The cemetery glowed green in the morning sunlight. It sprawled wide, pristine headstones clearly announcing new arrivals beside those struggling to whisper weather-beaten, moss-covered names. So I’d made the family plot. It gave me a bitter little chuckle to be buried next to the grandparents who thought of me as a bastard.
As I approached the gathering of black amongst the green, I hovered, keeping my distance. The crowd stood on fake grass, keeping the dirt off their good church shoes. My casket sank into the ground aided by what looked kind of like a mechanical altar, fringed with green cloth as if to hide the machinery. Behind them, a tractor waited to do the actual burying once everyone had gone.
My turnout looked even smaller this time. I didn’t linger on my mother and sister’s faces for long. Only enough to see their masks, not any cracks.
There weren’t any new faces, save one near the back. Though nobody seemed to pay him any mind, I had to get closer, see which asshole had shown up to my funeral wearing jeans.
He didn’t look bad, wearing a nice sweater and fitted denim over his dad bod, but it was nowhere near appropriate for the occasion. I resented his familiar attractiveness, blonde and clean and somewhat baby-faced under the beard. Once I recognized him, my insides frosted over.
Liam. I’d never seen his natural hair color under his black dye of old. He’d put on some weight, and carried it well, his old edges softened.
I looked at him. He looked back. Then he smiled, the painful overdue smile of long time no see.
“It’s awful to see you,” he said.
That stung for a moment, until I realized what he meant. “You too.”
We fell in step, instinctively looking for a more private place to talk, although no one could see us.
“When did you bite it?” I asked.
“Fuck if I know, it’s hard to keep track. It’s been… months, at least.”
My stomach sank like a stone. I hadn’t gotten my hopes up for myself, but I would’ve thought he’d make some front pages, or second or third, at least. Then again, I hadn’t been paying attention to the news.
“I hadn’t heard,” I admitted.
His eyebrows flickered up. “For real, nobody told you?”
“You think I kept in touch with anybody?”
He found it in him to smile, like we’d intended to meet like this, old friends catching up. “You did make yourself hard to find. I take it you never got my emails.”
I had, but I’d left them all unread.
“Now I get why you didn’t seem sad,” he said. “At least, no more than usual.”
I managed to keep the terror from widening my eyes too far, but I forgot about my voice. It cracked as I spoke. “You checked up on me?”
“I didn’t mean to spy, but what else could I do? You were doing it just now. It’s all we’ve got.”
So he’d seen firsthand how pathetic I’d become. I really ought to have died sooner. Then, he wouldn’t have had the chance to betray me, and we wouldn’t be on the brink of the conversation we were about to have now.
His voice went rough. “I hate what we did to you.”
I kept my gaze firmly ahead. “For once, could you give me some credit? I orchestrated most of my own destruction.”
“But I gave it some finishing touches.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at his old refrain, usually applied to writing songs. He joined me with his unusually big guffaw. It suited him better now that he’d filled out.
“It looks like we both got what we deserved.”
He gave me a look I recognized, meeting my casual cynicism with a stare that forced me to question whether it was warranted. “I don’t think we did.”
That might’ve been harsh. I shouldn’t have lumped him in with me. “How did it happen?” I asked.
He let his breath out slowly, bracing the back of his neck with his hand. He must not have met any other ghosts, telling the story over and over until it came as naturally as any other ice-breaker.
“I had a heart attack.”
“Really?” I asked. “At your age?”
“They think I had an undiagnosed condition.”
That, or we’d partied way too hard back in the day. We’d tried some of the hard stuff. Come to think of it, as much as he’d tried, maybe he’d never quit for good.
“Did you hear how I went?”
“I did,” he said.
So I didn’t have to elaborate. Before he could go ahead and ask anyway, I changed the subject. “What have you been doing with yourself?”
It sounded so mundane. No wonder he mistook my meaning.
“You mean, what did I do for a living?”
“I meant after dying.”
His head rolled on his shoulders. “I’ve been drifting around, peeking at people I used to know, people I don’t know, keeping up with the scene. I get to see all the shows at our favorite spots without asking to be put on the list.”
As if hardly any time had passed, no more than a day or so of misadventure separating us on the road, he asked me if I’d heard of this or that band, chided me for my ignorance, and promptly began whoring it up on their behalf. Same as ever. I found myself flushed with both annoyance and affection.
There’d been a reason I sort of cheated with him. Even if I’d had an open relationship with my boyfriend at the time, that only meant he could fuck groupies and I could sometimes settle for a roadie, not that I could fall for our bandmate.
“It’s nice to see you haven’t changed, you fucking snob.”
“I’ve changed some.”
As we wove around the headstones, it surprised me how different he looked. Rather, how different it felt to look at him. I could meet his gaze now without that old tug in my chest, the pull of the tide toward the moon. I’d never felt so firm on my feet in his presence.
It wasn’t just the beard and the dad bod. I’d gotten far past caring about appearance with him. I wondered how I looked to him now, bonier than ever, tattoos covered, piercings closed up, hair back to its natural color. We sort of matched. If anyone could see us, we might’ve passed for a suburban couple.
It still hurt, what he’d done. Even though he’d been the one to stay behind with me for a while, and he’d tried to reach out, make amends. But he no longer resembled the man who’d hurt me. He felt like a stranger, someone whose potential for regret lay ahead, not behind.
We drifted to a halt under the dappled shade of a tree. I guessed we were done pretending not to stare at each other. As I finally got a good look into those eyes again, I sighed. The old hollow in my chest where he used to be had closed up. The love no longer ran through me, any more than old blood on a bandage could flow back into the wound.
But it had been too damn long. After last night’s teasing, I couldn’t wait any longer, even if it was a terrible idea. At least his memories might not be so disorienting, since I’d share some of them.
Besides, we were at a funeral.
I put my hand on his arm, so he wouldn’t be too startled if he didn’t know we could touch. He didn’t look too surprised. I stood on tiptoe like old times, threw my arms around his shoulders, and laid it on him hard and fast.
Our mouths burned, and so did the rest of our bodies, tingling painfully from numb to overstimulated as we went down weightlessly onto the grass. I landed on top. Neither of us took any clothes off. We didn’t even need to voice our uncertainty over whether we could put them back on again. We simply pushed them aside as best we could and got busy.
It felt the same as the dancing, memories that weren’t mine swimming before my eyes. I dug my nails into his shoulders, like that could keep my head from spinning. Somewhere far away, my body keened and sang, and so did his, more like a sex dream than the real thing. Sometimes I saw him, with black hair and a thinner frame, and myself, a kaleidoscope of hair colors and slightly fuller curves and endless miles of skin. Other times, our faces changed, as different lovers came and went in our thoughts, unbidden and mostly unheeded.
Only one of them kept coming back—his wife.
“Shit,” I said.
I stared at him, back in the cemetery, blinking in the sun. He must’ve thought I’d cried out in a good way, because he didn’t even open his eyes. We’d already gotten this far, anyway. I’d learned a long time ago that I couldn’t un-fuck this guy. And I’d been alone so long, it felt like if I didn’t get off, I’d die again.
So I closed my eyes and tried my best to ignore his memories, riding him till we both finished at once. We’d never done that in life, but it helped to be in each other’s heads.
The afterglow didn’t last long. I got off him, not just because I didn’t go in for cuddling.
“Thanks, buddy.” Somehow, my voice didn’t feel the same in my throat. It pitched lower, with more growl and crackle. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my hair had changed color. “So, just out of curiosity, were you still with Haley?”
His eyes snapped open, startled out of post-coital drowsiness. Then he laughed, much quieter than usual. “Till death.”
We both stood and fixed our clothes back in place.
“Is that a problem for you now?” he asked. “You never used to care.”
He had a point. I hadn’t even thought to check for a ring. Once we’d broken up, I’d been too bitter to try putting any moves on him again, especially after he’d tied the knot. I’d gotten drunk and slept through his wedding, and not because I hadn’t gotten over him. The band had been too busy for him to commit to anything—or anyone—aside from us.
But between his failed attempt to go straight edge and my commitment to spiraling, we’d pulled the band apart. Even kicking me out couldn’t keep the rest of them together.
That must’ve been what turned me off, more than infidelity. Now that I’d gotten off, I couldn’t keep that closet full of skeletons shut.
“She’s moving on,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I?”
That seemed awfully soon. “This is why I never bought you as the marrying type.”
“Well, neither were you.”
“Damn right. You and I were supposed to get famous enough to keep getting laid even in our saggy old age. Wait, no. We were supposed to get famous, then die young, because fuck marriage and old age, right? Better to be immortalized young and dead than forgotten old and kicking.”
He hadn’t forgotten himself like I had, looking at me like he was so much older and wiser. “That didn’t exactly work out, did it?”
“Neither did your marriage.”
“Oh, fuck off,” he said. “It didn’t fail. I died.”
“You could’ve spared her the pain.”
“And then my daughter wouldn’t exist.”
My mouth fell. I choked on the words. “You’ve got a kid?”
He smiled, like he couldn’t help it, thinking of the little one. Even if he’d lost her, or rather, the other way around.
The smile turned into a grimace. “You’re not jealous, are you?”
I tried not to shake my head too emphatically. “I’m not.”
I’d always dreaded this part. We used to be quiet, muffled by our unspoken guilt, as I’d get dressed and leave the hotel room. Even after I’d broken up with my boyfriend—our lead guitar—Liam and I never spoke after sex. I’d face the other way in bed, his arm on top of me like an anchor. He never could hold me down.
No wonder he’d dumped me for someone more tangible.
Somehow, even after all this, he found it in him to reach for me. A tentative touch on the arm, an unspoken question.
“Do we have to do this?” I asked. “Were you thinking we could pick up where we left off?”
“If we’re ever going to work out our issues, it’s now.”
“I know you’ve had some time to think about your life, postmortem, but if you haven’t noticed, I’m barely getting buried. It’s not the best time for me, right now.”
He gave a huff of a laugh, spreading his arms. “What else are we going to do? There’s nobody else left in the world.”
“That’s not true.”
“What do you mean?”
I held out my hand. “Let me show you something.”
He’d have plenty of other company where we were headed.
* * *
Liam looked around the ballroom in wonder. Sunlight streamed through the broken windows in golden columns, leaves glowing transparent on the vines pouring inside.
“What is this place?”
I shrugged, trying to be cool about it, not revel too much. “Welcome to the Haunt.”
The lady with the parasol waved as she approached us, arm in arm with the hippie girl, taking a turn about the room.
“It’s not just us?” he asked.
He might’ve been regretting the hookup, realizing there were other ghosts to choose from instead. That’s exactly why I’d brought him here.
“You’re in for a ride.”
I couldn’t stay long. It would be too weird to introduce him to Alastair.
“Make yourself at home,” I said. “I’ve still got some stuff to wrap up.”
For once, I went ahead and showed how bummed I felt, letting my shoulders slump and brow furrow, trying to remind him we’d just come from my funeral.
“Of course,” he said, reaching out to rub my arm. I barely got my walls up in time.
“Hello there,” said parasol lady.
“I haven’t seen you around before,” the hippie girl added.
Their voices were giggly, eyes roving shamelessly over him.
Liam cleared his throat, blushing. “Uh… ladies?”
I patted his back in approval.
“Catch you later,” I lied.
By the time evening rolled around, and the band began to play, hopefully he’d forget all about me.