Good Spirits (Ghosted, #1)

by B.K. Borison

For the lost and forgotten ones. And the believers who hold on tight.

My aunt Matilda used to tell me there are few things that can’t be solved with a shift in perspective and some shiny new trinkets.

I’ve always been able to find a home among the forgotten things that clutter and crowd the shelves.

I’ve wondered if I worked hard enough at my bruised and broken bits, if I could be shiny again, too. I’ve wondered if anyone might ever see me as something precious.

Tonight, I’ll soothe the day’s disappointments with White Christmas and peppermint tea. Tomorrow I’ll try again.

This house is a disaster, but … festive, I suppose. A festive disaster.

Homesick, or something like it.

If I were a morose man, I’d call it a half-life. As it stands, it’s just my afterlife.

I’ve always been better on paper.

My brain starts wandering down alleyways it has no business traveling.

I suppose I always have believed in Christmas magic. I extend my hand, press my palm to his, and together we disappear.

I’ve had only sharp edges and curt words. I’ve forgotten what softness feels like.

I’m not meant to be her friend. I’m meant to be her reckoning.

I’d love to be loved that loud.

I’m being ghosted by a literal ghost. My life is a joke.

Because I’ve always been able to make my own happiness when the people around me decide I’m not worth the trouble.

A forgotten thing, just like the treasures I keep stocked on my shelves.

“That’s not the point of this conversation.” “I wish I knew the point of this conversation.”

“You’re the first thing in a hundred years to make me feel anything at all, Harriet York, and I don’t think that’s an accident.”

I can still see her in the fingerprints she left on me. She doesn’t have to be gone. Not if I don’t want to let her go.

It’s imperfect in the way real things always are.

It seemed the only thing I needed to do to win my mother over was to change everything about myself. So I did. And I ignored the paper cuts it gave my heart.

How sad it must have been, to be so lonely in a room full of family.

Our time together does not belong to us.

It’s easier to withstand her venom if I’ve done something to earn it.

“You’re not the villain of your story.”

“Maybe I was always supposed to find you,” I rasp. Maybe, my heart adds, you were always supposed to be mine.

Of course I had to fall in love with a ghost. I’ve always loved the broken and forgotten things best.

I was sent to haunt Harriet, but she ended up haunting me.

“For such an intelligent man, it appears he is remarkably stupid.”

Your souls were together in the beginning, and so they shall be in the end.”