Page 10 of Ghostlighted (Ghost Townies #2)

Chapter Seven

“ R eady for this?” Ricky asked.

I peered through his windshield at Greg’s building, a converted warehouse in Portland’s Pearl District. “Not sure I’d ever be truly ready.”

“Hey.” Ricky unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to face me. “I pretty much strong-armed you into this trip. If you’d rather not deal with it, we can just go home again.”

Home. Home is good.

“No.” I managed a smile. “Let’s not. I’m a master at procrastination and conflict avoidance, so I’d have found excuses to put this off forever.

And despite my griping about Greg’s inhospitality, I really shouldn’t impose on him any longer.

” My smile turned more sincere. I hoped.

“Thanks for the push. I needed it.” It was beyond time to tie up this loose end and get on with my new life.

Which, hopefully, would continue to include Ricky.

We climbed out of the truck, and when he joined me by the passenger door, I said, “I’m going to owe you lunch at least after this. Maybe dinner too.”

He grinned at me and patted the shell that covered the truck bed. It hadn’t been there yesterday, so he’d installed it just for this trip.

Just for me.

“I won’t say no to either of those. Your stuff will be safe, even if we have to park for a while.”

I swallowed and made myself take the first step forward. “His condo is on the top floor. I called yesterday to let him know we were coming.”

“Did he answer?”

“Voicemail.”

We hadn’t actually spoken since I’d moved out. His response to my texts was always the same: No messages, no mail, screw you. Come to think of it, I hadn’t texted him lately either, not since I’d moved to Ghost.

“Guess we’ll see if A) he’s home, B) he’ll open the door for us, and C) he didn’t actually dump all my stuff on the curb months ago.”

Ricky’s black brows drew together. “Do you think he’d do something like that?”

I led the way inside to the elevator lobby. “Nah. That’d mean he’d have to move those boxes by himself. He wouldn’t exert himself that much and he definitely wouldn’t have paid anybody else to do it.”

“Then I guess we’ll find out.” He gestured to the intercom. “I’d ring it for you, but I think it would be better for you to do the honors.” He grinned. “Closure, and all that.”

I choked back a laugh as I pressed the buzzer. “You have a point.”

A moment later, Greg’s voice emerged from the speaker. “Yes?”

“It’s Maz.”

“Maz.” His tone was perfectly flat.

“Greg.” I matched it. Also perfectly.

“This isn’t a good time.”

“I called yesterday. If you wanted to reschedule, you should have replied to my message.”

His long-suffering sigh was audible—and drawn out far longer than necessary. “Fine. Come up.”

The elevator doors slid open. Ricky gestured me inside. “After you.”

When we stepped out of the car, Greg was standing in his open door in his standard weekend casual chinos and polo shirt.

“This is super inconvenient, Maz. I do have things to do, you know.”

“It’s half a dozen boxes, Greg. It’ll take us twenty minutes to move them out and then you can stop complaining about them taking up your valuable attic space. BT-dub, if you hadn’t blown off the lawyer who was looking for me by telling her I was dead, I’d have removed them three months ago.”

He crossed his arms. “And put them where, exactly?”

I can admit it—I smirked. “In my new house, exactly.”

Greg snorted. “Like you can afford a house. You can’t even maintain your car.”

“That car’s history, anyway,” Ricky said. “He’s getting a new one.”

Greg’s jaw sagged. “Wait. What?”

“Hey.” I poked Ricky’s biceps, which were his best feature. Other than his smile. And his eyes. And his hair. And his butt. Not to mention his heart. “I haven’t agreed to that yet.”

Ricky’s smile was decidedly smug. “You will.”

“Brother,” I muttered. “Everybody needs to get off my case about the car.” I pushed my curls off my forehead. “Greg, this is Ricky Vargas. Ricky, Greg Findler.”

Greg’s left foot in its Bruno Magli loafer began to tap in a cadence I knew all too well: his you’re-wasting-my-time-but- I’m-keeping-my-annoyance-in-check tempo.

It was a little slower than his if-you-don’t-do-what-I-want-I’ll-bring-out-my-killer-passive-aggressiveness beat and a little faster than his get-to-the-point-because-I’ve-got-better-things-to-do roll.

Greg’s toe taps had a vocabulary all their own.

“I suppose,” he drawled, “that once more you’ve conned someone into believing you’ll actually return a favor.” He turned his head in Ricky’s direction, but his gaze was focused on the wall behind us. “I should warn you. He’ll never make good on it.”

Ricky never lost his affable expression. “In my family, we don’t keep score that way. But if we did, Maz would have banked about a decade’s worth of credit when he decided to send my godmother and sister to Boston for my cousin’s graduation.”

Greg’s chiseled jaw sagged. “He what? How?” He turned a glare on me. “If you’ve got money, you owe me.”

“Owe you for what?”

“For storing your boxes.”

I sighed. He did have a point. “Was it difficult to move them out of the way for your own things?”

“Not exactly.” His gaze slid away from mine. “The area isn’t easily accessible.”

“Yeah, because it’s an attic . Its purpose is to keep stuff out of the way.” I narrowed my eyes. “You badgered the reno company for weeks so they’d lower the bedroom ceilings and create that space. Have you put anything up there at all?”

“No,” he mumbled.

“Are you planning to put anything up there? Ever?”

His nostrils flared. “You know that’s not the point.”

“Look, Greg. When I lived here, I paid my share. I offered to put everything in a storage locker, but you said as long as I moved everything to the attic myself—which I did—that I could leave it there until I found a new place. Well, I’ve found a new place and I’ve come to get everything out of your hair. We can finally be done.”

Ricky cocked his head. “You know something? I think that’s why he agreed to keep it, Maz. He doesn’t want to be done.”

“This is none of your business,” Greg said hotly.

“Maybe it wasn’t before. But it is now. Are you going to let us in?”

For a minute, I gaped at Ricky. “What?” I croaked.

“Think about it, Maz. He always responded to your texts, even if he was a jerk about it. If he truly wanted to ghost you, he would have maintained radio silence. Not to mention he pointedly did not tell you not to come by today after you left that message.”

I glanced at Greg’s reddening face. “I’m pretty sure he?—”

“Also, that much cologne should be illegal.”

Greg flung the door open. “Get the damn boxes already. Don’t mar the walls, and if you scatter any dust or trash around, you’re cleaning it up.”

“I always did, Greg. I always did.”

I led the way through the sunny great room. Regardless of how my relationship with Greg had ended, I’d always appreciated the design and execution of the space, although industrial chic had never been my vibe. I much preferred my Queen Anne beauty in Ghost.

The small second bedroom where I’d worked was at the end of a short hallway, the desk still under the wide window. The center of the room was clear, so I pointed to the trap in the ceiling.

“Stairs to the attic.”

“Good.” Ricky glanced over his shoulder to where Greg loomed in the doorway. “’Cause I doubt he’d loan us a ladder.”

“He’d have to buy one first.”

The hook I’d used to open the trap was standing in the corner, exactly where I’d left it months ago.

With it in my hands, it only took a few seconds to snag the recessed handle overhead and pull—I’d had practice, after all.

The stairs extended smoothly, although dust motes danced in the sunlight.

I offered up a brief thank-you to Avi, who kept our house completely dust free.

I mounted the steps until I could see over the attic floor. My boxes still sat exactly where I’d left them, as far as I could tell. I went the rest of the way up the stairs.

When Ricky joined me a minute later, I was standing with my hand on the top box.

“Is this everything?”

“Y-yes.” I rubbed my chest, easing a sudden pang. “I didn’t remember there being so many. I thought there were only six.”

These boxes held everything that was left from my childhood, from my life with my parents, from their lives. When their RV went off the road in the Rockies, everything they’d had with them had been lost, too. Even ten boxes weren’t a lot to show for three lives.

Ricky sidled up next to me until his shoulder bumped mine. “You okay?”

“I will be.” I patted the top box. “This one has all my dad’s kitchen stuff that he didn’t take with him when he and Mom embraced van life.

He kept his recipes in a few loose-leaf notebooks.

” I glanced at Ricky. “Did I ever tell you that my grandfather on Dad’s side was the youngest of thirteen?

My grandmother was the youngest of seven. ”

Ricky’s eyebrows shot up. “You must have tons of cousins, too.”

“Maybe. But not all of them emigrated to the US, and they were mostly all a generation older than me. My mom and dad were both only children, so no first cousins for me, and my mom never introduced me to any of her extended family.” Which was why I’d never known about Oren.

He squeezed my arm. “You’ve got another family now.”

I swiped a hand under my eyes. “Yeah. I do.” I took a deep breath. “Anyway, Dad’s cookbooks have handwritten recipes for his aunt’s pita bread, his dad’s cheese, my grandmother’s kibbe. I haven’t seen them for almost a year. Haven’t cooked any of them for even longer.”

“Why not?”

“Greg doesn’t care for Arabic food, and he had nothing but scorn for my mom’s recipes.

” I chuckled softly. “Not that there are many of those. Mom hated to cook. She said it was the principle of the thing—in her midwestern fundamentalist family, cooking and cleaning were always the women’s responsibility, and she refused to bow to the patriarchy.

But I think she just found cooking so boring that she didn’t see the point when she could grab a bowl of cereal and spend her time reading instead. ”

Ricky studied where my hand rested on the box. “Will you make some of your dad’s dishes for me?”

The pang in my chest eased for the first time since I’d come into the attic.

“If you’d like me to, sure. Although I confess to being a little intimidated.

I’m not the fantastic cook my dad was, and your family runs a restaurant with the best Mexican food I’ve eaten anywhere except Sofia’s kitchen.

I doubt I can measure up to your standards. ”

He shrugged. “Sometimes it’s the willingness to give the gift that matters more than the gift itself.”

“All right,” I murmured. “It’s a date.”

“Hey!” Greg called. “I do have other places to be today.”

Trust Greg to kill the mood.

Ricky pointed to the stairs. “Pass me the boxes and I’ll stack them in the room below.”

Once we’d done that, we carted them out with a hand truck Ricky had produced from somewhere. As we wheeled out of the condo on the third and last trip, Greg closed the door behind me for the final time.

“Twenty minutes on the nose.” Ricky poked the elevator button. “You called it.”

When the doors slid open and we stepped inside, I could have sworn that I floated an inch off the floor like Avi often did. I’d been buried under the shambles of this relationship for so long, had gotten so used to living in its ruins, that I hadn’t realized how much it had been weighing me down.

My steps as we walked to Ricky’s truck and loaded the boxes in the back were lighter than they’d been in over a year.

Ricky closed the tailgate and locked the shell hatch. “Ready to head home?”

“Not yet.” I grinned at him. “I promised you lunch, remember? And I know just the place.”