Ghost Sickness

by Amber Foxx

  “I’m not always right.”

  “But you act like it. This bothering you?” He indicated the spinning apple.

  “Yes.”

  He stopped and took a bite, talking through it. “You can tell me about stuff like that. I’m not kicking myself when I say this. I know I can be irritating.”

  Mae almost protested his self-assessment, but it was true. “A little bit. Sometimes.” She bumped him softly with her shoulder. “See, I’m letting you be right.”

  He flashed a smile so sweet it caught her by surprise, a smile that grew broader and brighter like the light from between the clouds and crinkled little lines around his eyes. When he was radiant and open like that, his warmth could sweep away everything that got on her nerves and make her fall in love all over again.

  “Love it when you look at me like that.” His smile faded, and he grew serious. “Like you see me and not just what’s wrong with me. That’s something special about you, y’know? About Zak and Mel, too. Seeing me.” He took a bite of the apple and looked down at his feet. “Sorry I got pissed off in the store. It was me seeing something wrong with me. Not you. You were treating me like a normal bloke and I was ... dunno ... had two fucking panic attacks in the past two days ... feeling like I’m not good enough and like you wouldn’t let me make it up to you by paying for stuff. I’m sorry. I miss my book—it was helping—I forget so fast. Got the attention span of a flea.”

  Mae rubbed his back. He was hot, even hotter than normal, often a sign of some emotional storm brewing. “You okay, sugar?

  He surprised her by turning to lie on his back across the top step, pulling her on top of him and nuzzling her neck. Their apples tumbled to the ground with soft thuds.

  “Did we need to talk more or are we—”

  His kiss answered her question. He slid his hand under her tank top and unhooked her bra.

  “We should go inside,” she said. “There’s gaps in the fence. And Niall might come back to work on the deck.”

  “After the rainbow.” Jamie kissed her again and traced the line of her cheek and jaw with one finger. His eyes were huge and black, swallowing her in their depths. “Have I told you how much I love you today?”

  The enormity of his love, the naked vulnerability of it, left her at a loss for words. Yes would be trivial. I love you too, barely adequate. She managed a small nod and tucked her fingers under the broad lateral muscles of his back.

  “I miss you so much when I’m not with you.” He twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. “Think about you all the time.”

  “You don’t need to miss me, sugar. We’re still connected when we’re not together.”

  “I don’t do well alone, though.” He turned his head to the side and stared at Turtleback Mountain. “Feel like something bad will happen.”

  Mae sat up and stroked her hand over his chest. There was no way she could ask for a night on her own now. His heart was beating too fast and hard for just lying there. The urge to use her healing gift to calm him swept through her, but she sent her love through her hand instead. It should be enough.

  It wasn’t.

  “You feel like something bad will happen to us?”

  “Nah.” He pushed himself upright. “Just bad stuff in general. Think about death a lot. Mum and Dad getting old. Stuff like that.”

  “Getting old is good. I mean, it beats the alternative. When I healed Niall, Daddy thanked me for more years with him. He was always so afraid he’d lose him early.”

  Jamie’s hand squeezed hers hard. “Let’s live a long time, all right? Both of us.”

  He means together. She liked to think they would last, but she couldn’t make promises after dating for less than two months. Unable to choose the right words, she squeezed his hand back.

  Jamie sang a new tune Mae hadn’t heard before. She knew it was his. He often created songs that had only one or two lines, with variations on the mood and the melody. This one had a hymn-like quality, soaring and simple.

  “We’ll live forever, love lasts forever ...”

  With each exploration of the line, his voice grew stronger, vibrating every atom in her body like a powerful light passing through her.

  “Look. Look!” Jamie broke off his song, sprang to his feet, and jumped up and down. “Look!”

  Mae looked. A double rainbow over the Turtle. “Oh my god. That’s so beautiful.”

  “It’s a sign. Remember our first double rainbow?”

  It had been in Santa Fe, when she’d known him for less than twenty-four hours and didn’t know what to think of him yet. The rainbow had made him insanely happy then, too.

  He swept her into his arms and kissed her, danced her down the steps and twirled her, then dipped her back as if they were ballroom dancing. “We’ll live forever, love lasts forever...”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A touch on Mae’s shoulder woke her, followed by a velvety-soft kiss on each eyebrow. The room was dark except for the night light she’d put in for the nights Jamie stayed over. He touched the tip of her nose with one finger. “The hot spring is full and the wine is poured. The stars are waiting for you.”

  Exhausted, Mae groaned. “What time is it?”

  “Time for love.” He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. “Get up. Get wet.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought the hot spring would help, but then I thought, what if you woke up and I was out having a soak without you? Be weird. So, I’m being romantic instead.” Wrestling her gently, Jamie licked her ear, made a deep humming sound against her neck, and then blew on it with closed lips, making a fart noise.

  “Yeah, that poot sound was really romantic.”

  He repeated it and licked her ear again. “Play with me, love. Life is good.”

  Mae wanted to sink back into her dreams, but it wasn’t an option. She could reject another well-intentioned surprise and start an argument, or give in. Either way, she wouldn’t get any sleep. Too drowsy to fight, she surrendered and rose. He opened the door beside the head of the bed, and they stepped out into the night.

  Mae never went out to the hot spring without a bathing suit because of the gaps between the boards in the backyard fence. She descended to ground level in haste, the wind slapping her bare skin. Jamie followed.

  Most of the clouds had blown away, revealing a crescent moon. Its light gleamed on a bottle of wine and two glasses on a small table next to the big metal tub. Towels were draped identically on a pair of lawn chairs. Mae followed the red flagstones leading to the tub, stepping over a stake and a string where Niall had marked out the eventual dimensions of the deck, and lowered herself into the hot water. “Thanks sugar. This is romantic.”

  Jamie got in with her. He caressed her back and hips in a tentative sensual inquiry, kissed her, and let go to sink deeper in the water. “Thanks for brushing my hair, by the way.”

  When his insomnia had become distressingly conspicuous, she’d gotten his brush from his backpack and done the one thing she knew could calm him down. “Did you sleep after that or just relax?”

  “Both. It was bliss. Think I was out for at least an hour before I got squirmy again.” He wriggled, stretched, and took her hand and kissed it. “You’re good to me. You let me be myself. No complaints. Can’t tell you how much that means.”

  She thought of the complaints she hadn’t spoken and leaned her head back against the rim of the tub to gaze at the stars salting the sky. What was she going to do with him? It wasn’t as if he did anything wrong. No man had ever treated her better. She loved him. And yet he wore her out.

  “Forgot.” Jamie stood, sloshing the water, waded over to the table, and handed her a glass of wine. His body looked good wet and naked in the moonlight, as if his extra weight somehow blended better into the whole of his form. “Cheers.” He picked up his wine and took a sip. “This all right? Had to run up to the big box place while you were sleeping.”

 
“It’s fine—yes. Thank you. But don’t drink much in the hot water. It’ll make you woozy.”

  “Don’t want me to drown?” He held his glass above the water and slid under the surface, exhaling bubbles for a longer time than seemed humanly possible, then let the air cease a while before he emerged. “Sorry. You don’t like death jokes, do you?” He drank and leaned back.

  “I don’t think you killing yourself is ever gonna be funny. How can you treat it so lightly?”

  “Dunno.” He rubbed his foot against her ankle, then curled his toes over hers in a strangely agile clasp. After toe-squeezing her other foot, he met her eyes. “Don’t think about doing it anymore. Now I think the way normal people think about dying, I guess—not that I’d know what normal people think. But I never used to imagine getting old. Might be why I like the idea of a parrot. He can grow old with me. Fuck. That was pathetic. I mean, he’s a pet that’ll grow old with me. Jeezus. He was for you. You’re going to grow old with me.” He paused, drank, and twisted to put his glass on the table. “Aren’t you?”

  “Can’t we take things one day at a time?”

  “Not much commitment there.” He crossed his leg over hers and jostled her. “That the best you can do?”

  “I love you. You know that. I want you in my life. But I’ve been married twice. It’s ...” She took a sip of wine, feeling Jamie’s baby seal eyes on her. What she was going to say might hurt him, but sooner or later they would have to talk about this. “It’s not very appealing, to be honest. I don’t think marriage is romantic anymore. This is romantic. What we’re doing right now. Marriage is ... It’s something that goes wrong.”

  “Bloody hell, everything goes wrong. Doesn’t stop people from living.”

  Jamie turned over in a seal-like move that became like a floating yoga pose as he hung by his arms from the rim of the tub in a little backbend and stared at the metal in front of his face. It was a strange form of sulking, but she knew him well enough to recognize the mood swing.

  “Sugar, if you’d stop pressuring me, we’d be living. Having the moment together. Romantic. Just like you want.”

  He dropped under the surface and exhaled for a while, sustained another bubble-less silence, and emerged in his backbend again. “Doesn’t work. It’s not ... not permanent.” He turned over to sit beside her once more. “I know it’s fucked up, but I can’t help it. I think I could lose you. And you’re my soul mate.”

  “How could you lose me?”

  His shoulders wriggled. “Dunno. You’re still in classes with the Greek.”

  She had dated a college classmate, a man of Greek origin, before she finally fell in love with Jamie. “I am not interested in Stamos.”

  “But I annoy you.”

  “Not that much.”

  “You sure?”

  She set her wine on the table and turned so she could face him. “Okay. You sleep funny. And fuss over stuff. And your cat annoys me. But that doesn’t mean you could lose me. It might make it hard to live with you, but not hard to love you.”

  “See, that’s the thing. Not living together. We’re three hours apart—”

  “And you’re going to be on the road for how long? Three months. Being apart goes with your work, sugar.”

  “Jeezus. I could change that. Just do local gigs.” He sighed. “It’s not like I can do something else for a living—I hated teaching, I’d get depressed again if I had to do that—but I can figure something out.”

  “I didn’t ask you to. You need to be successful.”

  “You want me gone for three months?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He picked up his wine, drained it, and set the glass down with a punctuating thump. “You could at least move to Santa Fe. Transfer to UNM, take the Rail Runner to classes—”

  “I like it where I am. And I get free tuition because Daddy works there, remember? Maybe I could move to Santa Fe after I graduate.” Mae snuggled closer. “That’d be a good place to do fitness work and healing work.”

  Jamie’s face softened, and his voice came out in a whisper. “You think we could start a family then?”

  How had he read that into moving to the same city in three years? He looked so entranced, so touched and awed, his heart bared to her in his eyes. She didn’t want to hurt him and yet she didn’t want to do what Will had done to Montana—string him along for years without ever tying the knot. “I don’t know if I can tell you that. I’ll be thirty-one by then and I didn’t say we were getting married.”

  “Bloody hell. My sister’s thirty-three and she’s trying to have another kid. It’s not fucking old.”

  “Did you hear the last part, sugar?” How could she want to hold him while she said this? She restrained the urge. It would only make it harder for both of them. “If you want to get married and have kids, it’s not fair for me to ask you to wait and see if I’m ready—because I don’t know if and when I will be. Oh, god, I hate to say this, because I love you, but ... maybe we should—”

  “No.” The word was crisp and hard, not his usual drawling nah. “You don’t get to break up with me. We’re soul mates.” His voice shook as he stood and climbed out of the tub. “I’ll wait.” He leaned over, hands on his thighs, and took a deep, loud breath.

  “You okay, sugar?”

  “Yeah.” He stepped over a pile of lumber and flopped onto the chaise longue. “Just dizzy. You’re right about drinking. Jeezus. Heat got to me.”

  Mae climbed out of the tub and walked over to him. “I thought you were having a panic attack.”

  “Nah. Just too hot. Think there’s steam rising from my skin.”

  That was something that should happen in a cartoon of him, the way he could get angry in a flash and then the mood would evaporate just as quickly. She fetched the towels, put one under his head as a pillow and wrapped herself in the other, not sure if she was relieved or frustrated that his dizzy spell had broken off their discussion. “I don’t think hot soaks agree with you. The tub at the Alpine Lodge got to you, too, and you weren’t even drinking.”

  “You have to hate it that I’m always having a problem. Gets old, doesn’t it?”

  She sat on the edge of the chaise and placed her hand on his heart. Stress-fast, but not panic-pounding. “Reckon it gets old for you.”

  He wove his long, slender fingers through hers, holding her gaze. “Not a direct answer, love.”

  She sighed. “I love you. I get tired of going without sleep, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” He brightened. “You weren’t actually seriously trying to break up with me?”

  Those eyes. That look. She ducked her head and studied their hands. “I don’t want to. I was giving you the option. So you could find someone who’s ready to settle down and start a family. But I wasn’t trying very hard.”

  “Good. Then stop trying.” He drew her down beside him. “I don’t want to find someone. You think I’d be happy with just someone? I love you.”

  *****

  Listening to the erratic roar of the window air conditioner, Jamie lay holding Mae while she slept—or pretended to sleep—in her pitch-dark bedroom. After having bothered her so much, he’d conceded on the night light and let her have what she liked: suffocating, claustrophobic darkness. He hoped he was holding still enough that she was genuinely sleeping and that he was keeping her company, not annoying her. The terrible, soul-ripping offer that she’d made had shaken him so deeply he couldn’t bear to let go of her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but you’re so hot, right up against me. I need a little space.”

  Jamie sighed. He needed his cat. Gasser would let Jamie hold him, sparing Mae. He kissed her, missing her lips in the dark and finding her chin instead. “No worries.” He felt around on the floor for his pants and took them outside with him so he could see to put them on.

  As soon as he closed the door, a giant bat flew over the back fence.

  “Bloody hell!”

  “Jamie?”<
br />
  The creature drifted to the ground, becoming a piece of windblown trash. “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

  Jamie drew his jeans on and dodged the thorny little weeds in the dirt to reach the former bat. It was a rectangle of black cloth, light and cheap and stiff, about the size of a window, with bits of masking tape stuck to its edges. Strange. He looked up. Another piece blew past and snagged on the towering sunflowers in Kenny and Frank’s back yard.

  He peered through one of the spaces between the wide red boards at the section of the fence that bordered the alley. The view showed a dumpster and the garden of the spa across the alley. The dumpster lid was closed, so that wasn’t the source of the cloth.

  But T or C had a lot of these little dumpsters, several per alley for trash and for recycling, instead of curbside pickup. Somewhere, a lid was open. Jamie considered going out and finding it and putting anything that had blown out back in it, but his shoes were near the front door and it was locked. He would have to go through the bedroom to get them and that would wake Mae yet again, and he couldn’t go prowling around unpaved alleys barefoot. He needed Ezra to give him another sacred-earth-anti-litter speech before he’d do that.

  Due to the dumpster system, Mae didn’t have an outdoor trash can, so Jamie anchored the cloth with one of Niall’s pieces of lumber and lay in the chaise longue again. A real bat, backlit by the stars, crossed the sky. Mistaking the cloth for a scary giant bat would have been funny if he wasn’t so worried about bothering Mae.

  He had to face up to what she had said, and yet it wasn’t safe to contemplate. Too much risk to his hard-won semblance of partial sanity. How could she think he would want to break up with her so he could start a family sooner? Did she imagine he could be happy with someone who wasn’t her? Or, for that matter, that anyone else could be happy with him?

  He hoped Mae was happy with him. To make her happy was what he wanted most. The only time he was sure he succeeded was when they made love, those moments that filled his soul when he brought her to ecstasy. It was spiritual, the connection they had then. And when they danced, he knew he made her happy, too—it was almost as good as sex. But when it came to all the practical, everyday-life parts of the relationship, he kept falling short.