The sensible, sand-colored SUV handles like a boat, and I pilot it back to Mark’s apartment with my ancient, sticker-covered trunk rattling in the back. I’d timed my raid on the pool house for high noon, when the Wyoming sun bleaches everything to silence and even the lurking, judgmental ghosts of British professors are presumably napping. I was in and out in ninety seconds, grabbing the trunk from the closet, a random armful of silk and cotton from the floor, and fleeing before the scent of jasmine and regret could trap me. No one saw me. I am a ghost, a summer phantom, excellent at exits.

Mark’s apartment is quiet when I let myself back in. The only sound is the low, rhythmic hum of the central air and the deeper, steady pull of his breath from the cracked door of his bedroom. I stand in the living room, my trunk at my feet like a bizarre piece of luggage-shaped evidence, and listen. He sleeps the way he does everything else: competently, thoroughly. I feel like an intruder, my chaotic energy practically buzzing the neatly framed landscapes on the walls.

The guilt arrives, sharp and pricking. I’ve commandeered his car, his couch, his peace. The least I can do is attempt to be a functioning human guest. I pad into his kitchen, a space of gleaming stainless steel and wholesome grains in clear jars. I stare into his fridge, a tableau of organized vitality: Greek yogurt, pre-chopped vegetables, a dozen eggs in a carton. It’s terrifying. My culinary skills begin and end with one dish. I gather the ingredients: a box of linguine, a bulb of garlic, a bottle of olive oil that looks expensive, and the sad, plastic-bagged bunch of parsley from the fridge door. Pasta aglio e olio. It’s the only thing my mother taught me to make that didn’t come from a box, a skill she imparted with a sigh, as if passing on a family secret she doubted I’d ever use for anything respectable.

The water takes forever to boil. I lean against the counter, watching the pot, the silence pressing in. My mind, no longer occupied with stealthy retrieval, circles back to the garden path, to Arthur’s voice calling me ‘summer chaos,’ to the searing look on Sebastian’s face as I walked away. I crush garlic cloves with the side of a knife, the papery skins falling away, the pungent scent flooding the air. It’s a violent, satisfying action. I slice them thin, my knife clicks echoing in the quiet. I am making a meal. I am performing stability. The pasta finally goes in with a soft hiss.

“Something smells incredibly non-toxic.”

I jump, nearly knocking the bottle of olive oil over. Mark is leaning in the kitchen doorway, shirtless, his sweatpants slung low, his hair adorably sleep-tousled. He rubs a hand over his face, squinting at me in the afternoon light streaming through the kitchen window. “You went out?”

“I borrowed your car,” I say, stirring the pasta as if my life depends on it. “To get my things. And to make you food. A transaction. To offset the car-borrowing guilt.” I gesture vaguely with the wooden spoon. “It’s pasta. It’s the only thing I know how to make that doesn’t involve a microwave and profound regret.”

He pushes off the doorway and comes to stand beside me at the stove, his bare arm brushing mine. He peers into the sizzling pan where the garlic is turning golden in the oil. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know,” I say, and my voice comes out smaller than I intended. “But I wanted to. Consider it a thank you for not being… terrible.” I drain the pasta, the steam billowing up in a hot, starchy cloud, and dump it into the garlic oil. The sizzle is loud and immediate. I toss it with a focus usually reserved for soliloquies, then sprinkle in the chopped parsley and a reckless amount of red pepper flakes. “It’s done. Don’t expect grandeur. Expect edible carbohydrates.”

He gets two plates without being asked. We don’t go to the table. We lean against opposite counters in the kitchen, eating straight from the plates, the simplicity of it so disarmingly normal it makes my chest ache. He takes a bite, chews thoughtfully, and looks at me. “This is really good, Imogen.”

“It’s just pasta,” I mumble around a mouthful, but a stupid, warm flush creeps up my neck. He finishes his plate, sets it in the sink, and turns to me, his brown eyes clear and awake now.

“So,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. The movement highlights the defined lines of his shoulders. “You got your trunk. Does that mean you’ve decided? LA? Scottsdale?” He pauses, his gaze steady, kind. “Here?”

The question hangs in the garlic-scented air. My trunk is in the living room, packed. A symbol of flight. The pasta in my stomach feels like a anchor. I look at Mark, at his open, handsome face, and all I can see is the ghost of another man’s furious, blue-eyed judgment. “I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve said all day.

“Just stay here for a few days,” Mark says, his voice a low, pleasant hum in the quiet kitchen. He takes my empty plate from my hands and sets it in the sink beside his. “It’s no imposition to me, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll be at the hospital for the next two days, seven PM to seven AM. Please stay. I insist.”

I look at his sincere face, at the clean lines of his kitchen, at the trunk full of my chaotic life sitting in his orderly living room. The offer is a life raft, and I am so tired of treading water. “Well,” I say, forcing a lightness I don’t feel. “If you insist.”

I stay. For a whole week, it’s a blissful, bizarre bubble. We settle into a rhythm that feels like we’ve been a couple for years. I learn the sounds of his apartment: the groan of the pipes at 6:45 PM as he showers before a shift, the soft click of the deadbolt at 7:03 AM when he returns, smelling like hospital antiseptic and cold morning air. I do laundry. I attempt to grocery shop, though my cart looks like it was packed by a whimsical child compared to his. We share quiet dinners where I talk about obscure plays and he talks about tibial fractures, and somehow, it works. It’s normal. It’s so terrifyingly normal that some nights, lying next to his sleeping, solid form, I have to press my fingers to my wrist to feel my own frantic pulse, just to prove I’m still in here.

It’s on the seventh morning, with the shower running and steam curling under the bathroom door, my phone vibrates on the nightstand with a force that feels aggressive. Amelia. The screen glares up at me, a tiny rectangle of the world I’ve been pretending doesn’t exist. For a week, I’ve been a ghost in Mark’s life. Now, my sister is calling to summon me back to the land of the painfully living. I stare at it, my heart doing a clumsy stumble against my ribs. Then, with a sigh that feels like it comes from the bottom of my stolen trunk, I answer. “Hey.”

The shower stops. In the sudden silence, Amelia’s voice is a tinny, anxious stream in my ear. “Imogen. Thank God. Are you okay? Where are you? Arthur feels awful, we all do—” I tune out the words, focusing instead on the bathroom door opening. Mark steps out, a towel slung low around his hips, water glistening on the tan planes of his chest and shoulders. He runs a hand through his damp hair, his brown eyes finding mine, asking a silent question. I give him a weak, thin smile and mouth ‘my sister’. He nods, understanding, and pads toward his dresser. I watch the play of muscles in his back as he moves, the simple, efficient grace of him. It’s a beautiful sight. A stable, kind, half-naked man in a sunlit room. It should be a balm. Instead, it feels like a diagnosis for a sickness I can’t name.

"I'm at a friend's," I say, the word 'friend' sticking in my throat like a dry cracker. I watch Mark pull a plain grey t-shirt over his head, the fabric stretching across his shoulders. "I'm fine, Amelia. Truly. A picture of mental health."

"Arthur is an idiot," she says, and the vehemence in her voice is a small, sharp comfort. "A clinically significant idiot. I had no idea—Imogen, you have to believe I had no clue those were his intentions for you. To use you as some...some distractingly chaotic chew toy for his emotionally stunted brother. I would have strangled him with his own bowtie." I can see it, too. My sister, all five-foot-four of polished fury, wrapping silk around her fiance’s neck. The image makes my eyes prickle. "Please," she says, and her voice softens, cracks. "Come home. Let me fix this."

I look past Mark, out the bedroom window to the uncomplicated blue of the Wyoming sky. "I'm not coming back to the pool house, Ames. It's...it's probably best for everyone." The sentence tastes like ash. Best for Arthur, who wants a quiet summer. Best for Sebastian, who needs a distraction from a heartbreak I'm apparently not serious enough to mend. Best for me, because what am I even doing there, haunting a home that isn't mine?

There's a long sigh on the other end, the sound of her settling onto a plush couch I can perfectly visualize. "Okay," she says, accepting it in a way that makes my stubbornness feel suddenly childish. "Okay. But you're still my maid of honor. You're not getting out of that. I need someone to strategically spill red wine on any of Arthur's stuffy relatives who look at me funny."

"You're stupid," I say, and my voice is thick. "Of course I will be." I end the call and let the phone drop to the rumpled bedsheet. The silence in the room is immense. Mark is sitting on the edge of the bed now, pulling on socks, his back to me. He's giving me the illusion of privacy, this small, kind man. He finishes and turns, his brown eyes taking me in. I must look like a wreck, holding a phone like a dead thing, my hair a wild cloud from sleep, my face undoubtedly doing something complicated and tragic.

"Everything alright?" he asks, his voice a soft neutral. It's the perfect, polite question. It invites nothing. I could say 'fine' and he would believe me, or at least, he would let me have the lie. I look at him, at his solid, handsome normality, and feel a wave of such profound loneliness I have to press my lips together to keep it in. I am not fine. I am a ghost who just turned down an invitation to haunt her own life, and the man I want to be haunted by thinks I'm a summer fling, a bit of fun, a chaos sprite. Mark waits, his expression patient, a safe harbor in calm waters. And I am, irretrievably, a creature of storms.