Austensibly Ordinary

by Alyssa Goodnight

  I sank back down on the bed, Ethan back in my thoughts. If things were normal, I’d RSVP for the two of us and check with him later. But things weren’t normal—we might as well have been in the Twilight Zone for all I could grasp what was going on. Besides, if Ethan and I had merely upgraded to friends with benefits, then that meant that we were just casual, and that I could attend this dreamy weekend brunch with bona fide single status.

  But it would be loads better if I could turn “single” into “couple.” It couldn’t hurt to give Mr. Tielman a call. . . . could it? There’d been no mention of love, romance, or exclusivity; it had been like make-up sex, no strings attached.

  Before I let myself consider that analogy too carefully, I slid out of bed, darted into the living room, and rummaged through a disarray of lollipop sticks and their crinkly-wrapped heads to find my secret phone. Before I could second-guess my strategy, I dialed his number, retrieved from voice mail, and readied my voice.

  “Hello, Jake, this is Cat Kennedy. I had a little idea of how we could wrap up our twenty questions without interruption. . . .” I felt a twinge of guilt, thinking of Ethan. “I’ve just RSVP’d to the Pop-up Culture brunch this Sunday. If you’ll be there, come find me.” I waited a beat, and then decided to leave it at that.

  I smiled giddily to myself as I dropped the phone back amid the candy, stirring the mix until its trim black case slipped out of sight.

  I told myself I could ignore even the smallest twinge of guilt. I was unarguably unattached. Ethan and I were undisclosed and uncommitted, and the fact that I’d promised to drag Dmitri along with me to meet Syd was barely relevant. He was an operator, not likely to hang around with me when there were “pretty people” and Austin Movers and Shakers in the crowd. So I was good.

  I settled back on my bed and picked up my real phone, now officially committed. I typed “2” in the RSVP box, entered my credit card number, and hit Send. It was done; I was going; and I had no reason to feel guilty. Ethan would understand, and Jake didn’t need to know the backstory.

  I quickly texted Dmitri the details of our brunch date, suggesting we might want to ride separately, just in case. I thought it best to keep my options open.

  Slipping under the covers, I curled in on myself and tried to imagine how this evening fit in with the sudden whirlwind of crazy in my life.

  There are secrets, and then There’s Clueless

  Was it possible that Gypsy Jane was familiar with Alicia Silverstone’s portrayal of Emma and had been trying to hint around the fact that I might want to give Ethan a second look? Well, subliminally, it had worked like gangbusters.

  But as much as our little experiment had brought the wow factor, bubbling over like a homemade volcano, it hadn’t exactly left me with the feeling that the landscape of our friendship was irrevocably changed. While it might be true that we couldn’t go back, going forward into unknown territory wasn’t necessarily a foregone conclusion. It might be that fate had dealt the two of us a really good friendship . . . with the occasional bout of requited lust.

  Maybe we’d just hover comfortably right where we were.

  Or maybe this evening’s little trial run would blow up in our faces, burning the both of us beyond recognition. . . .

  Promising myself I’d dial down the drama, I groaned dramatically and buried my face in my pillow. And I tried not to think about any of it.

  Luckily I woke on my own, because setting an alarm clock had been the absolute least of my concerns. I hadn’t gotten around to removing my makeup either, but I thought the raccoon eyes paired nicely with my tangled wreath of hair. Groaning again, this time for entirely different reasons, I staggered into the shower and mentally prepped myself for the day ahead. Or attempted to. By the time I stepped out of the shower, I still wasn’t entirely clear on my strategy. I think I’d decided to keep Mom in the dark, keep Ethan at arm’s length, and keep Courtney from playing with any foreign equipment.

  I waffled over jotting a little note to Gypsy Jane and finally gave in despite the certainty that it would mean lounge coffee instead of a vanilla latte. It had to be done. My entries of late had been entirely self-focused, and Gypsy Jane had consequently homed in on my own little romantic situation. If I was going to keep up with a little matchmaking on the side, I needed to get her back on track. I needed an alternative for Sportcoat.

  Clearly I have some things to work out with Ethan and, if I’m lucky, maybe Jake too, but I could use a little insight into luring Courtney away from her latest crush-of-the-moment. A shared fascination with ghost hunting is not the solid foundation of a long-lasting relationship. Okay, I take that back . . . maybe it is online. Let me clarify: I’m talking about a romantic, in-person relationship. Courtney needs a sweet, serious, stable guy to walk into her life right now. And I would be thrilled to facilitate that. So if you have any hints, tips, or suggestions, work your magic, and I’ll try to figure them out.

  Satisfied, I smiled down at the journal, tipped it shut, and tucked it into my carryall along with another ninja-style ensemble for tonight. I’d check for any new advice on my off period.

  For a Monday, the day was particularly surreal. As I was pulling the door to my classroom closed on the first bell of the day, Ethan shoved a foot in the door, handed me my favored coffee drink, and let a silent message flash in his eyes. But it remained indecipherable. After that I saw Ethan in the hall, in the lunch line, even in the lounge, and other than the secrets banked in Ethan’s dark eyes, we behaved like perfectly normal, respectable high school teachers. But when the final bell rang, we turned, like werewolves at a full moon.

  Suddenly we were horny and irresponsible.

  An after-school visit to the computer lab to ask about my sluggish Internet connection turned into a fumbling free-for-all in the shadows. We kept it PG-13, but just barely. Afterwards, Ethan boosted my connection speed and we parted ways. It couldn’t have been more casual. And yet, by the time I reached my classroom, I was definitely feeling it: some sort of delayed reaction to my bout of risky business with Ethan. I dropped shakily into my desk chair and dragged the journal out of my bag, just now remembering it. I needed to focus on something other than Ethan and certain recent developments. . . . Gypsy Jane clearly did not have my back.

  Ethan is sweet, serious, stable. work your magic

  Unavoidably my thoughts fluttered back over the past twenty-four hours with Ethan as I bolted for the vending machine and an Orange Crush. It was difficult to know for sure, seeing as the other messages from Jane had been directed to me, but I assumed, given my request, that this one was meant for Courtney, with me facilitating.

  Courtney and Ethan. I had suggested it myself a week ago when she was looking for a tagalong companion to her Roaring Twenties event, but this was bigger than that. And things were a little different now. A week ago Ethan had just been a cool but geeky guy who rocked in the friend department. Now he was bona fide boyfriend material. And he was sleeping with me. Scratch that—we’d had sex once (well, twice) and pawed each other in the computer lab. He was not my boyfriend, which is not to say he wouldn’t be perfect as someone else’s.

  As the orange soda fizzed loudly in its bottle, I made the mature decision: I’d step back and away and let Ethan and Courtney decide if they could be more than friends with really good benefits.

  I washed down the lump in my throat with a swallow of Crush and then glanced at my Jane Austen action figure, standing primly beside my pencil cup. Craving a little harmless violence, I aimed her leg for a sharp kick and watched my now-empty soda bottle sail into the trash can. Short of pulling it back out of the trash and repeating the little fit of pique, there was little left to do but go and see a girl about a ghost.

  I transformed from school teacher to ninja in Courtney’s office, and decided to introduce Ethan into the conversation as a counterpoint to Sportcoat, aka the Ghost-hunting Guru.

  “Cate, he really is adorable. We talked for hours that night in the Driskill Café, an
d he’s been back twice since to give me some pointers. We even spent fifteen minutes closeted together in the elevator, trying to get a reading on P. J. Lawless,” she told me importantly.

  “And did you?” I asked, wondering if the Guru extraction would be more difficult than I’d assumed.

  “Um. Not exactly,” she admitted, clearly flustered. She’d shrugged off a royal blue jacket in favor of the pseudo-ninja garb underneath, and the pale contrast of her skin against the black set off the sudden rosy blush on her cheeks.

  “Wrong time again?” I asked, tongue-in-cheek.

  “No. In fact, he may have been there, and we just . . . didn’t see him.”

  “How is it possible,” I said, knowing full well precisely how it was possible, “that the two of you could be in an elevator with an infamous ghost—around here anyway—and not notice him?”

  “Well for one thing, Micah’s equipment was going haywire,” Courtney snapped, lifting Casper the Friendly Ghost Finder onto the table and turning knobs and flipping switches in a semiprofessional manner. Either she’d learned something from Sportcoat or she was faking it really well.

  “And for another . . .” I prompted, rather enjoying myself, even though I was going to have to bust this up. It was one thing for Courtney to have a ridiculous hobby that she indulged in in the safety of a respectable hotel, hooking being the exception to that rule. It was another to engage in said pastime with someone who took it a little too seriously, or worse, someone who thought nothing of playing a role to take advantage of a pretty ingénue.

  “Let’s just say we weren’t fixing the equipment, Cate,” she admitted, fighting a smile.

  I moved closer and dropped into the chair across from her desk, perched on the edge. “Do you really think you should get involved with a ghost hunter?”

  She leveled me with a steady gaze. “You’re involved with one,” she said, her eyebrow lifting in challenge.

  “Only as a favor,” I reminded her. “And you’re just messing around,” I countered. Please let that be all you’re doing.

  “So’s he. He’s just better at it.” Her mouth curved into a crescent, framed on one side by a sweet little dimple.

  “So he’s not a ‘professional ghost hunter’?” I hoped she couldn’t hear the quotes in my voice.

  Her smile morphed into a disbelieving smirk. “No! He’s a freelance writer, published regularly in magazines like Wired and Popular Science.” Seeing my raised eyebrows—one quite possibly higher than the other, likely coming across as dubious uncertainty—she added, “I looked him up online. He has a web page, and his picture is featured with one of his articles in Wired.” Now her eyebrow was up, and I had no choice but to lower mine in momentary defeat.

  “Okay, fine,” I said, starting over, splaying my hands on the smooth mahogany of her desk. “So you like him, and he’s a solid possibility. I still think you should maybe see if you and Ethan could hit it off as more than friends.”

  I swallowed past the lump in my throat. Technically “friends with benefits” was “more than friends,” and I’d say Ethan and I had knocked it out of the park. But that was irrelevant—we weren’t romantically involved and didn’t intend to be. He was fair game, and so was I.

  Courtney’s brows knit in a mixture of confusion and exasperation.

  “What is the deal with Ethan?” she asked patiently. “Why the recent push to get the two of us together?”

  “You’re already friends, and neither of you is in a relationship. I just think there might be the potential for something more.” It pained me, just a little, to admit that.

  “You’re better friends with him,” she pointed out, now a little bit sassy. “And you’re not in a relationship. I say you’ve got dibs. And I think Ethan would agree and thank me for saying so.” She let this settle in for a minute before tacking on the death blow to my matchmaking scheme. “Besides, I think I sort of am in a relationship.” She grinned and shifted her focus back to Casper.

  Well, I’d tried, so the matter was settled—it didn’t seem kosher somehow to broach the subject with Ethan right after we’d taken our friendship to the naked level. I started rummaging for candy corn and ignored the fact that the evening felt marginally celebratory from that point on.

  I trailed Courtney for thirty minutes before it happened, my only concessions to the hunt a pair of goggles and a clipboard. I’d volunteered to jot down any findings as an alternative to using a tape recorder, but so far had nothing on the page but a selection of bird and butterfly sketches. I was leaning over the balustrade on the stairs leading up to the second level, waiting for instructions, when a man came through the doors of the Brazos entrance. Tall and broad-shouldered, he carried himself with an almost cocky attitude. He glanced up on his way to the elevators and saw me watching him. It was the man from the other day. I let my mouth curve into a casual, passing-stranger, “I feel like I should remember you, but I don’t” smile, but he didn’t return it. In fact, he turned sharply away, stepping into the elevator and out of sight. Weird.

  I had too many things on my mind to let a cranky stranger’s bad manners bother me. By the time the really weird stuff started happening, the incident was already completely forgotten.

  We were in the mezzanine ladies’ restroom, Courtney attempting to extract an eyelash from her right eye and me washing my hands with the fancy soaps, when it happened.

  A little shimmer appeared in my peripheral vision, and I glanced up curiously, searching the gilt-framed mirror for the source. But there was nothing, so I finished washing and picked up one of the upper-crust cloth-style paper towels arranged in a neat stack on the counter. As I rubbed my hands dry, the shimmer teased my subconscious a second time. Curious, I switched my focus back to the mirror. There was still nothing reflected there, but shifting my gaze slightly, I noticed that something was in the room with us, and, skeptic or not, I couldn’t ignore the evidence that it looked a lot like a ghost. Or at least how I thought one might possibly look.

  I started, as if someone had snuck up on me, as I supposed, someone had. Or something that had once been someone. Creeepy. My heart rate, having launched into a panicked reaction, didn’t bother to settle, and I stood, blinking with a vengeance, half-hoping that with just one more twitch of the eyelids, she might disappear. And half-hoping she wouldn’t.

  This vision, with her wide, intelligent eyes, mischievous mouth, and willowy, ladylike stature, was clearly not the ball-bouncing child of hotel legend. So who was she?

  I glanced back at Courtney, who was leaning over the sink, rubbing and rinsing.

  “Court,” I said, keeping my eyes on our ghost and trying to take deep, calming breaths, “You’re probably gonna to want to see this.”

  “I can’t see anything right now, Cate. Between the eyelash and the mascara running into my eyes, visibility is very low right now. Not to mention the fact that I can’t stop winking! Shit!”

  “I think it might be a ghost,” I murmured in singsong, keeping things light and friendly and backing up ever so slightly toward Courtney.

  “What?! Are you serious?” She pivoted in my direction, dribbling water all over the pristine marble countertops and floor, squinting in a deranged sort of way. “Try to take a picture!” she screeched, frantically cupping her hands under the faucet and aiming palmfuls of water at her eyes, sending most of it cascading down into the V-neck of her black T-shirt. “Use your phone, and hurry! But don’t spook her . . . stall for time!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, fumbling as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I snapped two shots with shaky hands and didn’t bother checking them. In all likelihood, I’d blurred them or she had, simply by virtue of being a ghost. I spared a glance for Casper, currently sitting on the floor at the feet of our translucent mystery guest and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Clipboards were both user-friendly and nonthreatening. Turning back to the person-shaped shimmer, I smiled winningly and started jotting notes.

  Monday, Novem
ber 8, 2010, 6:45 P.M.

  Ladies’ Mezzanine Bathroom, Driskill Hotel, Cate Kendall, ghost hunting with Courtney Reynolds. Who is currently occupied by a freakin’ eyelash. Okay, what to write . . . Visitor is female, mostly transparent, with no discernible reflection. She also appears to be hovering.

  Her dress is a pale, shimmery blue, with a short, high bodice and a floor-length skirt . . . very nineteenth century. She’s wearing a pretty cap over her brown curls. She looks vaguely familiar (can’t place her), and she’s obviously curious, looking directly, disconcertingly at me, very possibly smirking.

  With that officially recorded, I looked up, conscious that I should probably try to make contact.

  “Hi, I’m Cate. Who are you?” I clenched my teeth, bracing myself for an answer.

  It could have been my imagination, but it seemed like her mouth, already edged up slightly at the corners, edged up a bit more. It was tough to tell, seeing as I was also looking right through her, at the flowered wallpaper hanging behind her. Seems I needn’t have worried. Beyond the subtle shift in her facial expression, she didn’t answer. Maybe she was shy.

  “Um, do you come in peace?”

  With this question, I was sure of it: She definitely smiled, and it was a saucy smile. I think there might have even been a nod of agreement.

  I smiled an awkward half smile, spared a quick glance for Courtney, prayed for a quick search and rescue, and then glanced down again, jotting “Friendly” on the clipboard. I wondered suddenly how she had died, and a shiver crept up my arms. What if it was violent—gory, even? What if she was angry . . . or crazy mad? I was now officially freaked out.

  “Shit!”

  That one word, emanating from the sink behind me, echoing my sentiments exactly, worked like two paddles to the chest and broke me out of my funk. This wasn’t exactly the House of Usher. I was in the ritzy bathroom of a historic landmark hotel in downtown Austin, with Hollywood lighting and fancy soaps . . . conducting an interview with a ghost. Get it together, Cate. It’s not like it’s a vampire.