Greta Van Fleet // Oneshots

The Ghost of You // Danny Wagner

Danny wasn't a fisherman. Neither were you. But you'd both gotten a lot of joy out of watching them jump and seeing them on all your adventures. Last summer, you'd stayed at a cabin on a different lake together–a little road trip with a cute little lake house at the end of it. You'd wake up early, right as dawn was licking through the sky with soft whispers of pink and yellow, and walk down to the dock. He would lean right against you; you'd curve your arm around his waist, his body always so warm and grounding. The fish were lively each morning you were there, bouncing and leaping through the water, the only sounds to intercept the wild quiet of the new world. Once the sun was throwing gold light over the trees, you'd go back inside to make coffee and pancakes or eggs or whatever–the slow, languid mornings when you felt like nothing bad could ever touch you again.

It was stupid, you thought as you adjusted on the rock, its hardness digging into your thighs in an increasingly unpleasant way. People had breakups every day. And it's been months. It'd been months and you knew those memories would sit there, maybe forever, but some would fade and fade until there was hardly anything left. That's what you were waiting for though–until that happened, maybe you'd be caught in a net of pain but, each day, it would get a little looser. Someday, you concluded, kicking a pebble into the water, you'd be free of it entirely.

Moving might help, too. Fish kept swimming to go forward, to go wherever. You could do the same, even if you'd placed yourself in your own net of memory and nostalgia. You gave a final look to the lake and then headed forward once more, balancing yourself over the log to cross and get back on the path. You wondered if Danny still had Mondays off. That'd been nice–it was always an opportunity to enjoy solitude together. Today, while truly on your own, solitude proved to be weighty. You then wondered how many other poor sad saps were wandering around with broken hearts, tangled in their own bullshit, drowning themselves in images and feelings long lost.

The ice cream stand around the other side, closer to the actual village, definitely wouldn't be open. But thinking of it sent you into another memory–when you and Danny got big soft serve cones and struggled not to coat yourselves in melted ice cream as you meandered to an empty picnic table. That was something you'd never understood about each other–your tastes in ice cream. But it wasn't just that. There was a well of misunderstanding that was far more significant, that seemed to get deeper and deeper, but you still couldn't understand why it had to lead to an end. And to not even be friends? That had killed you. You'd been too distraught to even fight that, when Danny had tried to say it was "for the best." It'd made no sense. You would never say you needed him in your life because that wasn't true–but what if it was and what if there was nothing wrong with that? Danny was too significant to not need. From the moment you met, you knew you and him were meant to be.

The village was almost totally empty, the morning still too early for human life to begin. You circled back, walking fast over the pavement, through another empty parking lot, thinking you actually did want to sit some more. Sometimes staying still was good. Back in the cove, the rock was still warm from you pondering there and you situated yourself back down on top of it, watching the water striders and dragonflies some more.

You finally felt you'd hit the perfect point of mindless meditation when you heard Danny's voice behind you, saying your name in the form of a question. That couldn't be right. Great, now you were hearing things–you were completely mental. You laughed a little to yourself and bent down to pick up a pebble to toss into the water; as it collided through the water, you heard your name again, closer and much too clear, and you turned. Danny was there, really there, not just a name in your phone or a dream in your head but flesh and blood, standing there with wide, confused eyes and a flushed face, like you were a ghost caught in real time.