“So, what are you afraid of then?” he asked. “Besides the ghosts.”
What was I afraid of?
I was afraid of…being afraid. And that made no sense, even though it made perfect sense…
“Joe’s driving,” I finally answered.
He gave a quiet huff, but didn’t push.
I didn’t want to talk about my real fears. The kind that climb into your soul when you’re least expecting it.
Inside stuff.
Me stuff.
“Right.” He turned toward the door, and I instinctively reached out.
“Noah. I…” He glanced back, and I dropped my hand. “Thanks,” I finished lamely.
He just stared at me for a second, then dipped his chin.
“No problem,” he said, backing toward the door. “But Luna?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t mind.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant.
Was he saying he didn’t mind chasing ghosts away? Or was it more than that? Was he saying he didn’t mind catching the worst of my prickles?
Or was he simply saying he didn’t mind that I wasn’t going to get a drink with him?
I just nodded and didn’t move until the door clicked shut behind him.
After a weird second just standing there, I kind of floated across the room to twist the lock into place. The room felt quieter now, as if it was settling back into itself.
Shaking off the last of my ghostly unease—not to mention a whole bunch of other…stuff—I climbed back into bed, plugging my phone in and pulling up Netflix. This hotel might have been built at the turn of the century, the one way before I was born, but thank God, it also had internet.
A sitcom felt like the safest option. No ghosts, no drama, and no aisle seat guys with frustratingly distracting cologne asking questions I didn’t know how to answer.
But lying there with the familiar voices and jokes playing over my phone’s tiny speakers, I found myself staring at the dark ceiling, my mind all over the place.
Noah wasn’t afraid of paranormal stuff at all. He was afraid of something else.
Something that didn’t disappear when you turned on the lights.
I replayed our conversation, the way he’d stood there in his rumpled T-shirt, his sweatpants low on his hips, looking unshakable but also…lost. Maybe I should have taken him up on that drink. Even if he had just been being polite.
Which was probably all it was. Despite that super-charged moment when I’d bumped into him, the way he’d looked down at me…
Nope. He was just being nice. When he’d said he didn’t mind, he’d meant he didn’t mind helping people in general. Like how he’d carried his mom’s packages, assisted some of the older people onto the bus, and shown Josie at least three different times how to send a picture to her niece.
He liked helping everyone. He was a helper.
And I needed to figure things out on my own.
This was not the time to get romantic ideas about someone.
