Page 74 of A Ghost’s Guide to Haunting a Witch

By the end of the first film, I’d stopped pretending I didn’t notice. By the end of the second film, I’d stopped pretending I didn’t want it.

We walked out into the night, talking about ghosts like they were real, and somehow that conversation softened into something quieter. The kind that makes the rest of the world fade into background noise.

He told me about his career. About how he’d become estranged from his father after walking away from the family business to study mathematics, and how he’d fallen into statistics almost by accident.

“How did your father feel about that?” I asked.

“There are lots of things my father and I strongly disagree about. Statistics was just one of them.”

“What happened?”

Theo shrugged. “I asked my father to reconsider his position. I pointed out that there was a twenty-seven per cent chance of estrangement in all families, and that only thirteen per cent of those estrangements ever end in reconciliation. I asked him which outcome he wanted for us.” He grimaced. “Bringing up statistics at that point didn’t exactly help my case.”

I made a soft noise of sympathy, then told him about my own family, about how I’d always felt out of place, how I’d opened my shop hoping it might make me feel more like I belonged.

“Did it help?” Theo asked.

I shook my head. “No. But I’m good at it. And I’ve found a kind of . . . place in the world, I suppose. Even if it’s not the one I thought it would be. Wait. I have one of my cards here . . .” I quickly rummage in my bag, pulling one out. I scribble a few words on the back before handing it to him, and Theo laughs, before tucking it into his pocket.

And then we kissed. Not a quick, polite, “goodnight, lovely to see you” kind of kiss either. No. We kissed like we had nowhere else to be. Like time had politely stepped aside to let us get on with it. Like we were making up for something neither of us could quite name. Minutes blurred. Or maybe it was hours. Honestly, I have no idea, and quite frankly, I couldn’t have cared less.

When we finally pulled apart, I was slightly breathless, my heart beating fast within my chest. Theo had smiled at me. His grin soft, almost a little crooked, like he knew exactly what he’d just done to me.

“Our third date will be even better,” he promised, which was, frankly, an outrageous claim to make after that kiss.

“How can you be so certain that there even will be a third date?” I asked, in a voice I hoped sounded flirtatiously indignant, but Theo, as it turned out, was a man who came prepared with data.

“Well, because statistically,” he began easily, like this was a normal follow-up to kissing someone senseless, “second dates have a fifty-seven per cent chance of turning into third ones. The odds are on my side.”

I’d simply stared at him. “Did you just cite a study to me?”

“Yes.”

“On dating?”

“On outcomes,” he corrected me seriously.

“Okay. Well, what percentage chance is there that a third date will . . . escalate after a second one?”

“Sixty-four,” Theo had instantly replied, without a hint of irony, and I had to laugh as I kissed him on the cheek and then walked into my flat.

Now, here we are, with our third date about to begin and a sixty-four per cent chance of escalation on our shoulders, which, if anything, feels low given my dress and the current circumstances.

I take Theo to a restaurant I found via my sister, who gave it a review so glowingly vague I just had to try it, and it’s the kind of place that insists it’s not romantic — which, of course, makes it absolutely insufferably so. The lighting is so low it feels like the room is trying to keep a secret. The chairs don’t match, as if they all showed up from different IKEA sponsored break-ups. Candles drip like they’re racing each other to the table linen.

Our waiter breezily explains that the menu changes constantly, according to the lunar cycle, which sounds charming until you’re actually looking at it and realize you understand maybe three words — and they’re all prepositions. Allegedly it’s written in English, but every dish is described like it’s auditioning for a Shakespeare revival. I order something called a deconstructed meadow with emotional undertones and pray that it’s a salad.

Theo loves it.

“This is brilliant,” he says, before he picks up the menu and scans it like he’s decoding something ancient. “Did you know your deconstructed meadow comes with a serving of seasonal ambiguity? A bold choice.”

“Well, what did you order?”

“The braised bovine in a slow-collapse of root vegetables, suspended in a nostalgia-infused reduction of time, fire, and quiet longing,” Theo replies.

“You have no idea what any of that means.”

“Who cares?” he replies with a grin. “It’s fun to say. This place is great,” He looks at me fondly. “Bonkers though. Why’d you choose it?”