2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

T he next day was a slog of epic proportions.

I'd been awoken at three in the morning by a neighboring spirit having a rather heated conversation with Reggie at the foot of my bed. This happened quite regularly. Reggie getting into tiffs with the ghosts that moved about the neighborhood. They usually didn't take place in my bedroom, but on occasion, it did happen.

Rolling over, I pulled my pillow over my head to block out the sniping of one irate marquis and a deceased milkman. Caleb Nichols had worked this street in the late 1800s, delivering milk with a horse and wagon. He met his end, tragically, in 1899. His horse, Winifred, kicked him in the head one day when he was bent over tying his shoe. To this day, Caleb, a rather handsome fellow despite the odd-shaped dent in his skull, arrived clad in white, his cap missing as it had flown off after the death blow from Winifred, to finish his delivery route. Reggie always bickered with the poor man to the point that I felt Reg had a thing for the affable countryfied milkman but was unable to simply say it aloud.

"…why in a country as vast as this you cannot procure clotted cream. Honestly, this is why your side lost the war."

"We won that war, Mr. Marquis," Caleb replied in a thick New England accent.

"Oh yes. Well, we should have won. Dashedly uncivilized lands these colonies."

I sat up, barked at them to take the clotted cream discussion downstairs, and then sighed and thanked Caleb for placing a ghostly half-gallon glass bottle of milk on my dresser before moving through the wall with Reggie on his heels. As soon as Caleb disappeared from sight so too had the milk bottle. I'd tried to fall back to sleep but my rest was fractured.

I rolled out of bed at five, made some tea, and opened my laptop to try to work on my Asian studies paper, but that only led my mind to wander about Phil Kestrel. Why on earth was a WASP—I was totally guessing about the Protestant part—taking Asian studies and English lit classes? I wasn't buying the whole BL story he had fed me. Asian studies wasn't a throwaway class for a jock sailing through his classes. There were far easier courses for a football player to take to keep his grades up enough to keep him on the team.

Something was off about Phil. Sipping green tea while staring off into space, my unease began to grow. I should have told Phil nope sorry no openings left, which yeah, was a total lie, but knowing he would be here this evening with all that bubbly, friendly, sexy vibe was making me edgy. Maybe I should text him and tell him I was sick. Deathly sick. On death's door sick. Then I could spend my night doing something other than staring into eyes as blue as a spring lake on a clear, cold morning when the dew was—

"Morning, sūnzi," Grandpa called as he slip-slapped into the kitchen in his sloppy slippers, a long robe hanging off his slim shoulders. "You're up early."

"Reggie and Caleb were arguing," I explained, coming out of my silly daydream about sapphire eyes. Honestly, as if Phil Kestrel would give me the time of day if he didn't want something from me. I'd moved under his radar since freshman year.

"Oh, that's rude of them to fight in your room. Have you told Caleb to leave the milk on the stoop?" Grandpa asked, then tugged up his running shorts.

"He says he can't do that since we don't have a milk box. Something about Sunny Moo Dairy delivery policies." I shrugged. "Maybe the next time we're headed to the cardiologist over in Killikee for your pacemaker checkup, we can stop at that antique store. They might have an old milk box lying around for cheap."

"Good call," he said as he opened the fridge and stuck his head into it. "I like eggs."

"I do too."

With a nod, he whipped up some fluffy scrambled eggs and tomatoes for our morning meal. Since the store was due for a thorough dusting, I spent the day climbing up and down a ladder, battling cobwebs and angry spiders, all the while stressing over Phil. Grandpa was feeling off, probably the big night spent out yesterday, so he rested, watched his soaps, and stirred up a pot of beef noodle soup for dinner. By the time the sun was beginning to set, I was pacing the non-fiction section, spying at the front door from behind an old oaken bookshelf, and telling myself that we needed the money.

"What manner of game is this we're playing?" I jumped a foot. Reggie peered around the bookshelf, drawing back at my glower. "Apologies, Arch, I was humming ‘Come Shake Your Dull Noodles' quite loudly as I approached."

"Hum louder," I spat just as the door opened. The bells ringing seemed exceptionally loud in the quiet shop. I felt the cold draft of an early October wind whistling into the shop.

Reggie spun around like a top. "By the King's curly hairs, what a fine specimen of masculine beauty!" Shit. It had to be Phil. I'd left the grate up and the door unlocked for him even though I'd wanted to lock up shop and hide in my bedroom upstairs. "Go wait on that man before he leaves," Reggie whispered before disappearing only to reappear behind Phil, who was eyeballing the store with what could only be described as childish glee. Like a toddler seeing Disney World for the first time.

Reggie fanned his face with a delicate hand and slapped the bells. They rang out a second time, making Phil look behind and up in confusion. Damn it. I rushed out into the walkway between biographies and memoirs, brushing into a stand holding books by a former first lady. The books hit the floor with a crash. Phil glanced my way. His smile was blinding. And so incredibly pretty. My chest felt tight with all his prettiness, so I dropped to one knee and began gathering the novels from the floor.

"Hey, Archie! There are so many books here," he gushed as he rushed over to assist. He knelt beside me, his gaze lingering on me as I tried to think of something intelligent to say.

"It's a bookstore," I replied with more venom than I had wanted. His cheeriness dimmed a fraction, and I felt instantly sorry for being so mean, which was not how this dynamic was supposed to play out. The jock wasn't the one who should garner pity because the weirdo was being a snot. "I mean, yeah, we do stock a lot of books. Older ones mostly."

"I think it's cool. Like this lady here." He tapped the front cover. "She has hair that looks like a football helmet, and her hands are in gloves. You don't see people wearing gloves much unless it's cold, but these are dainty white gloves like ladies wear to tea parties. Do you have tea parties here?"

I stared openly. "Why would you ask that? Because I'm Asian and so I naturally drink nothing but tea?" The fact that we did drink lots of tea had nothing to do with anything. Did it? Shit. No, yes, maybe. Shit. Fine, I like tea. There. Fuck.

"I thought bookstores had tea parties when people came here to read once a month."

Damn. It. Dammit! "Oh no, we don't have…well, a book club used to come in once a month and utilize the reading nook in the corner to discuss—"

"A reading nook?!" Phil shot to his big sneakers with a memoir of an old first lady in hand and went off to find said reading nook. I rose, slowly, unsure of why I was being such a complete dick to a guy who, no shit, was bouncing around a decrepit bookshop as if he had just found his way into…well, whatever big jocks found exciting other than scoring touchdowns. "I found it!"

Reggie floated past, a smile on his face. I tossed the memoirs aside and raced through the ghost, quaking as I moved through him, the infusion of his form and mine filling my mind with his thoughts and emotions. It was incredibly unpleasant.

"Ugh, oh, do watch your way! What a terribly mawkish sensation!" Reggie exclaimed, pulling away with haste. I shook free of the rush of cold that moved through me, bumping into a stack of cookbooks on top of a round end table. With a lurch, I caught them. "I must insist you do not rush through me again. It's dashedly unpleasant and not at all the polite thing to do."

"Sorry," I gushed, righting the books and sprinting to the readers' nook. The small space sat under the stairs to the second floor. It was a tiny space with room for just one big ugly plum sofa and a thin teakwood coffee table piled high with books to be donated to the local library winter book sale. Mostly it was a storage space since the book club disbanded a few years ago. People read on an eReader now and life was just too busy, it seemed. Personally, I loved curling up in this little hidden space under the stairs with a hardcover sci-fi read, but I was a rarity in more ways than one. I was an old soul living in a young body, Grandpa always claimed. If I had a yard, I'd be bitching at the kids to get off it. Pretty soon I'd be joining Grandpa at the mahjong table to complain about my fallen arches. Not that my arches had fallen—yet—but it was just a matter of time. I inherited all the bizarre shit from my ancestors, might as well add foot maladies to the list. There sat Phil, spread out over the dilapidated sofa that Sir Thomas, obviously rudely awoken by the massive linebacker, was sharpening his ghostly claws upon. "Oh hey, this nook is not for use anymore."

"Oh why? It's so cool. Can we study here?" Phil beamed up at me. "I have my books all downloaded. I think Mandarin looks so pretty. And for English lit, there are four choices of books to pick that we're supposed to read and then deconstruct. Which is really a shame because why would you take apart a story that someone worked so hard on?"

"I like him. He's a burly blond honey pot!" Reggie whispered before rushing over to sit beside Phil on the plaid plum sofa, legs primly crossed, hands resting on his knee. "I dare say he's eager for teaching. Why don't you find your glasses and proceed to lay a rod across his firm arse? My social calendar for the night is dreadfully empty and I would love a bit of naughty school lad and the randy schoolmaster to fill the waning hours of this eve."

My face flamed instantly. Was it possible to kill someone twice? "Uhm, the Wi-Fi is weak back here." I waved a hand in the air to indicate the rear of the shop.

"Oh bummer." Phil pulled out his phone. His slight frown turned upside down. "I have a full bar! Cool! We can study here. I moved all the boxes marked library. Do I need to take off my shoes? I read that Asian culture is big on removing shoes before you enter. Oh man, I already entered!" And with that, he hurried to remove his Chucks. "There, sorry for the disrespect." He placed them thoughtfully on the floor beside the spectral cat.

Reggie was staring at Phil as one does a box of puppies.

"No, it's fine down here in the shop. Upstairs where we live, we remove our shoes at the door."

"Oh awesome. So, you want to sit here?" He patted the cushion next to him, his large hand sailing through Reggie who giggled like a goose. The touch of a normal human did nothing to the spirits. It was only a full-body meld with a medium that opened up the dead to intense insight from those with the spiritual eye. Most of the ghosts I knew hated to be merged with me. I understood why. Who wanted someone delving into your deepest feelings and thoughts? Dust billowed out of the cushion. "Oh! Do you have copies of the books here in print? I love print books. They smell so good."

"I…yeah, they do," I stammered. This guy had to be feeding me some shit he just thought I wanted to hear.

"Like I wish you could inhale all the words from the pages into your head and read them anytime you wanted, but when you read, you get that great book smell."

Reggie tipped his head. "Egad, this lad is adorable . I insist you use your rod on his meaty backside immediately!"

If only Ghostbusters was real. I ignored the tittering redcoat. "We can look over your list. If they're classics, we probably have them lying around somewhere."

"Cool." Phil focused on his phone as his thick waves of hair tumbled onto his brow. Those strands needed to be gently pushed away from his eyes. "Okay, right, so Professor Loop sent out this list like last week, so I'm already a week behind with this and that paper for Asian studies but Professor Hayashi gave me a courtesy seven-day pass when I told her you were tutoring me."

"She did?" I had never seen Professor Hayashi do anything kind for anyone. She was always sniping at me and the other ten students in her class. And handing out extensions? Unheard of. What kind of spell did this mammoth footballer weave on people? "Let's focus on finding your chosen book for deconstruction, and then we'll start working on your Mandarin lessons."

He smiled at me so earnestly that I couldn't pull in a proper breath. The man was gorgeous. And he seemed so sincerely sweet. It was tossing my whole preconceived notion of the world and those who walk upon its ear, as the oldsters who hang at the senior center say.

"You're the best, Archie."

"Okay," I mumbled. What did someone say to a compliment like that? "Thanks?" I forced out just as the door to our apartment upstairs squeaked. I glanced up to see Grandpa making his way down the stairs. He was dressed to party hearty, as he liked to say. Pressed trousers, cotton shirt, thick sweater, white sneakers, and cane. His eyes met mine as he neared the bottom step, and he spied Phil packed back into the nook.

"Oh this must be the new student," Grandpa said and Phil shot to his feet, driving his head into the backside of the staircase. The thunk on his head didn't stop him from bowing. Grandpa, being polite, bowed in reply, but generally we Chinese didn't bow with the frequency of other Asian cultures. In certain cultural or religious practices but not in greeting. We're more prone to simply shake, nod, or verbally greet someone, but the thought was exceptionally kind.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kee," Phil said, taking the hand my grandfather offered and shaking it gently. "Your grandson had been kind enough to help me learn Mandarin for a class I've just taken. Oh, and he's going to help me with English lit. We have a list of books to pick apart."

"Ah," Grandpa said, then eased his hand out of Phil's to end the handshake. "Archimedes is quite the book lover as are all in our family. Many wonderful things are passed down from one generation to another."

Yep, I heard that little nudge at me. My grandfather and I had vastly different views on being a seer of spirits. He wished he had inherited the gift, while I would have been happy to have been one of those it skipped. What use was it to be able to speak with the dead other than to make modern life just that much harder?

"So we're about to look for books for analyzing for Phil," I said, stepping over the landmine of lack of gratefulness for my family's gifts.

"You should make tea for your student," Grandpa stated with a look that meant I should go now and make tea because it was hospitable. "We have a box of those little vanilla wafers."

Phil, now rubbing his head where he thumped it, bowed a few dozen times. "I love cookies."

Grandpa smiled pleasantly at Phil, shot me a look that screamed be a good host, and then ventured out into the fall evening. Phil eased out of the nook and removed his coat. My gaze darted down over the perfectly fitted Eurythmics white tee and jeans. The man had drool-worthy pecs and thighs. And that smile. I said something about tea before jogging up the stairs to slam the door in the handsome face of temptation itself.

Chest heaving, dick half hard, I closed my eyes to gather myself.

"You do know that he fancies you, yes?" Reggie announced on my left. I cracked an eye open to peer at him. "Truly! His eyes were on your arse as you hurried off like a maiden being pursued by a randy bishop."

"Stop. Just stop." I pushed away from the door, feeling the ghost moving with me into the kitchen, where I fell into the familiar routine of making tea. We used an electric kettle for the day-to-day tea. The good porcelain pot only came out rarely now, on holidays or when family flew over from Kunming. "Your mind is always on ass."

"Oh contraire. I think about cocks and bollocks quite a bit." My glower over the tin of green tea leaves made him disappear in a flouncy huff. I shoved his nonsense to a corner of my mind as I made tea, then grabbed the box of vanilla wafers from the cupboard. I also found a legal pad and pencils for jotting down characters for his intro to Mandarin. Down the stairs I went, finding Phil perusing the classics section, his nose wrinkled in thought. When he saw me, the crinkles disappeared, and he jogged over to take the cookie box out from under my arm.

"This is nice. The last tutor I had never made tea and cookies. He rarely bathed. I know you bathe because you always smell like coconut and your hair is shiny." I gaped. His smile faltered and his cheeks flamed. "Not that I was sniffing your hair or anything. I'm not that kind of guy. I would never sniff without consent."

"That's good to know." I walked to the nook, placed the mugs on the table, and turned to find him staring at me from across the store, with Jane Eyre in his hand and his face troubled. "Did you choose that one?"

He nodded. Huh, an odd choice, but whatever. I would have picked him for a Lord of the Rings or Beowulf kind of manly man. But whatever, it was his book to pick apart.

"Okay, we'll start with that. I take it you've read it before?"

Again he nodded his head, his big feet locked into place now, it seemed. I spied Eloise passing outside the window. Phil saw my vision dart to the window and glanced over his shoulder, then back at me.

"Alley cat," I lied, my sneaks glued to the hardwood floor as well, it seemed. "So for the English lit work, you'll have to read it first. Are you sure you want that one?"

"Yeah, I read the back." He flipped the well-used hardcover over. "It says it stars an eponymous heroine." His bright blue eyes met mine. A funny flutter of moonmoth wings erupted in my belly, which was wholly stupid. "I'm not sure what eponymous means, but I think Jane sounds like she goes through a lot with this Mr. Rochester."

"Uhm, well, yeah, it's…" I had no words. The man had left me void of intelligent conversation. Not that my conversational skills were that magnificent. "It's a classic."

"Cool!" He broke free of his footlock, bounding over like a chocolate lab puppy, all bright eyes and endless joy over a new toy. "So, I'll read it tonight, yeah, or well, the first chapter. Then we can maybe meet tomorrow night to do some analyzing? Oh wait, I have a game tomorrow night. How about Saturday, or are you like going out on a date or anything?"

I nearly choked, trying to keep my laughter contained. Queer Asian guys who lived with their grandfather over a dying bookshop and emitted a weird FREAK vibe didn't really have a social calendar filled with hot hookups.

"I think I'm free Saturday," I casually replied so as not to sound like a dorky loser.

"Awesome. I can't wait to start reading it. So, can we do Mandarin now?" I swear he was close to exploding like a firecracker. Over Charlotte Bronte and tonal introductions? Maybe Phil Kestrel was just as odd as me, but his beauty and athletic prowess kept the bullies at bay. Or maybe I was lost in wishful thinking. Probably the latter.

"Sure, yeah, we can start." I waved at the plum couch. He sat like an obedient pup. I wiggled into a small space on his left, his thigh resting next to mine, making me feel wobbly as I passed over his tea mug. His fingers brushed mine. Sparks raced up to my shoulder and then spread out in waves that felt nothing like the psychic overload of running through Reggie. This was pure attraction coursing through me, which was going to make working on the four main tones of Mandarin a bit of a struggle as my tongue was now tied.