7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

T hankfully, the following day was a Sunday.

I had no early classes, and the bookstore was closed. My eyes didn't open until close to noon, which was excessive, even for an exhausted spiritualist. The autumn sun was bright today, striping my bedroom with warm beams even though the window was steamy. I'd have to cover the old panes with plastic soon to help cut down on drafts for the winter. If only we had enough cash to buy new windows…

Staying in bed and daydreaming about thermal windows was a luxury. Turning my thoughts from double-pane low E bow windows to Phil, something else that was dreamy and would keep me warm in the winter, I sighed softly. It hardly seemed real. My life wasn't made of such fluff and light. Of course, Phil could have taken the night to think about everything that had happened after our kiss and was typing out an "It's not you, it's me" text. Not that I would fault him for coming to his senses.

The sun felt a little less cheery now that I had a nugget of cold dread in my gullet. I rolled to the side, found my phone, and took a bolstering breath. Lying on my back, I opened my notifications. Fourteen notifications. No, twenty-four. No, thirty-two. And more were coming in as I watched. What was going on? I rubbed my eyes with my fingertips. Okay, so the huge amount wasn't from sleepy dust. Who was tagging and texting me? I had no friends.

Opting to let the personal texts go in case there was a bad one from Phil, I took a fast trip to Instagram. Several of the team's players' girls had tagged me in photos from the game last night. Most were glowing images of beautiful young women squashing close around a befuddled-looking Asian guy. The guy being me. I had several new friend requests as well. Sir Thomas appeared on my extra pillow with a soft little PIFF and a mewl.

"Is this what it's like to be popular?" I asked the ghostly feline. He began grooming his face. Thankfully, spectral cats left no fur or litter behind on the bedding. The tuxedo cat ignored me, which, yeah, typical cat. After accepting the friend requests and spending a few moments staring at myself surrounded by the beautiful people, I opened up my texts with trepidation. There were only a few. Three were spam calls and one was Roxie asking if I wanted to meet up for a fundraiser her sorority was sponsoring for the local queer teen camp. I replied with a yes.

Phil's message sat there like a missive of death.

I glanced at the cat licking his balls, foot in the air, with not one damn care. "If he says he wants to break up, can I cry on your shoulder?"

Sir Thomas looked at me blankly, tongue halfway out. "Right. Stop being a drama llama. Okay. I am reading it now."

I drew in a deep breath and held it.

Morning! Are you doing anything this afternoon? We could go pumpkin hunting.

Do you carve jack-o'-lanterns? Should we get one for Grandpa?

I woke up thinking of you. That kiss, your special skills, and I am so excited to be dating you.

If that sounds pushy let me know. My last girlfriend said I was too eager to be loved.

If I'm being too eager just say so. I can dial back my enthusiasm. I think.

Man, I am making myself loopy. Do I make you loopy?

Do you like cider? We can buy some at the apple farm if we go to find pumpkins.

Okay, I'm going to stop gushing on you. XOXO ~ P

My exhale was so long, I got a little dizzy. He sounded like he was still onboard the Archimedes Kee crazy train. Choo-choo! I couldn't fight the smile that overtook me as I reread his texts. I decided to try to answer each one.

Morning! I am free today and would love to go pumpkin hunting.

Yes, we make jack-o'-lanterns for the store. Grandpa's are always lopsided.

You're not pushy at all. I'm kind of eager too so we're alike in that way.

Thinking of you makes me loopy and a few other things that I can't type out for fear of death by embarrassment.

I love cider. And please gush on me as much as you want. I like it. XOXO ~ A

I'd barely hit send and I saw those three dancing dots as Phil typed.

Cool! I'll be over in an hour or so. I can't wait to see you. And maybe kiss you. ~ P

I'll be ready. For seeing you and for kisses. ~ A

I hit send before I could rethink that flirt and erase it. Phil sent me a row of heart emojis. I wasn't sure if my feet even touched the floor when I went to shower and shave.

Grandpa was sitting down to have lunch when I arrived in the kitchen.

"Well, you look like you feel better. How is your headache?" He sat down with his egg salad sandwich.

"Gone," I replied as I started making myself a cup of tea. I dropped some bread into the toaster and dug some raspberry jam out of the fridge. Grandpa watched me as he ate. I sat across from him with my tea, toast, and jam. The weekly pile of bills sat by the tea kettle. I shoved them under my arm to go through after I ate. Maybe we could pay some? It was doubtful.

"So, how was your date last night?" he asked, then licked some egg salad from his fingers.

"It was good." I couldn't quite work up the confidence to leap over that hurdle. "I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I told him about my gift." Silver eyebrows flew up. "I know, I never tell anyone, but we walked into the book club and he saw what he thought were haunted books."

"Oh dear," Grandpa said, gaze filled with worry. "Did he lose his shit?"

That made me smile down at my toast. Losing his shit just sounded funny coming from an octogenarian. "No, actually, after a short time spent on the floor where he was a little freaked out and mildly hyperventilating, he seemed okay with it. He texted me to see if I wanted to go pumpkin hunting with him today. I'm guessing at the apple farm over in Killikee as he mentioned cider…"

"Oh I love apple cider! Grab us some and a fat pumpkin for me to slice a scary face into."

"Will do." I smeared some jam on my toast, my eyes fixed on the smooth purple spread. "Do you think he could really be into me?"

"I think he would be lucky to get you! Only people with great compassion and astral acceptance of the knowledge of another life after this one can be with a gifted seer such as you."

"I'm not sure how gifted I am." I sighed as I dunked my toast into my tea.

"You're young yet. You'll find your path and how to walk it." He reached out to pat my hand. I wasn't nearly as sure as he was about my future, my gift, or much of anything. I guess that's typical for someone in their early 20s, though, or so the talk show hosts all say. "I hope Reggie made the tea properly last night." My eyes flew from my soggy toast to him. "I heard him out here clattering about, so I offered to brew a good pot for you two."

"It was you who used the good set?" He nodded. "But that's only for extra special occasions."

"I think you finding your soul mate is a most special occasion." His dark eyes glowed behind his bifocals.

"Grandpa, he's not my soulmate. We've had one date, and that one nearly ended in catastrophe."

His cheeks rounded into wrinkly apples when he smiled. "You'll see. I might not have the sight, but I know when two people are destined to be together. Oh, I have to be at the senior center to help build the kissing booth for the Halloween party. I'm selling smooches for the first hour!" He would rake in the bucks, I was sure. "Stop doubting yourself. You are a loveable man. It just took a little time for you to find the other half of your heart." He rose, patted my cheek, and made his way to his room, his cane tapping as he went.

Feeling about as light as I ever had, I finished my breakfast and opened a few bills. Most were utilities, which we could jiggle. The last one was property taxes. Already past due. The notice was to inform us that we had until December 31 to pay the full amount due or our shop—and our home—would be sold off for back taxes.

And there went all that bouncy lightness I'd been feeling. Well, shit . How the hell would we be able to gather up over two grand in two months? We were robbing Peter to pay Paul as the old saying goes. Shit. It looked like I'd be quitting college to work at another part-time job which would suck, but my chances of landing a job in the government in an Asian diplomatic office were slim to begin with. Still, it stung to give up on a dream, but unless some miraculous money-making scheme fell into my lap in the next sixty days, this looked to be my last semester at Liverswell University.

***

"I honestly like this one. I mean, sure, it's a little on the warty side but that would look cool as hell if you or Grampy Kee wanted to make it look like Mrs. Bendricks, the school librarian."

Phil's cheery voice yanked me from the intense stare I'd been leveling at a wandering ghost for the past five minutes. It looked to be a Mennonite man, with a straw hat, thick beard, and plain clothes. Oddly enough, he was barefoot as he moved through the pumpkin patch, unable or unwilling to speak to me, which was fair. Not every ghost wished to gabber at you about tight arseholes or how poorly Sir so-and-so's valet tied his neckerchief. Some just wanted to walk the fields they had once farmed and check the produce.

"Sorry, I was watching an old farmer moving through the patch," I softly replied, still feeling odd about being able to share my world with someone not related to me.

"Oh." Phil lowered the warty pumpkin to scan the field. "Is it a he, or a she?" He hurried to pull out his camcorder to sweep the patch.

"A he, perhaps Mennonite. He's not showing any signs of a violent death, but why he's still here is a mystery."

"That is so cool. I wish I could see him!"

I glanced from the ghostly man in the straw hat to Phil. He stood beside me in jeans, a Lions varsity jacket, and Chucks. Wind-tousled gold hair, bright blue eyes, cheeks red from the cold wind rustling through the pumpkin vines and cornstalks. He was so handsome, so vibrant, and so damn accepting. How was I even living this right now?

"He's not paying much attention to me, but I suspect he can sense me."

"Well, he's just a silly pumpkin farmer if he ignores you. You're the prettiest man in at least five counties."

"You're beyond belief." I ran my cold finger over his hand. That got me a smile that nearly lifted the blues clinging to me. "I'm sorry I'm being so miserable today. I have a lot on my mind. Our taxes are due, and we don't have the money to pay them."

Honestly, it just blurted out of me. I'd not wanted to burden him with more Kee shit, but there it was floating in the air like a bloated fly.

"Okay, first, you're not being miserable, just a little distant. Like distracted. Which is totally understandable. You carry a lot of weight. Why don't we go to the cider stand, sit on a hay bale, and we can talk about it? I mean, if you want to talk to me."

I slipped my cold fingers into his jacket pocket since he was toting a warty pumpkin and a camcorder.

"I'd like to talk to you." He stowed the Canon and tucked his chosen bright orange gourd under his arm. We strolled to the little wooden stand at the end of the patch, skirting around the rustling corn stalks and stepping carefully over tiny decorative gourds amid the huge pumpkins crawling across the dirt. The sound of kids squealing floated over from the corn maze.

He bought us two glasses of cider, pressed just an acre away at the Schmidt Orchard, the same farm that sold pumpkins in the fall, wreaths of pine in the winter, and flowers in the spring and summer. Apple cider in hand, we dropped onto a sturdy square bale, one of many that outlined the vast pumpkin patch. The smell of apples, locally tapped maple syrup, cloves, orange, and cinnamon wafted up from the warm cider I was holding between my hands.

"So, taxes, huh?" Phil asked to broach the subject once more.

"Due at the end of the year," I replied with a hearty sigh as I stared down at a few cloves floating on top of my cloudy brown drink.

"Okay, well, we need to ramp up promo for the store. Make more vids. Sell more books. The holiday season is coming up, so I bet we can come up with a good gimmick to—oh! I have an idea." He shot to his sneaks. His warty pumpkin tipped over and rolled onto my foot. "Okay, so you know those guys online who ghost hunt?"

"You'll have to be more specific. There are hundreds of them." That was no lie. You couldn't swing an undead cat and not hit a supernatural detective online. The internet was alive with all sorts of supposed clairvoyants or spectral sleuths. Most were hacks or actors. A few could be legitimate, but they were generally buried under the more outlandish shows. Those of us with real gifts didn't generally make buffoons of ourselves in front of a camera when we spoke to those who lingered.

"True. Well, they're a couple of guys who search old places and look for ghosts and ghoulies in Oregon. One time they went to a western ghost town and got pings on their ghost reader thingy. They're pretty funny. We could do that! No, don't wrinkle your nose. Hear me out." He was fully animated now, stalking back and forth, waving his cup of steaming cider about as he spoke. "We do a show. We get some advertisers, and we livestream it. We find a ghost for you to talk to and people come into the shop to buy books and meet you."

"Uh-huh." I loved that he was so excited about this, but I didn't see how one livestream could save the bookstore from being put on the block. "That sounds pretty cool and everything but—"

"No, we do a pay-per-view stream! Yeah, that's even better. We push it hard all over campus." He stalked back and forth, his eyes alive with possibilities.

"Sure, yeah, we can do that, but we're nobodies." I didn't want to burst his bubble too roughly, so I was trying to gently ease him down from the clouds. "Most of those types of shows have clever names and fancy graphics. They're professionally made."

He spun to look at the overcast fall sky. "We can call ourselves something catchy. One of the guys on the team is a graphic designer. He could whip up a cool logo for us. Then we can go out to one of the haunted places you know about, and I can film and you can talk to ghosts. And we rake in all the bucks for the shop!"

Surely this was madness. It was absurd. "What would we call ourselves?"

"Something that reflected our new partnership." He stared at a passing cloud, a dull slate-colored puff. "Phil and Arch Hunt Ghosts?"

"Oh, well, that's not bad at all." It was honestly pretty bad. I sipped at my drink, unsure of how I'd gone from spitting on the whole idea to now mulling over potential names.

"Or we use our last names?"

I chewed on a bit of orange from my drink. "Kestrel and Kee?"

His face lit up like the New Year's ball at Times Square. "Yeah, Kestrel and Kee, Paranormal Investigators." He went to a knee in front of me. "This is the best idea in the whole history of best ideas."

It was silly. It wouldn't bring in a dime. It was nonsense. Who on earth would want to watch two dopes bumble around in some backwoods pumpkin patch trying to get Farmer Ezekial to say a few words on camera? No one. Yet there was no way I could say no to Phil as he gazed at me with such big blue eyes.

"We can try it." I folded like a lawn chair under a rhino.

Phil hooted, kissed me on the lips, and then ran in circles until he got dizzy and tipped over.

The Mennonite farmer shot me a look that screamed "You are a dummkopf" before disapparating into thin air. Maybe I was a dummy, but I had nothing to lose other than my dignity. And it would make Phil happy. Something that was becoming quite important to me of late.