Page 4 of Almost You

“Ex-wife,” I admitted. “But Abby and I still care about each other.”

“Ah,” the ghost said. He gave me an interested once-over.

Every moment I spent with this ghost was making me hot and confused.

Why was I noticing him?

From the thin material of his T-shirt, where it hugged his skin, to his hair stuck up in the front, to his mouth, I was noticing.

Like right now, I was seeing how his lips were naturally pink. More than Abby’s ever were without her lipstick.

What…the…actual…fuck?

Why compare his lips to Abby’s at all? I was not a sexual person. Far from it.

Uneasy, I almost offered him the flask of whiskey I kept in my jacket.Fuck, I could use a shot.But ghosts didn’t eat or drink much. It was one of the few things I didn’t envy about them. Ghosts had their senses, but taste was the least developed one. The experience of eating didn’t leave them fulfilled, so they tended to skip it.

Me? I loved food, especially breakfast. Flaky biscuits with scrambled eggs. Or buttermilk pancakes swimming in syrup. Crispy bacon. Bread with jam and butter. I’d eaten a lot of breakfast for dinner since my divorce had gone through. Because…why not? The human race was difficult to be among. If I had to live there, I needed some pleasures. My solidly built frame and slight belly indicated how much I loved food, and I didn’t care. When you went hungry as a child, you took seconds if they were offered.

Abby claimed there was more to it. She argued that I “ate my emotions.”

Maybe she had a point. I didn’t like to examine my feelings, and I was carrying about twenty extra pounds.

“I don’t know if I was in a relationship.” He sniffed. “What if I was married, too? I’m just a fucking blank.” He wrapped his arms around himself. “Who am I without my memories?”

“You’re you,” I tried to explain. “The essence ofyouis still here. Your tastes, desires, fears, hopes, likes and dislikes are here. The parts that make up your personality don’t change, not at the core. That’s what I sense, what I see. Some ghosts do retain fragments or more, some believe in multiple past lives, others visit the human realm for fun, but they’ve lost their tether to it.”

“That’s so sad.”

“Not for the ghosts. For the humans, yes. But really, it’s just a different way of thought. It’s like when you stop believing in one god who sees all and judges each life, and instead believe in a god who is part of all and everything, but is not aware of you as an individual?—”

“Stop.” He held out a hand.

“Okay.” I cocked my head, studying him. “Religion seems to be a trigger for you.”

“If it is, I don’t know why…”

He might not remember anything, but his whole demeanor had changed at the word “religion.” While they didn’t have factual memory, most ghosts had reactions to certain words, good or bad, and that indicated experiences.

For example, the word “cat” had made my last client’s ghost-grandma go all mushy inside. A smile never failed to cross her face and she’d touch her thighs as if to make a lap. So, no true recollection of it, but she must have loved at least one cat. As her granddaughter heard this in my official report, she wept openly, saying her grandmother had needed to rehome her cat, Milo, when she’d moved in. My client had severe allergies, so therewasn’t a choice, but her granny had kept Milo’s picture on her nightstand.

That was where my job came into play. When given the right prompts, some ghosts could recover pieces of their lives. Never the entire existence, but crumbs, little traces of their past lives. And desperate families and lovers would pay me for those breadcrumbs. Even if the ghosts didn’t remember anything, they were often willing to visit for shits and giggles.

My most successful case lately was a still-alive, elderly husband who was happy to let his wife haunt him. “It’s better than trying to replace her,” he’d told me. “Can you imagine dating at my age? I don’t have the patience for somebody new.”

And his ghost-wife had enough memories of him—the brand of cereal he favored, how often he changed the bedsheets—to make the visits successful. They didn’t confess their everlasting love, or ask for a kiss, which I was happy about as I channeled her ghost. The visits seemed more like a friendship to me, but what did I know about it? My marriage had ended. Who was I to judge a couple who’d weathered nearly fifty years before their end?

“Will you work for me or not? I need to find out who I was. I’ll find a way to compensate you.” He licked his lower lip.

“Good, ’cause I don’t do charity.”

Something about this ghost got to me in ways I didn’t like or understand. And it was the truth—I charged for my help. I’d grown up poor and didn’t miss it. Some had told me I shouldn’t openly want money. Or that I needed to offer my gifts for free. To that I said: Those people hadn’t gone to bed hungry. Or worried that their next foster family wouldn’t keep them.

I didn’t hurt others if I could help it. I kept my word to people. I was an average human, psychic powers aside, going along in the world. I didn’t understand my reaction to the swipe of his lip or the plea in those big brown eyes. Why it made mewant to sayyesto him—even though we both knew he couldn’t fucking pay me.

“I bet your wife would tell you to take me on,” he cajoled.

“Ex-wife,” I snapped.

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