I Cheated On My Husband With a Ghost

By: Adnan Ali

This isn’t a metaphor.

I cheated on my husband with a ghost.

Not a “ghosted me on Tinder” type. Not a memory or a figment of imagination. I mean a real, flickering shadow of someone who once lived and who, somehow, refused to leave.

My name is Rebecca. I’ve been married to Thomas for eight years. No kids, a decent house in Vermont, two dogs, and a marriage that once felt like an ocean. Lately, though, it’s felt like a frozen lake—quiet, cold, and ready to crack under our silence.

It started the night Thomas left for a three-day corporate retreat. He kissed my forehead like I was his sister, told me not to wait up, and left without looking back.

That night, I opened a bottle of wine. Just one glass, I told myself. But after the second glass, I stopped counting.

By midnight, I was curled on the couch with an old book from my college days. Something from the Gothic lit course I barely passed. The book had belonged to someone else once. I knew because of the name written inside the cover.

“Property of Elias Wren. If found, return to Room 307, East Ashbury Dorms.”

It always gave me chills. Not because I believed in ghosts, but because Elias was the first boy I ever loved. And the first one I ever lost.

He died during our junior year. Fell asleep drunk near a bonfire and never woke up. Smoke inhalation, they said. A “tragic accident.” I went to his funeral and never visited the grave. It felt like cheating on the future I was supposed to have.

I thought I had buried Elias Wren a long time ago.

Until that night.

The room grew cold. So cold I could see my breath, though the heat was on. My dogs growled low from the hallway, and then bolted into the bedroom as if something unseen had entered.

I looked up.

And he was there.

Leaning against the doorframe, exactly as I remembered—dark tousled hair, sarcastic smirk, and those eyes that always saw straight through me.

“Miss me, Bex?”

I dropped the wine glass. It didn’t shatter. It just rolled under the couch like it was scared too.

“I’m dreaming,” I said. “Or drunk.”

“Probably both,” he replied with a grin.

I don’t remember walking toward him. I don’t remember touching him. But I remember feeling the cold.

Not like ice.

More like grief.

We didn’t talk about what had happened to him. We didn’t need to. We just talked. All night. Laughed. Cried. He remembered everything—my old poetry, the time we got locked in the campus library, the night he told me he loved me and I didn’t say it back.

At 3:03 a.m., I kissed him.

His lips were cold. And I didn’t care.

The next morning, I woke up in bed alone.

But the house smelled like burnt wood.

The couch cushion had an imprint next to where I’d sat. And the wine glass was back on the table, still full.

Was I losing it?

Maybe.

But that didn’t stop me from waiting for him again the next night.

He came back. Every night Thomas was away.

We didn’t always touch. Sometimes we just talked, like we were back in college again. Sometimes we danced to old indie songs from my iPod, his fingers cold against mine.

And sometimes… we did more.

Don’t ask me how. Or why.

I just know that for the first time in years, I felt seen.

Not tolerated. Not ignored. Seen.

Thomas returned Sunday night.

I didn’t meet him at the door. I didn’t kiss him. I asked how his trip was, and he grunted something about numbers, presentations, and how the hotel breakfast sucked.

Then he went to bed.

I sat on the couch, wine glass untouched, and whispered into the dark.

“Elias?”

But he didn’t come.

He never came when Thomas was home.

For weeks, I wondered if I’d imagined it all. If grief and wine and loneliness had invented him. I tried to sleep beside my husband. I tried to laugh at his jokes. I even tried to initiate something physical.

But it was like kissing a ghost.

One night, Thomas rolled over and said, “You’ve been different lately. Cold.”

I stared at the ceiling and replied, “So have you.”

I finally saw Elias again a month later.

It was a thunderstorm. Thomas was on another business trip. The lights flickered once, twice, and then died. I lit a candle and whispered, “Please.”

And he appeared.

Softer this time. Dimmer.

“I can’t stay long,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, holding back tears.

“You’re starting to remember who you are,” he said. “Not who you were with me. Not who you pretend to be with him. But you.”

I walked toward him, heart pounding. “But I love you.”

“I know,” he said, brushing his cold fingers against my cheek. “But you don’t belong in the past, Bex. Even if the past still loves you.”

He kissed my forehead.

Like a goodbye.

And vanished.

Thomas never found out. He still doesn’t know that the closest I’ve come to cheating wasn’t with a colleague or a stranger at a bar—but with a memory.

A ghost.

Now I sit here, telling you this, wondering if I’m insane. Or just human.

I haven’t seen Elias since that storm. But every now and then, when the house gets too quiet and the air turns too cold, I swear I hear his voice whisper:

“Miss me?”

Yes.

I always will.