Chapter Text
Joe is barely aware of it the first time it happens. He’s shelving the new shipment of self-help books at Anavarin before the store has opened for the day, moving over the old ones to make room for the new. As he bends to take the final book out of the box, he catches a whiff of Santal 33, so faint it might be a memory. The cologne that Forty always wore. Joe freezes for a moment, then shakes it off. Just his imagination playing tricks on him.
They say that smell memory is the strongest of the memories, Forty. It’s no surprise I can’t forget you, still working here, only a few feet from the place where you died.
A couple weeks later, it happens again. Joe is helping a customer to find Oprah’s latest book pick, American Dirt – Really, you couldn’t spot it on your own, right in the front of the new book display like this? – when he catches a flash of a dark floral pattern out of the corner of his eye and jumps. The person wearing it turns around. It’s not Forty after all. Joe swallows nervously and tries to shake it off.
Joe can put this kind of thing out of his mind, for the most part. After all, he’s about to be a father. Love is in her third trimester and keeping him busy fetching Moon Juice whenever she craves it. Clearly this idea about Moon Juice as a cure-all runs in the family. There are doctor’s appointments to go to and pre-natal yoga classes to attend. As well as their birth training appointments with Love's doula and the endless, endless preparation of the birth plan. Love has been dealing with her grief by doubling down on planning for the new life, and Joe is more than happy to join her. When he’s not busy watching their mysterious neighbor, that is.
So these small moments, the flashes of Forty that Joe keeps seeing at Anavrin, in the book corner, in the kitchen, by the dumpster when he’s taking out the flattened cardboard recycling, these are all incidents he can write off. Until…
Joe is in the stock room, on hands and knees to reach into the back of the lowest shelf to grab the last box of register books. The register books are impulse buys that get shelved near the register, stupid little gift books that you pick up for that person you don’t know how to shop for and don’t care enough to learn about, or even think of, until you arrive at the register to pay for something else. Somehow the last box of 101 Life-Affirming Mantras For the Working Woman has gotten pushed to the very back and Joe has to practically crawl into the shelf to retrieve it.
“You trying to seduce me, old sport?”
Joe jumps violently, slamming his head on the shelf above him.
“Fuck!” He rolls his way out of the shelving unit sideways, clutching his splitting head. He sees a pair of legs and looks up, afraid of what he’s about to see.
Wait, that’s just Calvin.
“What… what did you just say?”
“I just asked what you were looking for. Jesus, are you okay? I heard your head hit that shelf from here. I thought you heard me come in.”
Joe sits on the floor, with his head still in his hands. “I… I’m okay. I think I’m okay.”
Calvin looks concerned, “Well, take your time. I want you to sit here and make sure you’re all right. I’ll take care of restocking those books.”
Calvin departs and Joe tries to pull himself together.
It’s okay, you’re okay. Forty’s not here. It’s just your mind playing tricks on you. You’re in the stock room at Anavrin, you’re sitting on the floor, you just hit your head. Joe closes his eyes and starts to do some of the breathing exercises he’s been learning with Love.
When he opens them, Forty is standing in front of him, clear as day, wearing the clothes he died in.
“Holy SHIT!” In a panic, Joe scrambles to his feet. He’s across the stock room, plastered to the opposite wall before he even knows it.
“Old sport! I can’t say that this was the reaction I was expecting from you! I thought you’d be happy to see me. It’s been, what, seven months since you basically got me killed? Don’t you miss me?"