Chapter 2: Old Haunts, New Wounds

When I pushed open the door and saw Jason standing there, my mouth tasted like old pennies and my knees went soft. This couldn’t be real. Maybe the whiskey hadn’t worn off and I was just hallucinating.

He was still wearing that battered Lincoln High letterman jacket from a decade ago. The blue sleeves were frayed at the cuffs, and the white L had faded into a soft gray, but the jacket still looked as cocky as he did. It was the kind of thing you only kept if you loved high school—or never figured out how to move on. Jason had always been both.

His mouth was as foul as ever. The second he saw me, he fired off: "Wow, wow, a drowned rat trying to cosplay as a ghost from a horror flick."

He was leaning against my bookcase, sneakers hovering just above the hardwood, smirking like he’d never left, like nothing had changed but me.

I glanced at my phone. 2024. The date was right. No time travel, no alternate reality. My lock screen showed my face, blurry and tired—just me, right now, in my too-big apartment. No magical reset. Just real, raw, and present.

Thinking I was imagining things, I started to look up again, but another string of messages popped up, each buzz sharper than the last.

"Miss Rachel, congrats on getting engaged to Mike, just like you always wanted."

"But between us, Mike seems to like me more."

"He was with me for four hours tonight. Twice."

Attached was a post-hookup, chest-to-chest selfie of her and Michael. The kind of shot that makes you want to hurl your phone against the wall, but instead, you just stare, frozen. My thumb hovered, half wanting to delete, half wanting to text back, but all I did was stare at the blue text bubbles and that mocking grin.

The phone vibrated again, little shocks running up my arm.

Before I could look up, Jason’s annoying voice rang in my ear again.

"Jeez, what kind of not-safe-for-work photo is this?"

"Rachel, is your phone bugged or something?"

"No, wait—fiancé? You’re getting married?"

"Wow, engaged and still fooling around? You really want this kind of guy?"

"You really traded up for the knockoff version, huh?"

"Is this some kind of stand-in romance? Rachel, don’t tell me you’ve got a thing for me? Heh..."

Jason, nicknamed the Mute Groom. He always said it made him sound like a B-movie villain—'the Mute Groom strikes again.' But after he stopped talking to half the school senior year, it stuck. Lincoln High gossip never lets go.

The only male lead in the Lincoln High coming-of-age story. When he kept his mouth shut, his face was perfect. Too bad his mouth was rotten.

Snapping back at him was almost instinctive.

"Like you? Am I nuts?"

As soon as I said it, Jason froze. So did I.

The next second, we both screamed. I screamed. He screamed. If this was a sitcom, the laugh track would’ve kicked in.

"Ahhh! I saw a ghost!"

"Ahhh! Someone can see a ghost!"

The neighbors probably heard, too, but this was the kind of building where nobody calls the cops unless you’re actively burning the place down.