I shrug gently. ‘Have all the moments you need.’
She smiles at me, but it’s such a tight, mournful expression that I can’t bear to smile back. ‘I don’t even know why I’m crying,’ she says with the tiniest wobble to her chin. ‘You must think I’m a total mess.’
‘Actually,’ I say, gently tipping up her chin with my forefinger, ‘when you’re a mess yourself, you don’t really notice when other people are. It’s a bit like if you both eat garlic.’
She breathes out a watery little laugh. ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that.’
I grin at her, my thumb tracing a light path along her jawline. I have a vague memory of doing something similar when we kissed. And that’s when I remember what Cam said earlier, about Josiah. It was the reason I came to see her, but I never got around to my carefully rehearsed speech.
I wonder if that’s who these tears are for.
‘Is it Josiah?’ I ask carefully. ‘That you speak to, I mean. Is it him?’
Her eyes dart to mine a little too quickly. For a moment I think she might be angry with me for talking about it, but that’s not it at all. And when she nods, just slightly, the expression on her face is something closer to relief.
‘I haven’t always heard him,’ she says quietly. ‘It’s a recent thing. I don’t know how, or why now, but it’s been happening mainly since I came back to Whitby a few months ago.’
‘You lost him here?’ I ask, but I already know the answer to that. I can see it in the hunch of Florence’s shoulders; in the way her hands are grasping at nothing under the water.
She nods. ‘At the foot of the cliffs beside the abbey.’ Her eyes dart away from me then, her head cocked to one side, like she’s listening to something. After a few seconds she nods, and then she looks back at me with a smile that’s almost sheepish.
‘I know it sounds crazy,’ she says, ‘but sometimes I can hear him talking to me. It’s as if he’s right next to me, whispering in my ear.’
‘Like just then?’ I ask, and she nods.
‘Florence, our first encounter was when you thought IwasJosiah, even though he’s been dead since the 1800s. Since then, we’ve also covered you being a vampire and me maybe being on my way to being one, too.’ I smile fondly at her while a matching emotion runs amok inside my belly. ‘You having a ghost fiancé actually feels kind of on brand at this point.’
Even if I were good with words, I couldn’t possibly describe the smile that takes over her face. It’s a thing of such beauty that all I can do is stare, hoping that, in some way, I’ll be able to hold on to even a little bit of her light.
‘It’s just,’ she starts, her shoulders lifting out of the water a little with her shrug, ‘you worry about things being haunted, and, well… he’s often around. I can’t, in all good conscience, tell you these places aren’t haunted because they definitely are. By him.’ Her smile turns sheepish. ‘Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the one who’s haunted.’
A tiny cold shiver snakes its way down my spine. It probably doesn’t make any sense to be scared of ghosts when I’m swimming in a deserted pool in the middle of the night with an actual vampire but try telling that to my fight-or-flight response.
‘Ok,’ I say, more confidently than I feel. ‘But are we talking like a Caspar situation or something more, I don’t know, Freddy Krueger?’
A wrinkle appears between her brows. ‘I don’t know what either of those things mean.’
I simplify. ‘Is he planning to scare me away?’
‘I don’t think so.’ A smile appears and twists her mouth ever so slightly to the side. ‘He seems to like you.’
Disproportionate pride floods my chest. ‘Obviously got great taste,’ I say, grinning first at Florence, and then around the room, like I might be able to befriend a ghost I can neither see nor hear. Then I remember that this is about Florence and not about me. ‘You must miss him.’
‘All the time,’ she says, and though there’s still pain in her voice, it’s beginning to fade. Even so, I would take all of it away in a heartbeat if I could.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, and she smiles across at me.
‘I know.’
She’s silent for a moment before her mouth curves into a smile, and she adds, ‘And Josiah knows too.’
* * *
We stay in the pool until we– well,I– have wrinkled fingertips. Florence is just as perfect as ever. And by the time she hauls that flawless body out of the water, her mood has improved to the point that I don’t feel at all ashamed about unabashedly ogling it.
It really is a work of art.
My eyes catch on all the obvious areas, of course, but it’s the other parts of her that hold my attention: the curve of her spine, the small, jagged scar behind one shoulder, the pool water that’s gathered in the dips above her collarbones. I map her by the parts of her I want to explore, everything I can see as well as everything hidden beneath the deep-red fabric of her bikini. My skin burns just from thinking about it.