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His tongue skims along his lower lip, and I think, contrary to what I said to Koko earlier, that I wouldn’t hate it if he leaned in and kissed me right now. But then he hesitates, and I find myself needing to fill the resulting silence.

“You’re really good.”

He blinks twice, and I realize that I’m making a habit of starting conversations where the first half has occurred only in my head.

“At writing,” I clarify. “Your song was the best one, and just in case it’s unclear, that’s me talking this time, not Koko.”

He laughs, and the way he smiles at me makes me think I have long surpassed the ones he reserves for baristas.

“I am glad you liked it,” he says. “Zee wasn’t sold on it at first. He thinks it brings down the crowd. I guess he has this whole vision for what he calls the ‘Midnight Station experience,’ and what I’m writing doesn’t exactly fit.” He shrugs. “But hey, he agreed to play it tonight, so fingers crossed the response is good enough that he’ll let me try again.” He kicks a rock, which stutters across the sidewalk, bouncing off the curb and disappearing down a sewer grate.

“I didn’t realize that was the name of your band,” I say.

Mackenzie shrugs. “Yeah, apparently, something happened to Zee in a subway that he says changed his life and made him realize he wanted to start a band. I don’t know if any of it is actually true, but it’s not the worst band name I’ve heard.”

Something tickles the back of my brain.

“Remind me, how did you meet Zee again? You answered an ad, right?”

Mackenzie shakes his head. “No, I was playing this festival back home. One of the bands had a fight with their drummer, and my brother Clive volunteered me to fill in. I guess Zee was in the crowd and liked what he heard. He got in touch a few months later.”

He stops again because we need to cross Queen, and this time, we have actual traffic to contend with. As he waits for the crosswalk to signal, an unsettling feeling washes over me as a rush of goose bumps prickles up my arms.

It’s impossible. It can’t be.

A chill rolls down the back of my spine. I shiver.

“Are you cold?” Mackenzie asks.

“Yes.” I nod. “But—”

Before I can explain that the bigger problem is that I am having an existential meltdown in the middle of the sidewalk, he slips off his jacket and places it on my shoulders, and everything around me goes black.

• • •

“Wait!” The words leave my lips as the light around me begins to brighten. The street is gone. So is Mackenzie. I’m standing in the middle of a crowded bar.

I blink and turn, scanning the crowd of people. Just like the last two times, it’s as if I’m a ghost.

I breathe in the smell of chicken wings and immediately orient myself to where I am. I recognize the long wooden bar, the televisions embedded in the walls, the leather booths and the wooden tables. It’s a pub on King. The name escapes me. It’s two juxtaposed words like the Crown and Dagger or Princess and Pauper.

My ex, Lucca, loved this place—or anyplace with Monday night football and half-priced nachos, so as the crowd thins and I have a clearer view of the bar, I’m not totally shocked to see him sitting there, sipping a pint as if he hasn’t a care in the world.

I begin to walk toward him. Lucca and I hung out for just over three months. He worked at CAMH as a counselor. We’d always end up in the elevator at the end of the day until one particular day, he asked if I wanted to grab something to eat. We didn’t have much in common, but we had the same work schedule, and he was kind and sweet. We fell into a pattern of sleeping together after work, then a couple of months went by and he was asking if I wanted to meet his parents.

“Parents? Aren’t we missing a few steps?” I had asked. His response was to laugh. “It will be three months in April that we’ve been doing this. Aren’t you ready for something more?”

I wasn’t. Although I was regularly putting on clean pants in the mornings, I was far from the mental place where I felt ready to open my heart up to someone else who I might one day lose. And, if I was being perfectly honest with myself, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get there with Lucca. After he put the idea of an actual relationship in my head, I started to notice little things—how his nose whistled while he slept and how he spat his toothpaste out with the accuracy of a cartoon character and then never wiped the sink. More important, I knew I wasn’t in love with him. I was lonely and using him as a distraction, and it was unfair to string him along.

A few days later, I took the opportunity to make a clean break and ended it.

I never did meet his parents.

I’m still not regretting that decision as I move through the crowd, wondering if I possess the physical ability to slide into the empty seat beside him. I worry that my ghostly body will slip through the chair like it does everything else.

I don’t get a chance to test my theory. Before I reach Lucca, someone else slides into the seat. He is tall and holding hands with a woman with braids. I don’t recognize either of them until he turns his face toward me and removes his black leather jacket.

I know that jacket.