Page 1 of The Ghost of You

1

Noah

“You can’t talklike that to a woman.”

“They like it.”

“Yeah, I don’t think they do,” I say, shaking my head as I pull our cruiser up to a parking lot of food trucks.

“When was the last time you were even with a woman? I highly doubt you know what it takes to get laid anymore,” my partner, Niko, says before he gets out of the car.

“Just because I don’t have relationships, doesn’t mean I haven’t had my fair share of women.”

“Yeah, but you are an old man so the grannies are a different story, can’t seduce them the same way.”

I shove my partner as we walk up to the food truck. I am not old, at least in my book. I’m thirty-five. And I look good for my age. I am fit and can run miles around my young partner. I take police work seriously and don’t let my body go. We might not have a huge amount of criminal activity in Asheville compared to larger cities but we have needed to chase a few suspects and I don’t want to be leaning over gasping for breath and let a criminal get away.

My partner is ten years younger than me and finds it funny to tease me about my age. We’ve been together for three years and despite our age difference, we work well as a team. I’ve been a mentor to him, and he keeps me young, you could say.

“Telling a woman she would look better bent over naked, is not going to score you any dates,” I tell him after we order food.

“It worked on that girl last week.”

“Don’t tell me you use the same lines on girls every time you go out.”

He grins at me, his smile taking up half his face. “You are too easy, old man. How are you ever going to become a detective if you can’t read a man’s features when he’s lying.”

I punch Niko in the arm. “Fuck off. I know you weren’t lying. I actually heard you tell a woman once; you would prefer to view her pussy if it was sitting on your face.”

Niko smiles at me. “And she went home with me. And we had a great time.”

I roll my eyes.

“And her pussy did look better sitting on my face.”

I choose to ignore him and grab our food when they call our names from the truck window. Niko is a horndog and I have heard him use any and every kind of raunchy pickup line in the book and not in the book. If he wasn’t as good looking as he was, I am sure he would get turned down a lot more often. But most women can’t look away from his stormy gray eyes. Half of us in the precinct call him Storm for that very reason.

We joke around as we eat our dinner until we get a call for backup on a drunk driver. I look at my watch and see it’s just past ten. It’s a Friday night and the middle of October, meaning the college kids will be partying more than usual and bars get a bit more crowded as Halloween themed nights go into full swing. We both look at each other and know this is the beginning to a long night.

* * *

I shutthe front door of my house behind me as I get in from my shift. It’s half-past two in the morning and as much as I would like to crash after my ten-hour shift, I need to study and get a workout in before I can sleep.

My best friend and roommate jogs to the door as I walk in. I crouch down and pat him on the head. I’ve had Brutus for the last four years. He has been my rock and the only thing I can count on, besides my crazy family. But I can only handle them in small doses, although they seem to stick their nose in my life more often than I want them to.

I head upstairs in my small craftsman house. It’s a work in progress, but when I moved in here, I needed anything I could do to keep my mind busy. Not to mention I am a police officer. It’s not like I am rolling in big bucks.

I walk into my closet and open the safe, placing my gun and badge inside. I undress, removing my uniform and my ballistics vest. I throw on a pair of basketball shorts, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. I jog back downstairs and grab Brutus’ leash and my running shoes out of the coat closet.

He runs in circles around himself as I tie my shoes. Once I stand up, I clip his leash to his collar and we both walk outside for an early morning run. With Brutus being a mix of a rottweiler and a bulldog, I need to keep my runs close to home. Some days he acts like more of a rott and will run five miles with me. Other days he acts like a bulldog and makes it around the block twice.

We are three blocks in and Brutus starts to drag behind me so I head home to drop him off. I wave at my neighbor who is pulling into her driveway as I head back out. As much as I hate running after a ten-hour shift, it helps clear my head of all the things that happened at work. I was lucky tonight and only had a handful of traffic tickets, drunk drivers, and a few bar fights. I hate the days when I am first on scene to a car wreck or the days I have to tell someone they have lost a loved one.

My job is rewarding at times, but other days it’s grueling hard work. But the good days outnumber the bad, and it’s why I keep doing what I do.

When I get home after a few miles, I head down into my basement where I set up a home gym. I spend an hour lifting weights and working my core before I make my way to the kitchen for a light breakfast and a bit of studying.

I’ve been a cop for nearly fifteen years, but I think it’s finally time I move on. The guys in my squad have been encouraging me for a few years to take the detective exam and I even went the extra mile and worked my ass off to get an associate’s degree in criminal justice. But I keep putting off signing up for the detective exam again. It’s not that I don’t want to be a detective, I want it more than anything, but the thought of failing keeps me from doing it. I’ve failed twice.

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