The Ghost and Lady Star

It’s not like anyone would know Rhea was having coffee at her favorite bookstore today. It’s not like her family ever noticed it when she left the house anyways. Besides today was a good day to get lost in books and the best damn caramel macchiato this side of town with just a drizzle of chocolate on top, courtesy of her friend Martin a nice Goth kid who worked here on week nights and Wednesday mornings. She often wondered how he got his homework done even though he was in college. Than shrugged remembering her college stint some years ago that didn’t last longer than a semester’s worth. She also remembered why it didn’t go very far, and suddenly she was strolling down memory lane with the memory of Neil attached to it. He had been a beautiful man with blonde hair and hotti written all over him, that and he had an obsession with joining the army. Not to mention he had an affinity for getting into trouble for studying weaponry with the wrong people. So what if he wasn’t that logical at times, he still was a friend, a good friend. Rhea sighed into her cup of frapped macchiato and took a straw full. Mm now that can distract a woman from an old wound, yet something was missing. Rhea looked at her watch, 9:29 am, would the ghost be late today?

As Rhea watched the glass door for any sign of the ghost her cell phone rang with that song from Rockwell, Somebody’s Watching Me that was the sign it was Elisa, her best friend and fellow partner in crime since college. When Rhea touched the phone to her ear it was cold as ice. Rhea barely said hello when she noticed him standing at the end of the isle in front of her. He was watching her with his green eyes and long messy black hair and he seemed quite content to be standing there as if he owned the Hasting’s Bookstore. Not to mention the look on his face was that of ownership, as if Rhea was his and no one could stop him from whatever he would do to her next. Rhea felt the impulse to scream at him to quit looking at her, but noticed people walking around the isles and so sat back in her green chair and kept her eyes off of him as if he weren’t there at all. He walked away slowly as if knowing the game all too well and sat down beside her, an amused if not dangerous smile on his lips. He looked at her again but she quickly looked away and picked up the romance book she was reading. He noticed she had put the phone away and not even talked to her friend. He laughed a small triumphant laugh than noticed a young man taking a book of Roman History down from the shelf and quickly went to see what pages he turned to if at all without putting it up too soon before Alexander had a peek over his shoulder.

Rhea didn’t feel uneasy, rather she felt angry that he had noticed her and she had given herself away to it. Suddenly her phone rang again with that same eerie song from the eighties and looking to the history Isle she noticed the ghost looking intently over the shoulder of a young man in a trench coat she had seen here many times before. It was an odd thing to see the ghost trying to get a glimpse of the pages with the young man flipping mercilessly through the pages. There was something so vulnerable about the ghost when he did it too, like he desperately needed to see those pages and it wrenched him to not be able to see them.

Rhea picked up her cell phone and flipped it open instantly releasing the ranting of her best friend. “What the hell Woman! Why did you hang up on me! What, did you see some hottie all of a sudden and had to spend a full ten minutes ogling him instead of talking to me?” She laughed and so did Rhea, she always had a way of lightening up things even when she was mad. “Brat, how did you know?” They both laughed and Elisa came back with, “Uhuh, uhuh, now I see how you are, all boy watcher with no time for your best friend huh, yup I see you now, hahaha.”

“Ha, ha…hey wait a minute, I ain’t no boy watcher, I’m a man watcher, hahaha”
“Yeah riiight!”
They laughed so much Rhea had to stop herself from making a spectacle of herself.
“Ok, all right, all right, what’s up, why you calling me this early?”
“Well first of all I wanted to say good morning and second of all I just wanted to tell you that Billy wants to go out with you tonight.”
“Oh my Gosh! Are you serious? Billy. The guy with the tattoo?”
“Yup that’s the Billy. I saw him yesterday night when I was hanging with Jared and Diana at Rookies. He asked me about you.”
“What did you say, tell me everything word for word.”
“Ok calm down woman.”
“Ok, ok just tell me cause I’m like going out of my head here.”
“Ok, well he said he thought you were cute.”
Rhea squeaked into the receiver and continued listening,
“And he asked me family questions like how many brothers and sisters and he asked me where you worked, and I told him you worked as a volunteer with your dad and your sister, than he asked me how old you were and I told him. He asked me if you lived alone, and I told him you lived with your sister and her boyfriend. He asked me what you liked to do and I told him, you know the basic stuff, movies, taking walks in the park, working out, hanging with the family and being an aunt cause you were big on family, oh and I told him you were totally in love with a ghost.”
“YOU DIDN’T!” Rhea practically screamed into the phone.
“OK, ok, so I left that part out, it’s not like I’m gonna tell anyone anyway girl, but still I bet you 20 bucks I know where you are right now.”
“Elisa.” Rhea said in an exaggerated sigh.
“You’re at the bookstore aren’t you?”
“Ugh!”
“I knew it, I knew it! You know girl you need to concentrate on the flesh and blood of the real world and quit pining over Mr. Tall Dark and Intense and NOT ALIVE! Ok, know what I mean, notice the emphasis on Not Alive there did yu?”
Rhea leaned her head back on her chair and tried not to notice the ghost looking at her again as the isle he was previously in was now empty, the trench coat guy having moved on to the Science Fiction on the back shelves against the wall. Some strange feeling vibrated through her for 4 seconds and then was gone. When she looked back to where he had stood before he wasn’t there but she felt as if he were watching her, from behind her chair. “HELLO!” She heard Elisa yell and thinking quickly she said, “I’m here, I was looking at a romance book I am going to buy, sorry bout that girl.”
“Yeah, whatever, you know what I mean girl, I only say that cause I care about you and you have all ready had too much **** from your family to deal with over this, I just don’t want you to get hurt again ok.” She said it so sympathetically Rhea couldn’t help but feel some shame in where she was and suddenly she felt so out of place in her favorite bookstore. Determined to claim back her normal life and get back to what was important she told Elisa, “Ok girl, your right, I know you are, I hear you loud and clear, I’m gonna meet you outside at the tables out there in front, pick me up, we have to go shopping if I’m going on a date with Billy Thorough tonight.”
“Woohoo, now that’s what I’m talking about, I’ll be there in just a bit girl, go buy yu nasty book and meet me out front, and be out front cause I ain’t gonna go look for yo ass girl, all right? All right. Bye girl.”
“All right, bye.”

Rhea got up from her chair and began to walk to the coffee shop to pay for her book but found herself turning back only to see the ghost standing and looking down the history isle with such a look of discontent on his face it made her heart ache. She turned again, thinking, I just can’t, I can’t someone will see, the book will get picked up too soon, and someone might think I’m a little crazy or just plain stupid for dropping a book on purpose and walking away, and then there is the camera’s. Damnit!
She turned around again and walked casually down to the history isle and went past him as if he wasn’t there and felt him watch her intensely as she plucked the book from the shelf along with five others and set them on the floor. Than she opened each one and tried to look interested as if she were doing research, than she fanned a text messege on vibrate plucking her phone from her pocket and half hazardly picked up the other four books and left the one he wanted to see laying open in the middle and she dashed off to the coffee shop to pay for her book hearing him say faintly, ‘thank you my lady,’ with an accent that could have made any woman turn around quick with a heaving breast and a healthy helping of ‘wow did you call me a lady.’

As Rhea went to stand in the long line to pay for her book she found she was hot now and knew she must look flushed but tried very hard not to seem shocked that the ghost had spoken to her. There were four goth kids in line, two guys and two girls, apparently friends of Martins. They laughed about one of the orders and suddenly Rhea felt normal again as if she was in college again listening to the normal goings on of an internet café.
Rhea loved people, with all their varied personalities and individualities, which is why the college life should have suited her, well, should have, if not for Niel’s disappearance, that and his reappearance in her dreams for an entire week after he had been missing for two weeks. He had told her so many things, things she still couldn’t recall fully but recalled frightened her none the less. The one thing she remembered most of all, was the love she felt from him and that his visit to her meant, he was dead and he was saying goodbye. On the Sunday, at 4 o’clock August 1997 he left this world and Rhea forever. His parents had received an anonymous phone call from a woman, telling them where his body was and how he had passed on.

As Rhea paid for her book the café became practically empty as some people went outside to the tables set up out there and the only ones left inside the café were two people on laptops and earphones.
Martin asked, “Are you all right? You look like you saw a ghost or something?” he laughed.
“If you only knew, nah I’m just kidding, hahaha” Rhea always knew how to blow it off and divert peoples moments of noticing her, the real her that is, the weird her.
“OK.” He laughed again and she handed him the book.
“So, how’s college going?” She leaned on the counter her arms spread a little wide and she tried her best to put on a happy and curious face.
“Oh it’s going good.”
“Cool.” She nodded her head and looked down at the counter and anywhere else but at him so she could some how hide her fear.
“It will be 7.94.”
“Oh, ok” she quickly opened her purse and fumbled for her wallet. It slipped out of her hand as she was opening it and two of her credit cards and a folded up piece of paper dropped out of it. She quickly crouched down to pick them up. But on her way up from the floor she noticed the ghost standing there beside her. He was so close to her and starred at her inches from her face with a look she could not discern. And so she placed one of her credit cards in her wallet and gave the other to Martin and tried really hard not to feel her skin heat and her heart beating so hard.
She was leaning on the counter again trying not to look distracted when suddenly she felt her hair stand on end on her arms and back of her neck except, for her arm, it was strangely warm like someone was running there hand down her arm. She didn’t want to look, and so she slowly moved her arm off of the counter and tried to breathe steady and calm. He than gently grabbed her arm and brought it up as if to examine it and brought it close to his face. She couldn’t help but stare at him in anticipation. Martin said, “Are you sure you’re all right? Is there something wrong with your arm?”
Just then the ghost kissed her hand and she wanted to go nuts or squeal or something instead she said, “Wow, I think my heart just stopped.”
“What?” Martin said a little freaked by this point.
“Uh, nothing…” she gently pulled her hand away from his and put it to her chest.
“I’ll be ok, probably too much caffeine and not enough sleep, I better get a decaf tea next time, hahaha.” She grabbed her bagged book and took off out of the bookstore at lightning speed nearly knocking over a stand of magazines.

To be continued...

i look forward to the rest...

That makes me happy you do, I will see to the continuation, thank you for reading it.

Open for Critique-be honest-suggestions are welcome.