Chapter 1

    Men tend to look most beautiful three, four days after their lovers die. Bring a dozen roses to my grave; I love you and I guess they didn’t have that shit on sale on Valentine’s Day.

    His phone alarm rings. It’s 6:30 AM. It used to annoy me how early he’d get up for work; he’d tiptoe to the bathroom, slip on his jeans; I’d pull the duvet cover higher over my head; he’d kiss the little hairs that poked out from the top, goodbye, I love you, baby.

    I used to work from home. I used to wait for him to come home. He’d eat dinner on his phone. We’d say twenty words. Then I love you, good night; we’d fall asleep facing opposite directions.

    Today at 6:30 AM, Beau still hasn’t slept. He’s sitting cross-legged beneath a pink camellia tree. He reaches into his pocket, shuts off the alarm; his eyes are red. His voice hoarse—he’s talked all night. His fingers trace my name in the permanent lines etched in stone:

​

    Vy Anh Nguyen

    April 21st, 1999 - December 14th, 2023.

    Always in our hearts, our darling, forever beloved.

​

    I remember the first time we stayed up and talked all night in Shanghai. I can’t remember the last time we stayed up and talked all night like this.

    The flowers are beautiful, I say. I hate this. We should’ve done it better. I can’t leave. I love you. I love you.

    “Vy, if you’re around,” he says, “God, Vy,  I hope you’re still around. I hope you can hear me, I can’t go. I love you.”

    I do. We’ve been speaking past each other for months. I hear you, what’s another day—you still can’t hear me.

    “I do have to go back to work today though.” He stands and brushes the grass off his pants. “I wish I could stay here all day. Wait for me, alright? Listen to the birds’ songs. I’ll come back after work. We’ll have dinner together.”

    I have a bad habit of ignoring what he tells me, so I follow him to the car. I slip into the passenger seat, my seat. There’s a tube of lip gloss in the cup holder—Summer Fridays in a sheer burnt shade. I should let him go. I hope he never kisses another girl whose lips taste like brown sugar.

    It’s a cloudy day—Beau walks into his office building wearing sunglasses. He keeps them on in the lobby, elevator, hallway; he makes himself a cup of coffee at the machine—it jams. He tosses the empty cup in the trash, strides to his office, shuts the door—I slip through as he bends over and buries his face in his hands. Beau lets out a broken sob. I want to cry too, but my God—I can’t help but notice: my boyfriend looks so pretty when he cries over me.

    At 12:20 PM, Beau is still working, staring at the same infinite while loop he’s been staring at all morning. He doesn’t have lunch—I wasn’t there this morning to pack him lunch. There’s a mason jar of frozen phở soup and meat in the freezer. The unopened packet of noodles is still good in the fridge. No, forget it, go across the street and get a bowl of Chipotle. Or kiss some single coworker, bring her home. I’d rather that if it means you’ve got a lunchbox and someone to laugh with come lunchtime tomorrow.

    At 2:15 PM, his mom calls. She once told me to call her Margaret at dinner; then she told me to start a Roth IRA if I was serious about my future.

    “Oh, honey, you’ve got it the hardest. It hurts me. How are you?”

    Beau inhales and doesn’t say anything.

    “I know it’s tough right now, but it’ll get better, alright?”

    “Yeah.”

    “I know Vy is your first love—”

    I freeze. Beau grips his phone harder.

    “—but you and I both know it was hardly the perfect relationship. You’re only twenty-five, darling. I know you’ll always have Vy in your heart—but you’re going to experience so many grand, romantic loves. And when you meet your soulmate, the woman you’re meant to be with for the rest of your life, everything’s going to click into place. And you’re going to find all those missing pieces that you haven’t found, and I know that Vy is up above, looking out and only wanting the very best for you.”

    I’m right here, actually. I immediately make several plans to research magical ghost powers so maybe I can teleport to Massachusetts, slam some doors, and flicker that pretentious nineteenth-century chandelier in Margaret’s old garish mansion.

    “Thanks, Mom.”

    I roll my eyes. Beau’s never grown the spine to stand up to his mother.

    “Come back to visit us soon, okay? I know you’ve got your friends out there in California, but when you’re going through something like this, it’s good to be home. I’ll make your favorite beef bourguignon."

    Tell her you will. Book a flight when you get off work. At least on this, I agree with her.

    “I’ll look into booking something this weekend,” he promises. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

    “You’ll get through this,” says Margaret. “Hang in there, honey.”

    Beau spends the next three hours inside the photos app on his phone. Honolulu in December, two more swipes—there’s a hot bikini picture of me in Crete. His thumb stops on a zoomed-in photo of my face mid-sneeze—oh my god, that’s illegal. Delete that immediately. I told him that at the time too—it made him chuck his phone across the room; he pulled me in because, wrong, you’re adorable, and that was the first time he kissed me on the floor—we didn’t have a mattress yet; it was our first grown-up apartment.

    After work, Beau drives back to our place. It’s a two-story townhouse with an office on the second floor. If one of us has to work late, we can use that—then we don’t have to disturb each other like we did in our old studio apartment.

    He walks into the kitchen and opens the freezer—no way, he remembers! I beam. He takes out the mason jar of soup; there’s a yellow handwritten Post-it note on it: 3 mins in the microwave. He traces the m with his thumb, folds it neatly in two and tucks it into his wallet; 3-minute warmed soup and noodles in the thermos; cinnamon and star anise lingers in the air; Beau blinks back a rush of tears; then he’s back in his car and driving back to me just like he promised me.

    “Phở’s amazing, Vy,” he says, biting into a meatball.

    I know. I spent all night and the entire day on it. It’s my mom’s recipe—it actually tastes better if you add a squeeze of lime. I think I slightly oversteeped the aromatics, though I guess it’s not too bad for a first attempt. But the meat and tendons turned out perfect, and I really wanted you to come home that night. I wanted to tell you all this. It’s all nonsense. I wanted us to eat it hot off the stove together.

    He pushes the noodles around the thermos with his chopsticks. Oh no—has it gone cold, soggy, or stale? I should’ve told him to microwave it for four minutes. I should’ve factored in the fact that he might take it on the go. The starch isn’t supposed to sit in hot liquid for too long; it’ll ruin the flavor of the broth; it would’ve been better to separate the noodles, take them in a Ziploc bag, and put them in after you get here. Next time I’ll leave better instructions in the fridge. Next time I’ll—

    I keep forgetting I don’t have a next time with you.

    “Vy, I don’t think I ever apologized. I should’ve come home that night.” His voice breaks. “I was so stupid. You were bleeding out on the freeway—it probably hurt like hell—and I was getting wasted at some dumbass party in my old college roommate’s apartment.” He’s sobbing now. His breath comes out ragged; his whole body trembles—I want to hold him. But when I reach out—when I reach for his hand—my hand passes right through him. “I failed you,” he chokes. “I’m sorry, Vy. What the hell happened to us? I just—I always took for granted that we’d have tomorrow.”

    I did too. Now I can’t stop following you around. It hurts so much and it’s so stupid it’s almost comical.

    “Come and find me in the next life, Vy, please—okay?”

    I bring a hand up and try to wipe the tears from his face. It’s impossible. I can’t, and yet I try anyway.

    “Whatever problems we had, I’ll fix it. We’ll get it right. We’ll get married. We’ll have a daughter and name her Eliza May.”

    I’m weeping. I guess that’s how people hear ghosts wailing in the cemetery after dark.

    I’ll come find you, I promise. I want a second chance for us. If it takes a thousand lifetimes to get us right, I want to spend a thousand lifetimes trying wrong on with you.

    Now I’m doing it again. I’m throwing myself at him; I’m throwing my arms around him. My arms wrap around the empty space between us.

    It’s unusually cold for California tonight. Beau pulls his faded black jacket tighter around himself. I remember that jacket; I want to go back to the scent of oud wood, back to first dates and pretending jacket sleeves were his arms around me.

    My cries reach a screeching, feverish pitch. Maybe if I scream, bash my head into these tombstones, split myself open on the sword in the stone angel statue’s hand—maybe I can somehow break this stupid metaphysical wall between us and he’ll finally hear me.

    At that exact moment, the clouds part from above. A full moon appears. A single beacon of light emanates from it—blinding—racing down straight toward the spot in the cemetery where I’m sitting.

    No. No. This can’t be it. It can’t be like they say. Not now. Not yet.

    I don’t want to go to hell or heaven or wherever else they’ve got for me. I’m sorry for making a ruckus; it’s okay if he can’t hear me. Please just let me sit here. I’ll be quiet, now and forever.

    Please let me sit and finish this last dinner I never got to have with him.

    The white light encircles my body. The world around me turns white. I’m up and running now, as fast as I can—I need to reach the edge of this all-consuming whiteness. I need to make it back to him. I need to tell him I love him, tell him good night. I need to make sure he eats lunch at work tomorrow.

    The glaring whiteness seeps into my eyes—it’s burning, as if I’m staring straight at the sun—I blink.

    When my eyes open again, the whiteness has disappeared. The world comes back into focus. The graveyard and Beau are no longer in front of me.