And I knew one secret he hadn’t told Suze yet. Years ago, he’d killed his asshole, abusive dad before he could inflict himself on Gavin’s little adopted sister, Wendy. I used to think that it’d be a good idea to keep Gavin away from Suze, him being a murderer and all, but I couldn’t deny that his father had deserved what he’d gotten, and Gavin wasn’t a killer at heart. That’s why I didn’t even mind that he’d gotten away with it.
As Suze put the lemonades down on a couple coasters that were waiting on the coffee table, he said, “I hate that you live here when you know I can help.”
She laughed. “I’m not going anywhere until I can afford it, Gav. I know you think my apartment’s déclassé, but it’s mine. Know what I mean?”
“You’re being stubborn.”
“It’s one of my virtues.”
She touched his hand like she wanted to avoid an argument, and he uncrossed his arms, resting his fingertips over hers. They stayed like that, two people who hadn’t had much experience touching each other yet and were just starting to get used to it.
A visceral punch knocked me in my stomach, and I turned on Dean.
“Great. So you actually graced me with your presence today to show me how close they’ve gotten and that I have no hope of ever being with him. Big wow.”
He barely smiled. “They haven’t gotten that close, Jenny. Not yet.”
He meant sex. I tried not to be relieved as I struck back at Dean.
“If you think that he’s the reason I won’t be one of your stars, you’re insane.”
“Isn’t he?” Dean said quietly, his voice gritty.
No. I wanted to tell him that I knew I had no chance with Gavin, even if there were sketches of me hanging on the walls of his room in his palatial condo. Pictures he’d drawn. Monuments of his own obsession that he hadn’t told Suze about. But I hadn’t told her, either. Why ruin her happiness at the beginning of a relationship that had so much potential?
Dean said, “I know you go to him some nights, hovering above his bed, longing to enter his dreams so you can feel close to him and he to you. But it’s been weeks since you’ve gone into his psyche, because you know your best friend’s feelings have gotten stronger for him and you don’t want to betray her.” He jerked his chin toward the apartment. “And here’s proof of how far they’ve come—from talking at the bar to being here, in her sanctuary that she’s tried so hard to maintain and afford.”
I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see any kind of intimacy between Suze and Gavin, even if it was innocent. They’d come together over me when Gavin had been looking into my past, wanting to know about the ghost who’d haunted him. I’d been their common bond, but I could feel that it’d only grown into something deeper since then.
There was one bottom line, though, and it was that Suze was still my best friend, so I had to stay away from him. Even if I couldn’t.
“Well, damn,” Dean said, watching the scene in the apartment. “They’re still hemming and hawing with each other. I expected more.”
“Shut up.” But, damn me, I’d looked, anyway. Gavin was quickly drinking his lemonade, like he had somewhere else to be. Suze looked disappointed. She also looked something else, though, like she hadn’t let go of what he’d said about her apartment yet.
I knew Suze well enough to tell.
I started to walk away from the scene, but Dean grasped my arm, keeping me in place. His hand left another imprint on my bare skin, claiming me, heating like buzzing rays coming out of a dark sun.
“Just forget him,” Dean whispered.
The intensity of his words rattled me, and I fought it.
“You only want me to forget him so you can make me your star puppet.” I tugged my arm away from him. “And you know what? You’re so twisted that I wouldn’t put it beyond you to just be fooling with me right now. This little scene probably isn’t even happening. You’re just conjuring it to make a jealous point.”
He was a creature who didn’t live by a strict sense of time, so what I was suggesting was definitely within his powers. But when the door opened behind me and I felt Gavin’s life force rush over every inch of my body, I knew I was wrong.
I hauled in a breath and turned around to find him walking out to his car, a light smile on his face. A smile Suze had put there.
Dean laughed softly, but when Gavin slowed down on his way to the Corvette and glanced around him, his expression turning into something dreamy and curious, like he was feeling me, I sent fake Dean a victorious smile.
And it would’ve been so satisfying if he hadn’t already disappeared, leaving an empty spot behind that felt even more hollow than it was.
5
I put a hand to my chest, feeling how unexpectedly hollow I was now that fake Dean had left. But that only had to be because my body had gone back to ghostly form without him around.
Airy, floaty, not really there. Yup, that was Regular Me. Still, I did have more energy now. Fake Dean’s touch always did that to me afterward: colored me up, charged me like I was one of those new cell phones I was still getting used to seeing everywhere. I guessed he’d juiced me up so much that Gavin couldn’t help but feel it in the atmosphere.
“Is that you, Jensen?” he asked, his keys in hand as he stood by the car, still looking around.
It took me a sec to debate whether to reveal myself or not. I could just fly away, get back to Elfin Forest, stay out of trouble. . . .
God, what harm would just saying hi do?
I noticed his gaped passenger’s-side window and slipped into the car through the crack. Who wanted to have a ghost conversation in the middle of a parking lot?
Since I hadn’t answered him, Gavin took one more glance around, then unlocked the Corvette, sat down, shut the door, and reached over to start the engine.
I was so juiced up that I didn’t even have to access the cigarette-lighter socket before I materialized.
“Boo?” I said in greeting.
He froze, his pale gaze wide, his pupils expanding. But then he leaned back in his seat, planting his hands on his thighs.
“Thought it was you.”
I mentioned his life force, didn’t I? He was and wasn’t like my death spot: he pulled me in, just like it did, but not so he could darken me with bad memories while giving me energy. Gavin Edgett filled me with light, and maybe something like hope.
But, seriously, how dumb was that? Like there was any sort of hope whatsoever for a future with him.
He was running his gaze up and down me, making me vibrate.
“You here to see Suze?” he asked.
“I figured I’d drop by.” He didn’t need to know about fake Dean’s part in this. “Nice of you to visit her, too.”
He merely nodded, his arm hair standing up from my nearness and his skin goose-bumping, his fingers fidgeting with his key chain like it’d suddenly become really interesting. But what did he have to be awkward about? He and Suze were two cool people who deserved to be happy together. Yeah, Suze was totally older, and that was a strange setup, but people seemed way more open nowadays to different kinds of relationships. Why shouldn’t I be, too?
“You’ve been seeing her a lot, away from the bar?” I asked.
Gavin blew out a breath.
“What?” I asked. “It’s just a question.”
“I don’t know. For some reason, you’re the last person I want to be talking about this with.”
This was so human. This tension between us in a closed space . . . It reminded me of middle school, when I’d be interested in a guy and I’d oh-gee-whiz my way around him, wondering if he liked me, too. The thing was, back then, I hadn’t had a fake Dean who was probably watching from his place on high, seeing all, knowing all, maybe even getting more jealous of me and Gavin than ever. And none of my guys had been getting closer and closer to my best friend
.
Time to erase that tension. “You’re still uncomfortable around me. I know that. Someday maybe you’ll forgive me all the way for haunting you and we can be . . .”
“Friends?”
Gavin ran a rough hand over his face, then laughed, shaking his head. He seemed relieved that we weren’t talking about the real reason for the awkwardness between us, though. The attraction, the fascination.
“If someone would’ve ever told me that I’d be sorting out a relationship with a ghost one day,” he said, “I would’ve feared for their sanity.”
Relationship? Red alert.
I swerved away from that topic. “I would’ve done the same thing if anyone had told me that, one day, I’d be a ghost.”
We barely smiled at each other, still at a weird distance. Those goose bumps kept running over his arms, my high electric buzz making me sizzle.
Then his smile faded. “Jensen . . .”
I stopped smiling, too. I even dematerialized a little, ready to disappear altogether if things got too intense. Was he about to say something that neither of us should be saying?
When Suze’s apartment door opened and she walked outside, sending him a quizzical look through the windshield, I sighed in relief.
Moment broken. And thank God. What was I doing, anyway? Suze and I had never liked the same guys. We’d been perfect, supportive best friends until I’d gone into my postparental death funk. Then we’d drifted apart, only to get strong again when I’d appeared to her in this afterlife.
She squinted, then saw what there was of me and waved. I wasn’t at the same materialization level I’d been at when I’d first appeared to Gavin.
As I waved back, Gavin rolled down a window and leaned out. “Look who I found in the parking lot.”
“I was wondering why you were just sitting here.” Suze walked over to the window, then bent to lean her arms on the sill. Cleavage galore spilled from her top. She still had it.
“First time you’ve come to my digs, Jen?” she asked. “Or am I wrong?”
Was she talking about the money Amanda Lee had been dropping off? Was she asking me if I was responsible for putting it through her mail slot?
“First time indeed,” I said, avoiding the truth about the money. Suze would only get all proud and tell me that she could take care of herself, even though I knew she appreciated the cash. “You like it here?”
She half laughed. “It’ll do in a pinch. The neighbors are great. So’s the landlord. He’s spearheading a movement to clean up the neighborhood.”
Gavin stiffened in his seat. “Good for him.”
They exchanged a glance that wasn’t meant to include me, because he was clearly talking about the slight disagreement I’d seen them have about her staying here. A supposedly private moment.
I felt myself lose a little of the color I’d gained from fake Dean’s touch. Or maybe it was because materializing, even halfway, took a lot of energy.
Just then, I felt something happening to my essence. A solidifying. A . . .
A sense that fake Dean was around, because my almost-body was back.
Had I accidentally invited him by thinking about him?
Like the joker he was, he strolled into sight from the rear of the car. I could see his lower half through the window while he ran his hand over the Corvette’s sleek body. He whistled in appreciation, like any guy would’ve, then stopped next to Suze, who had no idea he was there.
She was frowning and peering at me. Gavin, too. Usually, people couldn’t see my Dean-body, but I guess materialization took care of that this time.
“Wow, Jen,” she said. “Did you eat your Wheaties this morning?”
Dean leaned right down next to her, arms on the sill, too. Suze still had no clue.
“Just tell her, Jenny,” he said. “You had a different kind of sustenance. Me.”
I ignored him. Like I needed to ask him why he’d come back. It was because he wasn’t done messing with me for the day. Dummy me, thinking he’d had his fill.
Instead, I talked to the sane people nearby. “My energy level’s been a little . . . off lately. Surges of power, all that.”
“Ghost problems,” Suze said. “But I say more power to you if you’ve found something that works and makes you stronger and happier.”
Oooh. That sounded like another reference to the apartment disagreement between her and Gavin. It didn’t take a genius to come to the conclusion that their light talk about the issue hadn’t even touched on something that ran much deeper. It was almost like Suze’s pride had been poked by his wanting to pay for her to move out, and she hadn’t let go of the insult.
And guess what—she’d keep holding on to it forever. One time I’d told her that a pair of short overalls she liked were too “Old McDonald Romper Room,” and she’d kept bringing it up every time I wore a questionable outfit myself. And this apartment thing left the overalls in the dust.
Gavin hadn’t said anything this entire time. He was just looking at the steering wheel. Dean, however, had no qualms about contributing.
“Trouble in paradise . . . ?”
Suze unknowingly interrupted him. “Jen, what do you think? Am I in grave danger here?”
Crap, she was bringing me into this. “I . . . uh . . . I’m not familiar with the area, Suze. It’s changed since I was alive. Not that I hung around here in the first place . . .”
“But right now,” Gavin said to me, finally breaking his man silence, “just from a quick look, does it seem like somewhere a single woman should live without a security system or even a firearm?”
“I don’t get a sense of any evil vibes or evil spirits around.”
“I meant in general,” he said.
Oh. Well, who could blame me for thinking like a ghost?
Dean sighed. “Maybe a higher-powered spirit like me needs to step in and help them make up. What do you think, Jenny?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that if he couldn’t interfere with murder investigations on earth, he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to touch this.
His laugh told me that he’d been teasing me, but I went on ignoring. Suze was launching into her next line of defense, anyway.
“I don’t do guns, Gavin. And we have a neighborhood watch.”
“Suze, there’s no need for this show of independence. Not when I can—”
Just before Suze zinged him with a glance and backed away from the window, fake Dean held up his hands and retreated, too.
“Now he’s in for it,” he said. “Looks like their first argument. Historical—don’t you think?”
I barely refrained from answering and tipping everyone off to fake Dean’s presence as Gavin opened the car door and got out.
Suze was already to her apartment. “Sorry, Jen. Evidently there’s something we really need to hash out. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Oh, no worries! Later!”
I waved, but they were already sparring in low voices on their way across her hellhole threshold. He shut the door tightly behind them, and this time fake Dean didn’t bring down the front wall so we could see what was going on.
He only hooked his thumbs in his jeans belt loops. “Are you sure I can’t play Cupid here? Or maybe I could fetch the real deal from wherever he is.”
“Ha, ha.”
“What, you don’t believe in Cupid?”
“Of course not. Stop mocking them and me.”
Fake Dean gave me a long look I didn’t understand. Totally exasperated, I dematerialized, then almost flew through the driver’s-side open window until I remembered that I had my Dean-body again. So I had to reach over and actually open the door. Different rules with this guy around.
A neighbor from the top floor looked over the balcony, her mouth gaping as she saw the door opening by itself. Oh well.
<
br /> When I shut it, the lady stared, then slowly said, “Miguel . . . ?”
I could feel her fear even from here, and I let it flow into me.
“Smooth move, Jenny,” Dean said. “Now the neighborhood watch is all over the ghost infestation here in the complex.”
“You’re really in prime shape today, you know that? You just couldn’t resist hanging around to see what happened with me and Gavin, and you had to offer your lame color commentary as a bonus while the shit hit the fan with them.”
“Always at the right place at the right time—that’s my MO.” He strolled to the curb and sat on it, all casual surfer grace. “I’ll admit it. I knew you wouldn’t interact with Gavin if I was still around, and—”
“You wanted to watch.”
“Yes, that.”
Ugh, he was impossible.
Above us, the neighbor and a guy who had to be Miguel were leaning over the railing, arguing about what she’d seen and hadn’t seen. It was just white noise to me, before Miguel pulled her inside their apartment.
“Do you want to know what’s happening inside Suze’s place?” Dean asked. “Because I can accommodate you again.”
“No, thanks.”
He might as well have not even asked. “Then maybe I should just tell you that I can hear them arguing, and it’s a rager. And why wouldn’t they eventually disagree like this? Gavin always had money; she didn’t. He’s young; she isn’t. Also, their relationship is based on getting sympathy from one another, since they’re both emotionally involved with a dead girl, but in different ways. Yet there’s good news in all this.”
“I’m sure it won’t be all that good, coming from you.”
“Depends on your point of view.” He cocked his head toward the apartment, like he was listening. “Oh, she’s got a temper, your Suze, and no matter how much she likes Gavin, that pride of hers is going to win out. She’s calling him controlling, says that her ex-husband was the same way, and she won’t stand for it.” He grinned, chuffing. “Oooh, and there she went. She just mentioned the phrase, Maybe we should take a break.”
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