Page 16 of Haunted Ever After

And that smile of hers, like the sun. Not on a miserably humid day like today, but on one of those rare days in January, when the air was crisp and a hoodie didn’t feel like heatstroke. He wanted to bask in her warmth. He wanted to…

Ugh. Fine. It was worth seeing where this date could lead.

As he unlocked the front door to his apartment over the café, his heart raced with equal parts panic and anticipation. Because it really had been a long time since he’d asked someone out, and maybe he shouldn’t have waited this long. He was really out of practice at playing it cool when it mattered.

He wasn’t sure if his roommate would be there—he kind of came and went as he pleased—and when Nick first opened the door he thought he was alone. Which was good. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about any of it: his love life, his lack of one, and the possibility that he may have just accidentally jump-started something in his personal life.

His phone buzzed with a text. Of course. Time for Elmer to make fun of him. For having a date. For not doing an impressive enough job of asking Cassie out.

But the text was from Vince: Guitar night at Jo’s! Meet there at 7?

Can’t. I have plans. He knew as soon as he hit Send that there would be follow-up questions.

And there were. Plans? You? Since when?

Nick took a slow, deep breath in through his nose as he typed. I have a date. He stared at the words, glowing on the screen. Hitting Send felt like a declaration.

Vince didn’t respond for a long moment, and Nick almost put his phone away when typing bubbles appeared. About damn time! Catch you later.

Huh. Nick had been expecting more questions, but Vince must have decided to go easy on him. Nice.

There was another text waiting for him when he got out of the shower. The one he’d been expecting.

Ghost tour, huh? You don’t get enough of that at home?

Nick huffed out a laugh. Elmer had a point. He looked up from his phone and spoke out loud, addressing the room in general. “I’m home, you know. Don’t need to text.”

It took a couple of minutes. Long enough that Nick wondered if maybe he was alone in his place after all. But then he saw it: the ripple in the air, the way an almost-shadow settled in the battered brown leather recliner in the corner near the window. The recliner that had been here since before Nick’s time. The recliner that Hallowed Grounds’s previous owner had told Nick, under no uncertain terms, to never throw out.

“Yeah,” Nick said to the recliner. “I’ve never been on Sophie’s ghost tour, you know. I figure I should probably know what it’s all about if I’m going to keep shilling it at customers.” It was a poor excuse. Nick knew it. And Elmer sure as hell knew it.

Sure, okay. Nothing to do with the pretty girl who likes your banana bread, even though you make it wrong. This time the response didn’t come as a text on his phone, but more like a voice inside his head: words forming as complete thoughts as opposed to a literal voice. It had freaked him out the first time it had happened, not long after he’d moved into this apartment above the café. In fact, it had almost been a deal-breaker. It had certainly been a deal-breaker for the café’s last four owners.

But Nick remembered Elmer when he’d been alive: the grouchy old man who’d run this place when Nick was a kid. Hallowed Grounds had been a convenient stop on the way to school, and Elmer always had blueberry muffins and banana bread freshly made in the mornings. There had been something about hearing Elmer’s voice again, the nostalgia of it. The memory of when life was simpler, and his biggest problem was math class. The moment that Nick realized Elmer had still stuck around this place was the moment that Nick realized he didn’t want to leave, either.

“Of course not,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Nothing to do with her at all.” He wasn’t sure why he bothered to lie; Elmer knew him too well.

Then the cold kicked in. It always did when Elmer was around, and Nick reached for the flannel he kept slung over the back of one of his dining chairs. Having a ghost for a roommate meant he didn’t have to run the air-conditioning, even in the height of summer. When you lived in Florida, that was a pretty good upside.

This is good. Elmer’s voice bloomed in his head again. You need to get out more. Life is for the living, you know?

“So you keep saying.” Nick moved to the kitchenette side of the studio apartment. He needed to get back downstairs, get tomorrow morning’s prep done before meeting up with Cassie, but he still had some time. “Want some coffee?”

Please.

Nick reached for the can in the cabinet and scooped some grounds into the coffee maker. A half pot was plenty; he didn’t need much more caffeine than that, and Elmer couldn’t actually drink coffee anymore. But Elmer still loved the smell, and if that pleased his ghost roommate, Nick was happy to oblige.

Besides, Nick was in a good mood. He had a date.

Eight

It wasn’t a date.

Not really.

Yet Cassie had wasted the entire afternoon, first being too distracted to get any work done, and then feeling too guilty about not getting any work done to do anything else. Then it was suddenly six fifteen, and she had to throw a frozen pizza in the oven and figure out what she was going to wear. (She should eat first, right? Nick hadn’t said anything about dinner afterward. See? Another reason this wasn’t a date and Cassie needed to stop overthinking.)

Her hair was a lost cause; she could straighten it, but she didn’t really have time. And the humidity would turn it into a frizzy mess in the few minutes it would take her to walk to the café. So back up in a clip it went, and she threw on a sundress that was hopefully cute enough to make up for it. Then she slicked on some lip gloss and laced up her comfiest walking shoes. It was a walking tour after all, right?

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