Page 51 of Ghost Business (Boneyard Key #2)

Thirty-Six

Everything was going Sophie’s way. Technically.

Her ghost tour was safe, and she could keep doing what she loved.

If she’d been able to go back in time and tell Sophie in March that Tristan had conceded and would soon be leaving town, Past Sophie would be thrilled.

Past Sophie would throw a party and toss streamers off her second-floor balcony to accompany Tristan Martin getting the heck out of Boneyard Key.

But this was Present Sophie, and Present Sophie was miserable.

Cutting him out of her life had been the right thing to do. One of them had to be the adult; one of them had to recognize that what they had between them wasn’t going to last, no matter how good it was.

But for a few weeks there it had been so good. So, so good.

It would be easier if she could hate him.

If he’d been a liar from the jump, if he’d been as filled with corporate greed as he’d appeared the day he’d waltzed into Hallowed Grounds after their viral video and proposed that bet.

But Tristan wasn’t an evil mastermind, out to crush her under his heel.

He was a kind, funny, sensitive soul, and watching him open up to Boneyard Key, and all its facets, had been the best part of her summer.

But summer was over. And this Thursday night in late September was already the worst part of her fall.

There was a pounding on her door, but she ignored it. She knew who it was. It was Romance Resort night, and she was here on her couch instead of at Cassie’s house. She was letting everyone down. But she wanted to be alone. She was wallowing.

“Sophie!” Another series of loud knocks accompanied the shout. Libby.

“Sophie, you better be dead in there!” Cassie this time. “You better be dead on your kitchen floor and not just sitting there on the couch, feeling sorry for yourself and ignoring our texts!”

Sophie gave a guilty start from her spot on the couch, bundled up in one of Aunt Alice’s quilts.

It took a few good sniffs to clear away her tears before she hauled herself to her feet.

Trailing the quilt after her like a patchwork cloak, she went to the front door and threw the bolt open before heading back to the couch.

The door burst open.

“Oh, good. You’re alive.” Libby threw her a sympathetic look before heading straight into the kitchen. “Look, I get you’re going through it, but you need to answer your texts once in a while.”

“Oh.” Sophie raised her head from her flopped position, looking for her phone.

It was face down on the coffee table, and when she picked it up, she gave a wince despite everything.

The notification screen was covered; the photo she’d taken of the Starter Home at sunset a few years back was all but obscured.

“Sorry.” She ran her thumb over the screen, idly scrolling through the texts from Cassie and Libby—texts that grew more and more alarmed as Sophie wasn’t answering. “Sorry,” she said again.

Libby made a small, comforting sound, but Cassie wasn’t as kind.

“You better be.” She closed the front door behind her and leaned against it.

“I had to explain to Sarah that we couldn’t watch Romance Resort without you, so we’d have to put it off till next week.

One of these days she’s going to find out that it aired every night for two months, instead of me parceling it out to her once a week. And I’m going to be in huge trouble.”

“I’m on Sarah’s side here. Avoiding spoilers has been hell.” Libby rummaged through Sophie’s pantry, emerging with three boxes of macaroni and cheese and Sophie’s largest pot. “Do you have milk?”

“I think so.” Had Sophie even opened her fridge recently? She couldn’t remember.

Libby busied herself in the kitchen while Cassie sat down next to Sophie. “Come on. Talk to us. What did he do? Do I need to sic Nick on his ass?”

That brought a watery smile. “No. He didn’t do anything. He…” Wouldn’t it be so much easier if he had? If he’d been a first-class jerk, and she could wash her hands of him? Say things to her friends like Thank God that guy’s gone .

But she couldn’t. So she just gave a weary shrug.

“He’s leaving.” She barely got the words out when a fresh set of tears came.

It felt like she’d always been crying. “And I knew he was leaving, but…” She didn’t want to say it.

She didn’t want to sound like a whining child in front of her friends.

But these were her best friends. If you couldn’t be a whining child to them, who could you whine to?

“Everyone leaves.” The words burst out of her before she could call them back.

And once they were out, they just kept spilling out.

“My mom. My dad. Aunt Alice. Now Tristan. Why can’t anyone just stay ?

” The last word was a wail; Sophie tore her glasses off and tossed them to the coffee table, then buried her face in her hands for a good, hard cry.

No one spoke for a long moment, and in the back of her mind Sophie figured that Cassie was looking for a way to get the heck out of there. Libby had known her longer; Libby knew her baggage. But not Cassie. Cassie hadn’t signed up for this.

But to her surprise, Cassie slid an arm around her. “Okay.” She scooted over on the couch, pulling Sophie with her, until Sophie was lying with her head in Cassie’s lap, still in her crazy quilt cocoon. “Okay,” she said again, stroking Sophie’s hair off her temples.

“I just…I feel like I’m losing everything.” The tears kept coming, sobs wracking her body.

“You’re not.” Cassie’s voice was soothing.

“Of course you’re not,” Libby chimed in from the kitchen. “You have us.”

“And Nick,” Cassie added. “He’s told me more than once you’re the little sister he wished he had instead of Courtney.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Courtney,” Sophie said, defending her childhood friend through her tears.

“No, there isn’t. I just think he likes you better. You get him. You love this town the way he does. And you have Sarah. She loves you, even though you made her miss Romance Resort tonight.”

Sophie sniffed, a smile peeking through now. “I’ll apologize to her.”

“And Theo,” Libby said. “And Terry always slips you free garlic knots. And Aura and Jo, and Tony…we’ve all known each other since we were kids. You have this whole town.” Libby gestured widely with the wooden spoon she was using to stir the mac and cheese. “Boneyard Key loves you.”

“Exactly.” Cassie gave an emphatic nod. “Are you kidding? This town loves the shit out of you.”

Something stirred in Sophie’s chest. Hadn’t Nan said something similar, back before Flynn? She was right, and tonight proved it. These people were her family. It was okay to lean on them.

But Cassie wasn’t done. “And if Tristan doesn’t love you—”

“He doesn’t.”

“What?”

“Love me.” Oddly, this didn’t bring a new set of tears. The sadness was too deep for that. It was the absolute rock bottom of her heart. “He doesn’t love me. At least he never said it.”

“Oh.” She could all but see Cassie and Libby sharing a look over her head. “Well, fuck him, then,” Cassie said decidedly. “I know it sucks and it hurts, but you deserve better.”

Over a giant pot of macaroni and cheese and three spoons, along with most of a bottle of chardonnay Libby found in the back of the fridge, Sophie filled the others in on everything.

The weeks of stolen kisses, bringing him over during Hurricane Flynn, the way he’d made her feel loved like no one ever had.

Even though he’d never said the actual words, and neither had she. At the time it hadn’t mattered.

Then she told them about that last phone call with his father, and the circumstances surrounding the ghost tour bet that she had never known.

“I have a wacky thought.” Cassie licked at the backside of her spoon, getting off as much cheese sauce as she could. “Why don’t you ask him to stay?”

“What?”

Cassie shrugged. “You said he doesn’t want to stay. But does he know that you want him to stay? Because I bet that could change his mind.”

“I can’t ask him to stay.” Sophie stared hard at the mac-and-cheese pot, scraping out the last spoonful. “He’s going to work for his dad.”

“Sounds like he hates his dad, though,” Libby said, dividing the last of the wine between the three of them. “Job security or not, I bet he’d like being here with you better.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sophie said.

“Did you ask?” Cassie finished off the wine in her glass.

“No, but…” Sophie didn’t have a response. She hadn’t asked. No, she’d made the decision for the both of them when she’d told him to leave.

“Just something to think about.” Cassie tossed the words over her shoulder casually as she picked up the pot and spoons to take them into the kitchen.

Sophie thought about it. The way things were going, she’d be thinking about it all night. She hadn’t slept much since he’d left; her room didn’t feel like her room anymore. It felt like theirs, and she wanted him back in there more than almost anything.

Two things occurred to her at once. First: if her room didn’t feel like her room anymore, she could do something about it. There was another bedroom in this place that she’d been loath to claim. But maybe it was time.

Second: the one thing she wanted more than to have Tristan back was for Tristan to be happy. Even if it wasn’t with her. There was something she could do about that too.

Both things were urgent. She wanted to start them both at once.

Sophie blinked her tired, puffy eyes. She’d had enough of crying. She was ready for action.

“I want to move into Aunt Alice’s room. Can you help me?”

If either of her friends were startled by the subject change, they didn’t let it show. Libby even sighed in relief and sank back against the sofa cushions. “Yes. Finally. ”

“What can we do?” Cassie didn’t hesitate.

“I need to clear Aunt Alice’s things out of there. I meant to, after she died, but…” She sighed. “I never got around to it.” It was embarrassing, admitting out loud that she’d just closed off a room of her home and pretended it wasn’t there for the past few years. That was no way to be an adult.

“Then let’s do it.” Cassie was always the one with a plan. “I’ll come over Saturday with trash bags and gloves. We’ll do keep/donate/trash piles.”

She made it sound so easy that a glimmer of confidence peeked through the gloom in Sophie’s soul. Moving into Aunt Alice’s room was a twofold solution; her own room had too many memories of Tristan. But more than that, it was time for Sophie to be an adult in her own home.

That confidence carried on after the girls left, and it was time to focus on Project Number Two. Sophie washed her face, then she started a pot of coffee and opened her laptop.

“Let’s spend some quality time with some spreadsheets.”