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Nate stood next to one of the chairs, holding a box of matches, caught in the act of lighting the last lantern. He looked up. He didn’t say anything. He just watched Leo hang there in the air above the stone path, mouth still open around a sentence about televisions, and waited, unbothered.

“What,” Leo managed, “is this?”

Nate struck a match and lit the last lantern. Then he shook the match out and looked at Leo across the glow. “It’s a date,” he said.

Chapter

Thirty-Seven

“A date,” Leo repeated.

“That’s right.”

Leo looked at the table. At the little lights. At Nate, who was wearing a clean shirt — no dust, no paint, buttoned all the way — and who was watching him, waiting.

“You can’t date a ghost.”

“Watch me.” Nate stepped around the table and pulled out a chair. Not his own. The other one. Then he stood behind it and waited.

Leo stayed where he was.

“Sit, please,” Nate prompted.

It was one of the kitchen chairs. Nate must have carried it across the lawn while Leo was absorbed in his show.

He sat down.

He didn’t need to sit, of course, but if someone had prepared a chair especially for him, Leo would honor that.

Before him sat a plate, along with a fork and a knife and an empty wine glass.

“You set me a place.”

“Of course. It’s our own personal restaurant.”

Leo glanced around. “Our restaurant does not have walls.”

Nate smiled, looking at him. “But it has the best view in town.”

It was a good thing Leo was a ghost. If he weren’t, the tips of his ears would be going red now.

Nate sat down across from him and reached into the grass beside his chair. He came up with a bottle of wine and one of those folding knife contraptions.

“I can’t drink wine,” Leo reminded him.

“I know.” Nate cut the foil off the neck, set the point of the screw, and twisted. The cork came free with a soft pop.

He poured one glass for himself and one for Leo before Leo could utter another word of protest.

And once the smell hit Leo, he forgot about complaining.

It rose off the glass. Dark and sharp and full of nostalgia, hanging in the cool evening air above the table. Fruit, and something else he couldn’t name. Leo leaned in before he could stop himself.

Oh.

How long had it been since he’d had the scent of wine in his nose?

“It’s acceptable,” Leo said, thickly.