Page 76 of The Ghost of Exes Past

I should get up. Go wash my face. Down some water, make a new list, do something useful. I start making the list in my head and get as far as putting the wedding dress up on eBay, before something stops me. For one night I’d forgotten I was supposed to be managing myself. I hadn’t even noticed until now that that’s what I’m always doing. Managing. I’d got so good at it – the controlled breathing, the game face, pretending not to fall apart. We used to be chaos, Jake and me. Since he died, I just replaced that with control. Turns out it only takes one night to realise that just isn’t me.

‘It’s shit, Jake.’ My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. ‘For one night I remembered what it felt like to be myself. And it’s because of you. And tomorrow that’s gone.’

He takes my hands in his as the tears fall. I hate myself for it. The body shuddering, the snot, my face is so scrunched it gives me a headache, but he holds me through it. He wipes my tears with his thumb and kisses my head.

I’m getting married in – I check the clock – twelve hours, and I’m crying in the arms of a dead man. I can’t bear to look at my wedding dress hanging nearby, the matching veil I’d spent half an hour steaming. The shoes I’d spent a month deciding on. How Timothy’s speech will be perfect, how it’ll make everyone in the room cry, and I will be sat next to him, smiling but thinking of a ghost.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.

‘I don’t know how I’m supposed to be okay with feeling this alive … and then, somehow, I have to go back to sleepwalking through my life. How will I wake up tomorrow and pretend I’m choosing him when I know I’m really just choosing safe?’

Jake looks caught, stuck for a moment. I can see his jaw twitching. He whispers that it’s okay. He pulls me close, wraps his arms around mine and I let him, which is not something I do easily these days, and we both know it. In his stillness I know he’s thinking. I know he’s weighing up options and so I wait.

He’s going to say yes, I think. He’s going to find a way. He’ll tell me there’s something else Gabe told him, some clause or technicality. I let myself melt into his arms, tell myself that this is going to be all right.

He presses his lips to my hair, takes a breath.

‘Listen to me …’

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Jake

She’s asleep. Her head on my chest, her hands slack on the sheets, and her legs entwined with mine. I’m scared to move because I don’t want to wake her. And if I’m honest, I would be happy just staying in this moment forever.

Maybe having feelings is overrated. I spent ten years moping about, hating the fact I couldn’t feel, and somehow now I can feel everything, all at once, and it’s rough. I mean, apart from the post-orgasm glow – who knew, ghosts could still come – the pain in my chest is vicious, the bubble in my stomach agony, the acid in my throat unbearable. Just knowing this is my last evening, ever, with her.

My last night on earth before whatever comes next.

Why didn’t I listen to Gabe and do this sooner, like five years ago? It’s a question I keep landing on, because if I had, would that maybe have meant more time with her? I know the answer – I was an idiot.

After Belle had begged me to find a way, I had taken her head in my hands, placed my forehead against hers, and promised her the only thing I could.

‘Listen to me … I promise you I will always be here. I will look over you. I will do everything in my power to protect you if I can. I want you to be happy. I want you to live, for me, and for yourself. I want you to be with someone who protects you and puts you first. I want you to be with a love who holds you tight every morning and night and spoils you. Who cheers you on, who supports your dreams, who will hold your hand till you get there.’ She had wept in my arms as I said it, my voice weak. ‘But for us, this is it.’

We cried together. That was when I truly felt everything that had been lying dormant in me for ten years. For the first time since the crash, the saturation turned up to a hundred. And every instinct I had was screaming at me to find another solution, to find a way to keep her with me. But I couldn’t. And I also didn’t want to.

My last living thought was of her. Overturning in my car, I thought of the smell of her hair and the specific, terrible sound she made when she thought something was funny. I thought about what it would have felt like to have that face as the last thing I saw every night. Whether she’d have laughed at my jokes, even though she’d heard them all before. I thought about the way she’d look at forty, fifty, sixty. I thought about the lavender we’d grow in our garden – there was always going to be lavender – and the way the smell would get into everything. The sheets we’d hang in the garden. My shirts. Her hair. I thought about all of it as the car went over. And then I lost all of it.

I don’t know what will happen next. I just know that I couldn’t let her follow me. She deserves all of that with someone else, someone who will be there with her.

I want her to live.

I wait for it to feel more complicated than it does. I know that younger me would have wanted to drag her with me, keep her for myself, agree and find a loophole that Gabe hadn’t thought of, but it doesn’t come. I don’t even want her to be devastated by the loss of me.

I want her to live.

I watch her sleep as I stroke her arm. She whimpers gently.

I start to close my eyes, my nose in her hair, ready to doze off, say goodbye to the world, but something shifts. The dark blue of the bedsheets fades first, bleeding out until it’s the colour of cement, then the fireplace that I’d lit – the flames are still there but they’ve stopped moving, frozen mid-flicker, the light coming from them bleak and grey.

The curtain by the window is caught mid-billow and the trees outside are perfectly still, seemingly set in stone. The sea that’s been crashing all night is silent. The whole room looks like a photograph that hasn’t quite developed yet.

I clutch my chest as it tightens.

Because beneath my fingers, Belle has gone both cold and still. Not asleep or dreaming – still. Something is wrong. My eyes spring wide open in panic. I pull back and draw down the covers. Her chest isn’t moving. The blush of her cheeks is now greying, the pink of her lips is gone. Like a sketch of herself. I shake her, say her name, then call it louder than I mean to and she still doesn’t move. She doesn’t even flinch, just stays frozen like she’s been preserved in glass.

Have I just killed her? Have we swapped places? Has she passed and now I’m the one living?