Composed at Randy’s (Diner Days)

Epilogue

ELVIS

“ K ai, what are you doing?” The little guy, Wren, tries to look over his bodyguard’s shoulder to see what he’s up to, but his height isn’t up to the task. Kai tilts his phone to accommodate him.

My band is all crammed into our bus along with their entourage, and it feels like old times.

“Why are you calling the manager for my condo?” Wren’s forehead scrunches up adorably. Bael, my lead singer, tugs him closer to his side, pulling him away from Kai. I don’t blame him. The kid is a snack.

What? Can’t an old guy learn new words? There were plenty of snackish people in my day, but we didn’t have the proper terminology for them. Now we do. It’s called evolving, and I love every new discovery.

“I need to fix something,” Kai says. When Wren tries to get closer, Kai stops him with a hand to the face. Bael removes the hand from Wren’s face and calls Kai an asshole.

My afterlife has become so much more fascinating since Wren arrived. It wasn’t exactly boring before. I mean, I latched onto Baelfire for a reason. The band has so much energy and life, and they truly love each other. They’re a family in the very best sense of the word, and I’m glad I stumbled across them.

They needed someone like Wren, though. Bael was sad when no one else was around. I don’t think his family knew. I don’t think Bael knew, so how could they?

But I’d seen him spend countless nights quietly sighing while playing the same videogame over and over again. My boy was lonely. Not anymore. You should have seen his face when he brought Wren home. He was smitten on day one.

Watching Bael play video games with Wren was the happiest I’ve ever seen him. There were other things they did later that made him even happier, but I’m a discrete ghost.

I don’t watch and tell.

I enjoy watching now as Kai verbally reams the manager of Wren’s condo for hiring such an idiot for their doorman. It serves the guy right. Poor Wren was so humiliated that I nearly did something to help him out. I didn’t because it would have used up so much of my energy that I would have had to hibernate inside that stupid fan for at least a week. That’s the last thing I wanted because then I would have missed all the fun.

“Get him on the phone. Now.” Kai’s voice sends chills down my incorporeal spine as he orders the manager to do his bidding. It’s a matter of seconds before the dumbass doorman is on the other end.

Watching Kai verbally destroy the man is a thing of pure beauty. Harvey is getting heart eyes throughout the entire conversation. He may be about to propose marriage, though I don’t know how that would work. Two straight boys falling in love?

That’s a disaster in the making if I ever saw one. Especially if Trina hears about it. Bael will have one hell of a time making good on his promise to get her that date.

Get me some popcorn, folks. I’m here for it.

There’s nothing but incoherent sobbing on the other end of the phone by the time Kai is done, and Bael has to hold Wren back from trying to take the phone from Kai.

“He deserves it, Wren. If he’d looked into your claim even a little, he would have found out you weren’t lying.” Bael says as he holds Wren in his arms. “Don’t they have a picture of you in their system?”

“They do,” Marty says. “Burn him to ashes, Kai.”

So the doorman gets fired and traumatized. Everyone but Wren agrees that he had it coming, and then they all spend several minutes convincing Wren.

They don’t succeed, but at least Wren knows he is loved, and that’s what matters.

“Can someone trade seats with me?” Travis asks as he eyeballs my fan nervously. He’s jammed into the corner right next to it.

“Elvis isn’t real, Travis. Relax,” Bael says. I love Bael, but the kid isn’t the sharpest pumpkin in the patch. I’ve literally handed him a towel after a concert before and he passed it off as an exhaustion-induced hallucination.

“You’re going to hurt Elvis’s feelings if you keep that up,” Mel, my favorite human, says. Mel is gorgeous and I would fuck him in a heartbeat… if I had a heartbeat.

“If you don’t believe in Elvis, then you sit next to him, Bael.” Travis is cringing away from my fan and half out of his seat. It won’t take much to have him out of it completely, but I bide my time. Travis is so much fun to play with.

“I’ll trade places with you, Travis,” Wren says. “I’d love to get to know you better, Elvis, and I’d be delighted to sit with you.”

He’s officially my second favorite human now.

“No deal,” Bael says, and the greedy bastard hugs his new boyfriend tightly to keep him from leaving. “Travis and our fake ghost will just have to make nice.”

“He’s not fake,” Mel says, and Shay nods, backing up his sib. “Stop saying that or I’ll steal Wren from you.”

Bael shoots Mel a glare so malevolent that my special slut goes pale and shuts up.

I rattle my fan to show my displeasure. A little jealousy is all well and good, but no one messes with Mel.

“Did you see that?!” Travis squeaks, and he huddles as far from my fan as he can get.

“See what?” Wren asks excitedly.

“The fan moved.”

“Sure it did, buddy,” Bael says, rolling his eyes.

I wait until everyone else but Travis is looking away and I rattle my fan again.

“No seriously! It totally did it again!”

So maybe I’m a bit of a bully, but if you were an old, dead rock star, you’d take your fun where you can find it too.

Travis spends the rest of the evening giving my fan the stink-eye, Bael and Wren cuddle and make everyone on the bus feel single, Kai and Harvey plot out the next ten years of everyone’s lives, and Shay, Laura, and Mel bond in the strange way that only two best friends and the mother who fucked one of them can bond.

This is my family. Didn't I pick a good one?