“Rosalind, how has your work been going? We always talk about Wild Art, but we never talk about your own projects,” Archer said as I shoved a handful of popcorn in my mouth.

We had stopped watching the movie I’d chosen a while ago, deciding to talk instead. I was curled up in a blanket on one side of the couch, while he was sitting on the opposite side of the same long couch. We’d finally realized it was easier to hold a conversation if we were sitting close together. We never touched—I made sure we never touched—but the ever-present energy between us crackled and sparked.

“Wait, haven’t you looked at the canvases in my studio?” I sat up, upending the bowl of popcorn that thankfully was almost empty. I grabbed a handful off my lap and ate it.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Hmmm.” I gave him a knowing smirk. There was no way he hadn’t snuck a peek at my work that covered every available surface of the makeshift studio.

“I just wanted to hear you talk about it. Your face lights up when you speak about things you love. You positively glow, and to me, there is no more beautiful sight.”

I gasped at his declaration as my gaze flew to his, wanting to see what truths lay in their depths, the need to decipher his feelings too intense to deny.

“You are, you know, Rosalind. You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said with a shrug, as though what he just said was a part of our normal conversations.

While I wasn’t the most self-conscious person in the world, his words, compliments still made me uncomfortable. And all the old self-doubt came back, taking me right back to my childhood.

I was awkward and different from most of the other girls around me when I was younger. The area I grew up in wasn’t very diverse, and I was bullied a lot. While my mother was French, Argentinian, and a bit of Sioux Indian, she had dark blonde hair and green-gold eyes. At first glance, we looked nothing alike, and the kids at school weren’t old enough or aware enough to look for the nuances that made our relation apparent. What they were good at was making someone who looked different feel alienated and ostracized.

My mom helped out and volunteered at my school a lot. She was super crafty, and she shared her talent in my classroom. Every single time she was at school, the day would end with a large group of kids in my class cornering me behind the cafeteria to hurl insults at me.

“You’re so ugly.”

“You know your mom isn’t really your mom, right?”

“You were adopted.”

“You were such an ugly baby that your parents didn’t want you.”

“Your real parents left you on your new parents’ doorstep.”

During all this they would shove at me, pulling at my backpack, grabbing onto the sleeves of my shirt and stretching it out.

There are only so many times you can be told you’re adopted and ugly before you start to question what you thought you knew to be true. At six, seven, or eight I had trouble seeing the resemblance between my mother and me. The hurt and confusion from the frequent bullying made me ask my parents on a weekly basis if I really was theirs or if they just didn’t want to tell me the truth of my adoption.

My peers only ever knew my mother, with her green eyes, her straight blonde hair, her very European look. If they had ever met my father—saw his light chestnut skin, witnessed the beautiful mix of his African-American and Italian features—they would understand my parents really were mine.

There were so many days I came home and hid in my closet, crying until I was physically spent, praying to a God I didn’t even know to change me. To make me just like everyone else. It can be so hard as a child to accept that your differences are something to value, not change.

I was never the most popular with boys in middle school and for most of high school. While I finally came into my looks, I was always different-looking, and there were times I still felt that old insecurity rise inside of me.

I had hazel-gold eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, dimples, a smattering of freckles, and long, heavy, loose, curly hair that was utterly uncontrollable. I wasn’t short, wasn’t tall, and I was fairly curvy. Over time I grew to be mostly comfortable with my self-image, but I never found a way to be comfortable with attention or compliments.

“Rosalind, are you okay? Did you hear me?” Archer’s alarmed voice in my ear broke through my memories. I opened my eyes as his hand made contact with my face and I nearly jumped from the shock of it, from the warmth and ache that curled through my body at his touch and proximity.

The energy between us sparked and nearly ignited. We had always kept things between us so safe, on my end as an attempt to deny the connection growing between us. With Archer’s body so close to mine, his hand absently caressing my cheek, my skin felt like it was about to catch fire. I realized I couldn’t deny it anymore.

“Do you feel it? The energy, this strange pull? Is it just me?” Heat crept up my neck, into my cheeks, until the tips of my ears felt like they were on fire. Archer’s eyes flared with so much emotion and tenderness it nearly made my heart stop.

“I feel it too, Rosalind. I’ve never felt anything like this.”

“Like—” I began at the same time Archer did. I let him finish his thoughts.

“It’s like I’ve known you all my life. Being dead and still present is solitary and lonely. You are the first person I’ve made any contact with, and I can’t help but believe it’s because of whatever this is pulling us together. So yes, I feel like there is something deeper here, and I hope this… friendship means as much to you as it has come to mean to me.”

He looked at me with both a boyish shyness and a hint of weariness. He’d been so forthcoming with his feelings and I owed him a full explanation about my ties to him as well.

“I already feel like you’re one of my closest friends, Archer. There are some things I need to tell you.”

I took a deep breath and a step away from him, breaking the physical connection between us. I couldn’t say what I needed to with him touching me. His touch was too distracting. It caused my pulse to skyrocket, the nerve endings in my skin to tingle at the current that arced between us.

“From the moment I stepped in this house, I began having dreams about you. I didn’t know it was you at the time. I just knew I was having dreams about a man I had a profound connection with. Then strange things I couldn’t explain began happening to me. Josie kept joking it was a ghost, but it seemed too crazy to be real or true. When I saw your picture, I started to put the pieces together, even if I still didn’t want to believe ghosts existed.”

I paused for a moment, taking a much-needed breath after the onslaught of words that just poured from my mouth. I looked down at my clasped hands, trying to buy some time to figure out exactly what I wanted to say.

“I don’t know why I’ve been dreaming about you, but I believe it’s where our bond began, for me at least. It’s strange, and none of this should be possible. But it is, so I’m just going to roll with it,” I finished and threw my arms out to my side in a gesture that showed I had laid it all out there.

He laughed, a deep, full, contagious laugh. I smiled in return, a little bewildered by his reaction.

“Rosalind, did you think I didn’t know these things already? This is all peculiar to me as well. The thought of finally having a friend, someone I can communicate with, someone I feel like I might have some common ground with, well, I don’t want to walk away from that, so to speak.”

I smiled at him, then laughed, and continued to laugh until tears streamed down my face. I looked up at Archer, and watched raptly as he leaned back on the couch, his ankle resting on the opposite knee. I glanced at his face in time to see curiosity and amusement written all over it.

My confession let loose something inside of my chest. A lightness that hadn’t been there before crept in. It was a release, one I hadn’t realized I needed. Once I stopped, wiping the tears from my eyes and clutching my stomach, which ached from the exertion, I felt a million times lighter, freer.

“Whew, sorry about that. Sometimes we all just need a good laugh, you know?” I asked him, silently begging him to understand. He scrutinized me for a moment before a wide, breathtaking grin took over his face.

“I do know what you mean, though before meeting you, I hadn’t laughed in quite a long time.”

I smiled back at him, starting to relax, feeling some of the burden of an untold truth lift off my shoulders while hiding my true feelings I wasn’t ready to acknowledge under the guise of friendship.