Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
He knew if he put Jamie off again with an excuse, it would have to be good enough that they believed him. But fear had wiped his mind of anything useful. He risked a glance at the window. If it had been a ghost he’d seen, it was either gone or about to ooze through the wall at any moment.
Jamie turned and looked where Edgar was looking. They turned back to him, looking confused and worried. Edgar couldn’t stand to see them worried, couldn’t stand to see the trust they’d given him fade away. Fuck!
“Edgar?” Jamie said softly. “What’s going on? Do you need me to get help? Call someone for you?”
Edgar shook his head, trying to make his voice work. He had never thought he’d tell anyone the truth, not after the way his father had behaved. But he hadn’t reckoned with meeting someone he liked as much as Jamie either. Someone he wanted to know him. Someone he wanted to spend time with. And spending time meant seeing him see ghosts. There was no way to hide it from Jamie, he was realizing. No way to hide it and still get to be with them.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! Am I really going to do this?
Edgar swallowed hard, reached out, and caught Jamie’s hand.
Thank you, he wanted to say. Thank you for being wonderful and for caring. Please don’t leave when I tell you the truth. Please don’t give me that look—the one that means, Oh, dear, he’s insane. And he looked so normal.
“I, um.”
Jamie looked instantly relieved that Edgar had formed words.
“I need to tell you something about me. Um.”
His tongue went thick in his mouth, and his throat was dry. But he focused on Jamie’s freckles and their kind blue eyes, lashes spiked with rain.
“I see ghosts.”
All these years of shoving it down, swallowing it, and chewing on it had worried it smooth, and it slid right out of Edgar’s mouth like a stone.
A rush of adrenaline roared in his ears, leaving him dizzy.
“Sorry,” Jamie said. “Can you repeat yourself? I think I heard you wrong.”
“You didn’t.” Edgar swallowed a woozy giggle.
Jamie nodded slowly. “Just to double-check, I heard you say that you see ghosts?”
“Correct,” Edgar said.
“Huh,” Jamie said simply. Then their face lit up. “Ghosts are real? Wow, sorry, not the time. So you… Wow.”
Jamie’s mind seemed to be going a mile a minute, but they hadn’t yet said that they thought Edgar was crazy. Or a liar. So that was good.
“You…you believe me?” Edgar had to ask.
“Are you telling the truth?”
“Well. Yeah.”
“Then I believe you.”
And that, apparently, was that.
They stood staring at each other in the aftermath of his confession. Edgar didn’t know what he’d expected to happen the first time he told someone. A musical swell or explosion of fireworks? That he’d suddenly transform into a different person?
But he was still just him, dripping rain onto brown motel carpet with absolutely no idea what to do.
“I don’t know what to do now,” he admitted and winced.
Jamie took charge, steering Edgar into the bathroom and turning on the shower.
“I’m going to get some food set up while you take a shower. Get warmed up, get out of these wet clothes. Then you can have something to eat. You’ll feel better,” they said with the absolute certainty of someone who didn’t see ghosts.
But as he stood in the shower letting the hot water stream over his cold skin, Edgar did feel better.
I am no longer a person with a secret, he thought as he lathered his hair.
There isn’t a huge, uncrossable gulf between me and every single other human on earth except my family, he thought as he rinsed it.
Someone knows the thing about me that I wake up in the middle of the night and clutch to me like a hobgoblin, he thought as he dried off and wrapped the towel around his waist.
The partly fogged mirror created the illusion that half of his face was gone. Did the part he could see look different though? Younger? Unburdened? In all the self-debate, he’d never actually thought about how it would feel to tell someone.
He remembered what Jamie had said they felt like performing burlesque. Like a god.
Maybe this was how they felt.
***
Edgar made his way out of the bathroom to find Jamie putting the finishing touches on a truly impressive spread of food.
“Shower’s free,” he said, suddenly feeling awkward and exposed with only the rough towel slung around his hips. Probably this was no big deal to Jamie, who did burlesque and dated regularly, but he had to fight the impulse to cover himself with his hands.
When Jamie looked up, their mouth fell open at the sight of him.
Flustered, Edgar apologized for his state of undress, explaining that there were no robes.
“Fuck,” Jamie said, still staring. “You’re really fucking beautiful, Edgar.”