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Even if I did want to pull them apart.
“Don’t worry.” He grinned. “I’ll keep you warm.”
“I like the sound of that,” she said happily. “And thank you, I promise… everything’s going to be great.”
They kissed once more, and he scooped her up in his arms. I tried not to think about the way her long legs wrapped around his waist, how that purple hair must feel between his fingers…
The room darkened again… but this time, the happy couple didn’t notice.
I turned on my heel and stormed out of the room.
It felt bad to spy like this for more than one reason, but the voyeur in me was also glad for my ability. Besides, I’d always been a glutton for punishment. The stealthiness of observing without being seen was probably the biggest perk to being a ghost… half-ghost…
Dammit, I never knew what to call myself. But yeah, at the risk of sounding creepy, spying on my house’s new inhabitants was definitely a perk of the job. The burning, churning feeling inside of my gut was just one more torture to endure, but it was worth it. I’d just have to pop in for more visits and get used to sharing the space… get used to whatever emotion kept trying to stir inside my cold, dead heart.
Get used to her. That was all. She was just a novelty, like a shiny new toy. I just needed the shine to wear off a little, and I’d be back to my old self in no time.
Suddenly, a fish hook of fire tugged from somewhere deep in my abdomen, nearly forcing me to my knees. It was an urgent, insistent pull downward as if I were rigged to an invisible pulley system. That could only mean one thing.
My boss needed to talk.
“Shit,” I grumbled. “Duty calls.”
3
MARNIE
With half of my crap still in boxes, I woke up the next morning feeling overwhelmingly good about my first morning in my new home. Not that there was any big fanfare over the first morning, but to have coffee by myself in peace was worth its weight in gold. If I’d been sitting in Beck’s mom’s house, she would have said something like, “Time to lean, time to clean.” And then she would have blown cigarette smoke in my face and ensured there wasn’t enough coffee left in the pot for me to drink. Real lovely woman, Carol Beck.
When I was done with my coffee and dressed, I kissed Beck’s sleeping face and shut the door as quietly as possible. I had to open the Canal Way, and my shift started a long time before Mr. Musician dragged himself out of bed in the morning.
I hopped in my shitty Honda Civic and drove the six minutes down to Canal Street, which all the local kids called Anal Street. I mean, who could blame them? The joke is right there. We even had a Canal Days festival and all that small-town junk, and what else was there to do as a teenager but make fun of it all? It wasn’t like Delaney was bursting with entertainment possibilities.
Anyway, the Canal Way Eatery was a sorta nice sounding name for what amounted to a tin can diner with a walk-in cooler attached to it. The whole thing seemed like it was held together with sticks, spit, and prayer, but it had been a staple in our town since the fifties, and it was one of the only places to eat, so I made all right tips. After football games on Fridays and weekend breakfast shifts were particularly lucrative.
As I drove, I drummed along to an old Metallica song on a semi-local rock station. My car didn’t have an aux cord or anything like that, so I still had to rely on radio tunes to rev me up in the morning. I itched a little for a cigarette, something that only ever happened on morning drives with the windows down, but I’d quit a year ago and was still going strong. Still, something about the crisp fall air made me want a smoke and a nice pumpkin beer. I know it’s not the coolest place in the world, but something about autumn in Ohio made the simple pleasures of small-town living okay for a bit. Maybe that was my eternal optimism again, though. It seemed like I was forcing a lot of that lately with the house, and Beck, and my job, and…
But my mom always told me to make the best of what I had, so I guess I was a pro at making lemonade out of lemons.
There were two cars in the parking lot when I pulled in. I immediately recognized them as cars for the other employees. No customers yet, thank goodness. We opened at nine for a late breakfast during the week, though on Saturdays and Sundays, we opened for the early bird special by seven. I hopped out of my car with a nice groan from my door, then walked through the diner’s dinged-up metal back door. As I walked, I tied my waitressing apron around my waist. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wear the old-timey waitressing uniform with the cap, apron, and pastel-colored, button-down dress. The Canal Way let me work in black pants and a branded tee, and I even got to wear my old grease-stained Chuck Taylor sneakers. I used to have to have “natural” colored hair, but they’d grown more casual with their dress code since I’d started back in high school. Now, most people were used to my tattoos and my hair, which had been every color of the rainbow at least twice. I still got some looks from the older folks in town, but you can’t expect much else. You can’t teach an old dog how not to be a judgmental dick, or however the saying goes.
When I walked in, the fluorescent lights greeted me with their intermittent flickering, casting an eerie, uneven light across the scuffed linoleum floors. The back hallway was notoriously creepy, but the lights evened out in the kitchen and dining room. As always, the air carried a heavy scent—a blend of old grease, years of cooked meals, and some faint cigarette smoke from when we still had a smoking section. Or, I guess until the nineties, the whole place was probably a smoking section.
“Hello!” I yelled to my two coworkers clattering around in the kitchen.
There’d be plenty of time to gossip in a bit, but I had to get a few things done just before nine. Quickly, I grabbed a spray bottle and a rag and began to clean the tables, counter, and bar stools. The vinyl on both the booths and the stools was cracked and repaired with duct tape and patches in some places. Most of the time, when you sat down, they emitted a sound like a squeaky fart, as if protesting that you were sitting on them. The diner hadn’t been updated since maybe the eighties, though it had stuck with the fifties decor. Wiping the tables off was its own useless task, seeing as they were perpetually sticky, as were the metal salt and pepper shakers and burnished old napkin holders. The jukebox, however, was always in working order, and I turned it on just before the bell over the door dinged with our first customer. An old Patsy Cline song came on as Carl Brimley shuffled in.
“You’re up first!” my friend Jessica called from the kitchen. She was my best friend and one of the only other dependable waitresses.
That was fine by me. Carl wasn’t a bad tipper, and he’d never been a creep.
I grabbed a faded menu, the laminated edges on it curling, even though I knew Carl wouldn’t need it. I also grabbed my dog-eared notebook and the pen from my apron, even though I knew I wouldn’t need them. It was just a habit. Carl always ordered the same thing. Even though it was nine in the morning, the old plumber would get a meatball sub so greasy it looked orange, a black coffee, and then pop two Tums. Behind me, I heard the usual comforting sounds from the kitchen—the sizzle of the grill, the hum of the equipment, and the clatter of dishes.
Yep, just another wonderful, normal morning at the diner, coming from my wonderful, normal home.
But that bubble burst pretty quickly when I got a real look at Carl.
He sat in his usual booth, looking sweaty and a little disheveled, which was normal, but he also looked extra morose, which was not. When I walked over to grab his order, he barely bothered to meet my eyes.
