Page 98 of The Spider & the Storm

“Where’s the security guard?” she asked, turning her head in one direction and then the other, as if she might catch a glimpse of a man I seldom saw myself.

I pointed into the distance. “He’s in the office over there. We don’t cross paths much. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve even seen or spoken to the guy.”

Maybe I should talk to him now, I thought.Maybe he’d have some insight into who’s been leaving shit around my house.

“You’re not scared of the ghosts?” Stormy asked as we reached the truck.

She quickly glimpsed toward the first row of headstones and visibly shivered. She was obviously terrified, yet she had still come.

To be with me.

“Ghosts can’t hurt you,” I assured her, unlocking the car and opening the passenger door.

Stormy leveled me with an incredulous look. “That’s not what those ghost hunters on TV say. They’re always walking through some haunted cemetery or some shit, dealing with pissed-off spirits that like to throw random shit around.”

I draped my arm over the top of the door. “And you believe everything you see on TV?”

She crossed her arms, leaning against the truck. “I didn’t say Ibelieveit. I’m only saying I don’t have a reason not to.”

“Fair enough.” I nodded my chin toward the shadowed headstones in the near distance. “Well, I can tell you with a decent amount of certainty that the ghosts here don’t wanna hurt anyone. They just want to be respected and left to rest in peace.”

She pursed her lips and muttered a thoughtful, “Hmm,” before climbing into the cab of the truck.

I shut the door behind her and got into the driver’s side, immediately struck by how weird and also nice it was to share the truck’s confines with another person who wasn’t Ivan.

When the seat belts were buckled, I started the engine and pulled out of my usual parking spot, ready to get back inside my house. Because while I might’ve told Stormy that the ghosts didn’t want to hurt her, I wasn’t so sure anymore that they didn't want to hurtme.

We drove in silence for a moment, slowly rolling beneath a canopy of branches and falling leaves. I stole quick glances at her through the corner of my eye, unable to believe that she was here in my truck, going to my house by invitation. My tongue was tied into a thousand knots; I was unsure of what to say or if I should say anything at all. This type of thing—inviting a woman back tomy place—wasn’t my area of expertise, and I was already failing miserably.

Not knowing what else to do, I reached out to turn up the radio when she asked, “Do you like being here because you feel connected to them?”

I narrowed my eyes at the black road ahead. “What?”

“The ghosts. Do you feel a connection to them?”

It was a weird question, one I didn't quite understand. “Why would you think that?” I asked, my tone flat and teetering on the edge of defensive.

Stormy didn't seem to notice. “Because that’s all you want too, right? To be respected and left to be at peace.”

Had I told her that? I couldn't remember now, and I held my breath, unsure of how to respond, until I decided that the best way was to say the things I'd avoided in every other interaction I'd had in the past several years—the truth.

“I didn’t always want to be by myself,” I answered, already feeling lighter from being honest. I allowed a huffed chuckle to rumble from my chest as I added, “God, I fuckinghatedbeing alone when I was younger.”

Nostalgic melancholy barreled over me as I remembered a time when just the thought of being alone would push me deep into an uncontrollable panic.

In my peripheral vision, I watched her turn her head and regard me with a soft, curious expression.

“So, what changed?”

“Life,” I answered simply with a helpless shrug.

Stormy scoffed, like the answer wasn’t good enough. “Life happens to everyone, Charlie, but not all of us make a complete one-eighty when it happens to us.”

Her tone was almost harsh, and it stung, like she was speaking from some kind of experience—her own trauma perhaps. I thought about what Blake had said earlier, that she had been hurt, and I resisted the urge to ask her what he had meant by that.

“Yeah, well, losing everyone who ever meant anything can do that to a guy,” I said, the words leaving a bitter taste on my tongue.

Stormy shook her head. “I think there's more than that.”

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