GHOST LOVER

The Interrogation in the Hallway

The next day, Selin encountered Kerem in the hallway. He was carrying groceries, she was coming back from work. The mundane collision of two normal lives.

“Hey,” he said with that easy smile. “Want to help me eat these? I bought too much.”

Selin hesitated. She could feel Murat’s presence even in the hallway, could sense his tension. But she said: “Sure. Give me ten minutes to change.”

Inside her apartment, Murat’s disapproval was palpable. “You’re going to his place? Again?”

“We’re neighbors. It’s normal.”

“Nothing about this situation is normal, Selin.”

“Exactly. Which is why I need normal. Why I need friends who are alive.”

The words hung between them, cruel in their honesty.

“I’ll come with you,” Murat said.

“No.”

“Selin—”

“No, Murat. You don’t get to come. Not this time. He’s my friend, and I’m going to have dinner with him like a normal person, and you’re going to stay here and accept that I have a life beyond you.”

The temperature in the apartment dropped ten degrees. “Be careful,” Murat said, voice tight. “The more you push me away, the harder it becomes for me to stay tethered.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a warning. I’m not as stable as I used to be. The more you engage with that world, the less I can hold on to this one.”

Selin felt a pang of guilt, but pushed it aside. “Then maybe you need to let go.”

She left before he could respond.

At Kerem’s apartment, she tried to be present. He’d made pasta—nothing fancy, but good. They talked about work, about the neighborhood, about the upcoming festival in Taksim. Surface conversations that kept them safely away from deeper waters.

But Kerem, perceptive as always, eventually asked: “Are you okay? You seem… distracted.”

“I’m fine.”

“Selin, I’m your friend. You can tell me if something’s wrong.”

Could she? Could she tell him that her dead fiancé was currently sulking in her apartment, that she’d just had a fight with a ghost, that her reality included a person no one else could see?

“I’m just tired,” she lied. “Work’s been intense.”

Kerem didn’t push, but his eyes said he didn’t believe her. They finished dinner with that unspoken tension between them—his concern, her secrets, the impossibility of bridging the gap.

When she returned to her apartment, Murat was waiting. But he didn’t speak. Just stood by the window, looking out at nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Selin said.

“For what? For having friends? For being alive? Don’t apologize for those things.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I want you to choose. Truly choose. Because this half-life we’re living—it’s destroying us both. You can’t keep one foot in my world and one in theirs. Eventually, you’ll have to decide.”

“And if I choose you?”

“Then you lose everything else.”

“And if I choose them?”

“Then I disappear.”

The ultimatum hung between them, stark and unavoidable. Selin had known it was coming, had felt it building for weeks. But hearing it stated so plainly made it real.

“I need time,” she said.

“Time is all I’m made of now. Take as much as you need.”

But they both knew time was running out. For both of them.