“Jamie, you’re overthinking this.”

“You always tell me that I’m either underthinking or overthinking. Which one is it, really?”

Kasey shoots me an exasperated look over the counter. I probably shouldn’t be openly talking to her in the shop, but no one is around to see. It’s getting late, and I only have half an hour left in my shift. I don’t expect anyone to drop in for flowers in that time frame. Kasey and I are alone in a tiny warm jungle.

The freezing wind outside drags tree branches against the windows, making muted scraping sounds.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell Kasey. “It’s so spooky out there tonight, I swear.”

“Ha. Technically I’m here haunting you, and that makes you less spooked?”

“Yes, less spooked, but more annoyed,” I fire back, “Especially when you’re giving me shit while I’m trying to focus!”

“Jamie. You’re spiraling. Close the laptop.”

I stare down helplessly at all of my open tabs. Diagrams, lesson plans, curriculum layouts, blog posts. Click here for 350+ free science worksheets. Fourth-grade level. Mom approved. Twenty of our favorite experiments for your budding scientist to try out. Printables. Projects. Hands-on learning at home. Fourth Grade Winter Packet - Free Download! STEM activities for kids. Modules. Answer keys. Click here. Click here click here click here.

Kasey opens her mouth to repeat herself, and I shut my laptop before she has to. Everything is starting to run together, my eyes refusing to focus in on even one more word.

“How can they possibly think I’m prepared to do this?” I crumple forward onto the counter, pressing my face into my palms. “It is criminally negligent to let me teach Ellen science. Why did I even agree to this? I was all prepared to say no, and then Aiden said a bunch of nice things and I-”

“Dude, you are missing the point by approximately twenty miles. This stuff?” Kasey points to my laptop. “This is what they don’t want you to do. If it was, they could just leave Ellen in the class she’s taking right now.”

“But then what do I-?”

“How did things go the first time? You just talked to her, right? Let her sort of guide the conversation, answered her questions?”

“Yeah…”

“So. Take her somewhere with a lot of plants and just feel it out.”

I blow out a long sigh and prop my chin on my hand.

“This is like, the one time in my life I wish that I’d gone to college.”

“Dear god, you really want to get into that right now?” Kasey quirks an eyebrow. “Do you not remember the Senior Year Two Week Nightmare?”

Oh, I remember the Senior Year Two Week Nightmare.

Kasey and I have been best friends for as long as I can remember. We squabble sometimes, but we rarely get into big, blowout fights. We’ve only had three of those over the entire span of our friendship, one of which happened during our senior year of high school.

Kasey had just started looking at colleges. We were sitting on my bed, and she was holding out two pamphlets: one for Columbia, and one for NYU.

“Jamie, New York City could really be-”

“I don’t want to live in New York City,” I’d interrupted.

“Okay, well, how does California sound? UC Berkeley has been sending me a lot of emails.”

I'd pulled out my phone and looked up the acceptance rate.

“Fifteen fucking percent, Kase-face? You can’t honestly think that I would ever get in.”

“You don't have to go there, specifically!" she'd snapped, startling me. "You could go to any other university in California! It’s not about the school. It’s about the fact that you don’t want to go!”

“Of course I don’t want to go, you know that! What would I even study?”

“Botany?”

“Just because I like plants? That doesn’t make me a botanist. I’m not good at school the way you are.”

“It doesn’t have to be botany! I did some research. There’s plant science, chemistry, cladistics-”

“Clad - what? Kasey, you’ve always known that I didn’t plan on going to college.”

“But - you haven’t changed your mind, like not at all-?”

“Why can’t you accept that I’m happy where I am? Were you not actually listening to me when I told you a hundred times that I don’t want to do this?”

“Seriously, you’re really gonna make me go without you?” She was shouting, by that point. “You’re gonna make me leave you behind?”

“You’re choosing to leave me behind!”

She recoiled sharply, her dark eyes stunned.

“No, hang on, I didn’t mean that.” I was stammering, suddenly on the verge of tears. “No no no, you should go, you have to go, but-”

“Wow, Jamie,” she’d muttered, under her breath.

“I take it back, okay? I didn’t mean it at all, you’re just - you’re freaking me out!”

“You’re freaking me out! And I don’t get why you won’t at least apply somewhere-”

“The application fees alone-”

“Yes, but your parents-”

“I’m not going to make them pay so that I can apply for something I have no intention of following through on!”

“So what, we just - end up talking on Skype or on the phone, and then eventually not having enough time for each other, and getting busy and growing apart, until we barely even know each other anymore, and I come back in four years and you have this whole other life and so do I, and it's not the same anymore, and…” Her voice broke, and cut out.

I stared at her for almost a full minute of shocked silence, hurt and bewildered and angry.

“Seriously? That’s how you think it would go?”

“That’s how it goes sometimes, Jamie, even if you don’t want it to happen that way!”

“I can’t believe you think that would happen to us.”

“I don’t want to risk that happening to us! And I can’t believe that you’re willing to!”

We didn’t speak for two weeks after that. It was awful. Avoiding each other at school, awkward and resentful, both of us reeling from the things we’d said to each other.

It was the best feeling ever when she finally hug-tackled me in the school parking lot and told me she didn’t want to fight with me, and I admitted that I was sad-eating way too many pizza bagels, and couldn’t we just…?

“Yes, please,” she’d groaned. “I can’t take this anymore.”

It turned out that we didn’t need to worry. Kasey and I were in touch the entire time she spent away at school. The time difference didn’t turn out to be too bad. She took me on a video-chat tour of her tiny dorm, and then her tiny studio apartment that three people were somehow living in. We sent each other postcards, and books we'd read and thought the other would like. She came back to Ketterbridge as often as she could, and once I showed up to surprise her on her birthday.

She’d text me highlights from her lectures. Have you heard of Zinaida Portnova? Girl poisoned over a HUNDRED Nazis between 1943-1944!! WORK, Zina!! 💯💯💯

We’d do early morning video chats. I would tell Kasey about Ketterbridge, and how Destinee, Kent, or Ellen was doing that week. Stuff happening in my romantic life, or with my parents, or at the shop. So this customer got BIG mad, right, because he wanted to send bouquets to like, five different women on Valentine’s Day, all with the same very raunchy message, and Kent said no, because of the store’s no cheaters policy. Dude threw an absolute tantrum, and Destinee has been doing impressions of it all day.

We’d also have late-night phone calls. A super giggly one when Kasey called to tell me about this cute guy named Milo, and then a long, tearful one when they split up. Calls about the drama with her roommates - I lived for those, my own personal reality TV.

Calls about a creep on the subway, or about how Times Square is actually the worst place to hang out in New York City. Calls about an exhibition she'd caught at the Whitney or MoMA PS1. The food in Spanish Harlem. Getting lost on the L train while trying to navigate Brooklyn, and getting directions from a busker in a thong playing an electric guitar on the platform.

Calls about whatever.

You know me, I'm not even into jazz, but there’s this jazz bar below this bookstore… Wait, did I tell you about that bookstore? I found it ‘cause I went to this panel discussion on gentrification, which, oh my god, Jamie, don’t let me forget to tell you about it later. It was literally moderated by someone named Brenda White, and yes, she’s exactly what you’re picturing.

“Jamie?” Present-day Kasey waves a hand in my face, and I surface from my memories, blinking. “I was just kidding. We seriously don’t have to rehash that argument. In fact, let’s please not.”

My throat suddenly feels a little tight. I lay my hand on the counter, palm up. Kasey tips her head to the side, but rests her hand on top of mine.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Yes, I’m just - thinking about that stupid fight we had, and - I’m happy that you came back here to do your Ph.D., because I missed you so fucking bad while you were gone, but... I’m also really glad that you ended up leaving Ketterbridge for a while. I’m glad that you got to experience all that before…”

I look down at her shimmering, opaque hand, and she nods slowly.

“Me, too. Got in a little adventure before it was all over.”

“Hey,” I tell her sternly. “The adventures are not over, okay?”

“I can’t go anywhere. Can’t touch or taste or feel anything.”

“We’re going to make it so that you can go somewhere. And yeah, maybe you can’t try out the food or whatever, but… You’re a ghost. Your options are pretty much unlimited, right? You can walk around museums forever, without your feet getting tired - you could put your head through the glass and get one inch away from the stuff they have on view! You can skip the line, walk right into all the ancient ruins you want to visit, check out all the places where they don’t allow tourists. You can do everything that you can’t normally do with people watching. You can sleep in the Louvre. You can make out with Will in the Parthenon in broad fucking daylight if you want to! Or - on a fancy couch in Buckingham Palace. I don’t know. You get my point.”

Kasey taps a finger to her lip, then grins at me.

“You’re right. I could fucking… jump from the top of the Cristo Redentor, if I wanted.”

“Okay, that sounds terrifying, but yes!”

Kasey smiles and tries to squeeze my hand. Her fingers briefly vanish into my palm, but it’s okay. I understand what she meant. A silence passes, and she pulls her hand away, shaking her head.

“How did we even get on this? All I was trying to say is that - what you did for Ellen last time, that’s what worked, so. Just find something new to tell her about, and then do what you did before.”

As always, Kasey is probably right, which means - oh, thank god. I can close the window with all of the frightening tabs. Just the thought is a relief.

“What would I do without you, Kase-face?”

“I don’t know. Good thing I’m one of two ghosts to ever exist in this town. Thank god for Aiden, right?”

Yes. In all possible ways, yes.

~~~~

“Hey,” Aiden says brightly, stepping barefoot out onto the porch. “I wasn’t expecting you, is everything alri-?”

I fling my arms around his neck and kiss him so forcefully that he stumbles back into his apartment. It only takes him a few seconds to recover, and then I’m being kissed back with equal enthusiasm. Aiden’s palms slide up my back, and he laughs against my mouth.

“Hi. What a nice surprise. What did I do to deserve this?”

“What didn’t you do to deserve this?” I slip my hands under his t-shirt, dragging my thumbs along the curves of his hip bones. Bite down on his lower lip and gently roll it between my teeth, stealing little tastes with my tongue. “You know how much I like you?”

I release his lip so he can answer.

“Um - a lot, based on this treatment I’m getting?” Aiden’s voice is a little breathless, and the sound of it hits me in all the right ways. I spread my fingers on his chest and push him flat against the wall, then stop to look at him. His hair is messed up, his chest rising and falling fast, his pupils all huge again.

“Where are the kneepads?” I demand, and he laughs.

“Shin guards.”

“Where are the shin guards?”

“I don’t know, but-”

“It’s cool, I can do it without them.”

Aiden takes my chin in his fingers, shaking his head. “You trying to blow up Kent’s house?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

He smiles widely, then draws me in for a much slower, calmer kiss.

“What prompted this?” he murmurs.

“Nothing. I was just thinking about how you gave me my best friend back, and then became my other best friend, and now I have two instead of zero. Because of you.” I nuzzle my nose into his. “How many times have I thanked you for that? If the number is less than one million, it hasn’t been enough.” I put my mouth to his neck, let my hands start to explore. Aiden breathes out a heavy exhale, closing his eyes and slipping his fingers into my hair. “Thank you,” I whisper, between soft, lingering kisses against his throat. “Again. A billion times over.”

He smiles, locks his arms around my back, and lifts me right up off the ground.

This time he doesn’t sling me over his shoulder. This time I find myself with my legs wrapped around his waist and my arms wrapped around his neck. This time there are messy, gasping kisses the whole way to the bed, where he drops me onto my back and climbs over me.

I push my fingers into the glossy chestnut mess. “I thought you said-?”

“To quote you,” he answers, busy undoing the buttons of my flannel, “Just make out with me until something explodes.”

My heart does several backflips in a row.

“Okay. Whatever. I don’t have anything better to do, I guess. Not right now, anywa-”

He pulls me up into another deep, heart-stopping kiss, and I forget everything I was going to say.

~~~~

Aiden is gone when I wake up, his side of the bed cold and empty. I sit up, alarmed, then remember that he left for work already. I vaguely recall a goodbye kiss from earlier this morning, but not the exact details. I was half-awake at best.

I reach for the pillow he always sleeps on and push my nose into it. The faint vetiver scent lulls me back to sleep until my alarm goes off about an hour later. I really don’t want to leave Aiden’s bed, but I have to get home and take a shower, eat something before work.

I wonder what we broke last night. We couldn’t see it in the dark, but we did hear glass shattering - a sound I’m becoming very familiar with. I check the trash bin in the kitchen and discover that Aiden has already cleaned everything up.

Two broken mugs, this time. Aiden isn’t going to have a single piece of dishware left in his apartment, the way things are going.

Crossing through Kent’s kitchen on my way out, I spot something on the counter: the folder that Gabby put together. I hesitate, then flip it open. The document at the top is the one from the school, already signed by the principal, Ellen’s science teacher, and Kent. There’s a line left blank, James Keane printed neatly beneath it. I’m the only one who hasn’t signed yet.

I stand there looking at it for a long moment, thinking about everything that my two best friends have told me over the last twenty-four hours.

I pad back upstairs to Aiden’s room, grab a pen from his desk, and scribble my name on the dotted line before I go.