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)
The ghost’s expression was neutral now, and Edgar did something strange. He reached out his hand and offered it to the ghost. The ghost slowly raised its own hand. Edgar reached for it very, very slowly. When his fingertips touched the ghost’s, a cool, minty sensation crept up his wrist. They clasped hands.
Edgar got a flash of confused thoughts that felt like a different texture than his own and feelings that felt just like his: fear, sadness, the desperate desire to be with his love. Then Edgar let go, and it was all gone. He was only himself.
The ghost—no, no. His name, Edgar realized, had been Benjamin—looked different now. Less…mangled? Or was it simply that Edgar had gotten used to it?
No, Benjamin looked less. Less mangled, less corporeal, less everything. He looked like he was fading away.
Edgar was overwhelmed with sadness and relief. Maybe ghosts were just looking to be witnessed. To be truly, accurately seen.
After all, wasn’t that what most people wanted?
He stayed until Benjamin was gone. Gone where, he didn’t know. Back inside the cemetery or somewhere else in the city or perhaps nowhere at all. It wasn’t for him to know.
Then Edgar Lovejoy dusted himself off and walked slowly toward home.
31
Edgar
“Congratulations!” Edgar swept Jamie into his arms.
Jamie had a week of strike ahead of them, but the haunted house was officially closed for the season, which meant Edgar would get far more time with them. Jamie was elated to have finally confronted their parents and had been gratifyingly proud of Edgar for confronting a ghost. Add how well he and Poe were getting along, and Edgar was feeling dangerously close to being in the Halloween spirit.
“Thanks! I’m so glad to be done until next year.” They kissed him, lips a sweet promise for later. “So are you feeling up for the party?”
Edgar was still learning what it meant for him to be up for a party at all. He’d spent most of his adult life afraid to leave his house, anxious whenever he did, and desperate to get back to his safe haven so he could deal alone with whatever feelings he had incurred.
Spending more time with Jamie, who had a large circle of friends and several who were quite close, it became clear to Edgar that he had a lot of shit going on. Antoine’s death at thirteen hadn’t just been traumatic for all the obvious reasons. It had shown Edgar that when he cared about someone—when he loved someone—they disappeared from his life.
Cameron’s parents had sent her to boarding school the year after Antoine died, needing space for their own grief, so he’d lost her then as well. His father had left a year later. His mother several years after that. Then Poe.
Edgar had wrapped his strangeness around himself like a blanket and hidden away from the world, convinced that anyone he might care about would think he was too much of a freak to love him back. Certain that if they did, they would inevitably leave.
“There are so many people who like you and wanna hang out with you!” Jamie had told him more than once over the past few weeks, referring to Helen and Veronica, Carys and Greta, Leila and Amelia, and more. “And they would like you just as much if you told them the truth.”
More and more recently, Edgar had begun thinking about changing everything.
Sitting with Benjamin hadn’t magically cured him of fear. What it had done was show him that anything, everything, could change.
And how could he not take that seriously, since his whole life had changed since meeting Jamie? Now, there was one final piece missing in the puzzle that was Edgar’s life.
What if you didn’t have a secret anymore?
It was a question so bright and overwhelming that Edgar only dared to look at it sidelong.
Edgar agreed to go to Helen, Veronica, Carys, and Greta’s Halloween party, even though it was at the time by which he usually made sure to be inside his apartment.
“Yeah?” Jamie grinned and gave him a once-over. “Awesome. I want to show off my sexy boyfriend.”
Edgar flushed hotly and loved every second of it.
***
“You came!” Helen called excitedly across the room when they walked in. Edgar assumed they were talking to Jamie, but it was him they threw their arms around. “V, look, Edgar came!”
“I see that,” Veronica said, but she smiled and squeezed his shoulder. “Glad you’re here.”
It was the first party Edgar had been to since high school. The crush of people, the bumping music, and the constant addition of new voices made Edgar’s head spin, so after a little while, he wandered onto the porch to get some air.
Greta was out there, and she was talking with two men Edgar didn’t recognize. He tried to duck back inside, but Greta saw him before he could escape.