Page 8 of The Ghost of Exes Past

He interrupts my thought process. ‘Once we’re hand in hand, you have to think of wherever it is you want to go to demonstrate your journey. In love. And then we’ll go there.’

Why is he being so vague? Why is my eternal soul in the hands of a guy who doesn’t sound sure of himself at all? And my journey in love? Really, does it have to be now? I’ve got a seven-course tasting menu downstairs in an hour and he wants me to … mentally scrapbook my love CV? Then again, a ghost has showed up. On my wedding eve. That’s not nothing.

‘Really?’ I stammer.

‘Like you said, let’s start somewhere short and come back quickly. A test run. Then you can see how much time has passed and we can figure out whether your soul is actually salvageable.’

I glance at my phone screen again – it’s 3.55 p.m. now. I’ve had this day planned down to the minute for a year – colour-coded, cross-referenced, backed up in multiple places. There was no column in my spreadsheet for ‘catch up with dead ex’.

‘Jake, if I miss just a second of my wedding—’

‘Belle, just think of a short one!’

‘FINE!’ It comes out louder than I meant it to, and he’s not even hiding his smirk – we secretly both know I’ve already lost. I’m still losing arguments against Jake Marleigh and he’s been dead for a decade. Honestly, it’s just embarrassing.

The room suddenly feels huge, as I take the five steps over to him, counting them down in my head. He holds out his hands to me and I reluctantly reach out to touch them. Instead of cold, bone, and decay, I feel their warmth. They are solid and calloused in the same places they always were. Bigger than I remember, and so familiar and somehow … Somehow, they feel like home.

I shut my eyes, my palms in his, and we wait.

Nothing happens.

I crack an eye open.

‘Well, why aren’t we going anywhere?’

Jake frowns. ‘What did you think of?’

‘The Tesco on Bethnal Green Road.’

A pause. His hands still in mine, his grip steady and sure.

‘Why did you think of that?’

‘I don’t know, it just came to me. I fancied the cashier there once.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. He scanned my Dairylea Dunkers and I never saw him again.’

‘That’s not a relationship, Belle.’

‘It could have been.’

‘Try again.’

Okay. Something more significant than a brief infatuation, but short enough that we can get back here quickly.

I shut my eyes again and think back to the evening of my first kiss.

Peter Cox

Greasy fingers mark the bottle. Nervous giggles fill the room. Belle sits cross-legged in her cousin’s basement, silently begging and begging the bottle to land on Matty. Matty, with the bruised knees, bitten fingernails, and messy, scruffy brown hair that is swept half over his eyes. The plaster cast is gone from his arm – skateboarding accident, two months ago – and somehow the fact he broke a bone is sexy to fourteen-year-old Belle, whose eyes linger slightly longer than necessary on the faint white scar. She first met Matty at her cousin Harry’s birthday party last year and has been dreaming of her first kiss with him ever since.

Now is her chance. She just needs fate to be on her side.

In her dreams it was to be perfect – stars exploding, time slowing, body melting. She didn’t picture it happening in a room full of her cousin’s mates. She notices she’s shivering, not with cold but with nerves, adrenaline, and apprehension. She scolds herself, tells herself to pull it together, act cool, and prays once again that it’s Matty.

The bottle comes to a stop, still rattling, pointing at … Peter? Suddenly, the smell of sour cream and onion Pringles, salsa, and oven pizza becomes nauseating to Belle, but everyone is staring at her now, whooping and hollering.