I hadn’t expected to see Cave here. I really hadn’t expected to be so happy to see him. It was like being underwater too long, suddenly breaking surface and getting that first gasp of oxygen. Everything was sharper, more in focus, when he was around.

I didn’t want to think too hard about what that reaction meant. If I allowed myself to go down that path, my life would get a lot harder. It was rough enough right now with Giselle and Toby and the label and everything going on in my “real” life.

This morning, we’d been listening to riffs, little bursts of song-parts to see if any of them resonated with me. More arena-filling ballads full of triumphant major chords.

“They’re thinking of an album title like, Can’t Go Home Again,” Toby told me.

“How I wish that were true,” complained Giselle, stretched full-length on the couch. “Can’t we at least find a nicer hotel?”

I put my headphones back on and closed my eyes. The music swept over me, past me, through me. I touched a key on my laptop to move from track to track, sometimes jumping back to listen to one a second, third, tenth time. Nothing caught me.

Instead, I pulled over my guitar. “Listen,” I said.

I played this melody that had been on my mind for days now. It was slow, a little melancholy. A winter song. My fingers barely touched the strings; the guitar almost whispered, the same way I did.

Looking up at Toby, I said, “It reminds me of ghosts.”

“Wonderful, a Halloween album, just what the world needs,” said Giselle, flipping through her phone.

Toby had made the same joke a few days ago. But he wasn’t going to make jokes now. He could see my face. See what it meant to me, to make my own song. I played it again.

“Haunted by memory,” he said.

“Specters,” I said, just trying out the word. It felt wrong. Too harsh for the feeling the music gave me. “No, phantoms. Phantoms of the mind, the ghosts we leave behind...”

My voice was in no shape to actually sing, but part of our process was to record these sessions anyway. Sometimes a throwaway comment, a phrase you thought nothing about at the time, could turn into a full song, and you wanted to have that captured. Of course usually we were in a studio and had a producer around to help.

Out of habit, I played it back and listened to myself. My voice, full of gravel, sounded older. Like someone who had been through life, who had been hurt and kept going, time after time. The ghosts we leave behind...

“Haunted in my own home,

By the way you said goodbye--

The way you left me alone.”

I glanced up at Toby and shrugged. He nodded, and I kept going.

“Ghosts never know what’s true--

Was it you leaving me,

Or this time was it me leaving you?”

I held the note too long, and listened to my voice quickly fade, my throat closing off. It wasn’t painful; if anything, it seemed like a natural punctuation to the verse. I took another sip of tea. When it was safe to talk again, I said, “It feels better than the stuff you’ve got me listening to. It feels more real.”

“But you can’t call it Ghost Stories,” Toby said. “It’s too obvious. The label won’t allow it. But...what if you called it something like Unfinished Business? You know, they always say ghosts come back because they’ve left something undone.”

“Are there any magazines?” Giselle asked, interrupting our moment. “Anything at all to read?”

* * *

At the meet-and-greet, it took me a minute to realize Cave had slipped out of the room. These adults were almost as bad as my younger fans. At least the school kids knew how to stand in line and wait patiently for their turn. Toby had done his best at crowd control, but the whole point of this thing was to let everyone meet me, let them bask in my glory. I gave him a pained look and gestured at my throat.

“All right, folks,” said Toby. “I think the PR team has a few words to say to everyone, if you’ll come this way.”

He led them off, sheep after the shepherd. It gave me a chance to look for Cave. There was his friend Rhody, still talking to Giselle. I could ask Rhody if she’d seen him.

Or maybe I wouldn’t. I mean, what was I hoping to accomplish? Did I really want to complicate things? Open old wounds, pull off the fucking scabs, let myself get hurt again?

Come on, I said, you can just talk to him.

But why? What was there left to say? Our goodbye had been sufficient, hadn’t it? What did I think would happen, drawing it out like this? Happy little catching-up conversation? Did I want to sit there and listen to the minutiae of the past fifteen years of his life, get current on every strain of gossip for people I only half-remembered from a time in my life I’d tried so hard to forget?

Yes, I did, but at least I recognized the problems with wanting that.

I didn’t have to ask Rhody about it. I knew Cave. He hadn’t changed that much. He never wanted the spotlight, never wanted to entangle people in drama. He would’ve slipped out without telling anyone. I envied him that ability. Even with everyone ostensibly listening to the PR people talk about this visit, people kept looking over at me. Was I going to do something exciting? Was I going to shine my star-light upon them?

Oh, for the ability to just disappear. To be a ghost, flitting from room to room unseen.

Should’ve written that one down for the album.

Well, it didn’t matter. I was at the door. Let them watch. Let them speculate about my exciting reasons for walking out.

I’d half-expected to come out here and find Cave gone. Maybe already home, already cozy in his little fort that kept the world out.

He had his keys in his hand, leaning against his car.

“Leaving?” I said.

His smile was complicated, happy to see me, sad to see me, I wasn’t sure what it communicated. “Thinking about it,” he said. “I’m not great at the meet-and-greet part of all this.”

“Oh, I thought you were escaping from me,” I said. At first, I’d meant it as a joke, a way to lighten the mood, but by the time I’d finished saying it, it was just bare and honest.

It was so hard not to be honest around Cave. The truth just kept coming out.

“That too,” he said. “It’s just...do you ever see someone you know at the grocery store, and you wave and say hi...and then you see them again in the next aisle, and it’s like, what do you do? You can’t greet them again because you just did, but it feels wrong not to acknowledge them somehow? And then by the time you’re a few aisles down, still seeing them, you feel...not hostile, exactly, but you just wish you could buy your groceries without this constant awareness that you should say something?”

“Um, I haven’t been inside a grocery store in a decade,” I said, and his laughter was clear and refreshing and loud, like a wave breaking over me.

“I just figured it would be awkward for us,” he said. “We keep saying goodbye to one another and then, oops, there we are, together again.”

His fingers had come up and were touching his tie, a nervous gesture. His hands were so strong. They drew the eye, the way his smile did. You couldn’t stop looking at him. At least, if you were me. He drew the eye like a magnet draws pins.

“This time it’s my fault,” I said. “You can blame the awkwardness on me. I--”

I wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. I bit my lower lip, staring at him. This was so foolish. Giselle and Toby were back there in the building, ready to get me back to my normal life. I had no business out here. No right to interfere in Cave’s settled, happy life.

“I want to see you again,” I said. It came out in a whisper.

His head tilted. I remembered suddenly, a night a thousand years ago, on the ferris wheel at the fair, riding upwards with him, putting my hand on his leg, and his head tilted the same way, like he was curious, interested in this strange new event, not entirely sure it was connected to him in any way, but curious nonetheless.

“Is that wise?” he asked.

“It really isn’t,” I said. “I’m busy dating a supermodel, and working on a new album, and signing five million contracts for all my side projects. I don’t have a single free second to spend on what I actually fucking want.”

“Your girlfriend will be jealous,” he said, with an unaccustomed hint of archness, but I sensed the question behind what he said.

“She’s not my girlfriend. Not really. She’s a distraction, a smokescreen.”

He didn’t seem to know how to take that, and looked away, chuckling nervously. “You’re right. Your life is too complicated. I should probably say no.”

“For my own good? For yours?” I took a step closer to him. “Are you going to say no?”

Now he was looking straight at me, and I melted. His eyes, so gentle, so sincere, so serious. His lips were so soft, it was like they were begging to be kissed, and every ounce of my being called on me to pull him close. What would happen if I did? What would happen to this strange, artificial life, where I always felt like I was onstage? Would it just collapse, if I reached out for him now?

Yet I could sense his wariness. I’d hurt him once. Maybe he was waiting for me to do it again. He said, “I don’t know what to say. You don’t know how incredible it is to see you again. But you have to admit, we live on different planets, Ransom.”

I nodded. “I know. I’m not asking for anything but a little time with you,” I said. “Not even a date. Nothing so formal. We could...I don’t know, we could take a walk around town. You could show me all the stuff that’s changed. Or we could just hang out at your house again.”

That made him laugh. “You sounded so much like your teenaged self when you said that. Next, you’ll be promising to bring over your Playstation so we can play some games.”

“Oh, man, I haven’t thought of that thing in years. Honestly, though, I’m in town, you’re in town...here we are on the same planet. There’s no harm in just having lunch or something. Right?”

“I’m not going to say no. What do you expect? Of course we can...whatever you want to name it. We can visit. That sounds appropriately innocent and old-fashioned.”

I wanted to hug him. I was so glad he’d agreed. But with cameras lurking so close, it was better not to touch him. No sense in risking unnecessary tabloid headlines.

I gestured back to the building. “Guess I’d better get back inside,” I said. “They’ll start sending out search parties if I’m away from the cameras for too long.”

He was searching for the right words to say. I shook my head. “Go home. I’ll call you.”

I returned to the cold, icy arms of my waiting public, while he returned to the warmth of his life.