“No.”
“Good, because it sounded absolutely nothing like Desi Arnaz.”
“Everett Jebediah Waybill,” she says through her teeth.
“It’s kinda funny, actually...” He drums his fingers on his lips. “That I conned a con artist. You can see... how that’s funny... right?”
“No. No, I don’t currently see the humor in the fact that you...” Overwhelmed by the rage bubbling up inside her, Gretchen can’tfind a way to articulate the full scope of his offense, and settles on a gritted-out, understated, “lied to me.”
“It’s not like I meant to! Or, I mean, I guess I did. I just never expected—”
“Jesus, Everett. Is there even a curse at all?” she asks, flinging her arm out.
He dodges it, as if sensing that an inadvertent bone chill is not going to make Gretchen any calmer. “Yes! Everything else I told you was true. Charlie and I are indeed both in quite a jam here, it’s just not as... eternal as I led you to believe. The real terms of the curse are that if I can keep the Waybills at Gilded Creek for a hundred years, then I get to leave. If I don’t, I’m stuck here forever. I think. Probably.” He smiles again, this time going for adorably contrite.
She seethes. “And Charlie?”
“He’s still in danger. If he left now without your whole marriage plan, he and I’dbothbe stuck here forever. But after the hundred-year anniversary, as long as a Waybill is still around, the curse will be lifted. Then he’ll be free to do as he pleases. Or you will, I guess, if you still want to take his place.”
“Fucking hell, Everett. Why didn’t you tell me that from the beginning?! You don’t think ‘Hey, Charlie, you just gotta hold off another few months and then you can do whatever you want’ wouldn’t have been an easier sell thanthe rest of his life?”
“Well, you know how wobbly time is for me. I figured I must be coming up on a century of being dead, but from one moment to the next I never know exactly how close to the hundredth anniversary we are. When Charlie put the farm up for sale, I thought I could simply scare off prospective buyers for a bit, and then, when it was time, I would go Up, he would finally sell, it wouldall be hunky-dory. But he got a lot of interest in the place as soon as he put it on the market, and I couldn’t be certain if we were talking days or months or even years.” His head pops up, eyes bright. “Say, could we get a calendar? To hang on the icebox? You could cross it off at the end of each day. I bet that would be helpful.”
“No,” Gretchen snaps.
“Right,” Everett continues, realizing the calendar idea isn’t up for further discussion at the moment. “Anyway, so when you came along, and you could see me—well, you were a gift I never even thought I might receive. I... I couldn’t just let you walk away. Which, must I remind you, you were very eager to do.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you lied. Why you didn’t just tell me from the beginning that the curse would expire and all I had to convince Charlie of was to wait it out.”
Everett lifts one shoulder. “I needed you to take things seriously, and maybe I got a little caught up in the drama. And then it sort of... snowballed? Because we became friends, and it started to seem like maybe you’dwantto stick around, or at least keep coming by on occasion, and how was I supposed to tell you then?”
“How about ‘Hey, Gretchen, you’ve been planning the rest of your time on this mortal plane based ona lie’?” She throws out her arms again in anger.
He swiftly dodges once more, then squints as if not sure what part of this she isn’t getting. “But then you would’ve been mad at me.”
“And I’m not now?” she shouts.
“Come on, it’s not like you’ve never lied about stuff! Shouldn’t you... what’s that saying? Respect the hustle?”
“No, I absolutely should not ‘respect the hustle’!” Except...she sort of almost does. She doesn’tlikeit, of course, but looking back, she’s impressed by the way Everett stuck to his story, never letting on that he was hiding something from her. In retrospect, there were tells, but nothing that ever led her to suspect... And it’s not as if she truly has the moral authority to be mad about his deception, does she?
People in glass houses, et cetera, et cetera.
Gretchen once again cradles her head in her hands. “I cannot believe this,” she mutters. “You were going to let me and Charlie getmarried. You were going to let me live here without the person I love, only to, what? Poof away one day and never return? And then I would have been stuck here, alone, wondering what happened to you, still believing I’d die if I left?”
That’s the crux of her anger, she realizes. Not that he lied, but that Everett was going to leave her. That he had every intention of abandoning her to a life of loneliness, knowing his presence—his friendship—was the one thing she felt she could count on remaining steady.
“I did try to talk you out of it. A couple of times, actually. Which I should get credit for, because I really do want you to stay,” Everett says. “I also feel the need to point out that I did wind up telling you the truth.”
“The day before I was going to enter into a legal institution in order to save someone who doesn’t even need saving if we just wait it out!” Gretchen takes a few deep breaths, calming herself. He cut it close, sure, but Everett did ultimately confess. She knows from experience how much courage that takes. Still, his deceiving her has shattered everything she thought she knew about him. About their friendship.
“What about us being friends, Everett? Is that a lie too?”
“Hey. No. How could you even ask that?” He moves in front of Gretchen. “That was all thetruth. Cross my heart and hope to— Well, just trust me, okay? You really are the best friend I’ve had in my entire, well, life and afterlife combined. That was my downfall, I suppose. I started to care about you, and you started to care about me. I’ve never had that before, with anyone. So when I saw how much you were hurting, I thought, ‘Gosh, I would do anything to stop her pain,’ especially since I felt ateeeeeensybit responsible for it. I didn’t want to see you hurting anymore because of something I did. So I knew I had to tell you.” He pauses. “Geez. It was really easier not having all these emotions. I didn’t realize howuncomfortablethey can be. Like wearing a slightly too small union suit.”
There’s a beat of silence before he adds, “I do feel some remorse about misleading you. But I can’t be truly sorry, because it meant we got to spend this last month together. And I’d like to think you got something out of being here. So maybe... you’re welcome?” he says, flashing a nervous smile.
“Ha, yeah, no. I’m not...Weare not cool, babe.”
