Unrequited Ghosts

The elevator didn't open onto the steakhouse. It let them off in a vestibule three blocks west, the glass and steel lobby echoing as the doors hissed shut behind them. The cold outside was sharp and immediate, plainly there, but it didn't have any real bite to it, not for either of them, not anymore. Andy zipped his jacket anyway, out of habit. Riley just pulled her hands up into her sleeves and started walking.

The street was a tangle of parking meters and salted sidewalks, the kind of urban grid where the buildings repeated in alternating patterns of brick, stone, and exhausted vinyl siding. Above them, sodium lamps turned the snow into dirty gold. Riley walked a step ahead, eyes on the sidewalk, not checking cross streets or looking for traffic, just moving with the muscle memory of someone who knew the city by feel.

Andy let her have the lead, more comfortable with the back-and-forth of her pace than with the idea of breaking the quiet. The whole way there, she didn’t say a word. When he tried to catch her eyes, she didn’t look away—she just gave him nothing, the poker face of someone who had spent years refining the craft of not being seen when she didn’t want to be.

At the next intersection, Riley finally slowed, made a left, and paused under the awning of a place called “Carlton Chop.” The sign was faded, the neon C on its last legs, flickering like a dying nerve. Inside, the windows were steamed over, a few shadowy shapes hunched around tables in the back. Riley hesitated for a fraction of a second, then pulled the door open and let the heat and the smell of cooked meat slap them both.

The hostess was stationed at a plywood stand just inside, reading a dog-eared paperback. She looked up and did a visible double-take, her eyes traveling from Riley’s face down to the impossible swell of her chest beneath her jacket, then back up to the waterfall of red-and-black hair that fell well past her waist. She set the book aside, lips parting in genuine shock. “Riley. My God, is that you?” Her voice was a faded photograph—familiar and slightly sepia, with the Chicago vowels rounded by decades of service industry. “Look at you. Christ, your hair—and you filled out.”

Riley answered, “Hey, Diane,” with none of the edge she used on anyone else. There wasn’t warmth in it, exactly, but there was recognition.

Diane came out from behind the stand, wiped her hands on her apron, and for a second looked like she might hug Riley, then thought better of it. “Where have you been, hon?” she said, not even glancing at Andy. “Last time I saw you, you were still all sharp angles and that short crop.”

Riley shrugged. “Working. Out of town for a while. Just got back last week.” She delivered the lie like it was a grocery list—efficient, practiced, with nothing in it to snag on.

Diane absorbed the answer, her gaze lingering on the new fullness of Riley’s frame and the startling length of her hair. Then she gave Riley a look that said she’d heard it before and would hear it again. “Well, we’ve missed you. You want your usual?” She finally noticed Andy, sized him up, then gave a slow nod. “And a guest, too. Very fancy.”

Riley almost smiled. “We’ll take the corner booth, if it’s open.”

“Of course.” Diane set two menus on the edge of the stand, but Riley just waved her off. Diane caught the gesture, tucked the menus back, and said, “I’ll tell Tony it’s you. Don’t let him see you leave without saying hi, or he’ll kill me.”

“We’ll see,” Riley said, but her voice was softer than it had been all night.

Diane led them to the corner booth—the only one in the place that could see the whole room without being seen in return. Andy slid in first, Riley after, and Diane lingered just long enough to fill their water glasses and take a drink order. Andy asked for a beer, Riley said water, and Diane vanished without another word.

The booth was old, vinyl split in two places and patched with duct tape that almost matched the color. The table was covered in butcher paper, a stubby pencil jammed into the sugar caddy, and a shaker of fake parmesan with a label so faded it could have belonged to any decade since the place opened.

Andy waited until Diane was out of earshot, then said, “You don’t want a drink?”

Riley shook her head. “I want to keep my edge tonight.” She traced a finger along the knife line in the table, eyes tracking it like she was solving a puzzle only she could see.

He let the silence stretch, then asked, “You used to come here a lot?”

She nodded. “Every anniversary, every promotion, every time we needed to celebrate something that didn’t matter to anyone but us.” Her tone was not fond, not ironic, just a statement of fact. “Came a couple of times during his deployment, ordered a steak in his name. Pregnancy results, first ultrasound. Stopped coming after he left. Didn’t see the point.”

Andy let that settle. There was nothing light in the air, not a sliver of it.

When the server came, a guy in his late twenties with a bad haircut and the hopeful aura of someone not yet crushed by restaurant work, he asked Andy first. Andy ordered a ribeye, rare, and didn't bother asking for the menu for anything else. When the server turned to Riley, she said, “Same as his, but blue. And bring out a second ribeye with mine, also blue, at the same time as ours. Not after.” The server glanced up at that, decided against asking, and wrote it down. “And salad for the table,” Riley added. “He'll take whatever dressing you've got, I'll take blue cheese.”

The server left them alone.

Andy said, “That's three steaks for two people.”

“Math was never your weak subject,” Riley said, and didn't explain any further than that.

He believed her. There was a time in his life when he’d have resented the presumption, but right now it felt like a kindness. “Is this where you and John would always sit?” he asked, the question soft.

Riley nodded again, this time not looking away from the line she’d traced. “Every single time. First time, it was a fluke—other tables full, they put us here. After that, it became a ritual. Same booth, same drinks, same dumb toast. We even kept the same routine when things got weird. Last dinner before he shipped out was right here. Diane gave us an extra hour and three rounds on the house.”

Andy absorbed that, the air between them thinning in a different way. “You want to talk about him, or not?”

Riley considered, then said, “No. But I don’t mind if you do.” She folded her hands together on the table, fingers laced so tight the knuckles whitened. “I just don’t want to give you a script to work from.”

Andy respected the boundary. “Okay. I’m not here to fix anything.”

She almost smiled at that, the ghost of it ing over her face and gone.

The salads came, a pair of uneven bowls, one swimming in blue cheese, the other with a drizzle of oil. Andy watched Riley eat, fast and neat, more work than pleasure. He did the same.

The steaks arrived minutes later, all three of them, perfectly charred, huge, fries spilling off the edge of every plate. The server set two in front of Riley and one in front of Andy without asking which was which, refilled the water, and faded out. Riley picked up her knife and started on the plate closest to her, the rhythm of it calm and unhurried. The second plate stayed where he'd set it, untouched, at the edge of her space instead of the center of the table.

Andy watched her, saw the difference between this Riley and the one he’d seen at bowling, at the shelter, even in the car. This Riley wasn’t performing anything. She was just present.

He picked up his own knife and mirrored her motions. They ate in silence for a few minutes. Andy broke it to say, “You ever think about leaving Chicago?”

She didn’t look up. “All the time. Then I it’s the only place that ever made sense.” She paused, chewed, then went on. “If you leave, you just start the same story in a new zip code. At least here, I know where the ghosts are buried.”

Andy didn’t argue.

They ate most of their own steaks before either of them slowed. The second ribeye, the one that had come out with theirs and sat untouched the whole time, was still there, going cold at the edge of the table. Riley finally pulled it in front of her, cut into it, ate exactly one bite, then pushed the rest toward the center of the table, next to her own half-finished plate.

She caught Andy looking at it before he could ask. “It's John's,” she said, softly. “Was his. Blue, always blue, he'd send it back twice if the middle wasn't bloody enough. I used to tease him, take one bite out of it before he could. Drove him crazy, in a good way.” She paused, looking at the steak. “Used to order like this when he was deployed. Thought it'd bring good luck, if I treated it like he was here. Tonight... tonight I don't know why I ordered this one. Maybe just... to say goodbye. One bite.” She nodded toward the kitchen. “Diane knows. Nothing here gets thrown out. Whoever's working the line tonight eats better than they would have otherwise.”

Andy didn't ask anything else about it.

She reached under her shirt and pulled out a thin silver chain, the weight at the end a simple gold ring, scuffed and worn but polished clean. She wrapped it around her finger twice, looked at it, then let it drop back against her skin. She ate another fry, washed it down with water, and said nothing.

Andy wanted to say something—anything—but the right words were too large for the space. Instead, he finished his own steak, wiped his hands on the paper, and said, “Thank you for letting me be here for this.”

She looked at him, and this time the smile stayed for more than a second. “If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t have come,” she said. “That’s the point.”

Andy nodded, and the weight between them became something less than it had been, not gone but diluted by the simple fact of having someone to share it with.

By the time the plates were cleared and the check paid, the crowds had thinned out and the noise in the steakhouse was mostly the wet-mop shuffle of the closing shift, the glassy echo of last drinks poured at the bar. Andy sat across from Riley, both of them tucked in tight to the battered booth, and for a long stretch the only movement was the slow migration of ice in her water glass.

Riley picked up her fork, set it down again, then left both hands flat on the table. “I want to be clear about something,” she said, the words landing without buildup or apology. “I didn’t stack this date with activities because I thought you couldn’t handle it. I did it because I couldn’t. If I kept us moving, I wouldn’t have to sit still long enough to think.” She made a small, tight smile. “But I’m done running it for now. For the next ten minutes, I promise to sit here and not try to distract you with anything.” She looked at him, and for the first time all night there was no challenge or dare in her face, just a stubborn sincerity that left no room for performance.

Andy held her gaze. “Thank you for saying that.”

She shrugged. “You can take the floor.”

He considered how to start, then went with the plainest version of the truth. “At lunch, I sat there and listened to three women I love say—one after the other—that they’d rather die than let anyone else take the hit for them.” He pushed his hands together, fingers interlaced, and looked down at them while he talked. “No matter how you spin it, there was no answer I could give back to any of you that wasn’t also just asking one of you to die instead.” He stopped, waited to see if Riley would interrupt. She didn’t.

“I tried to tell myself it was noble, or strong, or just the way it was supposed to work,” Andy said, voice lower now. “But the truth is, every time I ran the scenario—every single time—I lost you all anyway. I just got to choose who went first.”

Riley let the words hang. When she answered, there was no edge in her voice. “My answer stands, Andy. I meant it. I’ll mean it tomorrow, too.”

He nodded. “I know.” Then, after a pause: “I knew it before I even asked you. But I still needed to hear you say it.” He glanced up, found her eyes, and didn’t look away. “Since you and Myra and Laura gave your answers, the bond I have with her—it’s not gone, but it’s gone quiet. Not broken, just thin. I can feel the difference, every hour since.”

Riley’s brows knit together. “Is it getting worse, or staying the same?”

Andy shook his head. “I genuinely don’t know. Maybe it’s just plateaued. Or maybe I’m only starting to notice how much I depended on it to keep things steady.” He flexed his hands, as if the act could ground him. “I’ve been steady all afternoon on purpose, by the way. Not because I feel it, but because if I stop being steady, everyone else does too. And today isn’t a day when anyone can afford to lose control.”

Riley drew a slow breath, then let it out in a single long line. “That’s not sustainable,” she said.

“I know,” Andy said. “But it’s what I’ve got.”

They didn’t try to fill the silence. There was no attempt to cover it up, or dull the edges. For a long time, they just sat with the discomfort, the only movement Riley’s thumb running idle circles on the tabletop.

It was Riley who broke it. “You know what would actually help?” she said, not as a question. “Not one of us changing our answer. Not me, not Laura, not Myra. What helps is you finding the door nobody else in that room could see.”

Andy blinked, a little surprised. “You actually believe there’s a door?”

She nodded, matter-of-fact. “I don’t believe in much, but I’ve watched you do at least three things I’d have called impossible before I saw you do them.” She ticked them off on her fingers, one by one. “You got Katherine out of something unbreakable, even if only partially. You gamed the system, basically, during the Garden of Glass—walked out with all of us when the whole point was to leave someone behind. And besides both of those, you brought Laura back from a place nobody comes back from.” She looked at him, her eyes hard, not giving him an inch. “I decided a while ago to call that a pattern, not luck. And I’m not saying it to cheer you up. I mean it. There’s nothing you’ve done this season that’s just been luck. So that’s my real answer. Do one more impossible thing, and I’ll believe you can save everyone. I’ll say yes.”

Andy absorbed it, slow. “You’d tell me if you ever started believing it, right?”

Riley smiled, not the brittle kind but the real one, faint at the edges. “I’d tell you first. Before anyone else found out.”

He nodded, something in his chest easing, just a notch.

Riley looked down, reached into her coat, and pulled out a folded piece of paper—a different one from the bowling score sheet. She opened it a third of the way, read whatever was inside, then folded it again and tucked it back into her pocket.

Andy watched her do it. “What was that?”

She shook her head. “Later,” she said, and there was nothing in her tone that invited him to push.

She checked John’s watch on her wrist, eyes flicking to the time, and said, “We’ve got go-karts in forty minutes. If we’re late, the next group will grab our spot and I don’t want to race against children.” She tried to make it sound like a threat, the way she would have earlier in the day, but it came out about half as sharp as she meant it to.

Andy grinned. “Then we better get going.”

They left the steakhouse and walked to the car in silence. This one was different: less brittle, more like the pause after something important had been said. They drove the three blocks in the dark, neither of them turning on the radio.

When they got to the warehouse, Andy watched Riley's posture shift again, all the tension running into her hands as she adjusted the sleeves of her coat, more out of restlessness than cold.

He followed her inside, not needing to check the time or the route, just matching her stride.

The go-kart warehouse was wedged between two abandoned factories and a discount mattress showroom, the corrugated steel walls echoing the engine noise out onto the parking lot like a warning. Riley parked the car and before the engine even stopped groaning, she was out, hands already out of her pockets, eyes bright and hungry for the competition.

“Hope you’re ready to eat tire smoke,” she called over the cold, her voice carrying through the dark like a dare. This time, the trash talk landed real, not as armor or a performance, but as the pulse of something she needed—motion, friction, a chance to break out of her own skin.

Inside, the noise doubled. The front desk was a battered counter with a row of battered helmets behind it, and a teenager in a faded blue polo—MAX stitched on the chest—stood ready with a clipboard and a plastic smile.

“First time here?” he asked.

“Not for me,” Riley said. “This one’s a rookie, though.” She pointed a thumb at Andy, already grinning.

Max ran through the safety briefing at light speed: “Helmets at all times, pedal on the right is gas, left is brake, yellow flags mean caution, red means stop, no intentional bumping but everyone does it anyway, so don’t cry about it.” He glanced at Andy, checking if the message had landed.

Andy asked, “What’s the difference between yellow and blue flag?”

Max started to answer, but Riley cut in. “Yellow means slow down, track hazard. Blue is a ing flag—if you see it, let the faster driver go.” She delivered it like a teacher correcting a student, and Max just shrugged and let her have it.

Riley grabbed a helmet off the wall, then another for Andy, and handed it over without ceremony. She stuffed her hair up into hers, but it fought her the whole way; she spent a solid minute trying to wrangle the straps under her chin, muttering “fuck” in increasing variations until finally she just let the hair do its own thing. Andy watched the prehensile strands of black and red twist themselves into a thick rope and disappear down the back of her jacket, like it was a living thing. She caught him looking. “It’s better than getting scalped on the first turn.”

“Good point,” Andy said, and put his own helmet on. The inside smelled like plastic and sweat, but the chin strap worked fine.

They headed out to the grid, a line of stubby electric karts staged under a string of Christmas lights, because nothing at this track had ever made sense or tried to. Each kart had a number stenciled on the side. Riley beelined for number 2, Andy took the one beside her. She wiggled in the seat, tested the pedals, looked over at Andy, and said, “Try to keep up, okay?”

He shot her a thumbs up. The teenager stepped out, waved a green flag, and the grid came alive all at once.

The first corner was a bottleneck, the karts squalling and juddering as a pack of four tried to fit two-wide through a turn meant for one. Riley went outside, cut in hard, and came out leading the whole train. Andy, still feeling out the line, got shoved to the edge and clipped a barrier on turn three, the plastic rail giving just enough to keep him from spinning out entirely. He righted the kart, glanced up, and saw Riley already half a lap ahead, her helmeted head low and tight, arms working the wheel like she’d been born for it.

By the second lap, the rhythm set in: Riley attacking every corner, gunning the straights, barely braking; Andy driving smarter but not harder, keeping it clean, working out the geometry. He found the groove by lap four, started picking up seconds, but Riley was relentless. She lapped him once, then again, and every time she did, she flicked a wave as she ed—once with both hands, just to show off.

Andy lost count of the laps. The cold of the warehouse turned to sweat under the helmet, and the sound of the motors fused with his own heartbeat. For those minutes, he forgot about lunch, about the Law, about everything except the primal need not to lose by more than a lap and a half.

At the final flag, they both slowed, coasted into the pit. Riley yanked off her helmet, shook her hair loose, and looked for the results board before she’d even unclipped her seat belt. The numbers were already up: RILEY—1st, ANDY—6th, with the gap measured in embarrassing seconds. She crowed, “I told you,” then grabbed Andy’s helmet with both hands and wrenched it off, the gesture more playful than competitive.

Andy tried to catch his breath. “You’ve done this before,” he said.

She grinned, wide and feral. “John and I raced here on our first date. He got second, but only because I let him.” She glanced at the track, at the other racers still piling in, then back at Andy. “I’m not letting you win, not even once.”

Andy laughed, genuine this time, and said, “Good. I wouldn’t know what to do with a win tonight.”

They made their way back to the counter. Riley handed the helmets over, hair sticking up at wild angles. She looked flushed, not just from the heat but from the feeling of being, for a few minutes, completely herself. Not the careful, armored Riley from dinner. Just the version that wanted to win and didn’t care about how it looked.

Andy watched her. For a brief, perfect stretch, she wasn’t managing anything at all.

“Rematch?” he asked.

She smirked. “You’re on, but I’m not making it any easier.”

They signed up for a second heat, and for a moment, everything felt simple.

The grid for the second heat was packed: a bachelor party in matching t-shirts, two teenaged couples, and Riley and Andy wedged between them like a ringer and her mark. They rolled up to the line, engines humming, exhaust ghosting up to the high beams overhead. Riley glanced at Andy, helmet down, and gave him a sharp little nod—a new signal, not the easy showmanship of the first race, but a respect that meant business.

The flag dropped and the karts shot forward. Andy took the first corner tight, letting the tail slide just enough to keep speed. This time, he didn’t fight the line—he read it, absorbed it, became part of the motion. At the second turn, he saw Riley’s strategy: late braking, an inside dive, a cut to the apex. He mirrored it, and when she checked her six, he was there, right on her bumper.

Riley’s whole body tensed, and for the next three laps, the race was a knife fight. She tried every trick—shoulder feints, sudden brakes, even a hip-check on turn five that almost sent Andy into the barrier. He held his ground, inching up on every straight.

On lap four, Riley tried to put distance between them, but Andy held, tight and steady. On the back straight, she leaned hard into a left, then, for just a beat, took one hand off the wheel to brace her chest, laughing out loud as she did it. “Nobody warned me about this track!” she yelled, voice ragged over the engine noise.

Andy edged in, close enough to hear her, and called back, “Warned you about what?”

Riley, still laughing, shouted, “Every bump is a body shot. If I eat the wall, it’s on the track’s insurance, not me.”

Andy caught the next corner clean, lined up the final straight, and for a split second saw the opening. He gunned it, karts nose to tail, and at the finish, his number blinked up first on the scoreboard. He stared at it, had to check the screen twice. Riley coasted in, helmet off, hair wild, her face a mix of disbelief and iration.

She walked over, helmet under one arm. “Since when?” she said, eyes searching his face.

He shrugged, grinning, “Bowling must’ve used up my incompetence quota for the day.”

She barked a laugh, shoved his shoulder hard enough that he caught the wall to stay upright, and then shook her head, mouth stretched in a smile she didn’t try to hide.

They lined up for a third heat, tie-breaker. This time, no trash talk, no jokes. Just a long look, and a mutual understanding. The kid at the desk waved them up, gave a thumbs up, and hit the green flag.

Riley took the lead at the first corner, Andy glued to her, matching her pace and daring her to slip. They ran in tandem, perfect symmetry, neither one giving up an inch. On the final straight, both of them floored it, neck and neck, the karts crossing in a blur that no one could call.

At the desk, Max watched the replay twice before announcing, “Dead heat. I’ve never seen it before, but it’s a tie.”

Riley protested, demanded a photo finish, then accepted it with a growl. “Fine. But I want the printout.” She grabbed the slip, folded it, and stuffed it into her coat with the bowling score.

They left the warehouse together, bodies loose with adrenaline, grins still hanging on their faces. On the walk to the car, neither said anything—the silence was easy, unburdened, the cold on their faces more alive than any conversation could have been.

They climbed in, shut the doors, and the quiet settled. For a long moment, they sat there, steam ghosting the windows. Riley looked at Andy, and in the amber glow of the dash, her eyes were soft and somber.

“There’s one more stop I need to make,” she said.

Andy nodded. He knew what was coming, and so did she.

Riley started the car, hands steady on the wheel. The sound of the engine was the only thing that broke the silence as they pulled away from the warehouse, streetlights flicking past, both of them facing forward into whatever the next place demanded.