Page 14 of Ghost in the Cupboard

An indeterminate but satisfying amount of time later, I was sitting on the edge of the sofa, back in my boxers. Danny was still laid out on the sofa behind me, nude as the day he was born. He had pulled out his vape pen—which he knew I didn’t approve of—and was blowing blueish-gray clouds towards the ceiling behind me. I reached up and ran a hand through my disheveled hair and shook my head, amused.

“Blue Raspberry?” I snorted. “What are you? Twelve?”

“It tastes and smells good,” he chuckled.

“Smoke cigarettes like a grown up.”

“Ah, but then I’d get cancer and you’d have another ghost to swindle my mother over.”

I ignored the invitation to another fight.

“Those things aren’t exactly safe,” I said. “They might be causing new diseases that we don’t even know about yet.”

“Why don’t you look in your crystal ball and let me know?”

“I’m a medium and clairvoyant. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Isn’t that convenient?” Danny snorted. “Your powers are only useful when you need them to be.”

I turned to glare at him on the sofa behind me as he blew another plume of fog into the air.

“You know what?” I growled.

Danny reached up and put a hand over my mouth, silencing me. I continued to glare at him as he let the hand slide from my mouth to the side of my face. He kept it there, rubbing his thumb tenderly along the apple of my cheek as he smiled up at me.

“I didn’t come here to fight, Si,” he said. “Don’t.”

“Stop prodding me,” I quipped.

He raised an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean,” I said as my cheeks burned.

“All right.”

He let his thumb play along my cheekbone a moment longer, then his hand slid down to my neck, over my chest, and back to his side. He took another puff of his vape.

“You’ll get that ‘popcorn lung’ or whatever,” I said.

“You told me I’d get lip cancer from the dip in high school,” Danny said as he opened his mouth wide. “So far, so good.”

“That’s because I convinced you to quit before it was too late.”

I stood from the sofa. Danny stared up at me, his eyes hungry.

“That’s a sight,” he said softly.

“I could say the same thing,” I replied.

He grinned evilly.

“Oh,” I waved him off, “get up. Put your clothes on.”

“Suddenly you don’t want me here?” Danny grinned and swung his legs over the side of the sofa. “Didn’t seem that way a few minutes ago.”

“I don’t get afterglow,” I retorted, “I get annoyed. How long are you going to keep doing this anyway?”

Danny stood and took a puff of his vape right in my face.