Where I Still Exist

by fire3jj

Summary:

Ava died. Bea didn’t. Neither of them know how to let go. What happens when love doesn’t end at death. It just gets more complicated.

Set in modern day London, this AU follows Ava and Beatrice trying (and mostly failing) to move on from death. Expect late-night conversations, emotional chaos, ghost jokes, and a lot of unresolved feelings.

I write in Ava’s POV because she’s messy, real, and can’t stop talking, even from beyond the grave.

Chapter 1: Casper Lied

I’m dead.

And no, not the “I’m so dead when Mum finds out” kind of dead. I mean properly dead. Gone. Eighteen and finished before I even got started. Which, if we’re being honest, completely fucking sucks.

You’d think there’d be some sort of light, or an angel, or a celestial welcome party. Something. But nope. No light, no wings, no godly Post-it note saying “Be right back for you, Ava.” Just me, invisible, floating around London like a bored extra in my own afterlife. Been dead a few days. Already bitter enough to haunt people for sport I can see why ghosts get a bad deal of course they are angry imagine watching life happen around you. No control, no one to talk to and nothing left just this empty space.

If this were a movie, I’d have some unfinished business. Maybe a quest, a purpose, a redemption arc. But I can’t think of any. I said my goodbyes, well, I tried. I’ve watched everyone cry, which was depressing as hell. You’d think at least one person would throw a party celebrate my lfie. Something loud and ridiculous. Something more me.

I get why they’re sad. Dying by a drunk driver isn’t exactly peaceful. Still, crying’s boring. Dance. Drink. Live. Anything but this.

They never caught him, the driver. Some part of me thinks that’s supposed to be my “unfinished business.” But what would be the point? I don’t care about revenge. Justice doesn’t fix death. My justice would’ve been getting to live.

So yeah. Ava Silva. Dead teenager. I had an amazing boyfriend, JC. Awesome best friends Beatrice and Camila. I miss them like hell. I miss hugs. I miss sitting without falling through furniture. I miss feeling like I ever existed. Let me tell you ghost thing is such a scam. Casper lied.

I wander because there’s nothing else to do. The city keeps moving, like it doesn’t even notice I’m gone how insignificant we all are its unsettling. I wish someone could see me. Just once to have 5 minutes with someone I love. Who would it be....

Camila would talk too much, as much as I love her, obviously. She’d start psychoanalysing my death between tech tips. “Ava, we should have uploaded your brain before death.” But she’d care. She always cares. Also super religious so she would freak out for 3 of those 5 minutes.

JC maybe… God, I miss him. We were still figuring it out, 6 months in and we were just enjoying each other, he was mine. His hugs, his dumb jokes, his everything. I wonder if he’s okay. Probably not. Probably beautiful and brooding but he will be okay, he is strong and if I came back to him he would think it was a drunken state. So maybe not him.

Bea.... My best friend. She’s the calm in every storm. Feels everything deeply but hides it under that perfect composure. Her british stiff upper lip. She was always the steady hand to my chaos. She would be perfect 5 minutes with Bea thats who I would want to see me.

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My funeral’s today. Everyone’s dressed in black. Which pisses me off. I told them white, ya know those conversations you never think will matter, if I die wear.... I literally said wear white. Celebrate, don’t mourn. But no one listens to the dead girl. Even JC caved to his mum’s “respectable” choice. Coward.

Camila’s the only one who tried so far. She’s in this dramatic white fedora, matching coat, crying but looking like a ghost runway queen. Points for effort. She knew what I wanted and kept to it. I am so putting in a good word with god if I ever move on as for you the rest of you well..... good luck.

Then there’s the crowd. Half these people barely spoke to me when I was alive. And now they’re here, all crocodile tears and fake sympathy. And then I see her. Zori. Standing too close to JC, dressed in blue, pretending to look holier than thou while her hand conveniently grazes his arm.

“Hey JC, if you need a friend someone to lean on, I’m here for you,” she says, soft and sweet, like she practised in the mirror before she arrived.

Oh, I bet you are, Zori.

He sighs. “Thanks. I could use a hug.”

A hug? A hug? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m right here watching my boyfriend get comforted by the human embodiment of an Instagram thirst trap. If I could throw something, I would. Actually, I’d throw her. I walk away whats the fucking point. I go and stand at the back where some random girls near the back are gossiping, talking about how I died.

“I think she like, died on impact,” one says. I sigh glad I am so interesting in death.

“No, no,” the other replies, “she must’ve felt it, I heard she was conscious for like an hour but it was like Greys Anatomy when Derek died she was totally aware.” I wasnt i say looking at them all.

“Ew, that’s why it’s a closed casket,” the third adds. Hey im hotter than you still even dead I shake my head frustrated.

Camila spots the whole exchange, and just as I’m about to lose it, Camila turns, voice sharp enough to slice glass. “Excuse me? Shut up. My girl was stunning. It’s a closed casket because she didn’t want to see what little attention-seekers showed up. Look at you, dressed like a dog’s dinner, gossiping. My friend died. Show some respect before I take off my Prada hat off and beat you to death with it.”

They shut up immediately. Good.

I whisper near her ear, “I miss you, Camz.”

She shivers. Looks around. “Ava?”

Oh my God. She heard me. She actually heard me or felt me, she felt something. Then she brushes it off and looks away, like she’s imagining things. But she’s not.

I watch heads turn and I turn my head too just as Beatrice walks in stealing my attention and everyone elses. And she’s perfect. Full white. From her blouse to her heels. Simple, elegant, deliberate. She’s a light cutting through the doom and gloom. I’d high-five her if I could. “Go on, Bea,” I whisper. “You look like a fucking angel.”

The service starts. The priest drones on, saying things that sound like he has said them a million times before I have gone back to God, I am not in pain, sucks for him, his whole afterlife spiel its bull. Wait till you are here buddy not gonna be so fun for you too. I tune out until he says, “We now invite Ava’s mother, to speak.”

Mum’s shaking as she walks up. Her voice trembles but she keeps going. “My daughter was a good girl a fighter, she overcame not being able to walk and then became one of the most talented dancers. Her life was stripped from her too soon, and I will always miss watching her perform. She stunned us all everytime she overcame what the world threw at her. I’ll miss her caring nature. I know her father and I will someday join her in heaven and be together again. Until then, please keep dancing, my baby.” I want to hug her. Tell her I’m still here. I miss her so much it hurts but I think her seeing me would hurt her more. Its better she thinks I am in heaven.

"Next up is one of Ava's closest friends Camila." My heart’s already breaking and she hasn’t even spoken. She steadies herself and makes the cross sign over her face. I often forgot how religious she was, shes quietly religious, Camila was just Camila to me most days.

“Hi everyone,” she starts, voice shaking. “I just wanna say I miss Ava. I miss her laugh, her smile, her crazy comments. I miss everything about Ava because she was all-round amazing and beautiful from her skilled feet to her huge heart. No one will ever be like her. But now, I’ll always look up at the sky knowing there’s a beautiful angel dancing in the stars.”

“I wish, Camila,” I whisper. “I really wish.”

JC steps up next. His tie’s crooked. His eyes are dull. “I can’t say much. Everything’s been said. Ava was amazing, a dancer, a person, all of it. She’ll always have a place in my heart. But she’d want us to move on, so… I will.”

A person....Move on? That’s it? That’s all I get? You couldn’t even say you loved me one last time? Wow, JC. Wow.

Then Bea walks to the front and I feel my chest tighten. Her voice is calm but heavy. “Hi everyone. I think we all know how amazing Ava was, how talented and how beautiful she was. But behind all of that, she was also kind, she would volunteer time to teach people to dance, to help other people who had disabilities, showing them limits were meant to be broken. She cared so deeply about people. She’d stand in the rain because she said everything had beauty in it. She made my world better by just being in it. Her smile made people smile. Her words made people feel seen. She was a star in this world, and I’m sure she’s one in the next too. Today, we mourn her. Maybe not tomorrow because tomorrow I am pretty sure I will still be mourning for her but at some point in the future we remember to live for her, put as much love and energy into the world as she did. And maybe we can take a little bit of Ava with us wherever we go to make the world as special as when she was here. In this life and the next Ava.”

Bea’s voice breaks on that last line. And I’m done for. I didn’t know she saw me like that. I didn’t know anyone did. The tears fall down me and I almost laugh who knew ghosts could cry.

When the service and wake ends, everyone leaves. JC’s drunk already. Camila’s trying to keep him from falling over. Mum and Dad look empty. Bea stays behind for a minute. She’s holding a sketch of me. Its amazing. She gives it to Mum, hugs her, then walks away without a word.

Later that night, the world’s quiet. My parents are packing my things away no constant reminder of their dead child. JC’s out cold. Camila’s typing something, probably her next hackathon code. And Bea, Bea’s sitting by her window, crying softly, the city lights reflecting in her eyes.

I drift close, careful not to get too close to her. She’s holding a photo of us. Her fingers trace my face. “I miss you,” she whispers.

“I’m here Bea,” I whisper back.

She freezes. Looks up. Then she smiles, small, but real. I think she feels me, and for the first time since I died, I don’t feel like I’m floating through nothing. The light still hasn’t come, but maybe that’s because I’m not supposed to leave yet.

Maybe I’m not done. Not while she needs me.

Chapter 2: The Quiet Between Us

Summary:

Okay so I actually wrote this whole story a while ago and then got super un-inspired so I am now going through and writing it up and adapting it to bring it together - I am hoping to bring back my love of writing.

Enjoy chapter 2

I wish I could say I am getting use to being dead I am not. Sometimes when someone stares into nothing, it feels like they’re staring at me. Beatrice does it a lot as she sits on the edge of her bed, the duvet pooled around her waist. The room smells faintly of rain and laundry powder. The city hums through the window and she looks empty.

I stand between her and the wardrobe. She looks up. Her eyes land right where I’m standing.

“Hey, Bea,” I whisper. “I know you can’t hear me because I’m dead and all, but I miss you.”

She presses her fingers to her temples. “I need sleep. I’m starting to see Ava everywhere, and now she’s even talking to me. God help me, I’m losing it.”

My stomach flips. “You can see me. You can see me! This is brilliant Bea, come on yes world.”

“Still there,” she murmurs into the air. “Please don’t let me wake up and still see her. My imagination is obviously overacting. Grief is complicated.”

“Imagination my arse,” I mutter. “I could almost kiss you, thank god you can see me. That’s not imagination. Its just me.”

She buries her face under the duvet. “La la la la la. Sleep will help. One sheep. Two sheep. Three sheep.”

I hover by the window and watch a streak of headlights sweep the ceiling as she finally drifts off. “Maybe people see me when they’re really tired. That’s wild. Come on, Bea, wake up. It’s been seven hours. I’m bored.”

Her phone vibrates. She fumbles for it, voice thick with sleep. “Hello. Yeah. Sure. You can come round. Give me an hour.”

“Oh, who’s coming round?” I lean in.

“None of your business,” she mutters.

“Aha. You can hear me. You can hear me and you answered me.” My smile widens lets fucking go.

She sits up, eyes wide. “Oh God. I thought you would have left. Ava, please go away. I cannot be crazy my parents already have enough issues with me.” How could her parents have issues with her shes perfect A star student and practically perfect.

“Your imagination could win awards, I am sure Bea, but not for this,” I say, grinning. “I’m not your imagination, Beatrice.”

She stares at the wall. “I need to stop this. Tomorrow I’m calling a doctor for some sort of medication, because I cannot enable this dellusion further.”

I laugh. It bursts out, too loud. “You always said I’d drive you crazy. Bet you didn’t think it would happen when I was dead.” She looks at me unimpressed.

“Shut up. Please shut up.”

“Why.” She ignores me. After 15 minues I begin to sing under my breath, off key on purpose. “I’m so lonely, Mrs Lonely, I have nobody to call at all because I am dead, oh so dead.”

“Jesus Ava, be quiet. Please.”

“Okay. If you talk to me.”

“No. You’re dead and I’m clearly going crazy. I cannot begin to tell you how incredibly stressful this is.”

“You’re not crazy. You’re special. Psychic even. I’m dead and you’re sane. I wished for someone to see me, and it turned out to be you.” I tell her excited.

“Then next wish for heaven and go toward the light.” She says, frustrated. I am so confused. I would kill to see her if she died. What is her issue?

“Well excuse the fuck out of me. I didnt ask to die and I certainly didnt get a manual on how to be a ghsot. Point me to the light and I will fuck off." I should be nice to her. She's the only one who can see and hear me, but she is upsetting me.

She pulls the duvet to her chest. “I miss you,” she whispers into the cotton.

“I miss you too.” The words ache as they leave me she looks down. "I have nowhere to go Beatrice, i come to you because its you. Your my best friend."

She shakes here head “ I’m talking to my imagination. I need medicating. I need a lot more than medicating.”

“No, you don’t. I’m here. I’m right here, Bea.”

“Don’t call me that. Only she called me that.”

“It’s me,” I say softly. “Ask me something. Anything.”

“There’s no point. Anything you know, I know. That proves nothing.”

She’s right. “Fine. Ask what someone’s doing right now.”

“Fine. What’s Camila doing?”

“One second.” I close my eyes, think of Camila, and the room blinks away. For a breath, I’m on wet pavement, puddles shes walking outside. Camila walks past a chicken shop, phone in one hand. I think of Bea and I’m back in the room. “She’s on her way here,” I say proudly.

“I already knew that.” Beatrice counters and I sigh fuck shes right damn her logic. Wait, I know what shes wearing.

I smile. “She’s wearing white Converses, a black top with glitter on it, blue skinny jeans.”

“Sure she is Ava.”

“Trust me,” I say. “It’s me, Bea.”

“You’re dead. Please leave me alone. I know grief causes many things and this is simply my mind playing tricks. I’m grieving.”

“I can prove it. I have a birthmark on my inner thigh. I can show you.” I think through that I probably cant change clothes so I cannot prove that.

“I don’t need to see this. I’m not listening.”

“For fucks sake. I’ve been so bored and now you can see me, but you refuse to believe I’m real.”

“You’re dead, Ava. You’re in heaven somewhere. You’re part of my imagination, this cannot be real.”

“If I were, I’d do what you want and leave. Think, Bea. Please.”

“You’re not here. I’m losing my mind.”

“I hate my life. I mean death. Afterlife. Whatever the fuck this is. I can’t even find a bright light.” There’s a knock at the door. She freezes, then moves quickly and without speaking to me.

I follow her to the doorway. “Hey, Camila,” Beatrice says, opening the door.

Camila steps in with the wet clinging to her coat and glitter on her top catching the light. I look at Beatrice and raise an eyebrow come on I knew her clothing come on Bea.

“Oh my God, did you see Zori at Avas funeral? I mean, please. Ava’s funeral and she was already clawing at JC.” Camila starts and I sit nodding maybe I can just sit and get involved show Beatrice im real, be here without hurting her.

“I saw it all,” I grumble. “I don’t need the replay.”

“I know. What a asshole,” Beatrice says.

“I put her little clones right. Left them speechless,” Camila says proudly.

“That’s not hard.” They laugh. For a moment the room feels lighter, almost normal. I smile too, even though it stings, because two weeks ago that laughter would’ve included me.

“Talk to me, tell her you see me, maybe she can test me too prove im real” I whisper. She doesn’t react, just looks past me at Camila.

“Fine,” I say. I start to sing louder. “I know a song that will get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves…”

“Shut up.”

“What, honey?” Camila asks.

“Nothing. Sorry. Continue.” Time slides past. Camila talks about a gossip show, an influencer scandal, a new bakery near the river. It’s familiar and weirdly comforting. It also makes me want to throw something because I never realised how silent Beatrice is she obviously never got a word in when we both were sat talking I look around the room and begin to question how much I knew about her.

After about 10 minutes longer I sigh “Oh God, Camila, stop,” I mutter. “I’m dead and even I’m getting a headache hearing about all this tech stuff Beatrice is a genius and I am pretty sure about 20 minutes ago you lost her too.”

Bea’s mouth twitches like she almost smiled. I lean closer. “Your speech was beautiful at my funeral” I whisper. “Thank you.” She rolls her eyes and looks away, back to Camila. “Fine,” I murmur. “Fuck you.” Her head jerks, eyes wide. “Fuck you, Bea. I’m lonely and sad and I just want a hug. I’m dead. I don’t even know how to sit without falling through things so I stand all day and night. You’re the only one who can see me, and you ignore me. Fuck you.”

“I…” she starts.

“What, honey?” Camila asks, confused.

“It’s six already,” Bea says quickly. “I need to get some photos done.”

“Oh yeah, totally I always lose track of time when were together. I need to finish my new coding. See you later, sweetie.”

“Bye, Camila.” They hug. The door shuts. Silence stretches long and cold.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Beatrice whispers I go to speak but she stops me. “Because if it is, you’re miserable and lonely and you haven’t moved on. You’re not in a better place. Please, Ava, I really need you to be my imagination.”

“It’s me,” I say quietly. “No bright light. Just limbo. Sorry.”

I reach for her face. My hand passes through like smoke, but her skin prickles. Goosebumps rise along her arms. “No, I am sorry but i can't” she says, trembling. “Leave. Please. If it’s you and not my imagination, go. Let me grieve. You’re not here anymore. Just please Ava go.”

I didn’t think about how much this would hurt her. I only thought about not being alone.
“I just wanted someone to talk to, I hate being alone” I whisper. “Sorry. Bye, Bea. You won’t see me again.”

I walk out and keep going. The night outside is damp and quiet, the air full of light rain and city noise.

“I’ll see what JC’s up to,” I mutter, disappearing into the dark.

JC’s room smells like stale beer, leftover curry, and a sadness. The tv;s on mute, flickering blue light across the walls. The rest of the house is dark, his parents asleep upstairs. He’s slouched on the sofa, a bottle of beer dangling from his hand classy dude real classy. Zori’s perched beside him, knees crossed, perfume fighting the smell of takeout.

“You know she always loved dancing,” JC slurs.

“I know she did,” Zori says softly.

“And she loved me. But not as much as dancing. That was her everything.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, brushing imaginary lint off her skirt, “I’d put you first.”

“Would you, Zori?”

“Of course. She was silly not to.”

I hover by the coffee table, arms crossed. “Excuse me, Miss I’ll-sleep-with-anything-that-breathes. Get away from my boyfriend.”

“You’re so sweet,” she purrs, resting her hand on his arm.

He gives that lazy grin that used to make my stomach flip. “Really?” Oh my God, I think I just threw up in my mouth.

“Yeah,” she says, leaning closer.

“You’re beautiful.” He says touching her hand softly boy have I seen this movie before.

“Don’t even go there, JC.” I say getting more and more pissed off every second.

“Am I?” she whispers.

“Yeah. Of course.”

“No one thinks I’m pretty.”

“I do.”

“Ew,” I say, watching their faces drift closer. “No way. I only got buried days ago. I am not watching you two about to kiss.”

My body buzzes, a cold fury. The lamp beside the sofa rattles, then flies off the table and crashes into the wall. Glass falls over the carpet.

Zori jumps, clutching her chest. “What the hell was that?”

“Me, you prick!” I yell.

JC’s face goes pale. “Ava?”

“Yeah, me, arsehole.”

“That was creepy,” Zori whispers.

“I know, right? Weird,” JC mutters, already pretending it didn’t happen.

“Let’s go somewhere your ex can’t see us from the other side,” she says, grabbing her bag.
“Maybe you should go,” he says quickly.

“But”

“Yeah, maybe you should,” I sneer. “In fact, I’m gone too. You deserve each other.”

I walk straight through the wall, out into the street. The air’s cold and damp, perfect british weather to reflect my mood.

By the time I drift to Beatrice’s house, it’s past midnight. The street is quiet, windows glowing faintly from the few who still can’t sleep. Inside, everything is still. Bea’s parents’ room is dark, the steady rhythm of her dad’s snoring down the hall, im surprised they are even home they rarely are Beatrice has been brought up by more staff than parents her entire life.

Her door’s half open. She’s sitting on the bed, hair loose not in its usual bun, the lamplight gold against her face as she sits scrolling on her phone. Everything in her room is lined up perfectly, books stacked by height, clothes folded into exact squares. Control in chaos. It’s so her it hurts.

“Can I come in?” I ask, hovering in the doorway.

“Go away,” she says without looking up.

“Please. Just for tonight.”

“No I can't.”

“But tomorrow you’re going to the doctor, so you won’t see me anymore. One night. Please.”

She exhales through her nose. “Fine. Fine but no talking.”

“Okay,” I whisper. The word trembles. Tears roll before I can stop them.

“Why are you crying?” Her voice softens, careful.

“I’m dead. My friends and family are falling apart. My boyfriend’s cheating on me. And the only person who can see me refuses to believe I exist.”

Her eyes flicker toward me. “Wait. JC’s cheating?”

“Yup. With Zori, although technically im dead so its not cheating.”

Her brows furrow. “How would you even know that?”

“Call him.” She hesitates, then grabs her phone and dials. The ring tone cuts through the silence of the house.

“Hello?” JC’s voice sounds breathless.

“Hey,” she says evenly. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Just jogging, you know.”

A pause. Then a muffled voice in the background: Zori’s. “JC, come back to bed, baby.”

Bea’s expression doesn’t change, but her grip tightens around the phone. “You never deserved her” she says, and hangs up.

“Told you so,” I say quietly.

“Yeah. He’s a dick.” Her shoulders slump for a second before she straightens, the perfect posture snapping back like armour.

The tears spill again. I can’t stop them. “Hey,” she says, eyes darting toward me. “I’d hug you, but you’re imaginary.”

“I’m dead, not imaginary.” I correct her once more.

“Sure you are.” I reach for her hand. It’s instinct more than choice, and it works. I feel her. Cold, solid, real. Her breath stutters.

“Sorry,” I whisper, about to pull away.

“Don’t,” she says, sharp and low.

“What?”

“Don’t let go. Please. I never thought I’d feel this again. Ava please.” She said my name I nod.

I smile through the ache. “I’m freezing sorry.”

“I don’t care. Please, Ava.”

“Okay.” My voice is small. “Can I lie down?”

She moves slightly, careful not to touch me any further. “I don’t need space. I can lie through you.”

“No offence, but no thanks. You’re kind of freezing.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s weird but… okay. Just new.” I lie beside her, the air between us thick with silence. Her eyes stay open a little longer, unfocused, before finally closing. Her breathing evens out.

“Go to sleep, Bea.”

“Will you too?”

“I…” How do you tell someone the dead don’t sleep? You don't. “Course I will. Now rest you need to sleep you look like shit.” She laughs and then falls asleep, her hand still cold in mine. I stay beside her until morning.

When light creeps in, I feel a sadness wash over me. I stand and stretch out of habit mainly. My chest aches in a way that isn’t physical. I turn once, then again, and again. Every movement smooth, remembered. My body hums with old rhythm. For a few precious minutes, I dance like I’m alive.

I catch Bea watching me from the bed, chin propped on her knees. “Why did you stop?”

“I’m tired.” I say honestly.

“Really? Can ghosts even get tired?” I frown its a valid point but I am tired.

“I guess.”

“You looked amazing.”

“Thanks. It’s just dance.”

“It’s not just dance, Ava. It’s who you are.”

I look away. “You’re still going to the doctor, aren’t you?”

She nods. “I have to. I can’t live seeing you every day, knowing my grief has turned into you.”

“So last night was imaginary?” I ask her and she shrugs.

“It has to be. Grief is an extreme emotion. It can create feelings, sensations that are not real.”

“I’m gonna go.” I say sadly.

“Why?”

“Because it’ll make you happy.”

“No, it won’t.” She admits and that is the first line I have believed that she has said since I died.

“It’s what you want.”

“No. I want to be sane.” I smile.

“You are.” I argue.

“I can’t be.”

“What if whatever he gives you doesn’t work?”

“It has to.” She says it with such conviction that I begin to believe her.

The doctor’s office smells like antiseptic and instant coffee. Bea sits in the chair, back straight, feet flat. Her blazer is buttoned, sleeves smooth. She looks composed enough to fool anyone that she hasnt had the worst few days of her life.

“So, you believe you can see Ava’s ghost?” the doctor says, pen scratching the paper.

“Yeah,” she answers. “I know it’s not real though. Just grief.”

“Good. That’s important.”

“Whatever, baldy,” I mutter. “I’m real. As real as your head is shiny.”

Bea’s lips twitch. She bites down a laugh. “Why are you smiling?” he asks. “Is Ava here now?”

“Yes,” she says quietly. “She’s cursing you.”

He sighs. “Please ignore her. This is the first step. We’ll start counselling and a anti-depressant shortly.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Bea says, standing perfectly straight.

I follow her home. She doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t speak. A week passes. Then another. She blanks me every time. I sing. I shout. I hum the world’s most annoying song until I nearly drive myself mad. Nothing.

Today she’s heading back for a check-up. I hover near the hallway mirror. “One thing before you go in there. Please, Bea. Just one.”

She finally looks at me, eyes shining. “Okay. What?”

“I just want you to know I don’t blame you. And I’ll miss talking to you. I get why you’re doing this. You want to be normal. But if you ever need me again, I’ll be right here. Forever.”

“I am truly sorry, Ava but I can’t live like this.”

“It’s fine.” My voice shakes. “God, I hope they don’t work.” I send up a prayer to who I dont know anymore never believed before and now im pretty sure theres no reason to although I must say I havent found any other ghosts so what does that mean...

At the clinic, the doctor gives her a small white pill. “Take two and tell me in twenty minutes if you can still see her.”

I watch as she swallows it. The seconds crawl.

“Can you see her?” he asks.

Bea looks right through me. “No, doctor. I can’t. She’s gone. Thank you. How many should I take a day?”

“Two.”

And just like that, im gone again. I feel it, the air thinning, the space between us stretching wide. I cry, but there’s no sound, even if there was theres no one to hear me anyway.

Two months pass. Bea still can’t see me. JC sleeps with anything that moves. Camila buries herself in computing and prayer, she misses me so I spend a lot of evenings with her. Sometimes I whisper answers to her homework just to see her smile or look up and thank me she cant really ehar or see me just feel my essence its nice but not like with Beatrice.

I’m learning more about this ghost thing. I can move objects when I’m angry, touch people when I feel too much. It leaves them with a chill, a flicker, a trace.

Tonight, Camila says goodnight to Bea on the phone and falls asleep. The house goes still. I check on my Mum and Dad like I always do. Then I do something I haven’t done in two months. I visit Beatrice.

Chapter 3: If you can see me

Summary:

Im easing you guys in enjoy while its not too angsty.

“She still stares right through me. Those tablets must be good,” I mutter, watching Beatrice through the half-open door.

Her room is different now. Brighter somehow, but emptier. The desk where we used to sprawl our mess of takeaway cups and notebooks is spotless. Every photo of us is gone, replaced with framed shots of buildings, sunsets, strangers. There’s only one of me left, and it’s on her phone, the lock screen she never changed.

“I miss you, Bea,” I say softly. You were my best friend. Now you barely even look at the old photos. I guess that's fair; I'm gone far from your mind and everyone else's.”

She’s sitting at her desk, editing something, her fingers moving slowly and steadily on the trackpad. The lamp glows against her skin, softening her features. I wish she’d look up, just once.

“Your room’s changed,” I go on, pacing because I can’t stand still. “Cleaner. Sharper. You replaced us with order. I hope you’re happy, Bea. I don’t like you on those tablets, but if you’re happy, that’s what matters. You’re going to be a star one day. Your photography’s still amazing, I find myself often wandering these days, and your work at college is still mindblowing, never stop.”

“I don’t even know why I’m talking,” I whisper. “You can’t hear me, which sucks. I stayed away for a while, but I missed you too much. Still haven’t seen a light yet. Still not your imagination, just in case you wondered.” My throat tightens. “Goodnight, Bea. I love you. Always and forever. Pinkie promise.”

For a moment, nothing. Then, so faint I almost miss it, she mumbles, half asleep, “I love you, Ava.”

I freeze. “What?” Her breathing steadies. She’s already fallen asleep.

Maybe I imagined it. Maybe not. I stand there for a long time, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest. “Goodnight, star,” I whisper, backing toward the door.

I leave, but I come back the next night. And the one after that. For three months, I sit in the corner of her room and talk until she falls asleep. I tell her about the things I see on the streets I drift through, the strangers I watch. It doesn’t matter that she never answers. Being near her is enough. Over time, I learn control. I can sit without falling through the bed, lift a ball without dropping it. Being dead’s weird like that, you have to focus just to exist.

“Nearly six months since you saw me. Yay, you,” I say from the corner of Bea’s room. Her window’s open a crack, and the sound of the wind drifts in. “I’m feeling sorry for myself, so what. You actually suck, Bea. I miss you, and you suck because you blocked me out.”

Her bottle of pills sits on the nightstand. I flick it with my fingertip, too lightly at first, then harder. It teeters, wobbles, and tumbles to the floor, scattering white capsules across the carpet like confetti.

“Pick them up. Now.” Her voice slices through the quiet.

I blink. “Wait. Can you see me?”

She looks up from her laptop, closing it. Calm. Steady. "Yes, I can.”

My breath catches, not that breathing does anything anymore. “You haven’t been taking them?”

“I have,” she says, standing slowly, brushing hair from her eyes. “They relax me. But they don’t get rid of you.” She ties her hair up and walks toward me, and stops looking down at the floor.

“Oh, so all this time you just ignored me?”

“Yes. I had to.” She crouches to gather the pills, her movements careful, methodical.

“I would help, but it kinda takes all my energy to flick something. But I’m real.” I remind her, and she sighs.

“I can see that now.”

“Six months is a long time to test a theory,” I say.

“I realise that, but what was my alternative? Admit I am clinically insane."

“So you believe me now? I’m really a ghost?”

She exhales through her nose, controlled but tired. “Do I have a choice?”

“Nope. You’re stuck with me.” I say, grinning.

Her lips curve, just a little. “Yeah. It could be worse. I have missed you.”

“I knew you would look at this face, timeless beauty this.” She smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

“It’s strange,” she says.

“What? Me dead, or me sitting on your bed right now talking like this?”

“Both,” she says quietly. “Everyone’s mourning you or moving on, but I can’t. Because you’re still here every night you are here, sometimes when you are not here, I swear I can still smell you.” Her voice cracks slightly on the last word. I stand and step forward without thinking.

“Would you prefer if I kept my distance?” I ask, doing the opposite and praying to anyone listening to guide her to me.

“Yes and no.”

I laugh under my breath. “Now I’m confused.”

“Me too,” she says. “Just stay for now, okay?”

“That I can do.” I smile at her and she smiles back.

Her eyes roam over me, thoughtful. “You look less dead.”

“Oh, thanks,” I grin. “Guess I’m becoming more solid in my ghost form as I learn my ghost powers.”

“It’s like you’re really here. And you’ve learned how to throw things.”

“Yup. I can pick stuff up now. My hand still goes through people, though. I only held yours that one night.” I tell her slightly confused about how it works.

“Maybe because I can see you.” She says, testing a theory. “So do I get a hug, then?” she asks, the corner of her mouth twitching.

“I don’t know if you deserve one,” I admit, and she frowns.

“Please, Ava.” Her voice softens, and I’m gone. I wrap my arms around her. She’s warm and solid and trembling.

“Jesus, you’re like ice,” she murmurs, laughing a little.

“I know. Sorry.” I start to pull away, but she catches my wrist.

“Did I say you could leave?” she asks, and I giggle. God, Bea, I have missed her so much.

“No,” I respond.

“Then come back and finish my hug.”

“Okay.” Her arms stay around me longer this time. When she finally lets go, there’s colour back in her cheeks she looks unburdened.

“So what are we going to do?” I ask.

“About what?”

“Well, me. As much as I love being around, I realise I’m a distraction.” I say, looking at the work she hasn't finished all night.

“Very true,” she says, smirking. She sits cross-legged on the bed and gestures for me to sit beside her. “Hmm. Maybe college could be fun again. Can you, like, tie shoelaces together?”

“I’m not Casper, you know. That asshole lied. Being a ghost is not fun.”

“Oh, well, he was deeply depressed before he had a friend; maybe having a friend helps."

I can’t help smiling. “Maybe.”

We end up talking for hours. She tells me about her photography projects, how the city looks different when she sees it through a lens. I tell her how it feels to move through walls, how weird it is to hear life without being part of it. Watching people move on its tough, but still nice to see people I love happy.

When she finally falls asleep, I wander through her room. Three thick photo albums line the bottom shelf of her cupboard. I pull one out, open it, and freeze. Every page is me. Dancing. Laughing. Mid-conversation. Photos I never even knew existed. I had not seen any of these. I open the next and it's more of the same, me, candid shots before shows, after competitions and dancing in our college.

I drop the album beside her bed on purpose I can't wait any longer. It thuds, and she jumps awake. “Bloody hell,” she groans, jerking upright. “What the hell, Ava?”

“Morning,” I say, holding the folder. It falls from my hand and onto her chest, where she lies.

“That hurt. Are you trying to get me to join you in the afterlife?”

I sigh. “Maybe. What are all of these”

She rubs her temple. “You’re impossible.”

“What are these?” I ask, gesturing at the pile.

“They’re photo albums, Ava. People put pictures in them. As a photographer, I use quite a few.” She says sarcastically, I raise an eyebrow, no, no, not Miss Nonchalant.

“Yes, but they’re all of me. Hundreds. Most I’ve never even seen. You’ve even got ones of me dancing at competitions outside of London, how when?”

“After you died, I put them all together.”

“Why so many?” I ask, and I watch her get uncomfortable.

“Because you were my best friend,” she says quietly. “I saw everything you did.”

“I never knew you came to half of my performances.”

“I never missed one,” she says. “I loved watching you dance.” Her voice softens, that calm British steadiness cracking for just a second. I sit beside her, tracing one of the photos.

“I love your pictures of London,” I say. “I never realise how beautiful it is until I see one of your photos.”

“One day I’ll show you how I see,” she says, looping her camera strap around her neck as she gets ready for the day. When Bea holds her camera, she’s different, focused, sure, like every inch of her belongs to purpose again.

“You coming, Ava?” she asks, and I stand, hell yeah, a day with Beatrice at college absolutely.

“Yeah. Sorry, let's go. Your photography is unreal, Bea” I place her albums down carefully.

I watch her, she looks at me inquisitively, “Why do you say that, What's so special about them?”

“They are breathtaking.”

“You don’t even breathe,” she teases.

“Ha ha. Very funny.” She clearly still cannot take a compliment, even from a ghost.

“Just saying.”

“Why do you love photography?” I ask.

She glances toward the window, where light is bleeding through the curtains. “Because you see everything more intensely. A sky isn’t just a sky. It’s every cloud, every crease, every reflection that makes it whole.”

I nod. “It’s like me with dance. It’s not just movement. It’s a transformation. It’s showing beauty in one motion, saying more in silence than a whole speech ever could.”

We walk in silence down her street. When Camila spots us from across the road, she waves, her energy breaking the quiet.

“Hey, girl. How are you?” she asks Beatrice, and I nearly answer, so used to being involved now I am not, and it's tough.

“I’m good, Camila,” Bea says, smiling faintly.

“So we need to find you a new crush,” Camila states so casually, and I almost stop, too stunned to move. Beatrice had a crush since when?

“No, Camila,” she cuts her off, shaking her head.

“Wait, you had a crush?” I grin. “Oh, who, who? Come on, Beatrice.”

Camila stops walking and holds Beatrice's arm “Come on, Bea. I know it's been 6 months, but she didn't move on; she died. Loving her was the hard part. She was never yours; you need a new woman to get all nervous around."

I blink. “Wait. Is it a girl? You never told me you were gay.” I shake my head. Did I even know Beatrice?

“We’ll talk about this later,” she mutters, and it serves its purpose because Camila stops talking, but it's two-fold; she told me she was not going to answer anything I asked, either.

Then it hits me like a punch to the chest, “Wait, it’s me?” I blurt. “You were crushing on me?”

Beatrice won't even look at me “We’ll talk later,” she repeats, walking faster.

“But wai...it’s me! You’re gay! What the fuck, Beatrice?” She picks up the pace, cheeks flushed. Camila falls in beside her, shooting her a worried look.

“Bea, I’m sorry. I just thought maybe you could like someone else. Ava’s gone. And it’s awful, but I don’t think locking yourself away and working nonstop is what she’d want. She’d want you to be happy.”

Beatrice speaks, and it's worse than I can imagine. "I am acutely aware of what Ava would say and think I can practically see her face; she would be disappointed. I know Ava, and she would want me happy, but I need more time to move on."

But I’m not gone. Not even close. And now it’s awkward as hell. My best friend is in love with me. Two problems. One, I never knew, and two, I’m dead and now I know.

Chapter 4: All the Things We Never Said

Summary:

Okay, this one kinda hurt to write, so I apologise.....comments make me write faster

Beatrice avoids me all day, and I avoid her all night. When I go to her in the morning, she still ignores me. She moves through the day like she is underwater, trudging through. If I did not know better, I would think yesterday never happened. Her room is too tidy, she is completely poised, but there is something brutal and cold that persists. I leave her and decide it's best we speak when she returns home alone. ,

I arrive before her, and her parents are in the kitchen pretending not to argue when I walk in. I hover near the doorway and listen because being dead killed any boundaries I once had.

“She is falling apart,” her mum says, very calm in that expensive way. “Grades. Sleep. The dark photos. The… mood.”

“It is grief,” her dad answers, crisp. “We will manage it.”

“We manage by controlling variables. I want her on something stronger. And I will not have gossip. Not about our family. Not about Beatrice.”

“About Beatrice and what?” her dad says. The pause is a weight. “You mean that nonsense from sixth form parents?”

“It is not nonsense if people start talking again, thank god that Ava girl is gone”, her mum replies.

I do not breathe, but something in me still tightens. So that is what Bea grows inside. Not just grief. Fear. I always thought control was her preference. Apparently, it is also her armour. She hides this all so well.

She appears in the doorway, a shell of herself, but one that can still pull a ponytail tight. She does not look at them. She says “College” like it is a full sentence and walks out. I follow. My feet do not make a sound. Hers do. Measured. Controlled. Like she is marching herself to her own demise.

In her room, she sits on the edge of the bed and stares at nothing. I stand in the nothing.

“You think I would hate you,” I say. “Like they would.” I start, and she sighs.

Her eyes flicker up to mine. “Ava, please.”

I shake my head, we are not going through another day like this. “Please, what. Please do not talk about the thing you have already said. You were in love with me. You did not tell me. Now you think I will hate you like your parents would if they knew.”

She looks at the wardrobe handle. Not at me. “You do not understand, you can not possibly fathom.”

“Make me understand,” I snap, then regret it instantly. “Sorry. I just. I do not want you thinking I am some judgmental asshole. I was never. I never wanted you to be anyone you weren't.”

Her mouth pulls tight together. “You do not understand because you never had to survive in this house.”

That stings because it is true. I had my own stuff, but I never had money and image standing guard over my head. I never had to turn myself into a straight line just to get through breakfast.

“Bea,” I say quietly. “I would never hate you for loving me or any woman.”

“You would not have loved me back,” she whispers. “That is a kind of hating, too.”

It hits, clean and unfair and maybe deserved a little too, would I have loved her back, I don't know well, I do, but it has no significance now. I am dead. I look at the window and then back at her, and then at the space between us that refuses to shrink. The distance grows by the minute. I feel frustrated.

“So what was I then?” I say. “A project. A safe crush. A person to hide behind so you never had to risk anything while I was alive.” I ask, and she looks at me, offended.

Her head jerks. “Do not make what I feel small just because you are scared of it.”

“I am not scared,” I lie, and the lamp on her desk pops like it disagrees. The bulb blinks and comes back weak. We both flinch.

“Please do not make me afraid of you,” she says, so soft it barely counts as sound.

I want to crawl out of my own skin. I want to take the words back and eat them, swallow them whole. “I am sorry,” I say. “I am not trying to scare you. I just. I feel like my whole life with you was a secret one that I was not invited to know. We were best friends, and I did not know you were drowning here, I did not know you were gay, how many things was I oblivious to.”

She stands like she has rehearsed standing and gets halfway to the door before she stops. “I did not tell you because every time I tried, you were laughing at something JC said or warming up for a performance or planning a party. I tried on so many days, but other things always came first. There was never a gap I could fit honesty into.”

The knife goes in and stays; that's unfair. “You could have made one. You could have told me, and you know it.”

“I know,” she says, and that hurts more than anything else. “I was a coward.”

We look at each other without looking. The rain hits the window like it is trying to get in. I cannot stand being separate from her and inside her mind at the same time. “Come with me,” she says suddenly.

“Where,” I say.

“The roof.” We climb past the third-floor landing and the loft door, and then to the hatch. She pushes it open and pulls herself through with the ease of someone who has done this a thousand times.

Beatrice sits with her knees pulled up and her coat folded under her like a barrier that is also an invitation. Her hair has escaped its neatness and lies damp against her cheekbones. “I am sorry,” she says. “I do not know how to do this right.”

“There is no right,” I say. “If there were, Amazon would have found a way to package that shit. Buy the Coming Out to Your Dead best friend package.

She huffs out a laugh that is not really a laugh. “My parents would hate you for existing if they knew I liked you.”

“They already hated me, Beatrice,” I say. “On principle of everything, I was, and I think they may have an inclination you liked me.”

“Well, they have no proof, and you're gone, so there is little concern now. They would hate me more for loving you.” Her voice wobbles around the word loving, like it does not fit in her mouth yet.

“Do you think I am them?” I ask. “Do you think I will punish you for telling me the truth?”

She straightens her shoulders “I think you are dead,” she says. “And I think it is cruel how easy it is for you to be brave about feelings now that there is nothing you can do with them.”

The rain becomes a curtain. My jumper would have been soaked by now. Instead, the water goes through me like I am not there, and yet still I feel heavy.

“If I were alive,” I say, very quietly, “I would never make you feel anything but loved, Beatrice.”

She turns her head so slowly that the wet on her jaw catches the orange of a far-off light. “That is a certain kind of cruel, Ava.”

“It is true.” I mean it I no matter what Beatrice told me would have loved her.

“It is cruel because I cannot have what you are saying,” she says. “And I am trying so hard to do the right thing in your memory and for my life, and I never know which one is the right thing.”

We sit with that. “Tell me the worst of it,” I say. “If honesty is going to kill us, we might as well go quick.”

She hugs her knees tighter. “The worst is not that I loved you. The worst is, I loved you and I waited. I waited for some neat time that never came. I waited so long that you died, never knowing, and the next time I saw you, after you died, I had to pretend you were not there because that was the only way to survive through it. I could not bear the thought of never being over you and you're here, so how could I ever move on from you, the one that literally got away?”

The words settle and sink in. I press my palms to the cold roof and imagine it is real.

“My worst is I think I like that you're loving me means more now,” I say. “Because it means I did not imagine being special in life. And that makes me feel like a bad person.”

She exhales like she has been punched. “You are not a bad person. You were just a girl. You still are. You are allowed to be messy your 18.”

“I am messy and dead,” I say. “Quite the combo.” We almost smile. It collapses.

“I do not want you to hate me, I cannot have you hate me”, she says. “Not for loving you. Not for waiting. Not for taking tablets so I could pretend to be sane.”

“I don't hate you,” I say. “I hate how alone you have been. I hate that I did not notice. I hate that you learned to be quiet so loudly that I thought you were fine.”

She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist and pretends it is rain. “If my parents knew,” she says, then stops, swallows, starts again. “If they knew, I would not have a home.”

“You have one,” I say. “Me.”

“Ava.” She says my name like a prayer she is embarrassed to believe in.

“It is true,” I say. “I am broke and dead, and if you're homeless, I am too. I am terrible at boundaries, but I am here. And I do not care who you love. I care that you live your life, Beatrice.”

She's silenced by my words, and I have nothing right now, so I think about the first time we met. When she took my photo at her mother's dance studio. The way she stood between me and the teacher when I messed up the choreography, her voice cool and calm, taking the blame for being too close when photographing me. The way she’d carry my bag when my knee flared up, pretending it was “on the way anyway.” The way she’d fix my hair because “you’ll hate the photos later.” I thought it was friendship. Now I know it was love disguised as care, spoken in the language of small things. Fuck.

“I have something ugly,” I say.

“Say it,” she tells me, and wraps her coat tighter like she is bracing for impact.

“I felt like our friendship was a lie when you told me,” I say. “Like every laugh and every sleepover had a second script I never saw.”

She flinches. “It was not a lie. I had no ulterior motives, Ava. It was me being a coward.”

“I know,” I say. “I just needed to tell the truth, so you know.”

There is a long, soft moment where nothing happens. Then she turns and faces me fully and looks directly at the place where I am.

“I loved you long before you died,” she says.

“I know,” I say. “I can see it now in all the moments."

“My parents would say that makes me wrong,” she says.

“Your parents are wrong about a lot of things,” I say. “Like interior design,” I say, pointing below us.

She snorts. It breaks and becomes a laugh, and then becomes not a laugh at all. She puts a hand out, slow, waiting for me to move. Her fingers pass through my shoulder and keep going. We both wince even though there is no pain.

“I hate that,” she whispers. “I hate that I cannot hold you and that when I try, I feel nothing and still I feel everything.”

“I am here,” I say. “Even if my body is not. I am here, Beatrice. I am here.” I know why she can't touch me any longer. It's my choice and I am making it. She nods like she is trying to believe me.

“Will you stay tonight?” she asks.

“Always,” I say, and it is the wrong word and the only word I have.

We climb back down and into the neat room with the neat bed and the neat life that keeps breaking at the seams. She takes her shoes off and looks around for clothes. I turn around, giving her privacy until she calls me. She's on the bed cross-legged, and I sit opposite, a mirror with nothing to reflect. We talk in the low voice people use in libraries and hospital corridors. We trade pieces. I tell her about the way light pools in puddles on the Holloway Road at three a.m. She tells me about the photo tutor her parents paid for, who loves her prints and hates her edits, who tells them about her work and critiques her. I tell her I broke a lamp over Zori and JC. She smiles for real and says she will allow it.

She lies down, and I follow suit. “I am scared you will hate me later,” she says into the pillow.

“I am scared you will forget me,” I say to the ceiling.

“I will not,” she says.

“Then I will not,” I say back.

The house goes quiet. Her breathing evens. I do not sleep. The dead do not, apparently. But for once, I feel like staying awake is a choice. I watch the window go from dark to light, and I think of all the things I could do to help her. Help her live. Stop haunting her. Start protecting her. It hurts in a way that feels like doing something brave might.

When the alarm beeps, she reaches over me without thinking and hits it. Her arm passes through, and still it feels like closeness.

“We are not fixed,” she says, reading how sad I am.

“No", I admit, "I am the one stopping you from touching me," I say, finally admitting the truth.

"Oh, why?"

"I'm uncomfortable", I answer, and she breaks, she shatters, and I watch her break into a million pieces.

"I should get to college", the words echo around the room, and I nod but say nothing.

She gets up. I get up. We start the day with a secret that is not a lie anymore, and it is horrible and beautiful and heavy, and for some reason, it feels like the most honest thing we have ever done.

Chapter 5: The Silence Between Us

Summary:

I feel the need to apologise, but it's so on brand for me to make readers sad....enjoy.

She doesn't even come home that evening; she is avoiding me, and I respect that in fact I kinda feel proud that's a hell of a statement. The next morning feels too clean, sharp and cold. Beatrice moves through her room on autopilot. Hair tied, shirt ironed, face unreadable. The way she smooths her collar looks almost violent.

“Bea,” I say. My voice barely stirs the air.

“I’m late,” she answers, still facing the mirror. That’s all.

She leaves. The door shuts softly but final. I stand in her wake long after she’s gone, the room still carrying her perfume and the hum of withheld tears. At college, she performs normality like choreography. The polite smiles, the perfect posture, the laugh that dies before it reaches her eyes. Everyone buys it. I don’t.

I hover behind her in the corridor; she doesn’t turn. At lunch, Camila waves a hand in front of her face. “Earth to Bea?”

Beatrice blinks, then smiles too quickly. “Sorry, just tired.”

When Camila finally leaves, I take the empty seat across from her.

“You don’t have to ignore me,” I say, and I wait.

Her eyes flicker, just once, to the space I fill. “I’m not ignoring you,” she murmurs under her breath. “I’m surviving you.”

It lands like truth always does, quiet and merciless. A punch to the gut, I nod and leave her alone for the day, wandering to my mum to others and finally to her home. That night her parents are the usual storm behind closed door,s calm voices sharpened to not only injure but to kill.

Beatrice listens from the hallway, expression still. I listen and it makes me furious that she’s learned how to disappear while standing up. In her room she sits cross-legged on the rug, head bowed.

“I’m not apologising for setting boundaries,” she says.

“I’m not asking you to,” I answer. “I just want to understand. We were being honest, I wanted to own up and start the way we wanted to go on."

She looks toward my voice but not at me. “There is honest, and then there is cruel. You could never understand because you do not love me not the way I care for you. You make me feel too much, and I can’t do anything with it. You’re fine, you dont have to live our issues just exist with you, for me they anhilate my days. Loving you its very painful.”

It hurts, but she’s right shes tired and shes right. "Bea" she cuts me off.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” she adds.

“You didn’t,” I say quickly. Then, lower, “I did.”

Her gaze lifts. “Why?”

I smile softly “I think I stopped you from touching me because I was scared. Not of you or of what you feel but of what it would mean if I let you get closer to me .”

She nods once, slow. “You didn’t have to love me back, Ava. You just had to let me exist, honestly.”
I wish I had an answer that isn’t silence.

"Im scared my feelings will change Bea. If I was to love you in that way how do I watch you live and love another."

"May I have some privacy" i nod and leave. We both need some time alone.

Later, she’s at her desk, light from the lamp tracing her cheekbones. I sit near the window, pretending to watch the rain but really watching her.

“Do you hate me?” I ask surprising her theres no ghost doorbell so I often appear and scare her.

“No,” she says, still writing. “But I have to learn how to live without you, even while you’re here. I need a break from this.”

When she finally lies down, I stay in the corner. The quiet between us has changed: not angry, just careful.

I realise the distance is part of her healing, and maybe mine too. I don’t want her love. I want her to live. But wanting that doesn’t make the silence any easier to stand. She drifts toward sleep, face turned toward the wall. Half dreaming, she murmurs, “Goodnight, Ava.”

I freeze. “Goodnight, Bea,” I whisper back.
The lamp hums, the air softens, and one of her photographs slips from the mirror, landing face-up on the floor between us a picture of light through rain. I leave it there. Proof that the connection isn’t gone, just quieter.

The house settles into its midnight rhythm: pipes ticking, wind brushing the gutter, a faint hum from the fridge below.

Beatrice turns in her sleep, the quilt pulled to her chin. Her breathing evens out, soft and steady.
I move toward the fallen photo. The edges glow faintly in the moonlight, droplets of water on glass frozen into silver dots.

When I reach for it, my hand wavers half solid, half shadow and the paper trembles before lifting into the air. It feels warm. Not like heat, but memory. I set it back against the mirror. It stays. Maybe it always would have stayed. Maybe she would have woken and fixed it herself. But I like believing I helped her in some small way.

I look around her room: neat shelves, a stack of sketchbooks, a cup of cold tea by the lamp. Every piece of her is order fighting chaos. I used to think she was made of rules. Now I see the rules are scaffolding, the only thing keeping her upright.
She murmurs something again, half-dreaming, and I catch only one word: sorry.

I wish I could tell her there’s nothing to be sorry for. That she can build a life and still keep the part of it where I exist.

Instead, I sit on the edge of her desk, watching the light crawl down the walls until dawn.

Every hour, the distance between us feels less like punishment and more like a kind of grace.

Three days. That’s how long it’s been since Beatrice last spoke to me.

Not in words, anyway.

She’s perfected the art of pretending.

Breakfast with her parents—short, polite, empty.
College—focused, flawless.

Evenings are headphones in, eyes down, me invisible. I still drift through her day like a shadow she’s learned to step through I accept her silence I stay out of her way and when shes alone I leave her be.

On Thursday morning she laughs at something Camila says outside the art building, and the sound hits me like a memory I didn’t know I’d lost.
It’s so normal it hurts.

Camila nudges her. “You’re smiling again, finally.”

Beatrice tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m trying.” It’s the kind of trying that looks like breathing underwater.

When Camila leaves, I follow her into the darkroom. The chemical sting in the air makes me nostalgic for things I can’t feel. She moves carefully, hanging prints, clipping negatives. I drift closer and see one photo she’s been working on me, mid-spin, stage lights slicing across my hair.

She studies it for a long time, expression unreadable. Then she takes it down and slides it into a drawer.

I should be glad she’s learning to move on. I tell myself that a lot. It still feels like losing her twice.

That night, I wander ghosting through streets, through walls, through the lives of strangers who never look up.

I don’t feel hunger, or cold, or time. Just absence. Everywhere I go, I see reflections that almost catch me in windows, puddles, and mirrors, but never hold me fully.

When I finally returned to Bea’s, her light was still on. She’s lying on her bed, phone on her chest, eyes glassy with exhaustion.

By morning, I’m in the living room, trying to work out if ghosts can cry. The answer seems to be no. Which is a shame, because I could use the release. I start testing things instead. The remote control. The lamp switch. The piano key near the window. All of them respond, faintly. As if emotion translates better than muscle. It’s like my whole existence runs on feeling now. The angrier or sadder I am, the more solid I become. That should terrify me, but mostly it just makes sense.

When I think about Beatrice, my hands steady.
When I think about losing her, the air shivers around me. Maybe haunting isn’t punishment. Maybe it’s unfinished love with nowhere to go.

That evening, she comes home soaked from the rain, coat dripping, hair flattened. She doesn’t see me. She doesn’t have to. She sits at her desk, scrolling through old photos on her phone. There’s one of us at a festival, me with a flower crown, her smiling at me, sunlight across her face. She stares at it for a long time. Then she deletes it. Something in me stumbles. The light flickers. Her pen rolls off the desk and hits the floor.

She sighs. “Not tonight, Ava.” I want to tell her I’m not angry. That I understand. That she needs this distance. But I can’t make the words leave my mouth. So I simply leave.

Later, when she’s asleep, I sit by the window again. I think about what she said on the roof: “It’s cruel how easy it is for you to be brave about feelings now there’s nothing you can do with them.”
She’s right.

But I’m starting to wonder if that’s all death is, learning how to feel without being allowed to act. I touch the mirror, and for a moment, my reflection almost forms.

Half-there. Half-gone. And behind it, Beatrice stirs in her sleep, whispering something that sounds like my name. It’s not enough. But it’s something.

It's been a week since Beatrice said stay, and I promised always. Now she doesn’t say anything at all.

She still knows I’m here, I see it in the way she hesitates before walking into a room, the way her eyes flick to empty space before she sits, but she’s stopped speaking to me. She’s learned silence like a second language. Fluent. Protective. Dangerous.

She wakes early. Moves through her routines with quiet precision. Her parents measure her recovery in politeness and productivity. They call her strong when she doesn’t cry. Beatrice takes the compliment like a punch.

At college, she’s back to being the model student. Focused. Careful. Always on time. Only Camila notices the edges slipping.

They sit outside the art block during lunch. Beatrice’s camera rests in her lap, fingers tracing the strap.

Camila kicks her sneaker against the wall, watching her. "You’ve been quieter lately,” Camila says. “Even for you.”

“I’m fine,” Beatrice answers. The word lands dull, rehearsed.

Camila frowns. “You don’t look fine. You look like someone pressed mute on you.”

Beatrice glances down, adjusts her lens cap. “Grief changes people, Camila. That’s all.”

“Yeah, but it’s been over 6 months,” Camila says, gentle but firm. “You can’t stay stuck forever. She wouldn’t want that.”

The air between them goes still. Beatrice doesn’t answer. Her thumb rubs at a scratch on the camera like it might polish the conversation away. Camila softens her voice. “I miss her too, you know.”

Beatrice finally looks up, eyes glassy but calm. “Missing her doesn’t help.”

“It helps to talk,” Camila presses. “To me, to anyone. You don’t have to keep all of this in.”

“I’m not keeping anything,” Beatrice lies quietly. “I just need some quiet. Would you believe me if I said I had talked about Ava all I could in this life?”

Camila exhales, worried but respectful. “Fine. But don’t drown in this, okay?”

Beatrice nods once. “I’ll manage.” Camila touches her shoulder before heading off to class.

The moment she’s gone, Beatrice stands still for a long time, pretending to scroll through her phone.

I drift near, whispering, “You don’t have to pretend for me.” Her eyes flick upward for half a heartbeat, then she turns and leaves.

That night, she reads until her eyes close again, pushing herself to sleep. I sit by the window, watching and hoping for her to subconsiously speak to me.

She needs space. And I need to figure out what I’m still clinging to love, guilt, or the idea of being remembered. I sit and relive our conversations. I think I finally understand: sometimes staying away is the only way to stay at all.

Chapter 6: Tomorrow

Summary:

Okay works been a.... never mind. Enjoy the next chapter

Days start blurring, but not in the floaty “oops, I walked through a bus” way. More like we’re both holding a cracked bowl and ambling so it doesn’t split in our hands. Less melodrama, more caution. She edits her life; I edit my mouth. We’re… functional, which is a funny word for two people who technically shouldn’t share a reality.

Beatrice doesn’t ignore me now. She just trims me. Crops the frame. I get the edges; she keeps the middle. Her answers are two, maybe three words. If I accidentally make her laugh, she covers it and changes the subject. I can’t tell if she’s punishing herself or protecting us or both. Some days she just looks at me, and I can see the question in her eyes, What exactly are you to me now? I pretend not to notice. I notice everything I feel like since I died, I'm seeing her for the first time.

Week One

Mornings at her home are the same three moves: kettle (on), curtains (open), hair (up). Eats half a thing instead of none, which I’m counting as a medical miracle since she has barely eaten in. Sleeps too late, wakes too early, still calls herself “fine" whenever anyone answers. I sit on the windowsill and watch her edit. Her hands are ridiculously steady, exact, and quiet. The kind of control you grow when the alternative is splintering.

I watch her and I smile, she seems today to be softer, her looks at me linger, and there are small smiles every so often, so I start small because small is allowed. Thank God I worked out how to hold things. Post-its on the corner of her camera strap, folded under her trackpad, peeking out of the cutlery drawer:

Eat something real today.

Go outside. The sky still works.

Smile at someone who isn’t me.

She pretends she doesn’t see them. Then her coffee or tea goes from cold and sulky to half-empty. The window ends up cracked open before I can suggest oxygen. By day five, I get a note back:

Stop mothering me, ghost Ava. :) (drawn the size of an ant, because Beatrice believes in stealth joy and stealth forgiveness, I swear she's a ninja warrior in another life.

I stick it to the board like a trophy.

By the end of the week, she’s going for walks again outside like we used to. I trail behind like a very chic haunting. We pass the same butcher with a chalkboard full of meat puns usually, I would make one back, but we are not there yet. The same woman misting plastic plants like they could learn to grow, the same kid playing in his garden stomping the same puddle like it owes him rent.

On Thursday, she says. “I forgot what this felt like,”

“What?” I say to her.

“The sound of London being alive.”

“It never stopped,” I tell her. “You did. Or, like, turned the volume down.”

She nods, mouth twitching. “Listening hurts.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But silence kills.”

She doesn’t argue. She never argues when I’m accidentally right. At home, her parents do that thing where they talk around her like she’s a vase, expensive, fragile, and theoretically deaf.

Mum: future, therapy, university image (said like it has a trademark).

Dad: Give her time (which he means, but he also cannot be bothered with Beatrice.)

One evening, Beatrice sits on the floor with an empty frame in her lap, checking the reflection like it might tell her what expression to have.

“I keep deleting you,” she says. “Every folder. Every backup. You’re still here,” she points to her heart.

“I don’t mind being there,” I say.

“I do.”

I almost joke. I don’t. Instead, I sit on the carpet close enough to feel the air warm between us.

“You’re supposed to be gone, Ava and I cannot,” she says.

“I know.” I nudge the frame so the glass stops catching her face in shards. “You’re not supposed to be alone, you have to live.”

“It’s easier just existing.”

“But it's not right,” I say. She puts the frame down like it could explode and doesn’t answer.

 

Week Three:

I relearn her like a language I used to speak it, I think, but it seems I forgot when I died. She taps her thumbnail against her lip when she’s mid-think. Counts steps in fours when she’s anxious. Tucks her hair behind her ear twice exactly before taking a photo. She thinks the habits hide her. They announce her to me. Sometimes I catch her catching me watching. She doesn’t look away. Her shoulders drop a millimetre and she smiles softly. It’s basically a hug in Beatrice's language.

That night, the desk lamp makes a little lake of light. On her screen: a bus window, faces smeared into the city, a gold drag where the streetlamp got sentimental. She’s annoyed with it for reasons only she can see.

“You’re stuck,” I say.

“I’m fine.”

“Bea.”

She exhales. “It looks false. Like I’m painting light on after the fact.”

“Then stop faking it,” I say, softly. “You’re better at finding it.”

She side-eyes me, interested against her will. I lean in and point. “There. Top left smear. That’s nice.”

She tilts the screen. The picture clicks into rightness in my head. “You think so?”

“I know so.” When she looks back at me, the guard dog inside her sits down. Four days later, she stands at the fridge with a magnet shaped like a pear, which her mum hates, so I obviously love it.

“We need a list,” she announces.

“Groceries? Because I agree it's boring as hell in there.” I point to the fridge.

She writes a title like she’s filing a legal doc: Beautiful Thing / Today

“One thing every day,” she says. “Rule.”

“I usually hate rules, but this one I'm down for.” We begin the list, and it is our collective joy.

Day 1: Fox called Margaret (screamed at 3:11 a.m., dramatic queen).
Day 2: Rain is great to walk in if you accept the beauty.
Day 3: The way you laugh. (She writes it without looking at me; I look very hard at the spice rack and try not to smile)

Week Four:

Real rain shows up, the kind that makes pavements smell brand new and makes fruit look holy. Beatrice's mood drops, and the weather is to blame, I think.

Enter: Camila, thank fuck. Zero subtlety, infinite love. She finds Beatrice under the art block overhang and peels paint with her thumbnail like she’s interrogating the wall.

“You’re quiet,” she says. “Even for you.”

“I’m fine,” Beatrice lies politely.

“You’re not,” Cam says in that gentle ‘I’ll pray-and-code you through this’ voice. “There’s an open call in a few weeks for a small gallery presentation. It's in a space by the library. Three images are needed. I’ll go with you. I’ll dress like a curated person. Say yes.”

“Maybe,” Beatrice says, looking at the poster.

“Maybe means yes.” Camila kisses her cheek because she is Camila. “Texting the info now. Stop hiding from the world.”

Camila doesn’t know I’m here. She still manages to shake me awake. We stop wandering sadly and start scouting photo opps.

“Three frames,” I say. “Window. Water. Stranger.” I try, and she shakes her head.

“Not faces,” Bea says. “Faces lie.”

“Not in between breaths,” I say.

She half-smiles. “You used to say that.”

“I still do.”

We walk the route she loved when loving anything wasn’t dangerous, down to the canal, cut through the playground with the squeaky swing, and end at the orange streetlamp that makes everybody look like they’re keeping a secret after 9 p.m.

“Shoot a human there,” I tell her. “The lamp does half the work.”

“I don’t shoot humans.”

“You shot me,” I say lightly. She doesn’t blink at that one, which is some kind of progress.

Back home, there’s a heavy card invitation on her plate. Over dinner, Mum says, “We’re pleased you’re… stable,” and glances at the pill bottle, and I want to throw the pear magnet at her. “Perhaps for this event brighter subjects, darling. People love joy. The college trustees love joy.”

“I’ll do my best,” Beatrice says, voice like polished wood. Later, she drags a rain photo into the bin, hesitates, drags it out again, and renames the folder keep. Sometimes recovery is just not giving up on an image you loved five minutes ago.

We make rules for each other, because we’re tired of drowning in fear:

“Tell me when my staying hurts,” I say.

“Tell me when my avoiding you hurts,” she says.

"Always", I say immediately.

One beautiful thing a day.

No deep talks and autopsies after midnight.

“A truce,” I offer.

“A truce,” she agrees.

The fridge list grows:

Day 7: Fox screamed at 3:12 a.m. like it was auditioning for something. I gave it a 7/10. A
Day 9: Peeled an apple in one perfect ribbon. Ava called it sorcery; I called it focus. B
Day 11: Sun hit the window right when she smiled. Physics owes me nothing else today. A
Day 12: We shared silence, and neither of us tried to fix it. A
Day 12: A photo didn’t hurt to look at. That feels new. A
Day 17: Tomorrow is not a threat. B (big letters; I stare at the floor because wow, that's progress)

She edits like she’s putting light back exactly where it fell. I tell her when her crop turns a street into a secret; she tells me to stop being dramatic, and also, I’m right. When she naps, she never means to. I pull the throw over us without touching her and keep watch like an old ritual.

At 3:11, Margaret screams (reliable diva). At 4, the city sighs. At 5, I realise I don’t hate being wanted by her; in fact, I like it.

On a wet Tuesday, Camila frog-marches her to the small space beside the library. It smells like paint. “These walls will love your images,” she tells Beatrice, stroking the plaster like a cat.

Beatrice folds her arms. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You can,” Camila says. “You will. For you. And for… someone.” She doesn’t look my way, but I know she means me. "Deadline Friday. Three images."

The first two basically shoot themselves because Beatrice is a genius. Thursday morning, a bus window fogs with a kid’s drawing of nothing and everything. She gets it in one click. Thursday afternoon, the canal eats the sky and gives it back silver-blue. She shoots. She edits and smiles. Two down. The third sits there like a dare,

“Faces lie,” she repeats, already bracing for disappointment.

“In between breaths they don’t,” I repeat, because I am nothing if not persistent with her in moments when someone isn't aware isn't ready are her best shots.

We go back to the streetlamp. The air smells like rain rehearsing. A girl waits with a red umbrella, sky still dry, because some people are consistent in cute ways. Beatrice brings the camera up. Her hands go quiet. She breathes in, out. The umbrella girl shifts. Far off, somebody laughs. A bus sighs. Click.

She checks the back of the camera, and for once, she doesn’t delete. Doesn’t even flinch. We go home like we stole something small and precious.

She writes Streetlamp Girl on the fridge list. Neat. Certain.

That night, our laughter finds its own way back. We sit on the floor with contact sheets and bowls, and I judge plates of food like I’m on a petty TV show while she washes them and calls me insufferable with a smile. We invented a glass-rating system (streak lost = bonus point if you swore in French). She hums along to a song she pretends to hate. I do not out her. Sacred things are small and stupid and perfect.

After nine, the old building settles like an old man into a chair. She pulls out a thin book, sketches rectangles and arrows and notes only she can read. When she catches me looking, she slaps a hand over the title.

“You don’t get to see the name yet.”

“Stop hoarding secrets. I have no life.”

“It’s called boundaries,” she says, and my face does something so dramatic she has to lie down to laugh. We laugh until my knee bumps her shin, and neither of us moves for three seconds that feel like a page turning.

“Are we okay?” I ask later, quietly.

She looks at me properly. The air tightens, loosens. “We’re trying,” she says.

“I’m scared of hurting you by staying,” I say. “And by going.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” she says. “I just want you to stop lying to me and stop hating me.” I feel sick, she thinks I want.

“I could never hate you,” I say, sitting.

"Not me, what I am," she responds, and if my heart could break, it would.

"I don't hate what you are. What you are is beautiful"

“Ava, what are you saying?"

"Beatrice, for someone so smart, you are incredibly stupid. I was never uncomfortable because of your sexuality; I was uncomfortable because my life felt like my life was a lie. I thought we told each other everything. I didn't see you, and I was blind. I love when you touch me, it's the one time I feel alive, but it's killing you, and I cannot bear to cause you more pain."

She reaches for the throw; her fingers brush mine. I don’t flinch. We let the touch hold for one, two, three heartbeats, I don’t have. It’s not romantic. It’s not not romantic.

Bed is a routine we remember now. Two pillows facing each other, like we actually learned something. Lamp off. I keep watch because someone should. The sky goes milk-pale at the edges; Margaret the fox decides against screaming the 3:11. When the alarm chirps, Beatrice reaches across me without apologising. She smiles before her eyes even open.

“Morning,” I say.

“Morning,” she says. “Toast, tea, breathing.”

“Plus one.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “Plus one what?”

“Laughter.”

She pretends to think about it. She’s already decided yes.

Friday: Three Pictures and a Pulse

Tea. Curtains. A playlist we both hate out loud. She dresses like she intends not to be seen and puts her prints in the portfolio like she’s tucking in small animals. This isn’t for trustees or CVs. This is proof that Beatrice is amazing.

At college, she prints them on good paper. The big machine whirs. The bus window comes out first, grain-like skin. The canal is next blue trying on silver. Streetlamp Girl last red umbrella, so contrasting, it's stunning.

Beatrice levels them with a little spirit level a tutor once gave her. Her mother doesn’t come, nor does her father. Her father texts good luck, which I respect because it doesn’t pretend to be more than he is; he barely cares about any moment of her life.

Camila arrives winged in eyeliner and applauds when she sees the photos. The small space beside the library smells like paint and nerves. Students step back, forward, and argue with tape and lining things up. Beatrice hangs her three in a line, steps back, and breathes. The ceiling lights are mean to most things. They are kind to these they are always kind to her photos and her face.

“It’s good,” Camila says, suddenly quiet. “It’s… more.”

Beatrice swallows. Nods. She doesn’t check her phone. She lets people look at something she wrestled out of grief and made gentle. The show is a show. Two strangers stop at Streetlamp Girl and lean in.

“It’s soft,” one says.

“It’s brave,” the other says, which is not the word I’d pick (people throw that word at pain like confetti), but fine. Tonight, it can be brave. We walk home through air that smells like spring. She’s not talking much. Doesn’t need to. Tonight was a huge step.

In the kitchen, she takes the pear magnet and adds a line to the list:

Day 18: I didn't hate showing my work.

Then she looks at me, not through me, at me and says, “You’re helping.”

“That’s the plan,” I answer.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to be happy.”

She looks back at the list, then at me. Something inside her unclenches. Not all the way. But enough.

We have toast for dinner because success deserves breakfast for dinner. She tells me a tutor loved the bus window and wanted the canal darker. I shake my head. They were perfect, just like her. Night does its night thing. I sit by the window and watch the glass become a mirror, become nothing, become morning.

Being dead gives you a lot of time to think. It walks in without knocking, sits on the sill beside me, and it hits me. I want her to live, and I want to be the reason she remembers how to live, how to. I am not saying the word love out loud. It deserves two living hands to give her that.

But these little things, tea, toast, breathing, laughter, a list with a pear magnet, are building something grief does not know how to take apart.

Morning will come softly. The kettle will hiss. She’ll make two mugs and pass me one I can’t drink, and I’ll hold it anyway because pretending is sometimes the only bridge that works.

We’ll add Streetlamp Girl (2) or Man with blue scarf, or Puddle that looked like sky to the sheet. We’ll keep our rules. We’ll keep our truce. We’ll keep going.

She sleeps on her side, hand under her cheek in a way that I adore. I keep watch. The orange lamp turns on and then off as daylight breaks.

“Tomorrow,” I whisper to the room, to the list, to the stupid pear magnet because that's now what I live for. Tomorrow.

Notes:

Do we like/hate this? It's dark and moody, but I think it has to be.

Chapter 7: I didn't Break

Summary:

Ava and Bea find their routine, and it gets detailed.

I hover near the counter as Beatrice walks in, “Morning.”

She jumps slightly, hand gripping the mug. “God, Ava, warn me next time.”

“Sorry,” I grin. “Didn’t want to break the kitchen ambience. Very serene. Very… tragic chic.”

She sighs through a laugh. “You’re insufferable.”

“I was voted that in life, too,” I say, leaning on nothing. “Class of 2022, ‘Most Likely to Haunt Someone for Fun and be infufferable.’”

She shakes her head, eyes soft now. “It’s too early for your stand-up routine.”

“You love my stand-up routine.”

“No,” she says, stirring the tea, “I love that you think you’re funny.”

I grin. “Close enough.”

She passes me a mug. I hold it out of habit, watch the steam curl through my fingers before it fades into nothing. She doesn’t look away when it happens anymore. Just sips her own drink and lets me pretend.

We walk later, down side streets that smell of rain and bread. The air’s damp, her breath visible. She’s got her camera slung cross-body like a weapon she’s learning to use again.

“Why are you following me today? We have no real tasks,” she asks without turning around.

“Because you would look normal, imagine our usual Londoners saw you not making conversation to yourself, they might think you were approachable.”

She snorts. “So you’re stalking me for my own good?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Only to the living.”

She glances over her shoulder at that one, lips twitching, like she’s fighting the urge to smile. I notice the faint flush in her cheeks from the cold, the way her fingers fidget inside her coat pocket, restless.

We stop at the crossing. A gust of wind sweeps her hair forward, a few strands catching in the corner of her mouth. Without thinking, I reach out. My fingers brush the curl away.

It’s light, a flick, a ghost of a touch, but real. The air between us hums. For a second, my hand looks solid, veins and skin where nothing should be.

Her breath catches. “Did you feel”

“Wind,” I say too fast.

“Right.” She looks at me a second too long. “Weird.”

“Just atmospheric special effects. Very high budget haunting.”

She shakes her head and keeps walking, but she keeps rubbing her wrist like she’s not convinced. I stare at my hand. It’s faded again. When I'm emotional, I'm more solid. I already knew, but she doesn't.

At the park, she sits on a bench, camera poised. She’s quieter lately, but not in that brittle way she used to be; it’s a focused quiet, like she’s tuning the world back in. I watch her lift the lens to her eye, adjusting the dial, waiting.

“What are you shooting?” I ask.

“Light.”

“Found it,” I say, pointing at her.

She rolls her eyes, but I catch the blush before she hides it behind the camera.
“You know you’re impossible, right?”

“Tragically, yes.”

She presses the shutter. The sound cracks the air. Then another, and another.

“Do you miss dancing?” she says, voice soft.

I blink. “Every day.”

“Then dance.”

“Here?”

“Why not? Who can see you?” So I do on instinct. My trainers on wet concrete, I spin once, twice, a ghost moving through time with music that doesn’t exist. When I stop, she’s staring. Not with pity. With awe.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t take a picture,” I say, grinning.

“I didn’t. I have thousands of you just like this.”

“Is my dancing as good as it was? I didn't miss a step?” I ask.

She shakes her head, "You never miss a step, Ava.”

I don’t joke after that. I can’t.

We get coffee, well, she does. The barista is one of those overconfident twenty-somethings with too much charm. She smiles too long when she hands her the cup. I hover at her shoulder. “Wow. She was thirsty.”

She looks at me blankly. “What?”

“She was into you.”

“She was taking my order.”

“Yeah, with her eyes.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And yet correct.”

“Are you?” she squints at me, suspicious, “jealous?”

I scoff. “I’m dead. I can’t be jealous.”

She smirks, sipping her drink. “You’re doing a really good impression, then.”

Back at the house, her parents are gone for 4 weeks, and it's bliss. She spreads prints across the table, her latest work. All stark light and stillness. I stand behind her, looking over her shoulder.

“They’re beautiful,” I say quietly.

“Too empty.”

“They’re honest.”

“Honest isn’t always beautiful,” Beatrice adds, and it cuts me; she's talking about herself.

“Neither am I, apparently, so we’re matching.” If she's ugly in her truth, so am I.

She laughs under her breath. “Shut up.”

“Never.”

She picks up one photo, the riverbank and studies it for so long that the air between us feels crowded. I watch her thumb trace the edge of the paper. She’s remembering something; I can tell by the way her lips part like she’s about to speak and doesn’t.

Finally, she says, “You make jokes when you’re uncomfortable.”

“I make jokes all the time.”

“Exactly. Were you always uncomfortable with me?”

"With you, no, with being myself always. I was always just a little too much for most people." I admit, and she shakes her head.

"Never for me, Ava." The silence after that stretches, comfortable and painful all at once.

Hours later. She’s sitting cross-legged on the sofa, laptop open, editing. I sit on the floor, close enough to catch her reflection in the screen.

She glances down. “You’re quiet.”

“I’m trying to be mysterious.” I joke.

“How’s that working for you?”

“Terribly.” She smiles, but keeps her eyes on the screen. Her fingers move fast, precise, confident. I can’t look away from them.

“You know what’s weird?” I say distracting myself.

“What?”

“I think you’re starting to look… happy.”

She pauses. “That’s weird?”

“A little. You used to be all sharp edges and quiet despair, even when I was alive.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome. It’s progress.”

She huffs a laugh. “You’re insufferable.”

“You already said that.”

“Then it’s still true.”

She stretches, arms above her head, the hem of her jumper lifting just enough to make my brain short-circuit. I look away quickly. Focus, Ava. You’re dead. Stop being a fucking cliché.

Later, she drifts off mid-movie. Her head tilts against the cushion, mouth slightly open. I know I should go. I don’t. I sit beside her, close enough to feel the warmth coming off her skin. I swear it hums, this low, steady pulse that makes everything in me ache. My hand moves before I can think. Fingers hover above hers, the air rippling faintly. Then, slowly, I lower my hand until it rests against hers. And she’s there. Real. Warm. For one impossible second, we’re touching. Properly touching. Her hand twitches in her sleep, and she curls her fingers around mine.

My body flares. Every nerve remembers what it’s like to exist. Then she stirs, whispers something that sounds almost like my name. My hand slips back into nothing. Her fingers close on air. She frowns in her sleep, mutters, “Stay.”

My throat burns. “Always,” I whisper.

She wakes later, blinking at the TV still flickering. “Did you watch the whole thing?” she asks, voice rough from sleep.

“Yeah. The ending sucked.”

She smiles faintly. “You didn’t move?”

“Had the best seat in the house.”

Her brow furrows like she wants to ask something, like maybe she dreamt what really happened, but she doesn’t. Instead, she tugs the blanket higher and says, “Goodnight, Ava.”

“Goodnight, Bea.”

I stay there long after she’s asleep, watching the rhythm of her breathing, the slight twitch of her lips when she dreams.

She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s saving me. Every look, every laugh, every moment she forgets to be sad, it pulls me a little further from the emptiness of being dead. I thought I was here to haunt her, to fix her. Turns out I stayed because I couldn’t bear not to. And somewhere between the tea, the laughter, and the brief impossible touch, I realise I’m falling in love with her. Not like lightning. Not like fate. Like gravity, quiet, relentless, and too late to stop because I was hitting the ground at a speed that could kill me all over again.

Beatrice is doing the route we made ours, like it’s a pilgrimage, to the canal to the orange streetlamp, camera strap across her chest like a seat belt. The sky’s undecided, which is London’s whole brand. She’s got the half-focus face on: calm mouth, eyes scanning for light like it owes her money.

At the canal, she crouches, ignoring the goose with the villain energy. The water is moodier than usual, blue pretending to be metal. She waits for a ripple, takes it when it comes. Click.

We head toward the lamp, the gold one that makes sinners and commuters equal. The pavements are slick. A girl stands under the light with a scarf the exact colour of a bruise, trying to be royal. Earbuds in, hands in pockets, she's the epitome of London, just cool.

“There,” I say. “Between breaths.”

Beatrice lifts the camera. Her shoulders drop the exact amount they drop when it’s right. Click. She checks the back, just once. Nods. Doesn’t delete. And then the girl looks up.
She’s got one of those faces that looks like a model. Dark hair, beautiful eyes, you notice those first. She glances at Beatrice, then at the camera, then back to Beatrice. Not hostile. Curious.

“Was that a photo of me?” she asks, pulling a bud out.

Beatrice freezes the way deer on tasteful Christmas cards freeze, contained alarm, no chaos. “The light was…” She stops, recalibrates. “Beautiful.”

“Is this the part where I sign a release?” The girl smiles, stepping into the lamp like she owns it. Her voice is warm with a scrape in it. “Only I charge extra if I’m mid-existential crisis.”

A small, traitorous heat climbs my ribs. I fold my arms for dignity I do not currently possess.

Beatrice finds her politeness. “I can delete it if you prefer.”

“Oh, God, no,” she says quickly. “I like the idea that I am someone's ideal image.” She nods toward the camera. “Can I see?”

Rules say no. Beatrice never breaks rules she didn’t write, but she hesitates. Then tilts the back screen so the girl can peek.

The girl leans in. “Oh,” she says, softly. “That makes London look… kinder.” She shifts, holds a hand out. “Lucia.”

Beatrice takes it. “Beatrice.”

“A name with posture.” Lucia’s grin is easy. “I’m not wrong, am I? You’re a real photographer, not a hobbyist with a nice camera.”

“Student,” Beatrice says, which is true and also her favourite way to make herself smaller.

“Right. The kind who actually sees the world.” Lucia tucks her scarf tighter. “Do you ever show your work? Or are you secretly famous and pretend not to be because you’re British?”

“She does,” I say automatically, uselessly. Beatrice cuts me a side glance that would be an elbow if she could.

“Sometimes,” Beatrice says out loud, boringly modest. “Small spaces. College/university shows.”

“I’m glad you took a photo of me,” Lucia says, as if we’ve collectively agreed that shooting people under orange lamps is a moral good. “Can I?” She gestures vaguely between the camera and her chest. “Could you send me the photo? I promise I won’t slap one of those cursed filters on it. Cross my heart.”

Beatrice thinks, because Beatrice always thinks. “You can give me your email.”

Lucia laughs. “Or you could… have coffee with me and bring it. Stone Age data transfer, give me a print of the soon-to-be-famous Beatrices portfolio.” She tips her head. Scarf releases a tiny puff of perfume, something citrus, something warm. “Sorry. Is that too forward?”

Yes, I think, and also: absolutely not. It’s precisely calibrated, and she is smooth. Beatrice looks down at the camera like it might offer advice. Her mouth opens and closes once, twice. I can feel the decision happening in her shoulders. I can also feel my temperature doing things science hasn’t signed off on.

“Coffee would be…” She swallows. Her voice steadies. “Nice.”

Lucia’s smile softens at the edges, like she’s relieved she doesn’t have to be brave for two. “There’s a place near the British Library. Saturday? Noon? Unless your calendar is full of other people you have photographed under flattering streetlamps.”

“Saturday is fine,” Beatrice says, and her hands are very still on the camera, and I remind myself to breathe even though I do not actually need to. Lucia pushes her scarf down a fraction, pulls her phone out. “Do I ask for your number like a normal person, or do we do the film version where we pretend not to want things?”

Beatrice’s mouth twitches. “Normal is fine.”

They swap details. It takes ten seconds. It feels like a century. “Okay,” Lucia says, stepping back into the lamp. “Thank you for making me look like I exist on purpose.” Then she tucks her earbud back in, looks at Beatrice once more, quick and bright, and goes.

“Well,” I say. My voice lands weird, too light, too late.

Beatrice keeps her eyes on the path where Lucia was. “Well.”

“She seems nice,” I add, because stabbing myself in the heart is not on the menu, and I’m going for a whole supportive dead girl vibe.

“She does,” Beatrice says, like she’s testing the verb. A silence arrives that is either our friend or a coward. I can’t tell which.

“You said yes,” I say. It comes out softer than I meant it to.

Her fingers tighten on the strap. “I did.”

“Good,” I manage. “Living is good, you get ten points.”

“That’s not how points work,” she says automatically, which is our version of air. We walk home. I concentrate on the left foot, right foot, don’t haunt, don’t hover, don’t hover too obviously. I’m fine. I’m fine. I am not fine. I feel anger and sadness.

“You can”, I point vaguely at the fridge list. “You should put something. Beautiful Thing. Girl who wanted to exist on purpose.’ Or ‘Streetlamp did the heavy lifting.’ Or ‘I said yes and no one died.’”

Beatrice finally looks at me. The moment is weirdly soft. “Are you angry?”

The laugh barks out before I can domesticate it. “At who? Lucia, for having a face? You for being dateable? The lamp for doing its job too well?”

“Ava,” she says, and the name is careful and soft and harder than any shout. "We promised honesty, and it's not past midnight."

I pinch the bridge of my nose like I have one. “Yes, I'm something.” I drop my hand. “I felt… something.”

“Angry at me for living,” she offers.

I make a face. “You are incredibly smart and yet always incorrect, Beatrice.” She doesn't want to say the word, the feeling we both know I feel; instead, she ignores it. A rule should have been not to lie to yourself, because then she might actually ask the real question she needs to.

She doesn’t move closer. She doesn’t step away. “I cannot apologise for trying to live.”

“You shouldn’t,” I say quickly, because I won’t be the reason her world gets smaller. “I want you to try. I want you to go. I want you to… have coffee. Be normal.” The word tastes like a lie. “I’m just… learning how to deal, where I put these feelings and how I handle this all.”

Her mouth warms at the corners, sympathy without pity. “Sit,” She gestures at the chair.

I sit. It’s ridiculous that it helps.

“I don’t”, I start, then stop, because honesty is expensive and I’m not rich. “I don’t like sharing you. But I like you living more.”

Beatrice breathes out. It sounds like weight lifting when she admits. “I don’t know what this is supposed to look like,” she admits. “You and me and… life.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll make it up. Worst case, I haunt Lucia politely.”

Her eyebrow lifts. “Define politely.”

“I’ll only scare her once a month.”

The joke lands where it should. Something in her shoulders loosens. She shrugs off her coat. The room decides to be a room again instead of a cage.

“Do you want to see the frame?” she asks, and the part of me that is all spine stands up. Of course I do.

She pulls the card from the slot, wakes the screen. There’s Lucia under the lamp, the scarf making her look like she belongs to a richer world. The gold is kinder than usual; it puts everybody at ease.

“She looks like she knows a secret,” I say.

“She does,” Beatrice says, and for a fraction of a second, I’m not sure if she means Lucia or the light.

On the way to the fridge, she picks up the pear magnet. Writes carefully.

Day 20: I said yes.

She caps the pen and leans the side of her head against the cool door like it might answer something.

“Tell me if you want me not to come on Saturday,” I say. The words taste like losing and also like love when you take the training wheels off.

Her head turns, just enough. “I think…” She chooses her sentences like she chooses her frames. “…I think I need to try it alone.”

“Okay,” I say, and my chest does that impossible ache. “Ground rules: if she’s weird about anything, fake an emergency. I’ll come if you call. I can feel when you call me.”

A laugh escapes her, small and grateful. “Deal.”

We move through the evening like it didn’t change anything. Pasta. Playlist we pretend to hate. Edit, undo, redo. She catches me staring once and tilts her head. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say, then give up on being a coward. “Just memorising you.”

Her eyes flicker. She doesn’t tell me not to. She just turns back to the screen, cheeks a little pinker, mouth that almost smiles.

Later, in bed, she lies on her side facing me, the way people do when they’re not afraid of morning. Our hands find the shared air between us and stay there beside one another. I feel that warm pull in my palms, the one that makes me more here when I feel more.

“We should talk more about this,” she whispers.

“After your coffee?” I ask, stupidly brave.

“After,” she says, and it feels like a vow to two separate things that might not cancel each other out.

She sleeps. I don’t. I practice being a good person in the dark: I wish Lucia kind jokes, competent baristas, and no cilantro in anything. I wish Beatrice soft light, no performance, one laugh she didn’t plan. I wish myself the grace I haven’t earned yet. I plan for the morning after, how to ask if it was okay without needing it to be awful.

On the fridge, the list looks smug in the dim kitchen glow: Day 20: I said yes. I add a dot under it, small as a freckle. Day 20½: I didn't break, I write in my own private space.

It’s not everything. It’s enough for tonight.

Notes:

The next chapter is going to hurt, but I am gonna need yall to hold steady, ok.

Comments inspire me to post faster...no pressure

Chapter 8: Bad Wifi

Summary:

Welp, this one is rough. Sorry, but please keep the faith Avatrice lives.

It starts with the sound of Beatrice humming. Not a full song, just a few notes, a soft, absent-minded melody caught between toothpaste and breath. But it’s enough. That tiny, unguarded sound tells me everything I need to know: today is going to hurt me.

Her room smells like lavender shampoo and decision-making. The curtains are half-open, London’s light spilling across her desk. She’s standing in front of the mirror, head tilted, studying herself like she’s about to perform an autopsy on her own face.

“Big day?” I ask, leaning on the doorframe like I belong in the world.

She jumps, then recovers fast. “Ava,” she breathes out, somewhere between exasperation and fondness. “You can’t just appear like that.”

“Then stop looking so cinematic,” I say. “You can’t give a girl a mirror scene and expect her not to make an entrance.”

Her mouth twitches. “You’re insufferable.”

“I was professionally voted that once. Yearbook superlative. Most likely to haunt someone for fun and refuse to shut up.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s warmth there, warmth that hurts more than it helps. I’d rather she looked through me than at me like that fuck. I already feel like I'm losing her to life.

Her hair’s damp. Her hands tremble a little when she dries them; she is nervous. She keeps choosing between shirts: white, then blue, then white again. The blue wins. The blue always wins. She's beautiful in either, I should have told her, but I cannot make today about me. I was selfish in life; I cannot be in death.

“You’re very… blue today,” I say.

“It’s called effort,” she replies, straightening her collar. Calm. Precise. Like, even her breathing’s been ironed.

“Effort’s overrated. You could show up in pyjamas and Lucia would swoon anyway.”

She freezes mid-button. “You want to talk about her...”

“I’m dead, Bea. Not much to talk about except your life. I am here for you, remember. Lucia is a supporting actor, a distraction.”

Her reflection looks at me, half challenge, half question. “Please remember how to be supportive.”

The words land like a paper cut. Tiny. Invisible. Somehow bleeding anyway. “Right,” I say, forcing a smile. “Supportive ghost mode. Check.”

She adjusts her sleeve, distracted. “You don’t have to wait here. I’ll be fine.”

That’s the thing about her voice, even when she says “fine,” it sounds like prayer and punishment at the same time. I stay anyway. Because I can’t not. “You look good,” I say, trying for lightness and missing entirely.

She glances up, the faintest blush brushing her collarbone. “Thank you.” The air thickens. I should vanish. I don’t. Instead, I watch her put on perfume, not her usual one, the amber-and-cedar I used to tease her for, something softer. The kind of scent people wear when they’re trying again.

It lands, it hurts my chest. I want to hate the scent I don't. I want to breathe it in until it burns. “You’re staring,” she says, voice calm but coloured pink.

“Occupational hazard.”

“You don’t have an occupation.”

“Haunting is full-time work, actually. Very competitive field.”

She huffs a laugh, soft, reluctant. “Maybe get a hobby.”

“I did. It’s you.” Silence. The wrong kind. The kind that says too much. Shit. I almost apologise. She beats me to it by looking at me with that tiny, forgiving smile that kills me faster than light ever could.

“Don’t wait up,” she says, grabbing her camera bag.

“Text me when you're” I start, then stop, because ghosts don’t get texts.

She hesitates at the doorway. “I’ll… see you later?”

“Yeah,” I say, pretending it doesn’t hurt. “Knock twice if you need rescuing.”

She smiles, soft and grateful, and leaves.

The door closes, and the silence that follows has claws. It's tearing me apart. By 5 p.m., I’ve floated through every room twice. I’ve alphabetised her bookshelf by category, colour, rearranged the mugs by how much I hate them, and stared at the fridge so long it’s starting to feel like I am in a time loop.

“Okay,” I mutter to no one. “It’s just coffee. People do coffee. Coffee’s fine.” The fridge hums in reply, the traitor.

By six, I’m pacing invisible circles. I imagine Lucia’s voice soft, laughing, the kind of easy charm that doesn’t need to earn attention. I imagine Beatrice’s shoulders relaxing in ways they never do with me. I imagine their hands brushing over a coffee cup, and my stomach flips, which is impressive for someone without organs.

“Don’t be that ghost,” I tell myself. “Don’t be the possessive kind. Be… benevolent. Be… a friendly one but not Casper, that guy's a fake.” Casper and I have too much in common to also fall in love with the person he was haunting. Unlucky bastard.

By seven, London goes cold. I picture them walking under it, the light kissing Beatrice’s hair, Lucia saying something that makes her laugh from the stomach. And I realise jealousy is just love that’s run out of a place to go. By eight, the house feels too small.

I drift to her desk, where her notebook lies open. The newest page reads: Be brave, not careful.

I press my hand against the ink. It doesn’t smudge. My fingers pass through like smoke. I wish I could say I’m proud of her. Mostly, I just ache that bravery looks like leaving me behind.

By nine, I’m talking to the fridge. “Beautiful Thing / Today,” I read aloud. “How about ‘Ava didn’t implode’? No? Too needy?”

The lamp flickers. I take that as sympathy. When the key finally turns in the lock, I nearly forget how to breathe. Beatrice steps in quietly, cheeks flushed, coat half-zipped, and face content. She looks alive. Not glowing, just alive in that small, ordinary way that makes my chest hurt.

“Hey,” she says, voice light.

“Hey,” I echo, trying not to sound like an open wound.

She moves through the house, shoes off, hair loose, camera bag dropped. I want to ask everything. How she laughed. If Lucia was kind. If she felt something. If she thought of me. Instead, I just stand there like bad wallpaper.

She picks up the fridge marker and writes carefully: Day 21: Laughed at something, I didn’t fake it.

Then she caps the pen, looks at me like she’s waiting for permission. “That’s okay, right?”

My throat tightens. “That’s perfect.”

She smiles small, real, tired and disappears down the hall to wash her face and get ready for bed. I stay behind, staring at the list. The ink gleams wet for a second, then dries. Just like everything else.

Lucia becomes a recurring word in our house over the next 2 weeks. Not often. Just enough to hurt me. Every mention feels like a slow subtraction.

I make jokes because that’s what I do when I’m bleeding: “Lucia sounds great. Maybe she can join our list. ‘Day Whatever: Ava learns to share.’”

Beatrice laughs, and I smile if it doesn’t feel like drowning.

Days later. She gets a text mid-tea. The corner of her mouth curves before she can hide it.
I don’t ask. She tells me anyway. Lucia found a gallery. That night, she writes on the fridge: Day 24: She laughs, and I feel happier.

Later, when she’s asleep, I whisper to the dark: Day 24½: Watched Bea happier with someone else and pretended it didn’t hurt.

ThencLucia comes over with a box of prints. Beatrice lights a candle that smells expensive. I hover then bail when I see their shoulders touch by accident. Beatrice’s laugh is the softest I’ve ever heard. When Lucia leaves, Beatrice stands smiling into the quiet.

She writes on the fridge: Day 28: I let someone new see my work.

And I write, in a book she’ll never see: Day 28: Watched her glow under someone else’s light.

Next time I see them, they are watching a film about grief, a weird indie film I would never get. I perch on the roof, listening to London breathe. Through the ceiling, Beatrice’s silhouette glows in the dark. Lucia’s hand rests near hers, not touching. Waiting to. When Beatrice laughs, she leans in. I leave.

Later, Beatrice writes: Day 31 — Forgot to be careful.

And I add quietly to my own list: Day 31½: Remembered what loss feels like.

By the time we reach Day 34, she’s stopped needing to fill every silence with memory.
She hums while she edits her photos. She smiles when she talks to herself. I am there but not. I watch her, and chat to her in small moments.

She writes on the fridge: Day 34: Felt happiness again. And then she goes to bed.

When the house is quiet, I drift to her bookshelf, second shelf, behind A History of Light. The notebook waits there, thin and overused. My handwriting curls across the current page. I go back for old times' sake to my first entries.

Day 1: Beatrice named a fox at 3:11 a.m. and apologised for waking it by shouting its name. She still says sorry to things that can’t answer. I think that’s why I stay.

Day 2: We agreed that rain is beautiful if you accept it. That’s what dying feels like, learning to stand still and let it happen.

Day 3: She wrote about my laugh. I pretended not to see. If she’d looked up, she’d have seen me fall a little bit in love with her.

Day 7: Margaret screamed again. Beatrice rated it 7/10; I rated Beatrice’s smile infinite. Maybe haunting is just love with nowhere to go.

Day 9: She peeled an apple in one breath, one ribbon. I called it sorcery because “holy” felt too honest.

Day 11: Light hit her face, and I forgot I was dead. That’s when I realised that I’m in love with Beatrice. And that might be the most alive thing left in me.

Day 12: We shared silence, and it didn’t ache. Her quiet forgives me in ways Heaven never will.

Day 12 (second entry): She looked at a photo and didn’t flinch. I looked at her and did. Maybe healing means she can finally bear to see beauty again, even if I’m not in it.

Day 17: Tomorrow isn’t a threat, she wrote. It used to mean losing her a little more. Now it sounds like something I might survive.

Day 18: She showed her work. I stayed unseen, and that's true love.

Day 20½: She said yes. I didn’t break. Progress is even after I stayed solid for an entire minute.

Day 21: She laughed for real. The sound hurt less this time. Maybe ghosts heal by degrees.

Day 34½: Watched her learn to live without me. Happiness isn’t something you feel when dead. It’s something you leave behind.

I close the book gently and slide it back into place. She’ll never know it’s there. But someday, maybe, she’ll pull it out looking for something else, and find all the words I never said. And for the first time since dying, I almost hope she does.

The ache becomes routine, a quiet, dull companion. Some nights, I almost convince myself it’s okay. Other nights, when she smiles at her phone, when her eyes soften in that way that used to be mine, I fade without meaning to. She doesn’t notice right away. Then she does.

“Ava?” she says once, voice small. “You’re… flickering.”

“Bad Wi-Fi,” I joke.

She doesn’t laugh, she looks at me, concerned, but I shake my head, not ready to talk.

Later, she falls asleep on the sofa, half-wrapped in a blanket, hand resting where my arm isn’t. I sit on the floor beside her, invisible and aching. It’s unfair, how peaceful she looks. Unfair that I still love her more than breathing. Unfair that she’s finally living, and I think it's killing me. On the fridge, under the low kitchen light.

Day 38: I think I am going to be ok without her.

It would be funny if it weren’t so cruel. It would be cruel if it weren’t so beautiful. Loving someone really can feel like dying twice; in fact, it's worse. The first time I died, it was in the blink of an eye; this is like drowning.

Chapter 9: I love you.......

Summary:

Ok time for less angst I think we have all earned it.

Lucia stays over one night. It drives me to my edge. I want to move on, let me go. I hear enough that I stop pretending that I can’t hear them laughing through the walls. It’s not loud laughter, just soft and unguarded, the kind Beatrice only uses when she forgets to protect herself.

I drift from room to room like a bad radio signal, glitching in and out of walls. The house feels smaller, denser, like all the oxygen has been organised without me. By the time Lucia leaves, polite, lovely, smiling like someone who doesn’t know she’s standing in the wreckage of my life, Beatrice looks happy. Genuinely happy. And I can’t stand it.

“Morning,” she says, radiant and unaware.

“Morning,” I echo, voice thin and metallic.

She fills the kettle, humming that soft nothing she only hums when she’s at peace. “She liked the photos,” she says.

“Of course she did.”

Beatrice glances at me, head tilted. “You sound… weird, Ava.”

“Do I?” I hover near the window, arms crossed. “Must be the ghost thing. We’re notoriously moody about creative feedback.”

She frowns. “Ava”

“No, really,” I interrupt, too fast, too brittle. “I’m thrilled you’ve got someone to drink lattes and admire exposure ratios with.”

“That’s not fair, Ava.”

“Neither is death, but here we are.” I'm more bitter than I have ever felt. I don't understand. I want her happy, but this hurts.

The kettle boils. The sound fills the room like static. She sets it down carefully, jaw tight. “Are you angry at me?” she asks.

“I’m dead, Bea,” I say. “I don’t get angry.”

“That’s a lie, because I can feel your anger, it's choking me.” She says it quietly. Without edge. Just certainty. And that’s somehow worse.

I start pacing. The lights flicker. “I’m not angry,” I repeat. “I just, I thought”

“What?” she presses.

“I thought this was our thing,” I say, the words shaking. “You and me. The stupid fridge list, the midnight rules, pretending we’re fine. You were my person, Bea.”

Her eyes soften. “I still am Ava.”

“No. You’re someone else’s now.” She has nothing to apologise for. I am dead, the rational part of me knows that, but the other side, the jealous person in love with her best friend, is struggling. "That's fine, but own it."

She looks stricken, takes a step forward. “Ava, that’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” I laugh, hollow. “You smile differently now. You look at her like she’s sunlight and I’m just… a cloudy day, I'm just a memory.”

“That’s not fair to either of us.”

“Nothing about this is fair!” I snap. “I can’t eat, I can’t touch, I can’t live, all I can do is watch you finally start to, and it’s beautiful and I want you to be happy, Bea, but it’s killing me.”

Beatrice goes very still. “What are you saying?”

I breathe out of habit, not need and everything I’ve been holding slips. “I’m jealous,” I admit, voice cracking. “So jealous I can barely stay here half the time. You laugh with her, and I flicker. You text her, and my hands go through walls. I thought I was here to help you heal, but I’m just haunting the space where we used to be. Maybe that's the plan, I help you heal, and I fade away into nothing.”

Her eyes glisten. “Ava im”

“No, please fuck let me finish or I will never say it and it will be another regret and reason I can't move on.” My words tremble now, matching the light. “I am in love with you, Beatrice. So call me thoughtless and self-centred, but if I don't tell you, I think I will regret it my entire afterlife. I think I’ve loved you since before I knew what that meant. I just didn’t figure it out until I couldn’t touch you anymore.”

Silence. The kind that buzzes. The kind that changes the world in a second.

Beatrice takes a small step forward. “Ava, you can’t”

“I know,” I say. “I know it’s impossible. You’re alive. I’m not. You deserve mornings, real hands, and someone who doesn’t vanish when you're sad. I know. Do you believe me?”

"I think you are thoughtless and self-centred but dishonest, no." I smile at her and nod. I feel her sigh.

“I can’t stop loving you.” Her breath catches. She looks at me the way people look at miracles and disasters with awe and terror blended.

“Ava,” she whispers, “don’t do this to us.”

“I already did,” I say softly. “Every time I stayed instead of leaving, I tried to be strong to not be selfish. I tried to accept that things change when you realise not everything is about you. I have died again and again over the past few weeks so that you can live. But I can't stay and pretend.”

She closes the distance between us, not touching, just close enough that the air hums. I can feel her. “Ava, don't please, I can't,” she admits.

“You can,” I tell her. “Just… don’t lie to me, I can let go if you tell me you don’t feel something too, if you're over me.”

Her jaw trembles. She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. The silence between us is its own confession. When she finally speaks, her voice is barely there. “What do we do now?”

I laugh quietly, broken. “I wish I knew.”

We stand there, her breathing too fast, me flickering at the edges, two people on opposite sides of a miracle neither of us asked for. Outside, the first snow of the year begins to fall.
Beatrice watches it drift past the window.

“What is our Beautiful Thing / Today,” she murmurs, to me eyes full.

“Don’t,” I say.

She looks at me. “Why not?”

“Because today hurts too much to call it beautiful.”

Her eyes shine. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t.”

I want to touch her. I almost do. My fingers hover an inch from her skin, and then she moves first. She closes the space between us, so slowly it feels like mercy. Her hand lifts, hesitates, then finds my jaw. Her touch trembles, warm and impossible. I flinch not from pain, but from the miracle of it. From her.

She exhales, the sound breaking in the middle. “You feel real.”

“So do you,” I whisper.

The air between us thrums. The room seems to bend, holding its breath. Her thumb moves in one soft stroke over my cheekbone, gentle as prayer. The lights flicker, and my whole being trembles in response.

“Bea,” I manage, “we shouldn’t, I shouldn't have” I was selfish again, making her feel things when we can never be.

“Maybe I should for once live, be selfish and be free,” she says.

And then her forehead rests against mine. Not moving. No rush. Just that quiet, infinite head against mine, two worlds trying to occupy the same space.

I feel her heartbeat echo through me. My edges stop flickering. For the first time since dying, I’m not half here, I’m whole. Beatrice whispers, “You shouldn’t love me, Ava, it's too painful. I loved you for years, and not being able to have you nearly ruined me.”

“I tried not to,” I say. “Didn’t work.”

She laughs small, cracked, shining. “You were always terrible at rules.”

“I didn’t know they applied to the dead.”

“They do,” she breathes. “Just not to you.”

Her hand is still on my face. Mine rise, cautious, reverent until our fingers meet. And somehow, impossibly, they fit. There’s only this, her warmth, my light, the impossible peace of being touched.

“I don’t want this to stop,” I whisper.

“Then don’t make it,” she says, voice breaking.

We stay there, forehead to forehead, hand to hand, the living and the dead meeting in the middle. No kiss. It’s something holier. Something that makes my whole body ache with the beauty of being loved. Outside, the snow keeps falling. Inside, the world finally feels still.

Chapter 10: No More Circles

Summary:

Let's resolve or talk through some of these feelings....

The snow stopped sometime before the morning. Beatrice is asleep on the sofa. Her head rests against the armrest, one hand half-lifted between her heart and where mine used to be.

She fell asleep sitting up after I promised I’d stay until morning. I meant it. I couldn’t have left if I tried. I could touch her, and I worried that if I left, it would disappear again; my mind would stop that from happening again. Her breathing is steady now, soft, slow, the rhythm I have begun to build my days around. If I close my eyes, I can almost believe I’m alive again. Almost. The thing about almost is it’s cruel. It’s the hope that kills you.

When she stirs, I move instinctively, not away, just away a little, the way you move when something fragile could break because we could couldnt we Bea is not okay, and neither am I. She blinks at the light, disoriented, then looks to the space where I was sitting. Her eyes linger there, like she can still feel everything we shared.

“Morning,” she says quietly.

“Hey, Bea.” Her thumb brushes her jaw where my hand used to be, proof that it wasn’t a dream. Then she stands, slow and careful, the way people move after something sacred.
The kettle hums to life. Outside, the snow is already melting as she begins her day.

“I thought for a moment I dreamt it all, you, everything,” she murmurs. Her mouth twists, half smile, half wound. “Last night”

“Didn’t happen,” I interrupt gently. “Right?”

Her shoulders drop. “That's what you want me to believe, or how you feel?” she asks

I don’t answer. If I do, I’ll unravel. She pours the water, measures out coffee, and touches the mug the same as always. The routine is brutal in its normalcy because today is not the same, is it?

“I don’t know what the rules are anymore Ava,” she admits.

“Me neither. Maybe we make new ones.” It's my only answer, we keep making rules until some finally work, what else do we do?

“You always say that like it’s easy.”

“It’s not,” I whisper. “It’s just the only thing that ever worked for us.”

She leans against the counter. For the first time since I died, she looks afraid not of me, but of what's next. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she says.

“You already did,” I tell her, “just not in the way you think.”

Her brow creases. “Then how?”

“By being alive. By being beautifully alive.” I smile, small and tired. “And by letting me love you anyway.” Her eyes glisten. She looks away. The light hits her face, soft and gold, my god, she is beautiful.

I remember last night her forehead against mine, the way her warmth stayed in me all night. I want to reach for her again, but the air between us tightens, reminding me what I am, my own restrictions, our restrictions.

“We can’t… do that again,” she says.

“I know.” It's unfair to her and to Lucia; she has to move on.

“Do you?” she asks because it seems even dead, she feels I am the one who holds the power here.

“Yeah,” I nod. “Doesn’t mean I’ll stop wanting to.”

She exhales half sigh, half prayer and presses her palms to her eyes, as if to erase what’s already written on her face. When she looks up, she’s Beatrice again, calm, composed, quietly breaking.

“I made coffee today,” she says. “Do you still like the smell?”

“It’s the only smell that still makes me feel human.” She says nothing. Just picks up the marker and writes on the fridge: Day 39: We survived after something painful. I drift closer, breath catching as she caps the pen, that's for yesterday then.

“Fair,” I whisper.

She glances toward where I hover, lips parting like she wants to say stay, but the words never come. “I need to get ready.” She admits, and I smile.

I nod. “What's your Beautiful Thing / Today?” I question, and she almost stops, but she doesn't.

She doesn’t turn to me, she just states. “You its always you, even if I never write it.” The words hit like a car, and I would know, too sudden, too real. Before I can speak, she walks down the hall. I’m left with the echo of her voice and the smell of coffee and cold.

Later that week. Her phone buzzes twice before she picks it up. Lucia’s name glows on the screen like an alarm. She hesitates, thumb hovering, then flips it face down.

“Not answering?” I ask softly.

“She just wanted to talk about the exhibition.”

“Sure,” I say. “And maybe about the way you vanished halfway through dessert the other day.”

Beatrice exhales through her nose, the sound of someone trying to file her feelings into alphabetical order. “I panicked.”

“You don’t panic,” I say. “You strategise.”

Her jaw flexes. “Then consider this strategy.” The silence could shatter glass.

“You like her,” I say. Not an accusation, just a fact.

Beatrice presses her palms to the counter. “I did. I do. She’s… uncomplicated.”

“Then why does uncomplicated make you look like you’re suffering?”

She laughs once and then scoffs. “Because of you. You’re inevitable, Ava. You always have been. I am yours, and if the choice were here, I choose you every time, dead or alive, and now we can touch, I want" she stops "I don't know what I'm doing anymore.”

“Thought you said we can't do that again,” I whisper.

"Lucia is part of the reason why; I feel like I'm cheating on her, even if we haven't defined anything, but when I'm with her, I feel like I'm cheating on you. I don't even know anymore. Most people would call me insane." Her eyes meet mine, her cheeks wet, but still loving. “Stop making everything a confession.”

“I’m not,” I say. “It just keeps sounding like one.”

That evening, Lucia texts again. Beatrice stares at the screen before typing I need a few days. She doesn’t send it. Instead, she takes out her camera. The shutter clicks, the corner of the kitchen table, snow melting off the window ledge, the space where I’m standing. When she looks through the viewfinder, her breath catches.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re there,” she whispers. “Just a bit of light. But there.” I step forward, looking.

“Maybe that’s how it works,” I say. “You see me when you stop pretending you don’t.”

She lowers the camera slowly, eyes bright and terrified. “I have always taken photos of you, I always saw flecks of light; this is more. Ava, what changed about you?” She sinks into the chair by the window. I shrug. How am I supposed to know I am just a ghost?

“I told Lucia I needed space,” she says.

“And do you?”

“I don’t know what I need. I know when I’m with you, everything feels more, it doesn't compare she can't compare to you, and everything makes less sense.”

My chest tightens. “Bea”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I can’t keep rewriting my life around someone who isn’t supposed to exist. Who no one can see you?”

“I’m not asking you to,” I say quietly. “I just don’t know how to stop loving you and being near you. If you want me to go, I can. I will this time if it makes it better..."

"Where?"

"I don't know if it doesn't matter, not really. I will wander, that's what ghosts do, right?" I answer, and she shakes her head.

"I can't give you up either. If you left, she wouldnt be enough. She isn't equal to you, and if you were gone, I would feel the same."

Later, when the house goes quiet, she writes:

Day 40: I tried to choose the living. It didn’t work.

And on the bookshelf, unseen, I write: Day 40½: She tried to move on. I tried to let her. We both failed beautifully.

The next day. Lucia arrives with her camera bag and the gentlest eyes in the world. My heart breaks for her; she is good, and she stands no chance. None of us do; this may well destroy us all. She’s holding a small green plant, promising growth. She doesn’t know she’s walking into the end of something. Beatrice opens the door in the cardigan she slept in, hair pulled back too tightly in a bun, her version of armour.

For a second, I think she’ll send Lucia away, but she steps aside instead. “Hi,” she says, thin-voiced. “You came.”

Lucia smiles, unsure. “You sounded… serious. I wanted to check you’re okay.”

Beatrice nods, automatically. “I’m fine." The air between them says she is not.

Lucia sets the plant on the table. “You don’t have to talk, but I’m here. Whatever this is.”

Beatrice’s hands are clasped too tightly. I can see the pulse at her wrist, frantic. Her lips part, close, open again. She doesn’t look at Lucia; she looks through her, talking. “I keep trying,” she says quietly, “to be normal. To move forward.” A breath. “You deserve someone who can look at you and actually see you. I can’t.”

Lucia’s face folds soft, bewildered heartbreak. “Bea, you don’t have to”

“I do.” Her voice cracks. “Pretending is cruel. You’re wonderful. You’re everything safe and kind and alive, and I thought that’s what I wanted.” She laughs once, sharp, helpless. “But there’s someone I can’t stop loving. Someone who isn’t here anymore and yet she's here.”

Lucia’s eyes widen, not with jealousy, but understanding. “It’s her,” she whispers. “The one in your photos. The light in the corners.” I frown, is this the wrong thing to do, did I condemn Beatrice to a life alone....

Beatrice nods, broken. “I thought if I photographed it enough, I could move on. But it’s her. It’s always been her.” Silence, sacred and cruel. Lucia doesn’t run. She just nods, tears in her eyes.

“You loved her.”

“I still do.”

Lucia exhales. “Then you should. Maybe that’s how she stays.” She touches Beatrice’s hand once, gently as forgiveness and steps back. "You know she's not the only love in this world."

"What if she is?"

"Oh, Beatrice"

"I am sorry, Lucia." Beatrice cuts her off.

“You don’t owe me an apology,” she says softly. “Just the truth. Thank you for giving me that.” Then she leaves. The door shuts, and now there's no escaping this. Our next step. Beatrice stands shaking and leaves me alone. I leave her be; she needs space, and I have no words to make her feel better, not today.

Hours later. I hover by her window, the place I always end up when I don’t know what to do. “You now know how I feel,” she says finally.

I move closer, careful. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I know.”

She laughs, quietly, wrecked by life. “I thought saying it out loud would make it easier.”

“Did it?”

“No.” Her voice trembles. “It made it real.”

The snow outside has melted to grey slush and sunlight. Beatrice turns to the fridge, picks up the marker with shaking fingers, and writes: Day 41: I told the truth. I Survived.

I move toward her, barely breathing. She faces me, eyes red, shining. “I can’t keep choosing between grief and life,” she whispers. “If you’re going to stay, Ava, then stay. But don’t ask me to pretend it doesn’t break me when we just go in these circles.”

I step close enough for her to feel the air shift. "No more circles.”

Her breath catches, that half-sob, half-laugh she makes only when she’s giving up control. Then, for one impossible heartbeat, she reaches out, not to touch me, but to rest her hand in the air between us, like a promise.

The light bends around her fingers. Between us, something burns quietly, not ending, not beginning, just being. I hold her hand, and she lets go of the pain, the anger; she releases it all. We move around each other the rest of the day, accepting we need time to work through this, but today, on the broken shards of her and Lucia, is not the day to start anything new.

Day 41½: No more circles, she deserves everything she wants.

I write knowing that what comes next could save or ruin us both. Maybe love isn’t what keeps you alive. Maybe it’s what refuses to let you disappear.

Notes:

Sorry for the delay, I do have lots of chapters written, just need to go through and fix parts. Enjoy.

Chapter 11: Is this Heaven?

Summary:

I hope you all enjoy this one, a little joy.

Beatrice leaves the window open a fraction so I can feel the air. She says ghosts don’t need oxygen; I say love does. It’s easier now. I don’t flicker as much. I don’t fade when she looks at me. Maybe it’s her faith that keeps me here, the stubborn, ordinary kind that makes tea, folds laundry and survives.

She’s stopped talking to me like I might vanish mid-sentence. We speak the way we used to: overlapping, teasing, finishing each other’s half-thoughts. If she reaches for something on the counter, sometimes our fingers brush, and nothing breaks. I lift small things now. A pen. A scarf. The photograph of us from a trip to a nunnery, I joke all the time, we could have been Nuns who corrupted each other. She responds Ava, you would never make it as a nun. She's right, the edges are worn from her hands touching it so many times. The first time she caught me holding it, she didn’t speak, just stared until her eyes filled, and she said, "Maybe being nuns would have been safer; we could have done missionary work together." I smiled softly.

Nights stretch long and dark. She reads under a blanket, hair escaping its knot, glasses slipping down. I hover by the heater pretending to feel warmth. Every so often, she glances up as if to check I’m still there.

“I think you’re getting stronger,” she says one evening.

“Or you’re getting better at seeing me.”

“Maybe both.” She pats the bed. “Sit with me.” I do.

Our shoulders almost touch. The static between us hums not electric, but alive. After a while, she closes her book. “Do you ever sleep?”

“Not since you started snoring.” She laughs, head tipping back, and the sound fills the room. When she looks at me again, the laughter stays in her eyes.

The next morning, she sets two mugs on the table out of habit. Steam curls around us like breath. “Try it,” she says. I reach for mine. This time, my fingers don’t pass through; it takes less focus.

The ceramic is warm, solid, trembling slightly under my hand. “I can hold it, it's easier,” I whisper.

Beatrice’s smile is the kind that could end wars. “Then maybe you’re not as gone as you think.”

We make a ritual of the ordinary. She edits photos; I rearrange the fridge magnets into constellations. She hums old hymns while cooking; I stir air beside her, pretending to help. Sometimes she lets the music fill the house, piano pieces we used to dance to, without calling it dancing.

The more she laughs, the more real I become. My shadow shows faintly on the floor. The scent of her shampoo lingers on my hands after I touch her hair.

One night, the snow starts again. We stand by the window watching flakes drift down, streetlights turning them into gold dust. “Remember last year?” she asks. “When you made me chase you through the square because you wanted a snow angel competition?”

“I won,” I tell her.

“You cheated.” She reminds me.

“I died, let me win something”, I remind her.

“Pretty sure that only counts when you're alive.” She nudges me with her shoulder, light, deliberate. The contact holds. Her skin is warm. Mine isn’t, but she doesn’t pull away. The air between us folds in on itself. When she turns, her hand finds mine. No barrier. No flicker. Just touch.

I feel every heartbeat through her palm, and for a moment, I think I could melt the snow outside with it. She whispers, “I swear I can feel you.”

“I think so too.”

“Stay.” I don’t promise. I just nod, because here right now with her hand, the snow, the warmth threading through the cold is the closest thing to heaven I’ve ever felt.

Later, she writes on the fridge: Day 45: She held the mug. I held my breath. And in my notebook, hidden, I write: Day 45½: Love has weight. I’m starting to feel it.

By the end of the week, we stop pretending this is something we can define. She talks to me while cooking, mutters at me from the bathroom, and leaves space for me on the sofa without realising it.

The house turns into its own small world: coffee rings, polaroids, laughter echoing against the windows. Every time Beatrice smiles at me, I feel a little more here. She hums while brushing her teeth; I steal her hoodie just to feel the fabric, solid against my skin. She scolds me for leaving it draped over the lamp. “You’ll start a fire,” she says.

“Good,” I grin. “Then you’ll finally have to admit I make you hot.” Her snort turns into a laugh so bright it almost hurts.

“You’re insufferable.”

“You love it.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” The air hums when we’re like this, teasing, breathless, on the edge of something bigger.

I’m stronger now. I can touch things again, light switches, door handles, her camera. The world doesn’t reject me anymore. “Maybe you’re evolving,” she teases.

“Ghosts don’t evolve.”

“You do.” Sometimes she tests it, brushes her fingers against mine when she passes by. Every time she does, the air glows faintly, a shimmer between us that looks like static and feels like home.

Snow starts again one afternoon. Thick, slow flakes. Beatrice pulls me outside, barefoot in her hoodie. “Come on, garden now”, she laughs.

“Snow angels.”

“I already am one.”

“Self-proclaimed doesn’t count.” I sink beside her. The snow doesn’t hold me perfectly; it dents just slightly, a shadow of a shape. She stares at it, smiling like it’s a miracle.

“You’re getting heavy.”

“Rude.” She flicks snow at me. It hits. We both stare. Then she bursts out laughing.

“Oh my god, you’re actually solid!”

“Careful,” I grin. “Next time, I might be able to tackle you.” She tilts her head.

“Promise?” The space between us collapses. The snow catches in her hair. She’s beautiful in a way that makes it hard to breathe, real, flawed, alive. Inside again, she hands me one of her scarves. “You’re shivering.”

“I can’t be cold.”

“You complain enough about the cold for someone who can.” She stands, so I follow suit. I tug the scarf until she stumbles forward, crashing gently into me. She laughs against my chest. “See your cold?” she murmurs.

“Warmth is transferable, so stay close.” Her breath catches when I say that.

“Ava…”

“Say my name like that again,” I say, and her eyes fall to my lips. I can feel her heartbeat against my chest.

"Ava", she breathes out, and I swallow my eyes nearly roll back, god, she's so beautiful.

She kisses me, soft and unsure, like she’s checking if the universe will break. It doesn’t. I kiss her back, and for a heartbeat, the world forgets we’re not supposed to exist like this.

After, we can’t stop smiling. She presses her forehead to mine, breathless. “Teenage hormones don’t respect cosmic boundaries.”

“Never did.” She laughs, radiant.

“Good.”

The days blur into something brighter. We cook together, she cooks, I stir air beside her, pretending to help. We nap on the sofa, her hand resting against mine like gravity finally remembered me. She snaps photos of me constantly now, light flares, shapes forming where I stand. “You’re easier to capture lately,” she says.

“Maybe because I feel alive again.” We don’t hide it anymore. The affection, the teasing, the wanting. We’re nineteen and in love, something neither of us understands, all raw edges and holy mistakes. I whisper things I shouldn’t say just to watch her blush. She throws popcorn at me when I make bad ghost puns. I let it hit me just so she’ll laugh again.

“You’re getting stronger.”

“Yeah. That’s good, maybe?” I look at her, the girl who rebuilt me from grief, who keeps giving me reasons to stay. “It feels like it should be good, I'm scared it will stop.” She nods, but her hand trembles. Because she’s Beatrice, and she’s already thinking ahead, wondering what happens.

Later, she writes on the fridge: Day 48: Laughed until the lights blinked. Maybe the universe approves.

And in my notebook, I write: Day 48½: If love makes me solid, what will it cost us?

The night ends like all the best ones do, quiet, half-frozen, full of warmth. She’s lying on her stomach, sketching something in her notebook. I’m beside her, tracing shapes in the air on her back, letters, stars, invisible poems.

She hums under her breath. “You’re staring again.”

“Yeah”, like I would lie, I openly stare at her, my girlfriend is hot, girlfriend shit, is that what we are?

“Why?”

“Because I used to think only heaven could feel like this.” She turns, eyes soft, lips curved.

“Ava.”

“What?”

“Don’t disappear.”

“I’m trying not to.” She reaches out, hand resting right over where my heart used to beat.

“You’re doing a pretty good job,” she murmurs, her voice half a laugh, half a prayer. I stare at her fingers on my chest, the weight of them light but anchoring.

“Bea?”

“Yeah?”

“If I were alive,” I start, and her eyes lift instantly, wary and soft, “I’d ask you to be my girlfriend.” It's a half-truth. If I were alive, I would freak out and then, like I did while dead, fall in love with her anyway and probably never say a damn word through fear until we fell in love so blatantly, and just marry her.

Her mouth curves. “You think ghosts can’t date?”

“Pretty sure it’s not in the handbook.”

“Good thing I don’t believe in rules.”

I grin. She so believes in rules. “So… what, are you saying yes?”

She tilts her head, pretending to think, like she’s choosing between sense and disaster.

“Yes,” she says finally. “Obviously yes.”

“You didn’t even hesitate.”

“Oh, I did for far too long before now,” she says, shifting closer until her breath is against my neck. “I’ve been in love with you since we were fifteen, so technically I’ve been your girlfriend for years. You just finally caught up.”

I laugh, the sound startlingly human, full-bodied. “Then it’s official. I’m dating a genius.”

“And I’m dating a ghost with terrible flirting skills.”

“Hey, I’m improving. I just made a girl say yes to being my girlfriend.”

She smiles, the slow kind that melts winter. “You did. And I’m keeping you, Ava Silva. Dead or alive.”

She leans forward, kissing me once, soft as ever, sure as ever. The lights flicker, the room hums, and for the first time since I died, I don’t feel temporary.

Later, while she sleeps, her head tucked against my shoulder, I write one thing in the notebook: Day 49: I asked her. She said yes. Maybe heaven isn’t a place. Maybe it’s her.