He narrowed his eyes at the pot and opened the door wide before disappearing into the kitchen without a word. I could barely hide my smile when I walked in and he was setting the table with paper plates and plastic cutlery.
And so began our tradition. Friday nights for Sky Flores were not for partying, or going with groups of friends to the movies, or climbing trees to take naps with black bears. They were for William, who I’ve come to think of as a grandfather of sorts.
“You caught me about to fill up the bird feeder,” he tells me, lifting a bag of black oil sunflower seeds leaning by the back door. “I’ll be two minutes.”
“Okay. I’ll get everything set up.”
He nods and disappears into the backyard. I pull the dollar store paper plates from the cupboard, stacking two on top of one another for each of us, since these things are thinner than paper, and Nadia’s lasagna is no match for dollar store anything. I’m pouring iced tea from the fridge into two identical blue melamine cups when I’m startled by the gruff voice of a man behind me.
“Who the hell are you?”
It’s not William, who I can see through the window is currently cursing out the bird feeder’s lid that won’t pop back on without a fight.
And William has only one person who could be visiting. One person who has ever visited since I could remember.
When I turn, I narrow my eyes when I see I am correct.
Standing in front of me is a tall, gorgeous man. Thirty-five years of age. Former journalist forTheNew York Times. Wearing a green flannel button-down with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of light-wash gray jeans. Barefoot and looking angry as all hell to see me in his grandfather’s kitchen.
Adam Noemi. William’s grandson.
The once-love-of-my-life turned to just-another-town-bully.
3
I have to admit something.
Snooping around William Noemi’s place when I was a ghost wasn’t one hundred percent altruistic. It wasn’t a high percentage of boredom, either.
A couple of years ago, when my body hadn’t yet been discovered, Sage was staying at Nadia’s, and crying a lot. A lot—a lot. Poor thing was going through it, between her fighting with Teal and Nadia and the high emotional roller coaster of falling in love with her now-husband, Tenn, all at the same time. Because of all that weeping, I was called to her, by her side through the connection between us with her tears, sometimes multiple times a day. She still hasn’t the faintest idea why tears drew me to her like bees to early spring dandelions…only that it was just some mysterious side effect of being a Flores bruja. I know better, though.
Anyway, one night, I stayed with her after she’d cried herself to sleep. Once I made sure her breath was deep and sound, I took a walk.
If there was anything tolike about being a ghost, it was that the laws of physics didn’t apply to me. I could walk through stone garden walls and somersault through the wide trunks of old trees. I could punch someone right in the eye and my fist would go through them as though they were nothing more than a figment of someone’s imagination.
What I loved best, though, was jumping.
From the balcony of the attic floor of Nadia’s home that night…I jumped. Without hesitation. It didn’t seem like I was anylighterwhen jumping—my ghost-body hit the ground with as much force as any regular, still-very-alive body. Maybe that’s why I loved it so much. It made me feel alive.
Or maybe it made me feel like I was about to die all over again, and perhaps that time, everything would end for real.
It didn’t end for real that night, obviously. So I walked around Catalina Street, stepping in and out of yards, gardens, homes. I walked past Jackie Piper, the single mom who had fallen asleep on the sofa between her two children, a huge, almost empty popcorn bowl in her lap, a Disney movie finishing up on the television. I stepped next into the huge, three-story Victorian-style home that Carter Velasquez, my sister Teal’s husband, used to live in with his whole family when we were growing up, multigenerational style. It had been purchased by a man who was trying to flip it, but it was turning out to be more of a hassle than he’d anticipated. I stepped over piles of pipes and torn-out cupboards, trying to run my hand over the huge quartz countertop piece leaning against the kitchen wall, to no avail—my hand simply went through the smooth crystal, as brilliant as a slice of moon under the streetlights glaring in through the windows.
The actual moon was full that night as I wandered into William’s yard. I stopped short when I realized there was a vehicle in the driveway I hadn’t seen before—a brand-new Jeep, even shinier than the quartz countertop under the blue moonlight. And then I heard the sound of giggling.
It was a man and a woman. I watched in awe as they stepped into the porchlight, him tall and slim, and her short and thick. “Let me just check on him and we’ll go back to my place,” he promised her with a voice as slow and deep as hot honey drizzled over some impossibly sexy dessert.
I followed him inside and watched as he picked up an umbrella that had fallen to the floor by the front door, as he made his way into the hallway and flipped on the light switch, and as he opened the door of his grandfather’s bedroom.
“Gramps?”
“Go away.”
Adam let out a deep chuckle that made my stomach drop. I hadn’t even seen him yet—he was still covered in shadows—but something about him even all the way back then…even with me, as literally just a ghost, listening to him laugh with his voice as rich as tiramisu…I knew Adam Noemi was…God, the wordspecialdoesn’t convey him properly.Extraordinarysounds like too much. But there was something intense and strange and wonderful about him that made mewantto know him, even though this was an impossible, impossible want.
He walked deeper into the room. “Guess you’re okay if you can begin with your classic rudeness.”
William was sitting up in bed, wearing pajamas with blue and green stripes. “Don’t you have a date with your girlfriend or something?”
