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I pull my hand away from his shoulder, jerking out of his hold. He offers me a hand, but I ignore it, brushing past him to collect the staple gun from the floor.

“Look, I’m sorry if I annoyed you yesterday,” he says.

My attention is fixed on the staple gun, tilting it in my hands and checking to make sure I haven’t broken it. When I look up again, I nearly jump out of my skin and into the wall of muscle standing in front of me.

“Jesus, Sunday,” I gasp, my hand flying instinctively to my heart, the heel of my palm rubbing at the throbbing muscle.

This close, his scent wafts over me—sandalwood and jasmine. Once my favorite, now suddenly not. Nostalgia and pain. Home and hell.

“Jumpy, much?” he laughs, but it sounds forced. Nervous, maybe.

I sigh. “What do you want? I have things to do, so…”

My blood heats as his gaze drops, roaming from my sky-blue Converse all the way up to my matching hoodie dotted with embroidered clouds. There’s a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth when his eyes stutter on my lips.

My wayward pulse thrums in my throat when his eyes connect with mine, and I hate it. I hate the way I notice the tiny holes in his lower lip from where he’s taken his piercings out. My curiosity wants to know why he did, but thankfully, the sensible part of my brain wins out.

It’s best if we’re civil. Coworkers, nothing more. We don’t need to rehash the past. We don’t need to pick up the broken pieces of our love and see if they still fit together like they once did.

“I was thinking I could take you out to dinner sometime,” Sunday says, looking down at me with soft, nervous eyes.

Is he actually being serious?

An empty laugh escapes me. “Really? You’re asking me on a date?”

“No, not a date, I just⁠—”

“I have literally just gotten divorced, and you practically pissed on Séverin at lunch yesterday.” Maybe he thinks I didn’t notice, but I know him. I know what he was doing. His crappy guard dog act is misplaced and unwanted.

“I just thought—” he tries, but I’m not done. Not in the slightest.

“You thought what? That we would just magically pick back up where we left off? Or did you forget that you abandoned me and went on to screw everything that moved?” I seethe, my chest heaving in anger.

His mouth slams shut, nostrils flaring like a worked-up stallion. He chews the inside of his cheek, unblinking, refusing to look away.

“You never even apologized, Sunday. Maybe you should start there.”

With that, I put the staple gun back down on the stepladder and shove past him, leaving him standing in the middle of the empty room.

I’m barely out of the front doors of the museum at the end of the day when Delphine pops into existence beside me. It’s a nice day, and I relish the warmth of the sun caressing my face, the slight breeze toying with my stray blonde waves as we walk in silence through the town.

I decide to take a complete detour through Salem Common, pulling off my chucks and socks to walk barefoot in the grass.

“Would you like me to haunt him?” Delphine asks sweetly, looping her arm through mine.

I scoff at the thought of her haunting Sunday. Though it would be wildly entertaining to watch her try to get through that thick skull of his, she wouldn’t have the patience for it, nor the attention span. Not when there are shiny new paranormal boys to play with.

“Oh, please? Just a little bit of a haunt. I could move all his things, maybe put a pink sock in with his white undergarments?” She waggles her eyebrows, eyes gleaming with mischief.

“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t own anything white. And he definitely doesn’t own anything pink.” Sunday always rotated through blacks and grays, with the odd flash of dark plum. He still has that black-and-white checkered jacket, too. I saw it hanging up in the staff room.

The one that matches the periwinkle blue version he bought for me when he was a nice, kind boy—not a total jerk who buried his hands in my ribcage and cracked my heart in two.

“Maybe you can hex him,” she suggests, her free hand spinning my rope bracelets and lava stones around my wrist.

She’s very tactile with me, and I guess I can understand that. It must be lonely to be a spirit like her—neither here nor there, unable to move on because of her self-assigned duty to me. I didn’t exactly choose it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“You know I’m not that kind of witch, Delph,” I chuckle, turning my head toward feet pounding down the pathway.