She eventually stopped laughing long enough to breathe. Well, whatever the ghost equivalent of breathing was. I know that they do not actually need to breathe, strictly speaking, but I think that her instincts drove her to. Her normally pale, vaguely translucent face was flush red when she looked up at me. She started cracking up again and fell over in raucous laughter again. “You . . .” She struggled to regain her composure again. “You actually want me to possess a fucking blow-up doll!”

I frowned and looked away from her, murmuring in my smallest voice. “Well, not a blow-up doll. They make like more lifelike dolls nowadays.”

She fell over laughing again. After about an hour, she finally stopped finding it hilarious and mostly just really funny. “Well then,” she began, stifling another giggle fit. “Show me these totally 'lifelike' dolls.”

“No,” I began. I was pretty embarrassed at this point. She was right. It was pretty stupid. Well, she had never said it was stupid. She just found it really funny. “Just forget it.”

She pushed me over onto the couch. There was no sensation of her sinking into my flesh this time. No hesitation. She pinned me down and stared down at me. “No. We're doing it.”

These were the wrong words to say to me because she had straddled me in the process and her ass . . . Well, her ass was kind of resting on my crotch. And it had been a little while since a woman had . . . Been in the apartment. She definitely noticed. I could tell by the little smile that spread across her face. Come to think of it, this is not the first time that she would have . . . felt me. Since she had invaded my apartment, I had stopped sleeping naked, which annoyed me to no end, but a pair of boxers was not exactly enough to hide my . . . excitement. And most days I did wake up with her in my arms.

“So, that's the real reason you want a sex doll?” She said, pressing down a little more onto me. I grunted and started to push myself off of my back. She did not relent. “Come to think of it, you don't really need a sex doll.”

That statement deflated my resistance and I fell back to the couch, staring up at her, eyes as wide as they could go. “W-what do you mean by that?”

She grinned and untangled herself from me, stretching. “God, you're easy.”

Her eyes did track down at me a little bit, wearing a small smile. She swatted at my calves. “Sit up. Show me these new non-blow up dolls. We can see what options they have.”

I sat up and looked over to her. “I don't think this is a good idea.”

“I think it sounds like fun!” She said, bending over and bringing the laptop over to me. I opened a new tab. I typed in the words “realistic sex doll” into Google. Several different sites came up and I opened up several new tabs with the different options. She pushed up into me and rested her chin on my shoulder, watching. She did not smell of lilacs anymore. I could not place the scent but it was different. And it was distracting. Not as distracting as the sites themselves, though. I scrolled through slowly and her eyes glittered as she pointed at different ones. “Ooh! Look at her! Is that what you like?”

To be honest, I found most of the dolls to be really creepy and off-putting. Most of them had not just large breasts, but gigantic. A lot of them were the size of the doll's head. Which sounded like a back problem to me. Lona was having a blast. She had me click on the full pictures. “Oh, oh my. This one has, like, hair down there. Good for her.”

I watched her reaction. I thought that most of them were creepy. The skin texture looked wrong. And their eyes. It was almost real. It kind of reminded me of looking at local newscasters. The lighting was basically the same and a lot of them take plastic surgery. Newscasters and sex dolls were very Uncanny Valley to me. Which, I guess, is mean to newscasters. Really for them, it is just the lighting and makeup that do that.

Lona was busy comparing and contrasting herself to the dolls. She had widely stopped talking and was now looking at herself. She grabbed her hair and twirled it around her finger. It was a dark, wavy, red color that went down past her shoulder blades. She had a cute nose and eyebrows. Vibrant green eyes and freckles. Some of the dolls had somewhat similar features, but nothing quite the same. She grabbed her boobs and squeezed, eyes focused on the screen. On one of the dolls with a lot more than her in that area. A lot more than most women, really. She had a relatively lithe figure. I did not know anything about bra sizes, but she was not exactly lacking in that area. Honestly, she was not lacking anywhere, really. It was kind of unfair. If she had been alive, I would have never talked to her. Mostly because I do not talk to anyone, but also because she was the kind of girl who seemed like too much. She was very pretty, very capable. From what I had seen, she was a great actress, able to do several accents and dialects. She would have been way too cool to talk to someone like me.

And yet, in a twist of fate, here she was. Stuck with the dude with anime figurines and waifu t-shirts. I watched her as she compared herself to these dolls. Her mouth had settled into a pouty frown. I swallowed and looked back at the screen. The last one she had chosen was this anime girl. Apparently, they were hot sellers. They had an entire section for anime girls. I turned back to her. “What are you thinking?”

“I-is that what guys like?” She asked softly. Her hands had fallen to her lap and she looked at me. “Y-you know. You collect a lot of those figurines. And the models. And the porn I found on your phone. The . . . The puzzle.”

She gestured weakly to the puzzle on the table. I stared at it for a moment. She was . . . She was self-conscious. She always seemed so confident. So . . . Outgoing. “I don't know. I'm not a normal guy. You probably shouldn't use me as a benchmark.”

“What do you think of me?” She said, looking directly. There was a forced firmness in her voice. Her back stiffened. I took her in for a moment, my mouth drying. She was pretty. Red hair, nice eyes, petite but not starving herself. Well . . . Well curved, I guess. Though that sounds like I'm describing a computer monitor.

She took my hesitation as disapproval and stood up. “Ugh! Men! You are all so shallow!”

I reached and grabbed her hand. “I didn't get a chance to answer.”

She stared down at my hand that was clamped over hers. She started to pull away, but I tightened my grip slightly and she stopped trying, staring at me. I knew if she wanted to she could just go entirely intangible. She could teleport away. She could disappear. But she did not. Her voice was strained when she spoke. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. “Well?”

“It's hard, okay.” She looked down at me disapprovingly, but I saw her lip briefly tug up in a smile. She wanted to point out the double entendre I had made. But she was still upset. “Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

“Who? Me? Never.” She feigned ignorance, bringing her a little more out of her dark mood. Her tone was still a bit rough, but it was a little better.

“I . . . It's hard to explain . . . I . . . Try not to look at you like that.” I said, my head fell down, eyes resting unfocused on the coffee table. “Not just you. Any woman, really.”

“Bullshit!” Lona responded, annoyance tainting every word she spoke. “I've seen you look at me. I've seen you look at other girls, too!”

“Yeah, well, I try not to dwell on it. I don't let it go anywhere or let my thoughts wander into anywhere.” I countered, dropping my hand from hers and scooting away a little bit. “It doesn't always work, but it's better that way.”

“Better? Better how?” She asked. Some of the acid had left her tone. She was still colder than normal, but it was not going to give me frostbite any time soon.

“Look, I'm an idiot. If a woman pays attention to me, I will probably just fall in love with her. Especially if she's pretty. And I have an overactive imagination. If I start thinking about sleeping with someone, I start thinking about dating them, then I start thinking about a life together and then I get attached to the version that I imagined in my head, and then they aren't the person in my head because how could they be and usually weren't interested in me in the first place and really who could blame them for that” As my little rant continued, I started talking lower and faster and Lona had to lean down to hear me. After I finished, I looked up to her just in time to see her rolling her eyes. “What? I already admitted I'm stupid about this kind of thing.”

“So your solution is to just not to try at all?” She asked, pointing at me accusingly. I shrugged and nodded. “Well, like, you're right about one thing. You are stupid.”

I straightened a little bit and glared at her. I did not really have a response to her. “How long has it been since you've tried dating anyone? Getting out there?”

“I . . . I don't know. A couple of years.” I said, defensively. The truth was that it had been almost five years.

“Liar.” She said definitively. “So, your plan was just to sit here and collect cartoon statues of women with no panties and be alone forever?”

I shrugged. “I . . . I hadn't really thought about it.”

“Like, I believe that.” She sat down next to me. “Do you think you would be happy that way?”

“I'm content.” I lied. She did not call me out this time, but I suspected that she knew I was lying. She just sat back on the couch and pulled me over to her.

“You never answered my question. What do you think of me?” She was changing the subject. Which was probably a good thing, I guess.

“I . . .” I hesitated again, then with a sigh, I pulled away. “You're gorgeous. You make me nervous and I hate it.”

She pursed her lips and stared at the screen. “What about them? What do you think of them?”

“Kind of creepy,” I said, closing the laptop. She stared at it longer, considering. “Look, forget it. One, those dolls are disturbing. No one would ever believe that they're people. They look too weird. Almost human but not quite.”

She did not say anything.