Inbetween

Chapter 18

Finn The next afternoon, I seeped into Emma’s house on a gust of cold wind and tried my best to brush the smell of death from my clothes. I went to the kitchen and checked the time on the stove. 3:27. Within minutes, she’d walk through that door and drive this god-awful worry out of my head. I’d been out on reaps all day. A shooting victim. A kid hit by a car. The list went on and on. I didn’t even know if she was okay. If she even knew that I wasn’t there to protect her. I paced around the living room, into the kitchen, and back again. I was about to invade the bedrooms when the front door opened. I braced my hands on the walls on either side of the hall, feeling relieved as I watched her walk in.

“Mom!” Emma tossed her book bag on the counter and pulled open the fridge. “You home?”

She pulled out a bottle of orange juice and twisted it open. I stood still, silent, wanting to watch her for just a moment. Her hair was piled on top of her head like an artfully tangled ball of gold thread.

Loose wispy pieces framed her face. She took a drink of the juice, licked a droplet from her lips, and shoved the sleeves of her white cardigan up to her elbows. “Mom!”

“She’s not here,” I said from the hall.

Emma yelped and grabbed her chest. “You gotta stop doing that.”

“Sorry.”

She smiled and leaned on the counter. “You’re back.”

I grinned back as I walked into the kitchen. God, that smile of hers was infectious. “I always come back.”

“I thought you were mad at me.” Emma put the cap back on her orange juice and stuck it in the fridge. “You know. For the touching thing.”

“I had to go to work.” I looked away. “And I wasn’t mad. I just…you have no idea what that does to me. Watching you practically beg me for something I can’t give you.”

“So you can’t touch me but you can touch that?” She motioned to the banana I was twirling on the counter.

I stared at the counter and frowned, thinking about Balthazar and his threats. She didn’t need to know that. It would just make her feel guilty for my being here. My voice came out rougher than I wanted it to when I said, “This is different.”

“How?”

Emma placed her hand over mine. My skin scattered like a school of twinkling fish before pulling back together. I watched the colors of our skin meld then separate, feeling a jolt of connection race up my arm. This was the problem. When I was with Emma…nothing else mattered. The lines disappeared. I could barely remember the rules I was supposed to be following. It was taking everything in me not to force my skin into existence and lace my fingers through hers for real. I could barely keep myself together like this, knowing she wanted me to touch her. I pulled my hand away.

“The universe has boundaries. Touching a human, like really touching, is one of those boundaries.

If I gave in and crossed that boundary, it would send off a signal. I wouldn’t be able to hide it. I may have the ability, but I’m not supposed to use it.”

No. Instead I had to be tortured with wanting something I’d never be allowed to have. Emma looked at me, worry creating creases between her eyebrows. I needed to lighten things up. She was going through enough without all this.

I picked up the banana and twirled it around my fingers like a six-shooter. “That time I pulled you up with the stick? I never touched you directly. The stick was just like this banana—they’re not going to get me in trouble. The universe doesn’t care if I mess with fruit or dead tree limbs or inanimate objects. I haven’t checked on vegetables, though. I might get zapped out of existence if I try messing with something as dangerous as a bell pepper.”

Emma leaned forward on the counter and grinned up at me. “I better keep the celery in the fridge, then. I wouldn’t want you to be tempted with something so off-limits.”

I laughed, but only because it’s what she expected me to do. Really, it was hard to laugh at anything at this point. I’d had three days with Emma now. Three days of talking and laughing and getting her to look at me like I was something other than a dead guy. I didn’t want to let this go. Being in the same room with Emma and her knowing I was there. Being in the same room with her and knowing she wanted me there. It felt like my own personal Heaven.

I was just waiting for Balthazar to take it all away.

“Finn.”

I didn’t realize how close Emma had gotten until I caught an intoxicating whiff of her scent.

Oranges and some kind of flowery lotion. I couldn’t help but wonder if she tasted as good as she smelled.

“You okay?”

I forced a smile onto my face and nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”

She pulled her sleeves down around her hands and balled them in her fists, looking doubtful. She bit her bottom lip, studying me before a smile lit up her face.

“What are you thinking about?”

She stood up. “I’m thinking we should do something fun. It doesn’t always have to be gloom and doom you know.”

I raised a brow. “You do know I’m dead, right?”

“Come on. Humor me.”

“What did you have in mind?” I could think of a few things I would have done if I was alive. I imagined what it might be like to take Emma by the hand and pull her down onto the sofa with me. To kiss her until neither of us could breathe. To feel her laughter against the hollow of my neck.

“You want to watch a movie?” She followed my gaze to the living room.

I shook the fantasy out of my head, embarrassed. “Um…yeah. Whatever you want.”

“Do you even like movies?” she asked. “What do you even like to do?”

I shrugged, thinking back to a time I’d forced myself to forget. I thought about Pop’s old records.

The scratchy, haunting voices that rippled through the living room at night when he and Mama thought Henry and I were asleep. We’d get up sometimes and sneak into the hall to watch them dance.

Pop would catch us giggling and wink at us, then press his finger to his lips. Then he’d dip Mama back and make her laugh in a way I’d never heard a girl laugh before. “I used to like music.”

“Really? I’ll be right back!” Emma darted down the hall.

I groaned. “You don’t have to drag your music thingy out here. I’m fine, really. We can watch the movie.” God, I didn’t think I could take the screeching sounds that Emma called music today. Not after all that death. I just wanted-Emma marched down the hall carrying a big brown case. She lugged it into the living room and set it on the table, then popped open the lid. A record player. She glanced up at me with those heavenly blue eyes and smiled.

I gaped at her. “How do you…”

Emma started digging old records out of a drawer across the room. “It was Dad’s,” she said, flipping through a stack of records. “Well, his father’s anyway. Dad liked to listen to these after Granddad died.”

She finally settled on one and crawled across the carpeted floor with it tucked under her arm. She hid it from me as she placed the needle on the vinyl disc and sat back smiling. “I always loved this one.”

The needle gave life to the music, and Billie Holiday’s butterscotch-rich voice wafted into the air around me. I swayed, unable to stop myself. I remembered the smell of flour and sugar on Mama’s hands, the cadence of Henry’s laughter as it mixed with mine.

Emma sat on her legs and hummed along to “The Very Thought of You,” her eyes closed, completely unaware of the world around her. Her eyelashes were soft as feathers against her face, her humming a soft vibration in her throat. The ceiling fan ruffled the gold threads of hair around her temples. A hair tickled her cheek and her nose twitched.

I could feel the thought coming before it even formed. It started in that sad, hollow space in my chest, then worked its way up my aching throat. I could feel it behind my lips, fighting to be heard.

Burning me up inside. But I couldn’t say that to her. I didn’t have a right to. So instead I let it run loose in my head. Three words that wouldn’t stop .

I love you.

I couldn’t stay still any longer. I crossed the room until I was standing over her, this girl I loved.

She stopped swaying and looked up at me. I reached out my hand. “Dance with me.”

Emma just looked uncertainly at my outstretched fingers and chewed on her lip. “But if you touch me, you’ll…”

“Then we won’t touch. Just dance.”

Emma stood, pulled her hands out of her sleeves, and stared at her feet, looking lost. I stepped closer, so close I could see my shimmer reaching out toward her skin, like metal to a magnet. I never needed to breathe, but now, in this moment, I couldn’t stop my lungs from pumping.

We moved together wordlessly. A step to the right. A smooth glide to the left. My shimmer sparked and hummed with energy the closer she got. I wanted to do like I’d seen Pop do with Mama, tip her back and make her laugh like a girl in love. I didn’t. Instead, I settled for leaning in as close as I could, letting my unnatural breaths coat her neck. She shivered.

“Hey, at least it won’t hurt if I step on your foot,” I said.

Emma chuckled and reached her hands up as if she meant to place them on my shoulders, then stopped herself and dropped them back down to her sides. “I never know what to do with my hands.”

“Well…” I leaned back and adjusted, so that my hand was out waiting. “If we were doing this for real, you’d put your left hand here.” She hesitantly raised her hand and placed it in front of mine so that our palms nearly touched. “And in a very desirable world, my hand would go right…here.” I placed my hand near her waist and she shivered, accidentally arching into my touch. My chest swelled with want and in an instant, my fingers scattered into a thousand iridescent particles, swimming around her like silver smoke. I pulled my hand back, watched my fingers take shape again, and wiggled them at her.

Emma released a pent-up breath and laughed. “Wow.”

I shrugged and kept moving. In the background, Billie crooned and somehow managed to put exactly how I was feeling into words.

“The mere idea of you. The longing here for you. You’ll never know, how slow the moments go, till I’m near to you,” I sang softly into Emma’s hair. Billie sounded way better of course, but the words felt too right in my mouth not to say out loud.

“You’ve done this before,” Emma said. “I can tell.”

“What?”

“Danced with a girl.” Without actually touching me, she went through the motion of running her palms over my chest. I ached for her to close that space, but she never did.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to steady my voice. “Just once. School dance.”

Emma smiled and did a little twirl. “What was her name?”

I couldn’t think. Didn’t really want to think about anything that didn’t begin and end with Emma, but a flash of a girl in pink satin swaying nervously in my arms shook me. I smiled. “She wore a pink dress. I remember that. And I was so nervous I thought I might throw up.”

Emma giggled. I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of hearing her laugh.

“Did you love her?” she asked quietly. We stopped moving. Silence swallowed us. Then the crackling hiss of the record sounded and a new tune began.

“No,” I said. “No, I didn’t love her.”

“Have you…” Emma took a step back and tucked her hair behind her ear. She wouldn’t look at me.

“Have you ever loved anyone…like that?”

I may not have been able to say the words, but I couldn’t stop myself from moving toward her.

Emma looked up at me, the question still lingering in her eyes. With an overwhelming burst of resolve, I let the words free. “Just you.”

Her eyes widened and glistened with moisture. I didn’t even think she was breathing. I wasn’t breathing, either. The moment was too big to let even a breath ruin it.

“Emma…” I couldn’t finish. I felt raw and needy. Alive. I leaned down, my lips just a whisper away from hers. I could feel the air clawing at me, trying to pull me from this moment, threatening to turn me to vapor if I closed the last bit of space between us, if I didn’t get my emotions under control. I didn’t want to let it. I-The front door opened.

With a gasp, I let go, tumbling into vapor. Emma stared through me looking frantic. Reaching out.

Her mom tossed her keys on the counter, then walked into the living room. “What are you doing with that?” Rachel asked, looking right through me.

Emma shook her head like she was coming out of a daze and balled her hands into fists at her sides.

“Um, just…listening to music. What else would I be doing with it?”

Rachel looked at the record player and her eyes dimmed and watered, obviously reliving memories all her own. She closed them and took a deep breath. “That’s an antique,” she said and walked out of the room. “Put it away.”

Emma closed the lid to the record player and sighed. “You better come back,” she whispered into the empty air, then gathered the record player in her arms and carted it out of the room.

I stared out the window, watching leaves twirl and dance through the air as they rained down from the trees. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Billie sang on. I could still smell Emma all over me.

They say the dead can’t sleep, can’t dream. But as I stood there lost with wanting, I couldn’t help but wonder when I was going to wake up.

When my scythe started to pulse with cold, I didn’t even try to fight it. I needed to get out of there.

Away from Emma’s smell and the feel of her warmth. I needed to leave before I gave in and did something I couldn’t take back.