Chasing Happy

by Jenni M. Rose

  “When you’re with him, you’re lost to me.”

  To some extent, Max’s energy must shield her. She knew his energy calmed her and evened hers out and when she was with him, her senses were quieter.

  Was it being with Max that kept the spirits away? She thought back to the first time they met and remembered she’d seen other spirits when she was with him so that couldn’t be right. What did it all mean?

  “No,” Rosie told Helene. “I’ve seen other spirits when I’m with him. Maybe it’s just you he’s blocking. Is there something I need to be protected from?”

  The spirit seemed to watch her. “I mean you no harm.”

  Rosie remembered being possessed and disagreed. “Well, you aren’t welcome in my body.”

  “What the fuck?” Dallas muttered.

  “I need to show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  “I need you to see?”

  “Is that why you keep dragging me here? To show me?”

  The spirit drifted closer making Rosie back up a step until she felt Dallas pressed against her back.

  “Let’s go,” he told her. “This is spooky as hell.”

  “Wait.”

  “I just want you to see.”

  “To see what? Where you are?” Rosie asked.

  “No way. We’re outta here,” Dallas insisted, grabbing her arm and pulling her away.

  “I’m here.” The spirit’s presence held a tinge of desperation that ate at Rosie as Dallas pulled her away.

  She had already gathered that Helene was in the cove somewhere but to be flat out told was a little unnerving. She wondered how many families had visited and played at the cove not knowing there were human remains there. Not knowing there was a spirit walking among them.

  “Is that what you’re after? Me finding your remains?”

  “He needs to know. My Jack.”

  Dallas pulled her closer to his truck and even though she wasn’t fighting him she wasn’t exactly ready to leave.

  “Know you didn’t leave him?” Rosie asked as Helene faded the farther away she got.

  “Never.” The voice was a whisper as Dallas shoved her in the passenger side of his truck.

  He crossed the hood and jumped in the driver’s seat, cranking the engine and driving away. Helene faded until she was barely a silhouette in the dark and then she was gone. Rosie watched as the cove disappeared and Dallas drove like a maniac down the darkened back roads.

  “You can slow down,” Rosie murmured, her mind still on the conversation with Helene.

  “I’m getting as far away from that fucking place as fast as I can,” he told her, not slowing down at all.

  “You must think I’m nuts,” she said, trying to picture what just happened as someone looking on.

  He turned his head to look at her and said nothing, then went back to looking at the road.

  “It’s always been there.” She shook her head, wondering how to explain. “That link to the other side. They’ve always just been there. Sitting on the bus next to me. Waiting in the hall in my apartment building.” She took a deep breath and looked out the window. “Playing in the grass across the street.”

  “Did it ever freak you out?” Dallas asked. “Because I’m totally freaked out.”

  She shook her head. “No. But like I said, it’s always been there.”

  “Always.”

  “As far back as I can remember.”

  “Must have freaked your parents out.” He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, like he was waiting to see if she’d tell the truth. He had to know by now the story she’d told in the bar about having a family was a lie.

  He turned the corner into Max’s driveway and parked behind a car Rosie didn’t recognize. How much honesty did a friend deserve when they bailed you out of jail and followed that up with an encounter of the ghostly kind? Just about all she could muster, she figured. Dallas deserved more than the lies she usually told.

  “Yeah, they weren’t crazy about it,” she lied quietly, shame making her look away to hide her face.

  “Huh. Did they believe you?”

  The thing about Dallas was, as she had already readily discovered, he was very intuitive. Maybe not in the same sense she was but he could read people in a very insightful way. So even though she told him a half truth, basically a lie, he’d picked up that something wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t what she said to him that piqued his radar it was something in the way she said it.

  She lifted a shoulder in response to his question. Did her mother believe her? Depended which day you asked her. Depended where they were living and which drugs her mom chose to do that day. Depended on what mood her mother was in or which friends were there at the time.

  “We’ve got company,” he interrupted her musing, his finger pointed to the front porch.

  Max was there, a look of concern marring his face, his mother was next to him.

  “Shit,” Rosie muttered as she grabbed her bag from the floor of the truck. “Can we just not mention anything that happened tonight? Until later?”

  “Yeah,” Dallas agreed as they both got out.

  Rosie mustered up the best fake smile she could as she climbed the stairs to the porch.

  “Where’s your bike?” Max asked.

  She wanted to smack her own forehead. She’d never even gotten the thing from the damn police station. It was probably still shoved in the back of that idiot’s cruiser.

  “I saw Rosie on her way to the bus stop and noticed she had a flat. We dropped it at the bike shop,” Dallas cut in. The lie was so smooth and came out so easily she nearly raised her eyebrow at him. “Hi Mom,” he continued easily as he squeezed Mrs. Murphy in a hug.

  “Oh, it’s always so good to see you, Dallas.” She hugged him back.

  Max sidled to her side and pulled her to him, his arm over her shoulder as he kissed her head.

  “Everything okay?” He asked.

  She shrugged and sent him a half smile. “Getting better.” When he looked like he was going to ask more questions she told him, “We can talk about it later.”

  For now, she had to brave a conversation with the human lie detector, Mrs. Murphy.

  27

  Mrs. Murphy hadn’t stayed long. She’d been picking a few things up from the farm and was headed out when she and Dallas got there. Normally, Rosie would pick up on some of the things the other woman was thinking but the complete absence of information struck her.

  She thought back to what the spirit had said down at the cove and wondered if it was Max’s doing. Not just the sense of peace she got when he was around but the silence. Give or take one or two pushes from Helene, maybe Max was shielding her from the other side.

  “Babe?” Max’s voice cut in.

  The three of them were sitting at the counter eating a late dinner but she hadn’t touched hers.

  “Sorry,” she apologized automatically.

  “What’s wrong?” He cut it before she could make any excuses.

  Dallas had been quiet about the events of the evening up to that point. She met his eyes across the counter and he just watched her, waiting.

  Max caught the exchange and looked between them. “What’s going on?”

  “Dallas and I had a run in at the cove on our way here. With Helene.”

  His shoulders dropped. “And you’re just telling me now?”

  “I didn’t think your mom would be super interested.” Rosie shot back. “Not after what happened that Thanksgiving.”

  “It’s a lot to process,” Dallas said putting a hand on Max’s shoulder. “And I only heard one side of the conversation.”

  Max grabbed his plate and walked to the sink. “Well, you guys process away. Don’t mind me, I’ll just leave you to it.”

  “Dude,” Dallas argued.

  Rosie put a hand on his arm. “How about we catch up with you tomorrow?”

  He watched her for a second before nodding his head. “Yeah. Okay.”

>   When she heard the front door close, she walked to the sink.

  Max was standing, hands braced on the countertop. She slid her arms around his waist, her cheek resting against his strong back. She held him like that for a good two minutes before speaking.

  “Please don’t me mad at me.”

  She felt him take a deep breath. “I’m not mad.” The words came from behind clenched teeth.

  “Yes, you are,” she said, her voice quiet. “I can feel it.”

  And she could. Max’s usually green aura was now an angry maroon with gray static floating inside of it. The static pelted her arms in a way that made the hair stand up when it shocked her.

  When she closed her eyes, she could finally get a read on what he was thinking.

  “I’m not sleeping with Dallas,” she told him after getting a particularly vivid vision.

  “I know that,” he said angrily.

  “Then why are you thinking I am?” She let him go and took a step back.

  When he turned around he was more upset than angry, hurt she supposed.

  “I am not,” he argued.

  “You’re worried that I call him when I need help and not you. You think I’m going to realize he’s better at helping people than you are.”

  “Are you reading my mind?” He sounded appalled, like she’d violated him in some way, which she kind of had.

  “I don’t mean to,” she argued. “You’re like, yelling it at me!”

  “Well, stop it,” he told her.

  She let out a laugh, as if it was that easy. “I can’t! Don’t you get it. I can’t shut it off!”

  “You said you couldn’t read me.”

  “I usually can’t. Your guard must be down because you’re mad.”

  He took a few deep breaths, hands on hips.

  People didn’t like to have their minds read. They didn’t want other people in their head. This was when people left. When it became clear that she was just too different.

  Like a bubble popping, the silence returned.

  “You can’t see it anymore,” he said, like he knew it was true.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I know. If you could you’d be blushing.” He leaned back and reached his hands out. When she put her hands in his he pulled her into his arms. “I want to be the one you call when you need something. Thinking about you running to Dallas drives me a little nuts.”

  She shook her head and leaned back to look at him. “I didn’t run to Dallas.”

  He shrugged. “Even so. It’s tough talking jealousy down from a ledge. It doesn’t always make sense.”

  She shook her head again. “It’s not what you think.”

  “I know that,” he told her. “In my head, I know that. But,” he shrugged again.

  “I didn’t peg you as the jealous type.”

  “I never have been before.” He leaned down and kissed her quickly. “I think it’s just you.”

  Rosie rolled her eyes. “All that aside I do have a lot to tell you.”

  He held out his arms. “Tell me.”

  She took a few steps backwards. “Not here. Upstairs.”

  Twenty minutes later Rosie and Max sat across from each other in the big master bathroom tub. It was funny, something that had been so foreign to her before, like being naked around a man, had become such a comfort. She and Max had yet to do anything sexually that required no clothes but bathing wasn’t so strange anymore. It had become a calming ritual. The dim, steamy bathroom, the hushed conversations, the intimacy of being together without having to be together in a way she wasn’t yet comfortable. She knew they’d come at their relationship from a strange angle but it worked for them.

  For now, at least.

  “So. Let’s hear it,” Max said as he pulled her foot to his chest and massaged the sole. “Why’d you call Dallas.”

  “Well, I didn’t call Dallas, first of all.”

  “So, the bike flat tire story was true?” He asked skeptically.

  “No. That was a lie. More for your mom’s benefit than yours.”

  “So, your bike isn’t at the shop,” he clarified.

  “No. It’s at the police station.”

  His fingers stopped moving. “The what now?”

  “The police station.”

  “What the hell is it doing there?”

  “They impounded it when I got arrested.”

  He quickly let go of her foot and sat up. “What?”

  “It was a total misunderstanding,”

  “For what?”

  It sounded so stupid when she said it out loud. She sheepishly recounted the story of riding her bike through the park picking up empty beer bottles and cans.

  “By the time I finally got someone to listen to me, I just asked for Dallas. I was trying to name drop so they’d let me go!”

  “And it worked.”

  “That guy called Dallas and when he got there they threw the whole thing out. I wasn’t drinking.” She didn’t know why she felt like she needed to tell him that. She was of legal drinking age and she was an adult. Drinking wouldn’t be doing anything wrong. But drinking also wasn’t her and it wasn’t something she did. With the life she’d lived, she felt it was important for her to stay drug and alcohol free. “I was just trying to help.”

  Max was still sitting up and was watching her closely. “I know,” he said simply.

  “I didn’t mean to call Dallas and not you. It wasn’t like that.”

  “It’s okay.” He reached out and stroked shoulder. “I get it.”

  “And then on the way home we ended up at the cove.”

  “How did that happen?”

  Rosie sat up so they were sitting face to face. “That was my fault. I made Dallas go.”

  “I thought you were waiting to go back.”

  “I was planning to. I guess Helene had other plans.”

  “She made you go there?” At her nod he asked, “How?”

  “Just pulled me, I guess. Anyway, she said something that makes a lot of sense to me now that I think about it.”

  “About how she was killed?”

  “No, about my abilities not working.”

  “You said it was her. Is it? Did she say that?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “It’s you.”

  His head reared back. “Me?”

  Rosie nodded. “It makes more sense.”

  “How am I doing it?”

  “I’m not sure, really. But she said she can’t get to me when you’re around. She said you protect me.”

  “How?” He asked perplexed. “I don’t think I’m doing it.”

  “I think you are,” Rosie disagreed. “You might not know you’re doing it but it makes sense. I told you, when I’m with you everything’s quiet. The spirits, the dreams, they’re not there. Even the little things I usually learn about people from sitting with them for a while, that’s gone too.”

  “But, you’ve heard her when we’ve been together. Down at the cove and here.”

  “I think that’s all she can do when you’re doing it.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing. And even if I did? What, I’m supposed to stop protecting you so you can go running off after ghosts into the ocean?”

  “Okay, well, I don’t think we have to go that far. But, if we can get you to ease up a little and see where it leads us.”

  “Last time it led you neck deep in Smith’s Cove. I’m all set with that happening anymore.”

  “Maybe we can practice you letting your guard down a little. Like before, when I could read you.”

  He let out a laugh. “Babe, I swear, I don’t have my guard up.”

  “Well, you have something going on because I could read you loud and clear downstairs.”

  “When I lost my temper. I don’t think that means I’m the one walking around with my guard up all the time.”

  He eyed her somewhat accusingly.

  “I’m just saying, maybe we could work on you trying
to be less protective.” She ignored his not so subtle dig.

  “Okay, so you want me to meditate or something? Visualize myself not protecting you?” He shook his head. “So dumb. Why are we taking her word for it again?”

  “It makes the most sense, that’s all. It’s not like we have to do it right now. Maybe we should talk to Jay about it. See if he has any ideas.”

  “I can go whenever you need me to. Tomorrow?”

  “Can’t. I’m supposed to go dress shopping with your sister.”

  He smiled. Not the happy smile she was used to seeing but that cat that ate the canary, cocky smile he saved for special occasions, like this one.

  “Is it gonna be short?” He eyed her chest. “Low cut?”

  “That’s what you want me to wear to the business association dinner? Something short and low cut?”

  “Works for me.”

  “With that jealous streak you showed tonight? Seems like a bad idea. I might get a burlap sack instead.”

  “Would it be a short burlap sack?”

  She laughed. “You have a way of turning crappy situations into something not so crappy.”

  “They always say that about me. You know that Max, always making the crappy just a little less crappy.”

  28

  “That’s the one,” Wendy said with a confident nod.

  Problem was, she’d said the same thing about four other dresses.

  “You said that about the red one and the purple one.”

  “I know, but I hadn’t seen this one yet,” she argued. “This is it. We aren’t leaving without that dress.”

  “Oh my,” Pamela, the saleslady said, as she came into the mirrored area of the changing room. “That looks lovely on you, dear.”

  “Thank you,” Rosie mumbled, eyeing herself critically.

  The dress was gorgeous, there was no doubt about that. Stark white and form fitting, it covered her from neck to toes. Looking over her shoulder she inspected her back, the entire thing exposed.

  “Are you sure it isn’t too much?” She asked Wendy. “I don’t want to show up and be overdressed.”

  “You did see the dress I bought, right?”

  Wendy purchased an incredible floor length dress with a delicate lace overlay. If Wendy wore that, Rosie knew she wouldn’t be overdressed.