Page 26 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
SIENNA
T he thing they don’t tell you about surviving a supernatural storm and bringing a dead man back to life?
You still have to buy groceries.
And the moment you step into the town market, clutching your canvas bag and pretending your boyfriend wasn’t recently a myth, everyone remembers they forgot how to blink.
Mrs. Trencher, who once gave me a lecture on using sea salt instead of iodized, stares like I walked in wearing a live octopus. Darren, the guy who restocks produce, drops a cantaloupe and lets it roll between our feet. The air feels vacuum-packed with suspicion, salt, and small-town judgment.
I force a smile. “Hey, y’all.”
No one answers.
Just the sound of the automatic doors hissing shut behind me like a final warning.
Back at the cabin— our cabin now—Elias is lounging like a cat with too many knives. Shirtless, sun-kissed, still marveling at the concept of “coffee with cream” like it’s sorcery.
“They think you raised me from the dead,” he says, sipping smugly.
I slam the groceries down. “Did you tell them that?”
He shrugs. “I might’ve implied it.”
“Elias!”
“What? You did. Don’t undersell your brand.”
I throw a banana at his head.
He catches it without blinking. “See? Reflexes. I’m very corporeal.”
I glare. “You are one black trench coat away from being their worst nightmare.”
“You’re not wrong.”
It’s not just the market.
The gossip’s gone viral.
Lyle texts me a blurry photo of the wreck with the caption: “any chance this counts as a national landmark now?”
Mira sends me a string of messages:
THEY’RE SAYING YOU CONJURED A HUSBAND
I TOLD THEM HE WAS JUST A REALLY DEDICATED HISTORIAN
THEY DIDN’T BUY IT
CALL ME OR I’M SENDING THE CAT WITH A MESSAGE IN HIS COLLAR
Apparently, someone saw “blue fire” at the bay. Someone else claims Elias kissed a wave and made it retreat. One woman is absolutely convinced she saw a talking gull.
I tell Elias that.
He deadpans, “I might have yelled at a gull. It took my sandwich.”
“You’ve been alive for ten minutes and you’re already starting rumors?”
“I was hungry. ”
Mira shows up a week later.
She doesn’t knock.
She never knocks.
“Your aura’s stabilized,” she says before even stepping inside. “That’s good. No trace of ghost energy. You’re not radiating doom. Just mild existential panic.”
“That’s just his face,” I say.
Elias walks in with wet hair and a towel, raising a brow. “You’re welcome for not glowing anymore.”
Mira surveys him like she’s considering poking him with a stick. “You’re sure you’re not still cursed?”
“I have bills now,” he mutters. “That’s enough curse.”
We sit out on the porch, all three of us. The tide’s whispering against the rocks. The wreck rests quietly in the distance—no longer haunted, no longer humming. Just a husk of what was.
Mira sips tea. “You did something impossible, you know.”
I look at her. “Which part?”
She shrugs. “All of it.”
For a long moment, we just sit.
No one speaks.
“I was wrong about you.”
I blink.
She doesn’t look at me when she says it, but I hear the truth in her voice.
“I thought you were reckless. Thought you’d destroy everything trying to save something broken.” She turns, finally meeting my eyes. “But you didn’t just save him. You rebuilt him. You made a new path.”
My throat goes tight.
Before I can answer, Elias walks up behind me and drops a kiss to the crown of my head.
“Yeah,” he says, voice low. “She does that.”
Mira stands. “Well. I’m not crying. You’re crying.”
“You’re crying on the inside, ” Elias says.
“Shut up, newly alive man.”
Lyle, meanwhile, has gone full carnival barker.
He’s converted Elias’ old cabin into a supernatural museum.
Yes, really.
Wrecker’s Bay Ghost Hunter Historical Archive and Paranormal Education Center.
He says it like it fits on a t-shirt.
Elias stares at the driftwood model of himself—complete with tiny wire chains and faux-glowing eyes.
“I look like a rejected Halloween prop.”
“It’s interpretive, ” Lyle says. “You’re folklore now.”
I nod, biting my lip. “Folklore with abs.”
Elias groans. “I liked it better when I was dead.”
The town doesn’t stop whispering.
But it changes.
From fear to curiosity.
From curiosity to legend.
People start leaving little tokens at the wreck—shells, ribbons, handwritten letters to “the sea.” Kids draw chalk runes on the docks. An older man tells me his son slept through the night for the first time in months after “whatever that storm was.”
They’re not afraid anymore.
Not of what it means to believe in impossible things.
At night, when it’s just us, I curl into Elias and listen to his heartbeat.
It’s never steady.
Never quiet.
But it’s there.
That alone feels like a miracle.
“You good?” I ask him once, half-asleep.
He brushes my hair back. “I don’t think I know what that word means anymore.”
“Me either.”
We fall asleep like that.
Two people who were ghosts in different ways.
Now building something new.
We’re sitting on the hood of my truck, parked behind a roadside diner that smells like fry oil, nostalgia, and questionable choices.
The neon sign flickers— Bay Bites —like it can’t decide if it’s still open. The only other car in the lot has a cracked window and a surfboard strapped to the top. A moth slams into the light overhead and dies dramatically.
Elias stares at the burger in his hands like it’s a live grenade.
“You’re telling me,” he says, slowly, “this... is meat. And cheese. Inside bread.”
“With pickles, ” I add. “It’s a rite of passage.”
He lifts the top bun suspiciously. “Why is it shiny?”
“It’s buttered. That’s good shiny.”
“I don’t trust it.”
“You fought sea monsters,” I remind him. “This is just a sandwich.”
He takes a bite.
Chews.
Then his eyes go wide.
“Oh my God. ”
“Told you.”
He keeps chewing, completely transfixed.
“This is illegal,” he mutters. “It should be illegal.”
I laugh.
Hard.
Like, full-on can’t-breathe, bent-over-wheezing kind of laugh.
It bubbles out of me, ridiculous and bright, echoing across the empty parking lot. I clutch my side, tears streaming down my cheeks, and Elias just stares at me—mouth full of cheeseburger, looking dumbfounded and kind of insulted.
“That funny, huh?”
“You— you glared at a hamburger like it insulted your mother, ” I gasp.
“It did!” he argues. “It tricked me. With softness.”
That just makes me laugh harder.
I haven’t laughed like that in years.
Not since before the wreck. Before the ghosts. Before magic and death and aching choices.
And here I am—under neon, with a reanimated sailor and a half-eaten cheeseburger—and I feel... alive.
Like everything terrible finally made room for something good.
Elias finishes the burger, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and grins.
“You gonna make fun of me every time I eat now?”
“Only when you look personally betrayed by condiments.”
He leans in.
Kisses my cheek, warm and sure.
“I’ll allow it,” he says.