Page 11 of Ghost of a Chance

A guy about her age with a buzz cut and thick horn-rimmed glasses wearing jeans and a sweater with “Books are essential.” knitted on it walked over to her.

“Hi, I’m Tim the manager. Can I help you find anything?”

“I’m K.L. Henson, the author of Roses for the Dead . I noticed you had some of my books in stock and wondered if I could sign them,” she said. Deep breaths, Kirsty. Some things about the job never got easier.

“Of course. Nice to meet you. We’ve sold a lot of copies of it,” he said. “Let’s get you set up to sign them. Are you local?”

“I’m here for a few weeks with some friends. Doing research for my next book.” Liar.

“Great. We have a local readers’ group that meets on the second Tuesday of the month. Would you like to come back and talk to them?” he asked. “That’s next week.”

“Sure, if you think they’d enjoy it,” she said. A room full of her readers sounded like a dream come true—or a nightmare, if they hated the book.

“Definitely.” Tim led the way back to the mystery section where Jasper waited. “Jasper Cotton? Dude, I didn’t know you were back in town.” In an instant Tim’s demeanor changed from mousy clerk to full-on bro.

“Just for a few weeks,” he said.

“You two friends?” Tim asked.

Oh no. If Jasper started talking about Paul and her amateur ghost whispering, then Kirsty was going to walk straight out of this shop. Even though she was getting filmed trying to live out this fantasy gone wrong, something about saying it out loud to a stranger made her feel ridiculous.

“She’s helping me with a project for work,” Jasper said. “I didn’t realize you lived here.”

“Decided to stay after graduation. My girlfriend and I leased this space and opened the bookstore. We’ve been making a go of it since.”

While they caught up, Kirsty signed the books and put her promotional stickers and bookmarks in them.

Noticing when she opened her bag that the physics book was in there.

Something she shoved to one side until she could speak to Jasper.

Her joy at signing the books dimmed slightly.

She truly didn’t believe in ghosts but how else could she explain the book being here and the music on Jasper’s phone?

Jasper snapped a few photos of her signing, as well as one with her and Tim before they left.

Once outside she pulled Jasper to a stop. “I don’t want anyone to know about the Paul thing.”

“I sort of figured. You went even paler than normal when he asked what we were doing. But you know Dan’s filming us and Bri is going to air that segment, right?”

She was about to make a massive mistake, but if she kept implying she could just ring up a ghost and have a conversation with them, she was never going to recover from this.

“Of course I know that. Also did you put the physics book in my bag?”

“Definitely not. Why?”

Opening the bag she held it out to him. Jasper rubbed the back of his neck looking awkwardly around them before pulling her around the corner. “Can you ask him why he’s here?”

“I don’t talk to poltergeists,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Do they show you things?” he asked.

Since that was pretty much what she’d intimated every time she’d used her “ability” to get out of something, she nodded. “It’s not all the time. I guess this explains your phone.”

“Maybe. So what’s the problem with people knowing about your paranormal skills?”

How could she say she wanted her books to stand on their own? That the only reason she’d added the joke to her author bio was to make it a part of the fantasy she’d always imagined for herself. One where she stood out?

The joke was on her. As Jasper had rightly pointed out, she was known as someone who had a psychic ability. At least in her small corner of the world. There was no way she’d ever truly know if her books were popular because of her writing or because people were intrigued by the woman behind them.

“There isn’t one.”

“Good. So what now?”

“Let’s go to the coffee place and you can tell me more about Paul.”

* * *

Joe’s had a certain timelessness to it. As he stepped through the door, the scent of roasted coffee beans and the chatter of the patrons took Jasper back to the first time he’d come here.

Freshman year. Paul had just transferred in after studying at another university and flunking out first semester. Too much pressure, he’d said.

Jasper hadn’t anticipated coming back here ever. Especially without Paul.

Of course his friend was technically here, just trapped in a textbook.

Kirsty needed to know about him, and Jasper wasn’t sure where to start, even after they ordered their drinks and sat in a corner booth near the back.

There was a tradition for students to write their names on the walls and they were covered with signatures and years.

His and Paul’s were scrawled on the other side of the café.

“What do you want to know?”

She pulled her tablet from her bag and set it on the table next to her double espresso with one sugar cube.

Her fingers moved quickly over the keyboard.

He noticed that chipped paint on her index finger again.

He liked the slight imperfection. It showed him that there were cracks in that formidable facade that she presented to the world. To him.

She said that no one had themselves figured out, but she did a cracking job of faking it. Shoving his hand through his hair, he waited for her. He took a sip of his cappuccino with two cubes of sugar. Deliciously sweet and just what he needed.

Closing his eyes, it was almost as if he was a sophomore again. Nothing had happened. Paul was still alive; he was still dithering about his major, but not so erratic in his class choices that he was limited to a handful of degrees.

“What did Paul want to do with his life?” she asked. “I think maybe if we can figure out what was left undone, we’ll have a good starting point.”

Jasper had no clue. They hadn’t talked much about the future.

Or rather Jasper hadn’t really listened.

He’d mostly partied, discussed their individual classes, complained about the daily minutia of college social life, and worried about their grades.

“I’m not sure. We didn’t talk about shit like that. ”

“What did you talk about?”

“Homework, how hard certain classes were, people we hoped to hook up with,” Jasper said.

“Did you both like the same girls?”

“No. Paul was into guys.”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed,” she said. “Did he have someone?”

“Yes. He and Victor were pretty serious about each other. They met sophomore year,” Jasper said.

Jasper knew he should have talked to Victor before he came back. It hadn’t seemed right that Paul would be haunting him instead of Victor. They’d been so close. Honestly the most solid couple out of their entire friend group.

“Could Paul be trying to get you to take him to Victor?”

“No.” He’d sent the book to Victor once, and Victor had returned it to Jasper. Though Victor hadn’t included a note or anything. Probably because of how Jasper had shut down after Paul’s death.

“What did he say when you told him Paul was in the physics book?”

“Nothing. I never talked to him about it. I sent him the book in the mail and he sent it back.”

She closed the lid to her tablet and put both hands flat on top of it. “Are you kidding me?”

“No. Why would I tell him? It would hurt him that Paul was with me and not him,” Jasper said.

“Or maybe talking about the book with him was what Paul needs,” she stated.

When she put it that way, it made a lot of sense. “Good thought.”

“Ya think? So where is he now?”

He didn’t know. What did it say about him that he hadn’t kept in touch? There had been a bit of guilt, but also the smallest bit of anger. Jasper never wanted the responsibility of shouldering the burden of his friend. Mourning him once had been hard enough.

“I’ll have to find out.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s keep Victor on the down-low in front of Dan until we find him.”

“Works for me. Do you think we should have that séance Gia mentioned, to try to talk to him?”

Her eyes went wide and then she opened the lid to her tablet and keyboard and started typing. She looked nervous. “I don’t usually do them.”

“Why not?”

She chewed her lower lip, which drew his eyes to her lush mouth. God, he wished none of this was happening. That there was no ghost or TV segment to film. Just two people on a date, so he could lean over, take her mouth and show her how beautiful she was to him.

“It opens me up to too many spirits,” she said, the words coming out in a low rush, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear anything. “I’ll consider it if nothing else happens when we get back.”

There wasn’t much more to discuss on that. She sipped her espresso. “So the music…even though the book’s with us. Could your phone be on the fritz?”

“Oh…maybe. Hadn’t considered that.”

“You’re probably so accustomed to the book doing freaky things so it makes sense. Has it happened before without the book being around?”

Trying to remember. “This is only the fifth or sixth time.”

“And?”

“Before it was always at home.”

“Good to know. Let’s keep an eye on it.”

“Don’t you mean ear?”

She groaned but he saw a hint of a smile. “That’s a total dad joke.”

“Does your dad tell them? I mean do you ever see him?”

“Not really. Not to take anything away from your situation, but it’s sort of like he’s dead. He never wanted to be a part of my life,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” He knew his father had wanted to be a dad more than anything. His mom had told him more than once that his father had read every parenting book to ensure he’d be the best father he could be. “My dad was apparently different.”

“Was he? Did your mom talk about him a lot?”

“All the time. It was hard. She lost her husband and she missed him so much. Plus, I was a colicky baby, so she was sleep-deprived on top of being depressed.”

“Cried a lot…that tracks,” she said without cracking a smile.

“Hey.”

“Kidding. That’s sweet that you’re close to her.”

“It was just the two of us for so long,” he admitted.

“Same with me and my mom. It wasn’t cool to call your mom when I was in college, but I still talked to her every day. It was nice to have that one solid thing.”

“Me too.” He hadn’t thought about it that way before. But he’d always known that whenever things went shit his mom would be there. Even if he was the one who fucked it up.