"Really?" James sounds so relieved, and only then I realise he was nervous about bringing this subject up. It must be nerve wracking, especially when he's still so young.
                          
I nod, smiling fondly at him just to let him know it is really okay and that his idea makes me happy, the possibility makes me feel so hopeful.
                          
"Working on a future with you is such a beautiful thing. The closer we get to that, the happier I become," I confess, leaning a bit closer to him. "The fewer things I take from you, the better."
                          
James doesn't reply, he just wraps his arm around my shoulders, bringing me closer, kissing the top of my head. At that same time Clyde climbs on to James' lap, curling there and starting to purr. My smile grows wider at the sight, knowing that even if we never adopt a kid or that even if we don't even leave Street, we've made our family here and we are having a life together. Unconventional. Impractical. Difficult. Unseen. But it's a life together, nonetheless.
                          
⋙⋘ 
                          
Summer holidays come and like that, James' first year of college is done. He still has to do a lot of college work to prepare his portfolio for his uni application, but we'll get on that little by little, and I'll help him on every task.
                          
The weather is great, maybe too hot for everyone, but he has a ghost girlfriend who's cold as corpse and keeps him cool even when everyone else is agonising. I'm better than any AC, and it is great we can have much more skinship without risking a case of hypothermia.
                          
We go out a lot, and we take Clyde with us to have picnics or just to spend a few days outside. I work every day on improving my cooking skills just to do something for him, just so I can take care of him, too. I think that once he finishes college, or even uni, I shouldn't follow him everywhere. And I can stay at home, helping somehow, finding something I can do. I never expected or wanted to become a housewife, to be honest I never even had time to have those thoughts before, but now it sounds nice. Maybe it's because it is something I can do, whilst everything else seems impossible.
                          
It seems funny how now I think of a future. It is ironic how I had to become a ghost to be able to dream, because when I was alive these thoughts never made it into my mind. I was in constant agony and fear, so much pain I couldn't see beyond the blackness that threatened to consume me every day. But that is gone now, along with my life, yet only now I work for a future.
                          
Only after I lost it all I found myself, I found my happiness and a reason to fight. It's heartbreaking I couldn't find it when I was alive. Just one reason to keep fighting, one more thing to hold on to and fight against my torturers would have made a difference. 
                          
I thought it was too late for me, I had resigned and fallen into a constant pattern where I didn't even think, I just kept doing the same day after day. But it wasn't all lost, when James came into my life he brought so many thing with him. He ignited the life that had left me and made me dream again. He made want to do things and try hard to accomplish them, even if they seemed impossible.
                          
It wasn't that late, then.
                          
And because I have him now and all these possibilities, all these dreams and plans, the darkness within me starts fading away. No. That's not exactly what happens. Darkness doesn't exist, that is just the term for the absence of light, and what happened to me is that the bullies had taken all the light in me, leaving me only with darkness. I couldn't ignite a spark on my own, but James did that, and slowly that flame grew up, consuming the darkness and lighting up every corner of my soul.
                          
There isn't absence of light in me anymore.
                          
Until him it was only despair, a thirst for revenge and so much sorrow for the unfairness of what had been my life. But now there's more. There's hope, there's love, there's dreams. And if someone asks me what road I'd like to take, I'd chose the latter, the one that leads me to light and warmth. The one that leads me to James.