36. Lovely Meeting
36
Lovely Meeting
Amelia Brown stood in the rain, and she knew she didn’t want to be alone.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, and he met her gaze and held it. His eyes were the deep blue of a summer sky back home, and however angry or sad she was at him, she still found herself yearning for those skies whenever she looked into his eyes. “I was a shit, and I shouldn’t have lied to you about Miranda—it just hurt. And I thought if I just forgot about her, the pain would go away. But I was wrong. And instead, I hurt you in the process. I was afraid.”
“Of what?” she asked, making herself stand her ground. In the dim lights from the house behind her, he looked like a specter from her dreams. Come to haunt her. She had wanted him to return, but she didn’t think he would. “Did you think I’d use your past for a little money and fame?”
“Didn’t you try?”
She winced. “I never sent in that article. I couldn’t.” Because she had realized over quiet dinners at the kitchenette and saving dogs and running from paparazzi—she realized she didn’t want that. She didn’t want a loud life.
She just wanted a good one.
He said, “I know. Thank you.”
She hugged herself tighter. “We’re even, then.”
“You rented the house for another week, I hear.”
“I love the weather,” she replied, shivering in the cold.
“It’s quite good. Would you . . . want the company of a messed-up, burned-out musician?”
She cocked her head. “Depends. Is the guitar included?” She motioned to the guitar slung on his back.
“I was going to serenade you if you wouldn’t listen,” he admitted a little sheepishly, and wiped his eyes. He was crying, though he’d tell her it was the rain.
She took a step toward him, and they were close enough that all she had to do was reach out her hands and take his, and pull him into the warmth of her house on the Isle of Ingary. “What would you play?”
He reached out slowly, softly, and took her hands in his. “Don’t worry,” he replied, “it would be a song with only the good notes.”
I wrote. And I wrote. For three months, as April turned to May, turned to June and into July, I polished and I edited and I cleaned the draft as I sat in front of a fan and drank sweet tea and fell in
love over and over with Amelia and Jackson and their magical Isle of Ingary. I checked my texts, though they were mostly from Rose checking in on me, and Carver asking about plans to propose to Nicki, and even Alice a few times! Though whenever she texted it was mostly about Rose.
I could see that trouble coming from a mile away. My best friend and my little sister? God help me.
I ate takeout Thai from the restaurant down the block and went to bed too late and woke up at noon to fix myself a pot of coffee I would take one sip of before abandoning it as I fell into the story again.
I hadn’t written like this in years, not since I first began writing for Ann.
It felt like everything over the last year, all of my pent-up frustrations, all of my failures, all of my wants and hopes and dreams, they all came tumbling out of me. On the page I could make sense of all of them, mold them into a beginning, a middle, and an end—because all good love stories ended.
And then, just like that, I was no longer in the dark night. I was stepping out into the daylight, into the happily ever after, and it felt good and whole and bright.
And something to be proud of.
One evening, Carver called to tell me, “He said yes,” on a video chat with Nicki, showing both of their golden engagement bands. “And we’re gonna have the wedding in a few weeks at the funeral home. I figured since Alice
basically
owns it now, she could bump a wake or two and give us a family discount. Bruno is officiating.”
“Elvistoo?” I asked, surprised. “I didn’t know he did weddings, too.”
Three weeks later, on the hottest day of July on record, I finished the last book I would ever write for Ann Nichols.
And it was good.
I sent the novel attached in an email to Molly, who then forwarded it to Ben’s new assistant editor, Tamara, the one who had done a lot of the heavy lifting while he was away on medical leave. Tamara knew I was Ann’s ghostwriter, too. I wasn’t expecting to hear back. It had been three months, and if Ben remembered me, if he
missed
me, then he would’ve found me. He knew how.
A few minutes later, Molly called. And offered me representation.
“I know your work is good, and since the contract is over, I thought I’d poach you before anyone else got you,” she said frankly. “So, what do you say?”
I told her I’d think about it, just to make her sweat a little for keeping Ann’s death (albeit a secret) from me. Molly was one of the best agents in the business, and I liked working with her, so it was a
no-brainer
, but you know, I had time to sit and think on it, since I wasn’t sure
what
I wanted to do next.
I’d just finished a book, after all.
Was Ben going to love it? No, I already knew he would. He was going to love it because for a few days during a chilly spring in Mairmont, he loved
me
, and like Jackson singing a song with only good notes for Amelia, the book was filled with only the good parts of us.
That evening, instead of takeout, I decided to make some celebratory mac and cheese while Rose stopped by the discount liquor store to get our favorite pineapple wine on her way home. My phone dinged as I was draining the noodles. An email.
I looked at who it was—
And my heart slammed against the bony cage of my chest. I almost dropped my phone into the hot noodles.
The email was from Ben.
Miss Day,
It was a pleasure working with you. I wish you all the best on your future endeavors.
Best,
Benji Andor
And that was all it said.
For the next four hours, I paced the apartment trying to decode every secret message within those twenty-two words with Rose and a bottle of pineapple Riesling.
“We didn’t even work together!” I cried, carving a hole in the hardwood floors the faster I paced. “What does he
mean
?”
Does he remember?
No—he couldn’t. If he did, then he would have contacted me so much sooner than this. That couldn’t be it.
Rose watched me pace from her perch in the middle of the couch, sipping on her wine. “Perhaps it was just a polite email?”
“I didn’t even get one of those from
my
old editor.”
“You should respond.”
I stopped pacing. “
What?
”
She took another large gulp. “Tell him you’d like to meet, and then finish up your unfinished business.”
“I don’t
have
any—”
“Florence.”
“Rose.”
“I love you, but you do.”
“I love you, too, but you just expect me to waltz into his office and—and tell him what? That I’m a chaotic mess? Seven drunk ferrets in a trench coat?”
In reply, Rose forcibly set down her wineglass onto the coffee
table and reached behind her on the couch to our bookcases. She grabbed one and presented it to me. “Sign, seal, deliver.”
I stared down at my own book,
Ardently Yours
. The book that Ben said was his favorite in the whole world. And I let out a very long sigh. “Remember your last idea involving Ben?”
She shrugged. “You got to punch Lee, didn’t you?”
She had a point.
So, the next morning, while I nursed a hangover and ate congealed oatmeal, I wrote a reply email.
Mr. Andor,
It was a pleasure. Though I do have something for you. Do you think we could set up a meeting?
Sincerely,
Florence Day
Miss Day,
Would this Friday work, at noon?
Best,
Benji
Mr. Andor,
Noon would be lovely.
With all my best,
Florence
And that was that.
I second-guessed my email the entire week. Was
lovely
too strong a word? Should I have signed it Miss Day? Should I have addressed him as Benji instead of Mr. Andor? Rose told me that Wednesday that if I spiraled any more, I’d drill myself to the center of the earth.
So I tried to spiral more
quietly
.
I think I might’ve had a full-on panic attack if it weren’t for having to finalize plans for Carver and Nicki’s wedding that weekend. Right after the meeting with Ben on Friday, I was to take a taxi to Newark and hop on a plane home for their wedding on Saturday. Friday was the rehearsal dinner and bachelor parties, and as the big sister who did absolutely
nothing
to help with the wedding while I was in the deadline trenches, I had to at least show up for those. I reserved my room at the inn (to John and Dana’s pure ecstatic joy), and walked Mom through the whiplash of “I’m so happy!” and “My baby’s all grown up and leaving the mortuary!”
and
I managed to talk Rose into coming with me purely because I was the best eldest sister in the entire world and I knew for a fact that Alice would
never
ask her. She was bold at doing absolutely everything, except when it came to her own happiness.
I guess it ran in the family.
So I gave myself a little leniency when I realized that I hadn’t brought any sort of
WELCOME BACK!
or
GLAD YOU LIVED!
card to go with Ben’s gift until I was already in the elevator going up to Falcon House Publishers. I bounced on my heels, quite unable to stop moving.
“Beautiful day,” I commented to a man sweating through his Armani suit. He grunted and patted his forehead.
It was summer in the city, and the men in the elevator looked like they were about to sweat to death in their ironed business suits, the women in flouncy skirts and kitten heels.
And I was in what I felt best in, an oversized blouse and straight-leg jeans with a hole in the left knee, and red Converses. I didn’t look like I fit in here, but looks were deceiving, and best of all?
I didn’t really care anymore. It didn’t matter. What mattered was where I was going.
I wasn’t scared of the looming floor number that we rose to meet. Executive editor Benji Andor had been back in the office for a little less than a month, though I was beginning to suspect he had done more than a little work from home before that. He apparently still had a lot of catching up to do, from what Erin told Rose. Then again, when did editors
not
have a lot of catch-up work to do? As long as I’d known Lee, he’d been
majestically
behind on every deadline. But I had a feeling that, unlike Lee, Ben actually wanted to catch up—but then why would he agree to entertain a meeting with me?
I was nervous. What if he thought I was some sort of weirdo who wanted to give him his favorite book? Couldn’t be any worse than a weirdo giving him a cactus, I guessed.
Because it
had
been three months, and I wasn’t going to lie, quite a few of those nights I spent drowning in a bottle of wine, wondering what happened with Laura. Wondering if she stayed. If he wanted her to. If they decided to try anew.
I was alone by the time the elevator stopped at the floor for Falcon House Publishers, and I stepped out into the clean white lobby. The glass-cased bookshelves looked exactly the same. Ann Nichols’s bestsellers sat on a shelf all to themselves, and the glass
reflected me, freckled cheeks and dry lips and messy blond hair pinned up into twin buns.
Erin was reading a book as I came up to the front desk, but she quickly put a sticky note on the page and closed it.
When the Dead Sing
by Lee Marlow.
It came out this week.
“Florence! Good morning!” Erin greeted. “How’s Rose? Is she alive?”
“You two
really
need to stop going to that wine bar,” I replied, remembering Rose stumbling into the apartment last night and immediately passing out on the soft shag rug in the living room.
Erin gave a pout. “But they have
such
a good cheese plate.”
Rose wasn’t going to work today; she’d already caught her flight to Charlotte, where Alice would pick her up to drive to Mairmont. After this meeting, I’d be on my way, too. I asked if I could stash my suitcase behind Erin’s desk, and she happily agreed. “I’ll ring Benji and tell him you’re here.”
“That’d be great, thanks.”
As Erin called Ben’s office phone, I leaned against the front desk to get a better look at Lee Marlow’s novel. The cover was decent, I guessed. A bit too much like
The Woman in the Window
for my liking. It wasn’t as if I could
forget
that Lee’s book came out this week. It had been everywhere in the city—on subway ads, in magazines, an entire article in the Sunday edition of the
New York Times
, and even in my favorite indie bookstore. It wasn’t something I could quite escape, but I no longer felt under the shadow of it, either.
Lee ended up
not
filing a police report after I’d punched him at the hospital. Probably for the best, because I had secrets that
could make his life very uncomfortable for a while, and he didn’t need that sort of bad press before the release of his instant bestseller.
After a moment, Erin hung up the phone and said, “That’s odd, he didn’t answer, but he should be in his office. You can head back there, if you want. His door should be open.”
So took a deep breath, and I went.