Taylor's first mistake was giving Colby permission to surf the internet. Taylor's second mistake was leaving him alone with it.

"You. Signed. Up. For Tinder?!" she yelled, upset.

Colby looked completely innocent. "And?"

"And?! You used your pictures!"

The ghost didn’t quite understand. "Yeah? I don't need fake pictures from the internet. I am fucking hot," he grinned.

"Your pictures! Colby! Come on! Think, boy! You’re the most famous missing person case in the entire world!"

"Oh, right," he realized. "Now I get the problem. Then no one will believe it’s me, so what?"

Taylor shook her head in exasperation. This guy, really. "It’s all coming from my IP address! In the worst case, there’ll be a bunch of police officers at my door tomorrow! Wondering why I made a fake profile with the pictures of a missing person!"

Colby leaned back in his chair and floated a bit in the air. He liked tilting the chair while floating. "And in the best case? What then?"

That threw Taylor off. "I... I guess, nothing? But still—"

"No still," he interrupted her. "Nothing will happen. I just wanted to go on the hunt again. Sorry. Really."

"What would you even have written to them? You can’t see me, but let’s bang anyway?" she asked sarcastically.

Colby laughed. "That's a good one. But I was thinking more along the lines of my best lines from my glory days. Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by one more time?"

Taylor cringed. "And those lines actually worked for you?"

"Of course they did," he said proudly. "Oh, or how about, Can I buy you a coffee, or are you already too hot to handle?"

"Oh my god. Please stop." Taylor covered her ears, but Colby found her reaction hilarious.

"I'm a master at reading between the lines. Want me to show you what I mean?" he said with a laugh. "Some things are just too hot to ignore. Are you ready to get burned? Oh, or my favorite: I love diving into forbidden worlds. Are you ready to cum with me?" He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

Taylor couldn't stop laughing. "You actually said that to a living person, yeah?"

"Multiple times. With success." And there was that stupid grin again.

"And you're sure they weren't just high or drunk, right? Or both?"

Colby took that as a slight insult, quickly brought his chair back to the ground, and playfully slapped Taylor on the arm. "Fuck you," he laughed.

Taylor shook her head as she tried to stifle her laughter. "Okay, okay, I admit, your lines are kind of... creative."

Colby gave her a challenging look. "Come on. You have to admit they're at least a little bit charming."

"Charming? More like... unconventional," she corrected, winking at him. "But if they worked on women, who am I to judge?"

"Exactly!" The ghost raised seven fingers, all on one hand. So he could do that now too, huh? "Seven out of seven women were completely swept off their feet by my charm."

Taylor rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I believe every word."

The rest of the morning went on like that. There wasn't a single minute where at least one of them wasn't laughing.

Maybe that was the true magic between them. Not the inexplicable powers Colby had, but the simple joy of spending time together and sharing laughs.

As noon approached and their laughter gradually subsided—since laughing was starting to hurt—Taylor felt a sense of lightness spreading in her heart. Maybe things weren't as bad as she had imagined. Maybe she could just relax and enjoy the moment. There were probably thousands of fangirls with Colby as their profile picture. The police wouldn't be knocking on their doors either.

And maybe, just maybe, she would start to develop a bit more trust in Colby's ability to make reasonable decisions. Even if he was still a bit crazy. But he probably always would be.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The doorbell rang.

Okay, forget about the trust. Fear spread through her again. If it really was the cops, Taylor would surely faint from fear.

"Aren't you going to see who it is?" Colby asked, puzzled.

She shook her head.

"Want me to lurk through the door and check?" the ghost offered, and Taylor gratefully accepted. As soon as he stuck his head through the door, he screamed with joy. Like a little kid. Okay, so definitely no reason to panic. "My dumbbells! They're here!" In excitement, he teleported around the apartment, celebrating like crazy. "Finally, I can pump iron again! Yeah!"

Relieved, Taylor opened the door to find a delivery guy who looked completely out of breath and was sweating profusely. He then glanced at the heavy package with an annoyed expression. "Delivery," he grumbled.

She was sure that if the guy found it too heavy, there was no way she could lift it. "Um... thanks. You can just leave it here."

"Pumping! Pumping! Pumping! Pumping!" a certain ghost bellowed from her apartment.

The delivery man looked at her skeptically. "Are you sure? Shouldn't I carry it in for you? It's really heavy. Brutally heavy." He wiped some sweat from his forehead.

No way was she letting a stranger into her apartment. Okay, aside from Colby. But she hadn't really had a choice with him. But a delivery guy? In her apartment? Definitely not. "No... I can manage," she lied. "I think," she whispered to herself.

She caught another disbelieving look from the delivery guy. "If you say so. Good... luck with that." He left.

"Yeah... thanks."

She stepped back into her apartment, where Colby was still joyfully teleporting around.

"They're here! They're here! Damn, that was fast! Does Amazon stuff always arrive this quickly?"

"Amazon is a company. But you'll get it... eventually. It did exist when you were alive, though. Anyway, better bring your dumbbells inside. I don't think I could even push them into the apartment."

Immediately, he went over and picked up the package. It seemed heavy for him too, but not impossible. As soon as he was through the door, he set it down with great excitement, snapped his fingers, and the apartment door closed gracefully.

"Couldn't you have just brought the package in with a snap? Using your weird ghost magic?"

He grinned again. Somehow, that was his default expression. "Where's the fun in that? I wanted the dumbbells to train, not my powers, but my muscles. Otherwise, I wouldn't have needed them," he explained, and in a strange and very Colby-like way, it actually made sense.

Taylor watched Colby's enthusiastic reaction to the delivery with a smile on her lips. His childlike excitement was contagious, and for a moment, she forgot all her worries. That seemed to happen often with him.

As the ghost gleefully unpacked the dumbbells, a beep came from the laptop, but Colby didn't seem to notice. He was far too in love with his dumbbells at the moment. Taylor, on the other hand, went to the laptop immediately. A blinking icon in the upper corner of the screen caught her attention. Her heart raced as she saw that it was a notification from Colby's Tinder profile.

She swallowed hard and felt a lump forming in her stomach. "Colby."

"What?" he asked absentmindedly as he assembled his first dumbbell.

"Colby," she said again.

He rolled his eyes, left his dumbbells alone, and came over to the laptop as well. "What is it?"

She nervously pointed at the screen. "You have a match."

"Really?!" he shouted with glee. "I knew I still had it! This day just keeps getting better and better!"

She quickly looked at the profile. When the picture of the matched person appeared, Colby made a disgusted noise, which surprised Taylor a lot.

"What do you mean by that?! You must have swiped right on her, otherwise, there wouldn't be a match!"

"I just swiped right on everyone. I didn't even look at the pictures that much. But I didn't expect someone like this."

The woman in the picture wasn't much older than Taylor and, according to Colby, looked like a creepy anime character. She had a huge pink pair of glasses on her round face, and her blue hair was styled in a way that made it look almost like she had cat ears. According to her profile, her name was Harper.

"Please tell me people do not actually dress like that in your time," Colby seemed on the verge of gagging. Taylor didn't even think the woman looked that bad.

"Some do. What's wrong with it?"

"Are we seeing the same chick in the pic?"

"At least she's not a Tinder admin or something. That would be much worse—" Taylor's voice trailed off. Colby's face turned ghostly pale. She had casually clicked on Harper's linked Instagram profile.

It was even worse than an admin. Harper's profile was filled with pictures of Colby. Edited reels with his photos, drawings of him, screenshots of newspaper articles, the entire profile was full of him. In one of her posts, she was even snuggled up in bed, next to a huge pillow with Colby's face on it.

"What the fuck." Colby's exclamation was not a question. "Who is that bitch?!" Now that was a question. "Holy shit!"

Taylor clicked on the most recent post, visibly shocked as well. But it got even creepier. The post had no picture, just white text on a black background. It read:

To my fellow colbians:

I'm now firmly convinced. Our idol must still be alive. You know how much I've been diving into the case. Over the past few weeks, I've gone through everything again. There's no other explanation. What if he's out there? Just hiding because his radiant presence would blind us all? Let's be honest, he's too hot for this world. I mean, we all know his shirtless pics from back then. He's a god. You'd burn up if you saw his real face. But not me, no. Someday I'll find him. After all, he needs a companion by his side. Every god needs his partner to whom he can pump everything he wants.

Oh my god, how much I'd love to inhale his farts one day.

That's the true scent of a god, my fellow colbians.

At this point, Colby was just staring at the screen, traumatized, biting down on his fist. Taylor felt similarly. Unlike him, though, she wasn't sure if she was about to burst out laughing or drop dead from fear. Apparently, there weren't any fellow colbians. The post didn't have a single like. Not even a comment.

"So, these are your fans," she blurted out, a little laugh escaping her, but Colby didn't react at all. Taylor's laughter faded quickly, though, when another notification pinged. She switched back to Tinder, and her eyes widened even more. A message. From Harper.

Colby?

Colby Vance?

Is that really you?