I didn’t see Archer again until the next night. I could have used his comfort after my call with Dan and then Josie, but I just couldn’t bring myself to contact him. He would have wanted to talk about everything that had happened over the last day, and I just wasn’t ready for it after talking to Josie.

He knew me well enough to know staying away was the best thing for me at the moment. He was around—I could feel his presence all around me, not intrusive, but calming, peaceful. I was unsettled and confused and incredibly fucking sad, but strangely, I also felt safe.

“Ros, how are you this evening?”

Archer had somehow snuck up on me, and I almost jumped out of my seat on the couch in front of the fire. I wasn’t used to him appearing without me calling to him first. He must have sensed that I likely wouldn’t have called him that night either, though I needed my best friend. I also belatedly realized he had called me Ros for the first time.

“I’m so sorry I startled you. Please, forgive me,” Archer said, taking a seat on the other end of the couch and turning to face me.

“You’re fine. I just wasn’t expecting you and I was zoned out,” I replied, waving away his apology, turning to face him.

“Zoning out? You’ve used this term a few times, but I’ve never had it explained to me.”

“Oh, I was lost in thought, daydreaming. I wasn’t concentrating on anything specific, but I wasn’t fully present either. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, I understand. So, would you like to talk about what happened with Dan and the phone call?”

He wasted no time in dropping the small talk to get right to the point. I had spent the last day thinking about this, trying to decipher what the call could have meant and how it made me feel.

“Do we have to?” I joked, though it sounded far too sad and bitter to be taken as one.

“I think you’ll feel better if you do talk about it. Would you prefer to speak to Josie about this?”

“No, no. I’m sure you already know I talked to her. I’m absolute shit at talking about my feelings with anyone. The conversation didn’t go very far, and I know Josie had about a million more questions.”

“I didn’t know you had talked to Josie about this. I’m not around all the time, Ros,” he replied with a grin.

I was speechless for a moment, stunned both by his statement and by the emotions his smirk stirred up in me, in places I shouldn’t have been feeling anything from him. I looked away, trying to gather my thoughts, considering how much I wanted to share.

“I’m confused. And not all of it is due to the phone call. I always thought I was satisfied with the nature of our relationship and mostly happy with things. When we moved here, I became more and more aware of all the things that haven’t been working in our marriage. It’s killing me. I can’t do these separations anymore. Now there are these calls where I can hear this woman in the background. I don’t want to assume anything is going on, or assume he is unfaithful. But I have to follow my intuition, and I know something is off.”

I dropped my head into my hands, covering my face and the tears tracking down it. Archer just let me ramble on, not interrupting me or asking questions, just letting me think through what I was feeling, letting me get it all out there. I should have felt ashamed for just spilling it all without a filter, but Archer never made me feel that way when we talked. He made me feel safe, like being honest was something I would never be judged for.

Air gusted by me, then a light hand caressed my back in a calming way. I turned my head slightly, peeking out of my fingers to see Archer sitting right next to me, rubbing my back. At that moment, it was exactly what I needed, what I hadn’t known I wanted.

I woke with a start, sprawled on the couch with the fire still burning and a throw blanket I usually kept on the back of the sofa covering me. I groaned, stretched, and looked down at my phone. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. I looked around the room and found Archer sitting in the armchair.

“I’m so sorry I just passed out on you. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I feel pretty emotionally exhausted right now.” I stretched again and rubbed my eyes, trying to will myself to wake up. “Have you just been sitting there all this time?”

“Yes, you were so upset when you fell asleep, I didn’t want to just leave you.”

“Will you need to go soon? I’m sure just sitting there probably took all your energy.”

The hope that maybe he could stay for a little while longer dripped from every word. The thought of being without him right now wasn’t a pleasant one.

“No, I mostly just sat there, so I didn’t need to use as much energy.”

“Archer, how does this whole energy thing work? I’ve noticed lately that you’re able to do more than you were when I moved here. You can touch me now, and the amount of time you’re able to be around is a lot longer than before too.”

“I wish I had a concrete answer for you. You’re the first person I’ve ever reached out to, so this is all new to me. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve concluded that it’s like a muscle. The more I use it, the more I touch, the longer I’m in contact with you, the stronger I get, the more energy I have and can use. Is it the actual reason? I don’t know, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”

I nodded my head in consideration. His theory was as good as any other. I guessed we would see if it continued to be true.

“I have an idea, Ros. Instead of us focusing so much on all the negative things going on, how about we focus on something positive instead?” He stood up and walked over to me, sitting on the same couch I was while I curled my legs underneath my butt and settled into the corner of the sofa to give him more room.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, curious.

“How about you tell me about the things that work well in your relationship with Dan, the good things.”

I rested my elbow on the arm of the couch and then my head on my hand and looked at him, thinking about what he was asking. I figured it was as good an idea as any, and really couldn’t hurt me any more than I already was.

“Hmmm. We have a lot of the same interests. We both love to hike and be outdoors. We enjoy watching movies together, even if we don’t have the same taste. We tend to get along pretty well. When we’re together, we rarely fight or argue.”

“What else?”

“I dunno. We always just clicked. We both love to travel and explore new places, even if we don’t get to do it often. Or at all really. And physically, we are very compatible,” I finished before I realized what I had said and started to blush fiercely. I could feel the heat creep up my chest, neck, into my face and the tips of my ears. It was one topic we had never broached and almost felt forbidden in a way, given our magnetic connection.

“I am so, so sorry.”

“Rosalind, it wasn’t that long ago that I was alive,” he replied, his voice still full of humor and laughter.

“It was, though! And you said before sexual relations outside of marriage weren’t common!” I’d never realized until now just how curious I was about this topic.

“So I wasn’t entirely accurate when I made the statement. I suppose I said it to get us off the subject. It was only a hundred years ago, Rosalind, people had sex back then. We even used the word ‘fuck.’ People have been having sex outside of marriage since the beginning of time, why would you think it was any different when I was alive?” he asked me, straight-faced but barely able to contain the laughter dying to spill out of him.

“I don’t know, Archer, I guess it was something I never put a lot of thought into until I met you, and then you basically told me that sex outside of marriage wasn’t super prevalent and was scandalous, giving me the impression you were a virgin. Since, you know, you never got married.”

It was such a stupid conclusion to have jumped to. I was beyond curious to know if he was, in fact, a virgin.

“So were you a virgin? I mean, it’s only fair to know since you know I wasn’t one when I got married.”

I smiled at him, but it had to be the most awkward smile in the world. My palms were sweaty, and I was nervous, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. It wasn’t like this was a conversation I had never had before, with both men and women.

He looked me dead on and then gave me a sexy smirk which then transformed into a full-on, devastating smile. I felt that look in my chest, in my stomach, between my thighs. That smile and the look in his eyes should have prepared me for his answer.

“I was called a bon vivant or a playboy. Can I just say, I hated both of those terms? People also gave me far more credit than I deserved back then. I was nowhere near as active as the rumors said I was.”

My shock must have been splashed across my face because he laughed at me again.

“No, Ros, I was not a virgin. Sexual affairs happened often. We may not have been as open about our liaisons as people are now, but they most definitely happened. My first fiancée was a virgin, and we never did ‘sleep together’ as you would say. My second fiancée Helena and I did have a fairly passionate sexual relationship.”

I quickly snapped my jaw shut after I realized my mouth had been gaping open in shock. It was way more information than I’d been expecting. There were so many things I wanted to ask but wasn’t sure I would ever be able to get the words out of my mouth. I also couldn’t ignore the stab of jealousy at his last revelation.

“Out with it, Rosalind, what do you want to know? You can ask me anything.”

“I don’t even know where to begin, Archer. I’m still in a bit of shock.” I was embarrassed as hell for some reason, and feeling the blush in my cheeks.

“Just ask the first thing that comes to mind.”

“How old were you the first time?”

“I was seventeen. She was older,” he replied, no shame in his answer.

“How much older?”

“She was twenty-four and very uninhibited. She taught me a lot about women and their desires and how to please them. I don’t know if I would have been so eager to learn if I had met her when I was older. How old were you?”

“I was fifteen. He’d been my boyfriend for over a year. I thought it was love and we would be together forever. He stopped talking to me a couple of months later, and it destroyed me. I can definitely say I learned very little about sex itself from him, and like most first experiences, it wasn’t great.”

“That’s a damn shame, Ros.”

“How many partners have you had?” I asked quickly before I could let myself think too hard about it or talk myself out of asking.

He leaned back and threw his left ankle over his right knee, considering how he wanted to answer the question, looking as though he might not want to respond to the question.

“Enough, but not too many. How many for you?” he asked right back, his voice full of humor and challenge.

“Enough, but not too many,” I promptly responded. Archer laughed at that and his laugh helped relieve the tension.

“Do you miss it? Being able to touch, to feel, to be physically intimate with someone?” I asked after our laughter had subsided. He looked down at his lap for a moment before looking back up at me, piercing me with the intensity in his gaze, making it impossible to look away.

“Do you miss it, Rosalind? Of course I miss it. When I look at you, in the moments I’m not struck dumb by your beauty and all you are, I miss it intensely. To know I will never share that with someone again, it’s only a dull ache, after all this time. But there are times when I see you, and the dullness fades away and becomes an intense pain, a fierce longing. I don’t think the desire to be intimate with someone ever goes away. I know it never did in life, and now I know desire even more acutely in death.”

I leaned back, feeling both stunned and on fire. Archer’s words touched me, affected me in a way I had never felt before. A warmth spread throughout my entire body, threatening to set me on fire. The desire he spoke of was in every cell of me, trying to fight its way to the forefront.

I had denied my attraction to him for a while, telling myself it was silly to think I could have feelings for a ghost, or they only existed because of my loneliness. After what Archer had just said, and what it made me realize I was feeling, I knew for sure those were excuses.

Loneliness was something I hadn’t felt for at least a few weeks. I also cared about Archer in a way I had never cared for someone before. The realization scared me more than almost anything ever had in my life.

There was nothing left for us to say. My emotions were far too close to the surface, and my thoughts too scrambled for me to add anything else to the conversation. If I vocalized any of the things stirring inside, I would ruin our friendship right there. It was a line I wasn’t willing to cross, a loss I wasn’t willing to bear yet.

We sat there in silence for what felt like forever. Eventually, my eyes fluttered closed, and became harder to open back up. I felt a soft caress on my cheek, smelled the comforting scent of ocean and sandalwood, and sighed deeply as a whispered, “Good night, my dear Ros,” sounded in my ear. Sleep hadn’t come so sweetly or quickly in a very long time.