Page 58 of Ghost of a Chance
“Try acknowledging him.”
“How?”
“Talk to him.”
“Good to see you, Paul,” Jasper said.After his disappointment during the séance it was nice to see Paul up to his familiar behaviors.
“Were the cameras on?”
“Yeah.We both heard you say he ticked you off,” Gia said with a grin.“So what’s next?”
“Jasper, try having a conversation,” Kirsty said.There was a hesitant note in her voice.
“What should I say?”
“What do you want him to know?”
The questions he’d had at the séance had been generic.But he and Paul had always been closer than that.Dan and Gia had moved so that they were sitting in the two side chairs also facing him.
No pressure.
Basically he figured it for a one-sided talk.How often had he wished his roommate would shut up and let him talk?But not like this.
“I miss you,” he said, emotion clogging his throat.
Nothing happened.
“Honestly if I’d known that would be your last night in the apartment I would have stayed.”
Every light in the house came on, brighter than before.“Fix You” started playing on Jasper’s phone, and the fire flickered in the fireplace, the flames leaping up toward the flue.
“Wow.That’s a strong reaction,” Kirsty said, pulling out a notebook from her bag and frantically taking notes.
“Yeah, I still need fixing but I’m getting there,” he said to Paul.
Jasper was also concerned about Paul.“I think about that all the time.Like you wanting to work on our side project for my mom.I know you were doing it that night.I feel bad that if I’d skipped… It’s not about me.I want you to know that.”Jasper gave a mirthless laugh.“I finally get that.”
He broke off asJudge Judyblared on as she said, “If you live to be a hundred, you will never be as smart as me.”
Kirsty started laughing.Gia and Dan were both sort of staring at him as if they hadn’t seen him before.Of course confessing to what he considered his worst moment as a human being wasn’t easy.
“Fair enough,” he said.
Dan clicked the TV off.Jasper knew it was because television sound would interfere with his voice on the recording.
“Keep going,” Kirsty said.
“Is there any way you can tell me what you want?”Jasper asked.
Nothing.All that opening up and he was getting the cold shoulder from a damn ghost.
“It’s not healthy for you to be lingering with me,” Jasper said again.
Still no response.
Slowly an hour passed and nothing he said caused another reaction.Dan finally went up to bed at ten, and Gia followed him a few minutes later.Kirsty however stayed, grabbing the bottle of rum and a two-liter of Coke from the kitchen and made the two of them mixed drinks.
“Did you two have something you did together?”
