Page 11 of Aftertaste

“Remember that green drink? From the health food place?”

He cracked a smile, a faraway memory flickering over his face. “Friggin’ kale.”

“Friggin’ kale,” she agreed.

“But I—”

“No buts,” she said firmly. “Not unless they’re—”

“—yeah, yeah, a Kardashian’s, I know—”

“I would’ve gone with J.Lo.”

“Well, you’ve been dead a while, so.”

They smiled at one another, something unspoken passing between them as her light dimmed again, and he took another precious sip.

Kostya watched through the door, a gnaw in his chest. It was saccharine, sure, and he barely knew them, but still. The way this guy looked at her, even dead, you couldn’t help but feel for him. It was love like starving.

“It’s time,” she whispered.

“I don’t know how,” he whispered back.

“You just live. Like I’m not here. Like nothing you do can hurt me. Just let go,” she said, and reached a glittering jade hand out to him, cupped his face.

Charlie’s eyes fluttered closed, his chin buckling. Kostya could see him shiver, the sensation of her touch both real and imagined.

“It isn’t fair,” he gasped. “That you got sick. That I got to live.”

“You don’t have to feel guilty,” she told him, “for wanting your life. My death—none of it was your fault. I died, babe. I just… died. You didn’t kill me.”

Kostya felt something inside of him blister. He would have given anything,anything, to hear his dad tell him that.

Anna’s light dimmed again, but Charlie’s eyes were still closed, and he didn’t budge this time, didn’t reach for the glass.

“Char—” she began, but her final thought was cut short, her burst of light going dark right in the middle of his name.

Charlie opened his eyes. He blinked at the afterglow of where his wife’s spirit had just been, the retinal burn of her brilliant outline its own sort of ghost. His fingers fumbled with an orange pill bottle in his pocket. He flipped it open, stared long and hard at the contents, then spilled the tablets across the lacquered wood of the bar.

Kostya wondered what was going through his head. Whether Charlie believed what he’d just been told about his future. Whether he was mourning his wife, or his marriage, or the arrested possibilities of his own life. Whether he thought he’d hallucinated the whole thing. Whether he was still planning, after all that, to take those pills. The only thing Kostya knew for sure was that if this guy started popping painkillers, he’d have to step in, call an ambulance, save his life, et cetera. And that meant another late shift and a fuck-ton of questions, none of which he felt like fielding.

But instead of ingesting anything, Charlie just kept staring. When it felt like he couldn’t possibly sit in limbo anymore, like he’d been in that bar all his life, had been born on that obnoxious barstool, swaddled in those asinine cocktail napkins, Charlie picked up his Spectral Sour, and tipped its cherry back into his mouth.

He chewed. Tasted. Licked his lip.

And Anna blipped back into existence, her face streaked with phosphorescent tears, like someone had broken a glow stick. She looked surprised to be there.

“Charlie?” she whispered.

“How did you know?” he asked, voice reverberating with pain. “How’d you know I was really going to do it?Ididn’t even know.”

“I know you like a book, babe.”

“You always did.” He nodded, sniffing. “Guess it’s time for a new chapter.”

They gazed at one another with the electric intensity of an imminent goodbye.

“Have an incredible life, Charlie. And when you’re done, find me in the next one, okay?”

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