He blushed.
It looked so real, soalive,I wanted to press my thumb into the color and feel the heat bloom across his cheek.
He’d nearly swallowed his tongue when he reappeared a few nights ago to find that I’d shaved, and had barely been able to stop looking at me since. His eyes were a near-constant, welcome weight wherever I went.
“I’d still prefer Randy,” he sniffed, staring at theVof sweat at the collar of my shirt. “What’s for lunch?”
I snorted, grinning. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Let me warm up my hands, and then I’ll figure that out, grouchy pants.”
He sucked in a breath and leaned into the contact when I brushed past on my way to the kettle of hot water.
The last few days were tension-filled torture. I’d already admitted to myself I wanted him, and if it was just a physical thing, I probably would’ve made a move by now and asked if he felt the same.
Judging by his heated glances when he thought I wasn’t looking, he did.
It wasn’t just about releasing pent-up tension, though. There was so much more to what I felt every time he reappeared after being away for a few hours at a time, and it was terrifying.
Realistically, though, I wasn’t even sure if wecouldbe together.
Setting aside the giant gaping canyon of, well, “How do you have a relationship with a dead person?”,what were the logistics of intimacy with a ghost? Did he feel desire? Pleasure? Would his body respond as it would’ve when he was alive? Could he orgasm? Would he ejaculate?
He could eat and cry, so there was some sort of bodily function situation going on. Everything else, though, was a mystery.
I’d already stopped myself from looking it up. I didn’t need “Can ghosts have sex?”haunting my digital footprint.
I’d searched whether they could come back to life, though.
Nearly light-headed with an emotion I couldn’t place and out of my mind, I scoured the internet for credible information on whether anyone else had befriended a ghost, fallen in—nope—deep companionship, and figured out a way to bring them back.
As if a Stack Exchange thread existed for the minor inconvenience of death.
“Hi, I received an error message when I tried to bring my dead friend back to life. Any help solving the issue?”
It was ludicrous.
Millions, no,billionsof people throughout history had lost husbands, wives, children, siblings, parents, friends, pets,and wished they could bring them back. Some would’ve given everything, even for a chance to speak with them, one last time. Why did I think our situation would be any different?
I’d slammed my laptop shut, tossing it aside.
Because Charlie is different,I thought.Because he shouldn’t even be here the way he is now. Why can’t I bend the rules just a little more?
Still, I couldn’t shake the questions, weaving in and out of my periphery in a near-constant tangle.
Would Charlie want to come back if he could? How would it work? Where would he want to go? Who would he want to spend his time with?
I poured a bit of the hot water from the kettle into a bowl, lost in thought. Bringing the temperature down just enough to be comfortable with a splash of cool water, I submerged my hands, sloshing them around.
“Why do you do that?” Charlie asked, padding up behind me.
He’d changed into a pair of thick wool socks, joggers he’d cinched around his waist, and a shirt that was way too big for him. He clearly enjoyed changing out of the clothes he always appeared in, and I wasn’t ready to admit how much I loved seeing him in mine.
“When my hands get cold, they slow down, and it’s harder to move them like normal. The fastest way to warm them up is hot water.”
He cocked his head. “What do you mean, slow?”
I hadn’t told Charlie about my MS. Mostly because it’d never come up, but also because it made me feel ungrateful to complain to a dead person about a disease I wasn’t dying from, and would hopefully remain in remission for a very long time.
Even if it didn’t, moaning about being alive to someone who wasn’t felt in poor taste. He’d asked, though, and it wasn’t like it was a secret.
