The girl with blue hair and a nose ring is more confused than afraid when she is visited by the ghost of that guy from that one time in the parking lot behind the movie theater. She hasn’t been there in years. She thinks it’s been torn down. He had been lovely and gentle if she is remembering him right, but they hadn’t exchanged numbers and neither tried to find the other again. Or maybe he is the one she met at the concert. But they only made out and his hands had wandered her body a little. They didn’t sleep together in the backseat of a car like she did with the movie theater parking lot guy. Which one is he?
She doesn’t know a polite way of asking the ghost, why me? If you died, don’t you have more significant loved ones? Why would you haunt me, a one night stand who is worried she might be mixing you up with some other guy she vaguely remembers?
“They paired me with you.”
Can he hear her thoughts? And his answer only sparks more questions. She imagines him in line at some kind of employment agency, getting assigned to her.
“So there’s no deeper meaning to it? I’m just yours and you’re mine? Because some machine or someone in power says so?”
“They must have thought I have something unfinished with you,” he says. “Like maybe I wondered what could have been if we hadn’t disappeared after that one night in the parking lot.”
So he is the movie theater guy from the car.
“Sounds far-fetched,” she says.
“Maybe,” he says. “So you really don’t remember?”
“I’ve had to let some memories go since the last time you saw me,” she admits.
“I did more than see you.”
She laughs. He steps closer and takes her hands in his. The memory floods her, coursing through every nerve ending. She remembers the feel, scent, and taste of him as though it’s happening now. But they remain fully clothed, standing a formal distance apart.
He smiles as he watches her realize that for a fleeting moment in time, they had meant something to each other.
“I did try to find you. After that night, I mean,” he says.
“I hoped you would,” she says, almost surprised by these emotions from a past self she doesn’t recognize—a version of her she has long since buried and forgotten. She wonders if this is some kind of afterlife missed connection. “Wait. Am I dead, too?”
“No,” he reassures her. “They just let me see you. They let me remind you. But I should go.”
“You can’t stay a little longer?”
“I wish I could,” he says.
She doesn’t know him very well, but she thinks he means it. She promises she won’t forget him again. As he turns to leave—to go where she does not know—she wonders what is unfinished in her own life that will be waiting when her time comes.
