Page 78 of Back for Seconds

“I’ll take care of this.” I laid my hands on her shoulders and pressed her in the direction of the hallway. “Go shower and get ready.”

“But—” June cut herself off. Shook her head. “Nothing phases you.”

“Not this kind of thing, no.” I took the tongs from her. “This is a perfectly controllable situation. I can wash some dishes and…discard Mimi’s trash. And I can make sure Burke leaves you alone for the rest of the day.” I lifted my chin toward the bathroom. “Go.”

That worked.

June disappeared down the hallway to the bathroom that, according to the glance I managed to steal before she shut the door, still had the pink tiled walls and awful tangerine ceramic bathtub. Sharing that bathroom had been its own unique hell, but the way Junie had decorated it—eucalyptus around the shower head, a calming impressionistic art print on the wall, pillar candles on the shelf behind the toilet—it actually looked pretty nice.

I got to work cleaning and organizing the kitchen. I could tell from June’s spice cabinet that she was a very particular person, not someone who would usually tolerate dirty dishes and hair extensions flung around. She must really love Mimi. She was a very charming woman, but June wasn’t easily taken for a ride. There was more to Mimi than just chaos and mess; she had to be a really good friend.

By the time the water cut off down the hall, I’d wiped off the countertops, organized June’s mail pile into two sub-piles (toss and keep), and swept the floors.

“Wow.” I looked up from my phone to find Junie leaning against the archway that separated the kitchen from the hall. Her pale skin was pink and glistening from the heat of her shower, long hair gathered over her shoulder in an inky black bundle, little droplets of water still falling from the tips. “This house loves you.”

I rounded the butcher block island and leaned back against it, drinking in the sight of her wrapped in a slightly too-short lilac towel.

“Does it?”

“Mhm.” She nodded, raking her fingers through her hair, smirking at me. “Every room lights up when you’re in it.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. How scary is that? I don’t believe in anything I can’t see with my own two eyes, Joey. But I’m saying right now, this house purrs when you’re in it. I haven’t had water pressure like that in months. And all these high-hat lights—” She pointed at the kitchen ceiling. “Only half of them usually work.”

“I told you, I feel things when I’m here.”

“Hypothetically…” She looked away from me and tightened her arms over her chest. “What do you think your grandmother would be trying to tell you if she was…I don’t know, communicating through my house?”

“Hypothetically? Well…” I cleared my throat and worked my knuckles back and forth over my jawline. “She always thought I was too attached—to her, specifically. She never really got to see my life take off. She only ever knew me really as like, this big baby pulling on the hem of her apron.” I laughed at myself. A smile broke across June’s face, like sunshine through rain clouds. “She…was my best friend. And for a long time I really never thought I’d have another friend like her. Then, I met you.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “Ok, I met you, like four days ago. I know. But still. So, hypothetically—if ghosts were real and death didn’t just turn us all into really expensive fertilizer, I think she would be telling me to…to keep going. Don’t stop, Joe. Don’t let fear or outside voices stop you.”

“You’re afraid?” she asked, her voice soft and quiet.

“Aren’t we both?”

June shook her head. “To me, you’re fearless—confident. I barely know you, and I trust you with my whole—” She cut herself off with a laugh. “It feels like the stakes are super high with us, doesn’t it? If, hypothetically, your grandmother was haunting my house, she’d be really pissed if we didn’t…”

June let the sentence fade on her lips, and I pushed down the sudden dull ache in my stomach. Was she spooked? Had this…all of this… been too fast, too much?

Super high stakes didn’t sound particularly romantic. I didn’t want her to feel anything other than pure excitement when it came to us.

“Look, forget about ghosts and family and whatever else. All she ever wanted was for people to be happy. How they got there, when they got there—it was irrelevant. That was why she was always pushing me away—she didn’t think it was possible that I could be happy hanging out with a seventy-five-year-old Italian lady. If my grandmother is in this house at all, it’s because she wants us—you—to be happy.”

June looked around the little kitchen, then up at the ceiling. “I wanted the house when we broke up. I didn’t care about anything else. This house has always been mine—felt like mine. I wonder if she would like it.”

I bit at the corner of my mouth. “She would hate the gray walls. But everything else? Perfect.”

June laughed. “I should get dressed. It feels weird to be having this conversation while I’m mostly naked.” Her eyes were fixed on mine with a strange mixture of emotion. “Thank you. For everything.”

I crossed the room, unfurling my arms. “You say that almost every day.”

“It’s how I feel every day. It’s how you make me feel every day.”

“Me too,” I whispered. Then, despite the twist in my gut, I kissed her the way you might kiss someone when you’re falling in love.

Part Three

bruise