21. The Crime Scene
21
The Crime Scene
I YAWNED AND poured myself coffee into a paper to-go cup and dumped half the jar of sugar into it. Without Starbucks right around the corner to give me my triple shot soy chai lattes in the mornings, I had to make do with what I had. Which meant terrible-tasting coffee so sweet the grains of sugar crunched between my molars every time I took a sip.
Last night I couldn’t get to sleep, trying to balance myself somewhere between the sadness that still felt like a rock in my gut, and wondering what the hell Ben had planned. My mind liked to wander at night and shut up in the mornings, at the exact opposite times I needed.
Rose always told me that I was a goblin. I did my best work between ten at night and five in the morning, when most normal people were either asleep or getting down to business (to defeat the Huns). (Sex, I mean sex.) Meanwhile, I was writing about couples banging it out to Fall Out Boy. I missed those days. When I could write. When I didn’t just sleep all day, and stare at my ceiling all
night, and scroll through Twitter to see who else in the writing community got book deals and went on tour and hit bestseller lists. It was a certain kind of soul-sucking year I’d had, and I didn’t realize how empty I was until I needed to write.
And by then, I couldn’t.
Last night felt a little different, though, as I stared up at the ceiling of the bed-and-breakfast. What if Ben
could
help me? What if it was as simple as turning on a switch, and I’d just lost it?
And a deeper part of me asked,
How can you think about Ben and writing and books when your dad is dead?
I thought about them because if I thought too much about Dad, that stone in my stomach would weigh me down to the center of the earth, and I’d never crawl out again.
So I sipped on my battery fuel and trained my mind on the thing in front of me—namely, Ben.
The main thoroughfare of the town was already filled with people walking to work, and moms pushing their strollers, and high schoolers playing hooky from school. There was a couple sitting in the gazebo, setting up two cellos, and a man in a business suit reading a newspaper on one of the benches in the green. On the other bench sat a man no one else could see. He was leaning back, his arms folded tightly over his chest, his face turned up toward the sun. Every time I saw him, he looked a little less put together. A button was undone on his shirt, or his shirtsleeves were rolled up, or his hair had fallen out of its gel. This morning it was a little of all three.
I tried not to linger too much on his forearms. He had a tattoo on the underside of his right arm, halfway up toward the elbow, though his arms were folded so I couldn’t see the whole thing. Though I really wouldn’t mind. Some people were shoulder people, some people were back people, some people were butt people—
I, for all intents and purposes, was a forearm kind of girl.
As I watched him, he cracked open an eye to look at me. “You’re late.”
I checked my phone. “By ten minutes!”
“Ten minutes is still late,” he replied, and sat up straight. I joined him on the bench and took another sip of coffee. The grains of sugar crunched between my teeth. He eyed the cup. “I miss coffee.”
“Connoisseur or lifeblood?”
“I liked the notes in some very limited roasts that I procured from—”
“Connoisseur, right. You’d hate this stuff, then. Definitely motor oil and sugar.”
He wrinkled his noise. “That sounds disgusting.”
“I drink the battery acid juice so I can go zoom-zoom,” I replied. “Okay so—why are we here? How is this going to help me? I’m wasting time. If I’m not writing, I should be helping my family with the funeral arrangements—”
“This isn’t a waste of time. Put your zoom-zoom juice down, take a deep breath, and trust me, yeah?”
I eyed him. “I’m keeping my zoom-zoom juice.”
He let out a laugh, said, “Fine, fine,” and motioned out toward the center of town. The man sitting on the opposite bench reading the paper. The mothers rolling their strollers to brunch. The kids playing hooky from school. The mayor taking a leak on a fire hydrant. (Hell yeah, stick it to the man, Mayor Fetch!) “This is a trick I learned—just sit and watch people. Set their scene. Imagine who’d they’d be.”
“Really?” I deadpanned. “This is stupid.” I began to get up, when he cleared his throat. I sat back down with a huff. “Do I have to?”
He raised a single thick eyebrow. I hated it. It was so—so
perfect.
“Fine!” I threw my free hand into the air. “Show me the way, O great Jedi master.”
“Learn you shall, young Padawan.” Ben leaned toward me and nudged his chin toward a couple walking their Pomeranian. “They met on Tinder last week. One-night stand. But then they matched again the next night—and the
next
night—”
“Tinder does suck around here,” I agreed. “Not a lot of choices.”
“And on the fourth night, he called her up. Asked her on a date. They’ve been inseparable since.”
“And the dog?”
“A stray—kept following them around everywhere. So, they decided to adopt it. Together.”
I looked at him, baffled. “Wow, you’re so
wholesome
.”
“I know, isn’t it charming?”
“It’s annoying,” I replied. “It’s like you walked out of a Hallmark movie.”
He pursed his lips into a thin line. “Fine,” he replied, and motioned between the two of us, “then set this scene.”
“You mean between you and me.”
“Perfect dynamic. A refined editor and his chaotic gremlin of an author.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Call this practice—a warm-up. What kind of scene would we be?”
“The kind that doesn’t happen.”
“And yet here we are.” He cocked his head. “You write for Ann Nichols, for god’s sake. Your imagination has been praised as ‘illuminating’ and ‘masterful’—and I’m confident that it still is. So please”—he shifted on the bench to angle toward me—“give me a scene.”
“Well . . . we’re two people. On a bench.”
“A refined editor and a chaotic author,” he reminded me.
“But the editor isn’t nearly as
refined
as he thinks he is.”
“Ouch.”
“And the author is tired. And maybe she was never good at writing to begin with. Maybe she never really understood romance. Maybe she’s not cut out for love stories—”
He leaned in close to me—so close that if he were alive, I would be able to smell the cologne he wore, the toothpaste he brushed with, the shampoo he used—and he said in a low voice, “Or maybe she just needs someone to show her that she is.”
The tips of my ears began to heat up. They were turning red.
I
was turning red.
Stupid Florence. He’s a ghost
. He knew he was. And he was professional, goddamn it, and orderly, and very straitlaced. The thought of throwing me onto the bed and ripping off my clothes probably hadn’t even crossed his mind—not once.
Not that it’d crossed
mine
, either, but . . .
Damn it
, I was in trouble.
Then he lifted his eyes a bit beyond me. His eyebrows furrowed. “Is—is that your
sister
?”
“My what?”
The sound of an engine revved behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder in time to watch Alice peel out of a side alley on Dad’s motorcycle, and disappear down the street. Well, I guessed it was fixed now.
And the noise brought me back to my senses.
This was bad—this scene, this moment, this tightness in my chest—
“I—I need to go run some errands,” I said, standing, and quickly left the town square. When I was well and truly out of earshot, I glanced back and he was still there, lounging back on the bench. Then a car passed between us—
And he was gone.