UNLOCKING HUMAN THINGS

The storm finally passed sometime before dawn. The house woke up slowly without thunder to drown it out. It was like watching a creature stretch after a long and uneasy night. Wind-hushed and reluctant, Blackwater Hall breathed in through its drafty windowpanes and exhaled tension from the cracks between its walls.

I hadn’t slept. Not really.

I just lay there, curled up in a half-conscious tangle of sheets, listening to the world settle. The sea hissed and retreated against the rocks below like it was nursing a grudge. The old pipes grumbled in the walls. My own pulse throbbed from some unnameable emotion that refused to either break or fade.

Then I heard it. A sound too gentle to be the storm. A soft knock.

Tap. Tap.

The kind of knock belonging to someone who didn’t know if they were welcome.

I sat up in bed, heart thudding once, the way it does when you almost remember a dream. My eyes swept toward the door.

Two steps.

Turn the handle.

And there he was.

Julian Vale. Barefoot. Holding two mugs of coffee.

He looked… real. There was no rock-star aura this morning. No dramatic lighting. Just a man in a white t-shirt, hair messier than usual, dark eyes carrying islands of exhaustion.

“You came,” I whispered, voice raspier than I intended. 

“You invited,” he replied softly. He held out a mug. “Made it myself. Probably doesn’t tastes the best”

I laughed softly, taking it. “The worst coffees are always the best” 

He huffed another half-smile. “Couldn’t agree more.”

When I stepped aside, he entered. Something shifted then. Not the air. Not the house.

Me.

His presence changed the room. Changed how I sat. How I breathed. How still I felt in my own skin. Julian moved toward the window and leaned his shoulder against its frame. The sky outside was the color of steel; clouds stretched thin like pulled wool. The ocean was calm now, as if exhausted from its tantrum. He sipped his coffee, eyes narrowed not in judgment, but observation. It struck me that he always watched the world like it was a memory he couldn’t get back.

“I haven’t seen you smile that much,” I said gently.

His eyes moved toward me. “I don’t do mornings, normally. Or people.”

“I’m honored to be both exceptions.”

“That isn’t what I said,” he said quietly. But the corners of his mouth moved.

 I took a sip of the coffee. He wasn’t wrong. It tasted like someone had torched the beans then apologized to them.

“So, coffee’s not your talent,” I mused.

“No,” he said. “But writing honest songs… used to be.”

We both stopped moving. The truth lingered between us. It was different from the storm, it was quieter. Heavier.

“What do you want to know today?” he asked, shifting weight between his bare feet.

I set the cup down and tugged a frayed notebook across the bed.

“I don’t want just the highlight reel,” I said. “I want the parts that cost you something.”

His eyelashes fluttered. He pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaled.

“You always go right for the wound.”

“They hired a ghostwriter for you,” I said. “The bruise is where the ink shows up best, you’ll have to get used to it.”

He dragged a hand through his hair, looking down at the floor.

“I’m not sure I remember how to be vulnerable without performing it.”

“Then don’t perform,” I said. “Just be someone who hurts.”

He stared at me for a moment that seemed to stretch between centuries like one of those Renaissance paintings that freeze forever in the space between faith and suffering. For a second, I could almost smell the dust of old canvases, the muted oil paint, the way those masterpieces felt both holy and tragic.

“I didn’t think I’d ever say this,” he said slowly, “but my whole life, I never told my story unless I got paid for it. You’re the only person who’s asked what I’m not selling.”

“There’s a difference between interrogation and invitation,” I said. “I’m offering you the latter.” He quieted. Then, instead of sitting on a chair or pacing like usual, he sat on the edge of my bed. Not close. Not touching. Just… human proximity.

“I’m afraid,” he said.

“What of?”

“That when the truth comes out the real truth… There won’t be anything left worth loving.”

His voice was barely above a whisper. The words hit something in me I’d boarded up years ago. The part that had felt the same way once.

“What makes you think anyone has to love you?”

He scratched his jaw. “Because if no one ever loved what I was… then why did all this matter?”

I swallowed.

“Maybe it mattered because it happened. Not because it was forgiven.”

He let the words sink in. Then he did something that surprised me more than his confession:

He reached for my hand. Not forcefully. Not even like he fully intended it. His fingers brushed mine by accident, hesitated then stayed. Warm. Present. Then, slowly, our fingers began to intertwine a deliberate, delicate threading, like two vines searching for each other in the dark. The warmth of his palm was startling, like a hidden sun. The soft slide of his skin against mine… it was tender, but undeniably charged. He looked up as our hands laced together, eyes wide with wonder, almost childish in their honesty, like we were two kids sharing a forbidden secret. In that silent beat, the whole world narrowed to the pulsing warmth between our palms. Nothing else existed no past, no future just the trembling, impossible beauty of touch

“If you’re trying to manipulate me into writing a tender portrayal of you,” I said lightly, “it’s working.”

“Good,” he said. “I could use one person in my corner. Even if it’s temporary.”

“You think I’m in your corner?”

“I want you to be.” He said it he’s voice trembling 

Silence.

The good kind. I stared at our hands for a moment. My own fingers twitched, but I didn’t pull away.

“I asked you what scares you,” I said quietly. “You answered. So here’s mine.”

I took a slow breath.

“I’m scared that I’m too broken to write a story that matters. That I’ve spent so long ghosting everyone else’s words, I don’t even remember what mine sound like.”

He didn’t reply immediately. He just squeezed my hand once. Deliberate. Grounding.

“You’re the only writer who ever asked if I mattered,” he said. “And the first to make me want an answer.”

He turned toward me, and I could feel myself melting into that gaze like unspoken ink bleeding across the page.

“Julian,” I whispered, “why are you doing this? Why are you letting me in now?”

“Because you’re the only one who doesn’t flinch when I take the mask off.”

My throat tightened.

“I flinch,” I said quietly.

“But you stay anyway,” he countered gently.

And that was it.

That one sentence opened something in me I didn’t know was still locked. We just sat there, our hands lightly tangled, the ocean whispering below us like a sleep spell.

No chasing.

No hunger.

Just recognition.

After a time I couldn’t measure, Julian pulled his hand back, stood, and exhaled his shoulders heavy, but lighter than last night.

“I should let you work,” he murmured. Then paused. “But… there’s one thing you need to hear.”

“What?” I asked, though my fingers were already searching for his, as if they’d become a missing part of me of my anatomy.

“You’re not writing a memoir anymore,” he said. “You’re performing an exorcism, one for a man who forgot he had a soul. And Ava? You’re not just a ghostwriter. You should free yourself from every ghost that’s ever haunted you… so you can finally be among the living.”

The words drifted from his lips like smoke. Then, without a shred of theatrics, he turned and walked away.

I inhaled once. Twice.

I didn’t cry.

Not yet.

What I felt was too complicated for tears. It was like trying to describe a cathedral collapse with beauty and ruin, all at once. I picked up my pen.

I wrote:

He makes me feel like I’m standing in a confessional not as priest or penitent, but as witness. He speaks in shattered glass. I’m the one holding the broom.

And then, small, beneath it:

Maybe someone needs to write us back into humanity.

The house groaned softly above me. The wind picked up again outside, but it didn’t scare me now. Even haunted places need witnesses. And sometimes, so do haunted people.