my eyes. His responding laughter was bright and clear and warm against the sleet pelting the windows, and despite the danger lurking outside, I felt more at peace in this lookout than I’d ever been.
Or maybe it had more to do with the man who lived there.
“Favorite color?” I asked, spooning up what was left of the ice cream from my bowl.
“Bwue,” Charlie replied through a mouthful of cobbler before swallowing. “Song?”
“Impossible, I couldn’t pick just one.”
He narrowed his eyes and knocked his foot against mine. We sat side by side on the bed, leaning back against the wall. “It doesn’t work like that. You have to answer.”
“Fine. The Braveheart soundtrack.”
“Is that a movie? Braveheart?”
My mouth dropped open. “Holy fuck, you haven’t seen Braveheart.”
His eyebrow quirked. “In case you forgot, I was busy being dead for a while.”
I could tell he was just trying to get a rise out of me. “I meant there’s so much you haven’t seen yet. So many good books and songs and television shows and movies you could read and watch and listen to now.”
He fiddled with the duvet we sat on before peering up at me through his lashes. “Would you show it to me? If it’s your favorite?”
My stomach swooped again. “Yeah.”
“What about…” He blushed. “My sister and I went to see Top Gun in the theater together. She was the only other one who knew that I liked men, too, so it was fun to just enjoy it with her without worrying over whether it was obvious I was drooling the whole time. We went three nights in a row the week before I moved out here. Could we watch that one too?”
I cleared the catch in my throat. “Of course, I’ll watch Top Gun with you. After we’re done, we can watch the sequel.”
His eyes lit up. “They made another? With the same people?”
“Some of the same. It came out just a few years ago, so they’re all older now. Goose’s son is in it.”
“Oh, Goose…” he sighed dreamily, sinking further down the bed. His legs dangled off the side. “That mustache did things to me.”
I laughed and found myself running a hand over my beard. My eyes caught on the way his jacket and T-shirt rode up, exposing a strip of soft skin.
What did Charlie look like without all those layers on?
I coughed, reached over to grab our bowls, and carried them to the counter, busying my hands with cleanup before I embarrassed myself. What the fuck was I thinking?
My MS flare-up left me feeling like a lot of my body wasn’t my own the last few months, and the boatload of steroids they’d given me hadn’t helped.