I wake up slowly, the pattering of the rain in my ears. For a moment I have no idea where I am or what’s going on. Last night feels like a bizarre dream, and I probably would think it was a dream if I wasn’t sitting up in Aiden’s bed. He’s still asleep, one leg flung over the covers, face down. The tired darkness around his eyes is still there, even though we’ve been sleeping for - how long? What time is it? I left my phone at my apartment. Thank god. If it had come with me last night it would probably be at the bottom of the river by now.

My muscles are sore, but Aiden’s bed is deliciously soft and warm, cozy against the rain. I lay on my back, thinking. I know I should be pondering the insanity of everything that happened, but my brain is focused on the moment where he pressed me into the ground for a laughing hug. Or the moment he shoved me into his bed, even if it was only to get me to stop talking and go to sleep. That happened. In fact, there were many little moments from last night that I want to keep, and I try to gather them up within me. A little storage vault of happiness.

Of course, there were parts of last night that were terrifying, too. Like, most of it. First I thought I was being burgled, then I thought we were going to get lost in the woods Blair Witch style, then I witnessed a car crashing into a river, and then I thought Aiden was going to drown, and then I thought I was going to drown, and then I thought that we were both going to drown, alongside a complete stranger with great taste in bags.

It was a lot. That’s not even going into Aiden and whatever happened with his eyes and how he knew about something that hadn’t happened yet. I watch his sleeping face. He looks so tired, still. I wonder if I can get to the bathroom without waking him up.

It turns out I can. I put a stripe of his toothpaste on my finger and lean over the sink, scrubbing my teeth and examining myself in the mirror. I look okay, I guess, even though there’s nothing to be done about this level of bedhead. I bend over to spit, and something catches my eye: the bathroom garbage can. I hadn’t noticed last night, but it’s full, almost to overflowing. With nothing but broken reading glasses.

Just like the other pairs, the frames are intact, only the lenses destroyed. Some have jagged pieces remaining, others have only a light layer of powder to show that there were ever lenses at all. What had Aiden said, last night? We didn’t even have the glasses, and we did it.

He promised me some kind of explanation today. I extract the topmost pair of reading glasses and dust them off. There are broken bits of lens around the frame. I step out of the bathroom and back over to the bed. I sit down carefully, trying not to wake Aiden, only to have Kent knock on the sliding glass door. Aiden stirs, frowns in his sleep, and rolls onto his side. So I guess it’s me who’s getting the update.

“How is she?” I ask, stepping out onto the porch, squinting in the pale light.

“She’s awake.” I expected Kent to look as exhausted as Aiden and I - maybe even more so, since he’s the one who hasn’t had a chance to snatch any sleep. But he looks bright, awake, relaxed.

“Oh. Was she freaked out?”

“At first, but she’s alright. You two should come down and talk to her. Get Aiden up, okay?”

“Sure. Thanks for staying up all night.”

“No problem.”

He heads off down the stairs at a faster clip than I expected. I turn and head back inside, where Aiden has a pillow pressed down over his own head. I slip the destroyed reading glasses onto my face, stride over, and give him a poke in the ribs. I’m rewarded with nothing but a muffled groan.

“Aiden. Gabrielle’s awake.”

He lifts the pillow from his face, blinking up at me. Then he sits upright so quickly that his nose is only two inches away from mine before I can react.

“Where’d you find those?” he asks, staring at the glasses.

“Bathroom trash can. I’m not sure if anyone’s ever properly imparted on you how to use a pair of reading glasses, Aiden. They’re for your face, not your feet.”

“Ha, ha.” He reaches up and carefully removes the glasses from my face. “Okay, taking these back. We don’t want to hurt your pretty brown eyes.”

I turn away so he doesn’t see the blush suddenly crawling up my cheeks.

“So. Today.” I poke his leg, and he gets out of bed, yawning and folding the glasses closed. “An explanation.”

“Right.” He hesitates. Runs a hand over his hair. “Yes.”

“Don’t tell me you changed your mind. Come on, after last night I’ve got to know. I can’t believe you dove into the water like that. What are you, a - lifeguard, or something?”

Aiden lets out a little snort.

“In a way, I guess you could say that.” He tosses the glasses into the trash can under his desk and dusts off his hands. “And no, I’m not backing out. I promise we’ll talk, but first, we should go see how Gabrielle is doing.”

I guess that's that on that, because he gets up and pulls a hat down over his messy hair, and then we’re heading down the stairs. The rain flutters down on us in a much gentler manner than it did last night. It’s a soaking morning, with puddles everywhere and a pale sky overhead. Aiden and I troop through the back door and into Kent’s living room. I have no idea what to expect, or even what to say. I’ve never been in this particular situation before.

We find Kent’s armchair scooched up closer to the couch than it had been when we left. He’s sitting in it, holding a mug of coffee in his hands, smiling and listening to Gabrielle. She’s sitting up, with her long black hair scooped into a messy bun. She’s no longer in the business attire she arrived in: rather, she has on a t-shirt of Kent’s, and a pair of his sweatpants. She fits Kent’s clothes about as well as I fit Aiden’s: she’s almost lost in them. She twists from her crossed-legged perch on the couch when we step through the kitchen door, fixing us with a sharp green gaze. Kent gets to his feet, and she does, too.

“Gabby, this is Jamie and Aiden. The ones I was telling you about.”

“Jamie.” She takes my hand and grasps it tightly, then gives it a firm shake - once up, once down - and releases me. “Aiden.” She does the same with him, peering up with her head tipped back. She’s a little bit shorter than me, and even I have to look up to make eye contact with either Kent and Aiden. “Kent told me what happened last night. How can I thank you?”

“It was nothing,” Aiden says, before I can answer. “Sorry about your car. What happened?”

“I’ve been living in New York City for the past eight months,” Gabrielle says. “You get used to driving at a certain speed. I was going pretty fast, and it was so dark, and all that rain. I thought I saw a deer in the road, and I swerved, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up on Kent’s couch. I don’t normally introduce myself to my employees dressed like this.” She gestures to her outfit, and Kent chuckles.

She has a lower voice with a slight rasp to it; a delicate pointed nose like a pixie, and immaculately threaded eyebrows. Even wearing Kent’s clothes, she looks more put together than any of the three of us do.

“So I know you work for City Hall, Aiden, but Kent didn’t tell me in what capacity. Are you in Safety & Rescue? Police? Fire?”

“Um, archives,” Aiden says, and one of Gabrielle’s perfectly-shaped eyebrows quirks.

“Okay... Archives must be different than I remember it.”

“You’ve worked in Ketterbridge before?” I ask, surprised.

“I’m from Ketterbridge.” Gabrielle turns to look at me. “Born and raised. I’ve been gone for a long time, though. The campaign trail had me all over the place. Quite the reentry I made, don’t you think?”

“Definitely one for the books,” I agree.

“I’m just grateful that someone was there to help me out. Seriously. I’ll have to take you both out to lunch sometime. In fact, let’s go ahead and get it on the calendar.” She feels around her waist, then adds: “Oh. Right. These aren’t my pants or my pockets. And my phone is, I assume, lost to the depths. Unless…?” She looks up hopefully. “I suppose it would be too much to hope…? It was in the cupholder.”

“No, sorry.” I turn and grab her bag off of the floor, where it was leaning against the back of the couch. “But we did get this.”

Gabrielle almost snatches the bag out of my hands. She quickly undoes the zipper and looks inside, then extracts the little silver case. She pops it open, examines the contents, and briskly closes it back up. The relief on her face is obvious.

“God, thank you. I can’t believe you rescued this. There are meds in here that would be a pain to replace.”

“Oh. Um.”

“You’re welcome,” Aiden says.

“Lunch, then?” Gabrielle turns to the coffee table with Ellen’s drawings on it. She extracts a free page and a green crayon. “Let’s say, Tuesday at 4 pm? Unless anyone has a conflict? Or hang on - I know I have a call at 3:30 that day. Let’s say 4:30 just to be safe. A little buffer room never hurt anyone. Could have used a bit more between my car and that deer, but hey. You get back on the horse. 4:30, then. I’ve got it written down here, I suppose I’ll have to use my backup laptop to get it in the calendar. I’m glad I sent most of my stuff ahead, or I’d be in Kent’s clothes all week!”

“My wardrobe is always open, although I almost think you’d fit Ellen’s clothes better than mine.”

“Yes, and I want to meet Ellen, too. After hearing so much about her.” Gabrielle smiles at him, then neatly tears the page out of the notebook and rips it into three parts. She hands one to me: the date and time and even location, apparently, of our lunch (our 4:30 pm lunch? what goes on?). She tucks the second paper into her purse, and hands the third to Kent.

“What’s this?” he asks, peering down at it.

“My phone number.”

Kent looks up, clearly surprised.

“Uh -”

“So we can arrange a time for me to give you back your clothes. Once I get them laundered.”

“Oh, right. Duh, yeah, of course. Yeah. Well - use them for as long as you want, honestly.”

“You’re a sweetheart,” Gabrielle tells him, and he smiles. “And please thank Margaret for me again. In the meantime, I’m going to head to my new place and hopefully get my hands on a new phone as soon as possible.” She gathers up the purse and her remaining high heel.

“Let me give you a ride,” Kent offers immediately. “It’s still raining, and you only have one shoe.”

“Excellent, that would be much more efficient. If you don’t mind me imposing on you one more time.”

“Imposing, not at all,” Kent says. “I’ll just go get my keys, stay right there.”

“So, we’ll see you on Tuesday, then.” I slap Aiden’s shoulder. “Although I guess he’ll see you on Monday.”

“I’m looking forward to working together, Ms. Soto.”

“Oh, please. Call me Gabby. Everyone is on a first-name basis in my workplace. I’m looking forward to it, too, Aiden. It’s good to know there are motivated people on my team already. I have lots of plans for Ketterbridge. New streetlights for the forest roads will be one of many things we can make better around here. But one thing at a time. We’ll need LED lights, of course. Presumably ones with remote monitoring and control capabilities, too. You don’t happen to know the DOT regulations on street lights, do you?”

“Uh, I work in the archives,” Aiden says again, as Kent bustles back into the room.

“Right. I’ll make a note to check on that later.” Gabby turns to smile at Kent. “Ready?”

He smiles back. “Yep.”

“Great. Guys, again, thank you. I’m very happy that you two happened to be out for a drive last night. We’ll chat on Tuesday. Looking forward to it.”

Aiden and I watch from the window as the two of them march off down the paved path towards Kent’s car. Aiden looks over at me.

“Coffee?” he asks.

“Yes. Coffee.”

~~~~

We end up at Mug Shot, the coffee place below the apartment Aiden almost leased. It’s not that busy at the moment, but I have to resist the urge to ask Aiden a billion questions the whole time we’re standing in line and waiting for our macchiatos. We didn’t stop back at my place to get clothes or anything, so I’m still in Aiden’s pajamas. Mine were covered in mud and stiff from river water. Normally I would have insisted that we stop for a change of clothes, but I’m dying for an answer to at least one of my questions. Aiden, meanwhile, is in no rush. He heads to the station with the sugar and cinnamon and stuff to doctor his coffee, then saunters back to our table at an easy pace.

“Aiden, sit down. Jesus Christ. Put me out of my misery.”

“Gabby is interesting, isn’t she? Not gonna let a car crash and almost dying affect the calendar.”

“Hey! So, here’s something fun - if you don’t tell me something, anything about what’s going on, I’m just going to beat you up.”

Aiden smiles.

“That’s adorable.”

“Don’t underestimate me. Maybe I have a blackbelt, like Angie.”

“Do you?”

“....No.” I lean forward across the table. “Come on. After what we went through last night… just, why don’t you want to tell me about what’s going on with you?”

“Jamie, you have no idea- I’ve been wanting to tell you since-” Aiden stops, takes a breath. His joking expression has gone serious again. “Look, here’s the thing. I’ve never talked to anyone about this, and I honestly never intended to, so this is hard for me. Give me a break, okay?” He looks down, taps his thumbs on the lip of his coffee cup. “I wouldn’t have pulled you in last night, but I panicked. I don’t want any of this on your shoulders. I never even wanted it on mine.”

“Aiden…” I shake my head, lost. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“God, I’m terrible at this.” He presses his palms over his eyes. “Fuck. I don’t even know where to start.”

“Anywhere. Anything.”

“It’s hard to fucking explain, Jamie!”

I believe that. Between the map, the glasses, the strange little rocks and plant scraps, his eyes changing, and his apparent ability to look into the future, there are a lot of questions that need answering. Plus, he looks so stressed out right now that even though I want to grab him and squeeze the truth right out of his mouth, I can’t help but feel bad. He’s obviously struggling.

“Okay, okay. How about this? You don’t have to tell me everything, at least not in one sitting. Just - try telling me one thing. You can tell me the rest when you’re - more comfortable, I guess. Does that sound doable?”

Aiden stares at me, then lets out a soft laugh and looks down into his coffee.

“You’re so goddamn nice. It’s ridiculous.” He swallows, and then nods. “Okay. Yes. I shouldn’t tell you everything at once anyway, it’ll be too much. What do you want to know first?”

I cycle through the options in my mind.

“The map.”

“The map.” Aiden nods slowly. “Okay. I’m trying to use it to - locate something.”

“What are you looking for?”

“You’re never going to believe me.”

“After last night? Try me.”

“Alright. Here goes nothing. I’m hunting for a ghost.”