Patrick closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of her soak through his shirt, imagining they were somewhere else. Maybe a dark bar with the music playing. They’d be in some corner, away from the other dancers. He could almost hear the rustle of movement from nearby people and the din of a crowd trying to talk over the tune. Her hair was soft against his skin, and it was by instinct that he slid his face to kiss the side of her head just once before returning to his original position.
One of her hands coasted up his chest and around to his neck, fingers tangling in his hair… stroking, stroking. It was more than he could have ever imagined. Maybe instead of a bar, they were outside. It was August, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility they’d be in the fresh air, dancing on the beach under the stairs, the tinny speakers of a radio providing them with music. God, he wanted more than anything to take her down the shore, buy her some ice cream on the boardwalk and make out with her while the ocean waves crashed in the background.
This house was all he had, though, and even though he would have preferred to be somewhere else with her, this moment was amazing. His fingers grazed the top of her ass through the rough pattern of her dress, a smile on his lips just from the sheer novelty of being able to touch something new. His smile widened –it wasn’t just something; it was Sara and her ass. This was more than he’d ever hoped he could have when he was alive, let alone dead. The connection between them was intense. Patrick had never felt closer to someone in his entire life.
He opened his eyes, the room slowly rotating as he led them in lazy circles. Sara sighed, shifting her head up until they were nose to nose. This time she closed her eyes, and he leaned down, brushing their lips together. So warm; so, so warm and sweet.
“Don’t leave me,” he murmured. The universe owed him nothing, and it was fickle; everything could snap back at any moment – the world could shift back on its axis, tearing him back to his normal world, silencing him.
“Okay.”
August came to an end, the hazy, humid days never fading Sara’s ability to touch Patrick. At his request, she opened the windows wide and left the front door open whenever she could. The air was heavy but more fragrant than he remembered . While Sara worked, he sat at the door, breathing in the scents of tar, grass, and flowers. The sun shined through the door, lighting the leg of his corduroys. Lying around in his boxers would have been preferable, but he didn’t want her to be uncomfortable. He held his hand up to the light, playing his fingers in the beam.
He was no more solid to the heat, though – his sudden appearance to Sara didn’t change a thing in that regard. His skin didn’t warm under the light… not like it used to. He didn’t miss it so much anymore, though. Especially not when Sara plopped down on the ground behind him, resting her chin gently on his shoulder. Her body heat was better than anything.
“I can feel that through your body.”
“Feel what?
“The sun.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh. Weird, right?”
“Yeah.” Patrick rested his palms on her knees, barely rubbing the skin. “Your knees are warm.”
Sara didn’t answer except to settle her body against his back more firmly, hands exploring just under the hem of his shirt. The sun shifted, creeping away from them, second by second. He stared out into the street, noticing the way the heat outside still shimmer ed on the blacktop. Indian Summer, his mom had called it.
“Hey, Patrick?”
Her voice rumbled through him, tickling his ribs. It felt almost the way he remembered soda fizzing –a cascade of bubbles sliding down his throat, the spike buzzing through his bloodstream. The distraction tore his eyes aw ay from the street outside, t he yellow flowers blooming at the edge of the porch passing into his vision . They’d always been his favorite flower. He longed to step outside and pick one to tuck behind Sara’s ear. It would look nice against her dark hair
“Yeah?”
“Why do you think you’re a ghost? Or, you know, what do you think it means?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you ever thought about it?”
He laughed, squeezing her kneecap with one hand. “Yeah, like a million times.” Every day for forty years, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours. It was probably a good thing he didn’t have access to a pencil past that first week or two after he died –he probably could have written entire books on the walls of the house about his thoughts on death, the nature of religion, and his theories about the afterlife. Recently, though, he’d thought about it less for no other reason than he was too happy to care.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Do you have ideas? You know, about why you got stuck here in your house?”
“It’s your house now.”
He wasn’t so sure he wanted to talk about this. Bringing it up seemed to be tempting fate, daring some higher power to decide it was time to drag him away. All those years, he would have been overwhelming gassed about waking up in Heaven , the clouds soft and fluffy under his feet as he strummed a harp and all that; now he’d be pissed off about it.
“Don’t change the subject,” she teased, kissing his jaw.
Patrick sighed, leaning back against Sara to feel more of the warm solidness of her body. “Okay, so… for a long time I thought maybe I was being punished. You know, by God.”
“For what? You’re the nicest guy ever.”
“Oh, sure. Now,” he said, grinning and reached behind him to mess her hair.
She laughed and pushed his hand away. “Yeah, because I’m sure you were out there robbing banks and pushing little old ladies into on-coming traffic.”
“You don’t know! I could have been a terrible person before I died.”
“Um, yeah, I doubt it. Anyway, so… you thought you were being punished. What else?”
“Well, then I thought maybe God just forgot about me. Maybe I died, and I just got overlooked. Thousands of people probably die every minute –things must fall through the cracks all the time, even for God, right?”
Patrick could feel her smile against his neck. “I suppose it’s a possibility if you believe in God.”
“Which, of course, I do.”
“Still, after all these years?” Her voice was incredulous, as though she couldn’t imagine he might still have faith.
“I’ve considered that maybe God doesn’t exist, or maybe the one that I believe in doesn’t exist. I thought maybe that was my problem, you know? Like maybe there’s some higher power with a plan to, you know, reincarnate me into a chipmunk or a rock or something… but it’s just not time to be reborn.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“I guess I’m just surprised you keep coming back to the idea of someone pulling the strings. You have no proof that God –any god –is real.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have any proof against it, either, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“That’s always been my problem.”
“Your problem?”
“With religion.”
The breeze blew the flag on the house across the street; he could almost hear the snap of the material. “You have a problem with religion?”
“Well, I guess it’s not really a problem – I just don’t believe in that sort of thing.”
“At all?”
“No. I mean, I grew up going to church, but I just… I don’t know. I just see no proof that a God exists. And then with all that Jules believes, it makes me wonder if I want to. I mean, if she’s got it right, I don’t want that kind of thing in my life. She uses it as an excuse to hurt other people.”
“Well, how do you explain me then? I’m a ghost… there must be an afterlife, right? I exist.”
“It does sort of throw a wrench into my whole ‘you die and that’s it’ thing,” Sara said, pursing her lips, “but I don’t think there has to be a god in order for you to be, you know, here . I can’t explain what you are, what ghosts are,
but the fact that you’re so convinced God ’s left you here doesn’t exactly persuade me that someone is calling the shots. Maybe it just sort of happens. You know, this self-regulating thing that sometimes doesn’t go as planned. Like a birth defect… but in this case, it’s a death defect.”
“I can’t believe that all this,” he gestured to himself and then to her, “is random.”
Sara crunched her shoulders up around her ears and released them. “Have you ever considered maybe this is one long dream?”
“My imagination isn’t all that great,” he replied. “You’re good enough to be a dream, but I could never have conjured you up by myself.”
“Oh, you’re smooth,” she joked, tugging at his earlobe. He laughed and bumped her head with his. “What if it’s just one of those weird tricks of the mind? Maybe this is your last conscious thought before you die. This –me, you, being a ghost –all of it’s just a really vivid hallucination. Your body’s dead, but your brain hasn’t quite caught up yet.”
Patrick tried to imagine that but couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. He could still see the urine spreading across the leg of his pants, his neck bent at an unnatural angle. His mother’s poke at his shoulder. He had seen the whole thing but hadn’t felt his body slip away. It had h appened without his permission or acknowledgment.
“I… I hadn’t really thought of it before. Is that what’s supposed to happen? I mean, it’s been a long time –have doctors figured out any of this shit yet?”
Sara shook her head, the spikes of her hair itching his ear. “Not that I know of. I mean, death and what happens after is just as big of a mystery now as it was then probably.”
“That’s helpful,” he said, chuckling.
“Yeah, well, the more things change, the more things stay the same, I suppose.”
That was true enough. There were hundreds of things that were peculiar now, but Sara wasn’t radically unlike people he’d been friends with in high school. She was … different , but she valued and loved her family, had a good heart, wanted others to be happy, wanted herself to be happy. That was all anyone had wanted in 1970, and it seemed as though that still held true , even if she truly didn’t believe in God . He’d watched the news on her television enough times to know the world still turned, still revolved around the sun. The country was still at war –albeit, not the Vietnam War –and there were still people hungry and poor. If it hadn’t been for the obvious technology advances, he’d be tempted to say everything was exactly the same.
Sara’s telephone rang, both of them startling at the sound. She laughed breathlessly before answer ing .
“Oh, hi, Mom. Yeah… things are good. Better than expected. Uh huh… oh, really? Is she okay? Good, good… how’s the bakery? Yeah? That’s great!”
Sara rubbed her warmth into the back of his neck with the palm of her hand as she chatted. Sara had gone without loving companionship for a while too, and in some ways he thought she had the worst end of the deal between the two of them. Yeah, he’d been forced to endure years of loneliness, but no one had hurt him intentionally. She could have been hopeless and jaded, bitter, because of all that had happened with her ex… but she wasn’t. Maybe it was just the implausibility of their situation or the improbable nature of their future that allowed her to live in this moment, but her openness was astounding.
He had to remind himself it had only been two weeks. Two weeks of being able to mostly forget he was dead, nothing more than a dead guy playing at being real. It wasn’t long enough to know if it was something Sara could deal with long term. At first Patrick couldn’t fathom that she’d allow herself to consider it –she was young and gorgeous; she could have anyone she wanted… someone who could leave the house and pick flowers for her. Each day weakened his resolve to bring it up, force the subject, though. He needed her more than anything in his life. It was pure selfishness, but he didn’t care. If she were willing, he’d spend every single day of her life with her.
The phone clicked shut, and Sara butted her forehead up against the back of his head, sighing.
“Jules is coming to visit.”
That was… nice. Okay, maybe it wasn’t nice – even the tone of Sara’s voice made him tense; the dread was evident. He wasn’t looking forward to Jules running around the house making snide comments about Sara or insinuating he was some evil demon bent on luring her into Hell. “Oh? When?”
“Well, she hasn’t called yet to ask, but my mother said she’s thinking about next week. You know, for a weekend or something. I guess this is the calm before the end-of-year storm for her at work.” Her lack of enthusiasm was even more pronounced now.
Patrick slid around to face her, his legs draping over her thighs. The frown on her face drew his hands to her cheeks, his fingertips nudging her mouth into a grin. She laughed and swatted at him .
“It’s just a few days,” he said, smoothing the hair at her temple. “It’ll be over before you know it.” To be able to do this, just touch her so simply, was such a gift. Thank you, God , he prayed silently. Thank you for this. He could say it sincerely, even knowing he might have to deal with Sara’s shitty sister.
Maybe Sara was right. Maybe this was all some crazy trick of his brain – or maybe it was all a trick of hers –but whatever it was, he was thankful to have the time with her . He was grateful to be this blissfully happy, even for five minutes.
“I know. I just… I don’t think I want her here right now.” The guilt swam over her face, coloring her skin.
“Why not?” Patrick didn’t want her in the house, either, but he was more interested in Sara’s reasoning. The last time she’d been t here, just a few months earlier, had been so completely different. Depending on what Jules was really thinking about Sara and the house and everything else, he didn’t know how things would go down. Maybe this time she’d try something more robust to rebuke demons or whatever. Her efforts would likely be unsuccessful, but he didn’t want to find out. And Sara ’s happ iness was at stake here – she seemed fine , he thought, and that was really all that mattered. All that he cared about, anyway.
“I don’t know. What if she comes here and something changes between us? We still don’t know why you could give me your memories… or why I saw you that one time… or why I can touch you now… why you can suddenly touch me.”
“Nothing is certain in this world,” Patrick replied before kissing the tip of her nose. “Things can change.” The skin of her face tasted like sunshine as he brushed his lips over the apple of her cheek. “Don’t worry about a thing.” He moved to her chin and then up to her other cheekbone.
“Easy for you to say,” she grumbled, inching closer to him and slipping her arms around his waist. “You don’t have anyone who can get all up in your business. She’s going to know I’ve met someone, you know. She can always tell.”
“So?” Patrick never had a brother or a sister; he’d overheard his mom talking on the phone once… he didn’t understand it all, but apparently it just wasn’t possible for her to have another child. He’d never cared then, but now that there’d been time to think about it, time to consider it, maybe it would have been nice to have someone to talk to and be close with.
“So – she’s going to be relentless, and it’s not exactly like I can introduce the two of you. Can you imagine how that woul d go over ?”
His wry grin got her attention. “Yeah. I, uh, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but she tried to exorcise me or something last time she was here. She blessed the house.”
She laughed, her tone incredulous. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. She wasn’t always like this, you know. She used to be really funny… she was always the first person I went to when I had a problem.”
“What changed?”
“I don’t know. Her husband, I guess. She met him, and she got sucked into his crazy church. Now, it’s like she’s convinced she’s a bad Christian if she can’t convert you. Even my mom gets sick of her shit, even though she’d never s
ay anything – my mother is the nicest person on the planet.”
A breeze blew through the open door, ruffling Sara’s hair, and the screech of a child echoed in from somewhere down the street. “Don’t let the bad blood there get you down. If you don’t want to see her, just tell her not to come,” he said, ducking his head to look directly into her eyes. “This is your life .”
“Oh, I know. It’s just… it’s simpler this way. If I say no to her, she’ll claim I’m under the influence of Satan or something. She’ll start harassing my parents, trying to convince them I’m going crazy again.”
“Yes, because your sister seems to have cornered the market on sanity.”
Sara’s smile appeared, and she laughed. “True enough. Sometimes I do think it’s me, though… maybe there really is something wrong with me that I can’t get along with her. I just can’t connect…”
He grasped her by the shoulders and shook her lightly. “I’d be worried if you could, but you shouldn’t worry –you connect with me . You sensed me immediately, I think… you found stuff of mine, and we had things in common… you seemed to like me before you even knew I was here. I don’t know, Sara. If there’s really a problem, maybe we both have it . My own parents couldn’t sense me , but m aybe if I could have figured out a way , I could have convinced my parents to stay. Maybe things would have really been different.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.”
“Yeah, I suppose. In the end, it really doesn’t matter because I have you. You’re better than anything I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Wow, that’s saying something.”
“Huh?”
“You saw The Doors in concert,” Sara teased, eyes lighting. “Coming in ahead of Jim Morrison is a serious compliment.”
* * * * *
CHAPTER NINE
Jules bustled into the house, dragging a small, black suitcase behind her. Patrick guffawed at the sight of her hair, half matted to her head and the rest of it sticking up on the other side. He’d never flown anywhere, but he imagined it had something to do with airplane travel and being trapped in a tin can for hours. Or maybe it was some new fashion trend. He shook his head –Sara had shown him photos of some of the clothes he’d missed over the years; sometimes he was glad he’d died when he did.
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