The Ghost of You

by Tori Fox

  “What happened?”

  “My shower head broke off and the pipes were leaking everywhere in the shower. My neighbor was able to fix it. He replaced some of the pipes he could get to in the wall but he said they were old and it was only a temporary fix.”

  The realtor walks into the bathroom and starts to inspect the shower.

  “You don’t need to exaggerate,” George says to me with a glare.

  I don’t want to deal with his bullshit. “You weren’t even here. You did nothing to fix it. You don’t know what happened. Besides, this isn’t going to keep you from selling.”

  “Well, it looks like whatever visible damage was caused was repaired which is great for selling. But let’s look at the main water heater. I wouldn’t want value to go down during an assessment if it’s something we can fix ahead of time.”

  George grumbles to himself as he walks Ms. Wilmot out the front door. I grab my yoga bag and put my things away before heading out to the front porch and sit in a chair.

  The two of them come back around and George’s anger looks to have settled into a smug smile.

  “Thank you for showing your unit to me, Ms. Cooper. I will speak with a lawyer friend of mine regarding your lease agreement and I suggest you speak with one as well. If this place sells quickly, which I am sure it will in this neighborhood, I want to make sure you are legally covered and don’t lose your home abruptly.”

  I stand from my chair and reach my hand out. “Thanks, Ms. Wilmot.”

  “Please call me Alice,” she says, shaking my hand and then pulling out a business card. “Call me if you have any questions. I am sure Mr. Casallero wants to get back to Florida so it might be easier to contact me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll pass the same information on to the other tenant as well,” she says before giving a quick goodbye and heading out to the Range Rover parked on the street.

  I turn to go back inside ignoring my landlord but he barks at me. “If you lost me money because of this water incident you caused, I will terminate your lease immediately.”

  “You can’t do that,” I answer back, half as a question.

  “Just wait and see.” He storms off before I can respond. I watch him walk away to his old Ford Focus.

  I grab my mail before heading back inside. I sift through it on the kitchen counter and see a letter from my parents. I fight the urge to tear it up and throw it out. I hate that anything from home sends anger through my veins. I know what that letter will say. ‘Come home. We miss you. It’s time you moved on.’

  I can’t look at those words anymore. They hurt more than the memories sometimes. I want them to understand the pain. But it’s hard when even they don’t know the whole story of what happened between Kyle and me before he died.

  I crunch the envelope in my hand and toss it toward the garbage. It misses, but I don’t care about picking it up.

  My mind feels like it’s going to explode. Between my landlord, my parents, and those damn words Seraphina said, I feel like a jumbled mess.

  I need a distraction.

  The sound of a table saw jolts my thoughts to the present.

  Maybe that is the distraction I need.

  12

  Noah

  I count the number of two by twos I’ve cut. I head over to my porch and double-check my numbers before cutting a few more pieces of wood for the porch railing.

  “Need any help?”

  The sound of Anna’s voice startles me. I’ve spent the last five days trying to forget about the fact I almost kissed her. But every time I try to all I can think about is the smell of her lemon and patchouli scent infiltrating my nose, her hands on my chest, the way she looked into my eyes like she could see into my soul.

  Then my mind thinks about seeing her naked. And how I would kill to see her naked again. To press my body against that soft milky skin, run my fingers through her luscious red locks, taste the sweetness I can only imagine she tastes like.

  I turn around telling my dick to calm down but it doesn’t help when I see her. She is wearing tight denim jeans that look painted on. A black t-shirt hangs loosely from her shoulders and a red and black flannel is tied around her waist. Her complexion is bright, that smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks nearly visible, and her green eyes are focused on me.

  I set the piece of wood down I am holding. “What are you doing here?”

  She shrugs. “I needed a distraction.”

  “From what?”

  Her gaze pierces mine as she repeats the same words I told her a few nights ago. “Life.”

  I don’t have words for her. And I know she doesn’t expect any. I just nod and wave her over to the table with the wood.

  “If you want to bring those over to the porch while I finish cutting the last few spindles.”

  “Okay,” she says as she picks of some of the boards and carries them to the porch.

  I cut through another board when I hear her curse. She throws a pile of wood on the ground and starts shaking her hand.

  I chuckle as I walk over to her. “Splinter?”

  “Fuck. Yes, it hurts.” She looks up at me. “I’m a wimp.”

  I take her hand in mine and look for the tricky piece of wood in her hand. “Nah. You just need some gloves.” I take my gloves off when I find the little devil buried in her hand and use my nails to rip it out. “All better,” I say with a grin. “And I think I have an extra set of gloves around here somewhere.”

  I walk back to the garage and sift through a bin of miscellaneous shit and find what I am looking for buried in the bottom. I walk back over and hand them to her.

  She inspects the pink gloves and raises a brow at me, teasing, “I didn’t take you for a pink guy. But now that I think about it, pink would definitely look good on you.”

  “My hands don’t fit in those,” I answer with a straight face.

  She nudges me with her shoulder as she puts them on. “Kidding.”

  She gets back to work and I can’t help but think of Claire. Those are her gloves; she wore them the one time she attempted to garden. She killed her plants in a week. I don’t even know why I am still holding on to them. Maybe it’s me holding onto hope that she will come back.

  As I watch Anna move the wood from the garage to the porch, the sun hitting her hair at the right angle making it look likes it’s glowing, it hits me. The reason I feel this attraction to her, this false connection I now realize isn’t real. She looks like Claire.

  “You going to help or do I need to build this railing by myself?” she shouts to me from the porch. I blink a few times until I see Anna standing there, not Claire. My head is fucking with me. I don’t have feelings for Anna, it’s the resemblance to Claire that has my mind twisted.

  “Be right there,” I shout back. I head deeper into the garage, sticking my gloves into my back pocket. I pinch the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, letting the memory of Claire fade away.

  I grab a level and a tape measure before heading back out to the porch. Anna is on her hands and knees moving the spindles in front of the dots I drew on the porch earlier. I give her a weak smile. “Looks like you don’t even need my help.”

  She sits back on her feet, her hands going to her hips. “Remember how I couldn’t even figure out how to turn the water off at my place? Your entire house might collapse if I try to use a power tool.”

  “Unlikely.”

  She holds up her hands in front of her. “You don’t know the destructive powers these hands have.”

  I laugh. “I highly doubt they are destructive, just clumsy. But I heard they are great at music.”

  She shrugs. “I think I’ve lost my touch.”

  “That’s not what Mase told me yesterday. He said you guys wrote new music the day before and it was amazing.”

  Her cheeks blush. “I think he is a bit obsessed with me. But don’t tell him I told you. If I played Mary Had a Little Lamb he would try to get me a
Grammy nod.”

  I step up in front of the porch where she is kneeling. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  Her blush deepens and she looks down at the wood by her hands changing the subject back to the porch. “I lined these all up with where you marked them. I’m not sure if that’s what you wanted to do.”

  “That’ll work.”

  We spend the next few hours building the porch railing in silence. We use it as our distraction from life as we planned to. We get to adding the top rail when she finally breaks the silence. “My landlord is trying to sell my building. I came home from work today and he was there with a realtor.”

  I look up at her but she keeps her head down. “So he is going through with it?”

  “I guess so.” She takes a deep breath as she screws a nail into the railing. She isn’t as dangerous with power tools as she thought. “I just finally feel like I found a home here. And now I need to move.”

  “I mentioned before you can talk to my brother for advice.”

  She nods. “Yeah, the realtor told me to talk to a lawyer regarding my lease. I think she noticed my landlord was being a dick.”

  I nod as I go back to my part of the rail. “Is that why you needed a distraction?”

  I hear the drill slip and quickly reach for it before Anna gets hurt.

  “No.”

  I set the drill down and see a tear trailing down Anna’s cheek. I move around to the steps and walk up them so I am standing next to Anna. I fight the urge to hold her face instead I settle on asking her a question. “What else did you need a distraction from?”

  She looks up at me through her thick lashes. I see tears brimming her eyes and I know she is holding them back. “It’s always hard for me around the holidays. And with Thanksgiving next week, the pestering from my family back home starts. I was already having a shitty day and then I had to get that damn letter.”

  “What letter?” I ask as I lean against the post connecting to the roof.

  She grips her hair and takes a deep breath. “My parents send me a letter before every major holiday every year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, even Fourth of July.” She looks out toward the street as she talks. “They write begging me to come home even if it’s just for a day.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  She sighs. “It hurts too much to go home. I can barely even call them. The sound of their voices breaks my soul. I know I should be there. But I am too scared to go back.”

  I can see a few more tears fall down her cheeks through the wisps of her hair and she keeps her face hidden from me. What happened to this woman that’s left her so broken? “Why can’t you call them more? Maybe then it won’t be so hard.”

  “They don’t understand.”

  “What don’t they understand?” I ask as I take a step closer to her.

  She sniffles before she answers. “The pain. The regret. The feeling of utter loss. The way it closes in on you, sucking in everything around you like a black hole, and no matter how much you fight it, will it to end, the inevitable happens. That hole sucks you in until you can’t breathe, can’t speak, can’t face anyone who hasn’t been through the same thing.”

  I can see her shaking as she speaks words I have felt myself. I close the distance between us, taking her face in my hands. “What happened?”

  She searches my eyes, looking for something I’m not quite sure of. “I thought this was supposed to be a distraction.”

  I can’t keep letting her walk around the subject. I’ve seen the misery in her eyes one too many times. “Tell me.”

  She closes her eyes and the tears fall freely. I use my thumbs to wipe them away as she finds the courage to speak.

  “Seven years ago I lost my fiancé.”

  I hold her tighter, bring her closer to me. I know what that kind of loss is like even if my wife didn’t die like it sounds her fiancé did.

  “We got into a fight. I told him to leave. He did.” Her entire body shakes when she goes to continue. “It was December in Georgia. Colder than it usually is. It was raining earlier in the day but it dropped below freezing at night. He slid on black ice. He tried to cut the wheel to keep from sliding into a tree. He hit the brakes too hard. His car flipped. He bled out from broken glass.”

  Her voice is monotone as she tells the story. My hands gripping her shoulders tighter and tighter with every word she says. I don’t think she even realizes the hold I have on her. She has separated herself from this moment. As if the memory is so fresh she isn’t even here. And it takes one hell of a memory to bring you back seven years to relive it repeatedly.

  I don’t have words to say. I know she doesn’t need another person to tell her they are sorry. She’s heard it enough. And I can only guess that her family is telling her to get over it, move on, the same way my family treats me.

  She tries to reach her face and I let go of her so she can wipe the tears from her eyes. “My family wants me to move on. And I know I should, but it’s too hard to think about moving on when you blame yourself for the death. If only I hadn’t started fighting. If I had listened to him, believed him. Then maybe we would be happily married.”

  “You can’t think about what might have been.”

  She finally meets my eyes. “I know. But going home is so hard, Noah. My hometown is filled with memories of him and I. We were best friends growing up. Then we started dating. I could barely cross Main Street without the waterworks coming on whenever I was back in Hartswell. That’s why it’s so hard to go back.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “I understand more than you know.”

  “And I am a terrible daughter and horrible sister because I can’t even see my family without the wounds feeling fresh?”

  “Have you told them that?”

  She nods. “At first they thought I needed time. And they were accepting of the fact I left and couldn’t return. But now with every year that passes, they become more bitter. I didn’t even read this letter. I didn’t want to see what they had to say. I left it crumpled on the kitchen floor.”

  I take my gloves off. Our project for the day is done. “You work tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you call off?”

  She looks at me curiously. “I suppose. Why?”

  I grab her hands and take the pink gloves off. “Tonight calls for a visit from the three wise men. Or at least one.”

  A small smile finally breaks her face. “As long as Jim is around.”

  I smile back at her. “Oh he is definitely here.”

  “What about the railing?”

  I grab the power tools and step off the porch. “It will be here tomorrow.”

  “Let me make a quick phone call then.”

  A few hours later and both of us have had a fair share of whiskey. I’ve learned a lot about her though and she keeps me intrigued. I know her favorite food is lemon bars, she used to love winter but now prefers spring, and her favorite color is gray, because it’s the only color that can be sad, happy, and in between all at once.

  Two half-eaten pizzas sit on her coffee table as we laugh over a story from her past. She said we had to hang at her place because it wasn’t a dust storm and I had to agree. I started some work on the kitchen cabinets earlier in the week and it is a mess.

  Brutus is on the floor between us, laying on his stomach, legs sprawled out to the sides.

  Anna picks up the bottle of Jim and pours us two more shots. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even tell you. My best friend Becca is now trying to convince me to come home when she never does because of something my sister said.”

  “Bullshit. From what you told me about her, she has never cared about you coming home.”

  “I know. It’s so fucking annoying. I just want them to leave me alone.”

  I look at her in the eyes, trying to show her I understand what she means. “Unfortunately family never wants to let you be. They always want to dig up the past and try to fix you.”

  The anger slips from her fa
ce. “What happened to you that they won’t let go of?”

  I pinch my fingers between my eyes before drinking more whiskey. “Nothing important.”

  Her hand lands on my thigh. “It must be important if they are concerned about you.” She looks off in the direction of my house. “Not to mention all the distraction you are working on over there.”

  “So where is this letter? Maybe we should throw it into the fireplace?” I say, changing the subject.

  She must be drunker than I thought because she doesn’t hesitate at the change of subject. She scrambles up from the table and nearly falls into my lap as she trips over Brutus. “You are so smart. Let me grab it.”

  I watch as she stumbles into her kitchen, catching herself on the doorframe that connects the two rooms. Her ass is glorious, full and round and I wonder how it would feel in my hands. So much for me thinking these feelings are false. I’m blaming the bottle of whiskey we’ve almost finished off.

  She skips back into the room with a kraft paper envelope in hand. She opens it and she struts toward me. “Our dearest Anna May…”

  “Does everyone call you that?”

  “Hmm?” she asks as she flops down next to me.

  “Does everyone call you Anna May?”

  She shakes her head, a goofy grin on her face. “Only people back home, Seraphina, and your brother.”

  “It suits you. But why the hell does my brother know that about you and not me.”

  “You know his friend Dee Bak?”

  I nod.

  “Well, he was a good friend of mine in college. Small world, isn’t it? That I would run into him here.” She bites her lip, lost in thought before she continues, “Anyway, he calls me Anna May so your brother started too.”

  “Ahh. Okay, Anna May.”

  She sticks her tongue out at me. “Nope. You can’t call me that.”

  “And why not Anna May?”

  “Because!” she shouts with a pout on her face.

  “Ahh. The perfect reason… because. I’ll make sure to follow through on that Anna May.”

  She crawls onto my lap and puts her hand over my mouth. “Nope. You can’t!”