37. The Dead Romantics
37
The Dead Romantics
I REMEMBERED THIS walk three months ago. I remembered how terrified I was, how I hoped whoever this new editor was would give me a little slack. I did end up getting the extra time I needed, but it didn’t quite go the way I had planned. I passed meeting rooms separated by foggy glass, and assistant editors and marketers and publicists working diligently to make the machine that was publishing run.
It really was a miracle that anything came out on time. Well, a miracle and way too much caffeine.
At the end of the hallway, Ben’s office door was open like Erin said it would be, and there he sat as if he’d always been there. As if he hadn’t been a spectator during the worst week of my life. His hair was a little longer and wavy, not gelled back like the last time I’d met him, and curling gently against his ears. His sleeves were rolled up, and the slightest hint of his father’s golden wedding ring peeked out from beneath his collar. There was a shallow scar running slantwise across his left cheek, still a little red and tender, but
healing. He wore large thick-framed glasses, though they didn’t seem to help him see any better because he was still squinting at something on his computer screen, a pen hanging out of his mouth.
It was a snapshot of his life. I wanted to take a photo of it, memorize how the door framed him in a perfect setting, the window behind him with midday light flooding gold into his office.
I steeled myself—and my heart.
Even if he didn’t remember me, it was okay. It was going to be okay—
I
was going to be okay.
I rapped my knuckles against the doorway.
He gave a start at the noise. The pen dropped from his mouth, but he caught it and shoved it in an accessory drawer in his desk. “Miss Day!” he greeted in surprise, and quickly stood to welcome me in, knocking his long legs on the underside of his desk. He winced at the pain. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
He held out a hand over his desk, and I took it. His was warm and calloused and I thought I had prepped myself for this sort of meeting, but at that moment I realized how woefully underprepared I actually was. Because he was
alive
. When so long he had been a specter that faded in and out of my life, first a ghost and then a memory and now—
Now he was standing in front of me and no matter whether he remembered me or not, he was here. The feeling of his hand in mine made me happy in a strange and comforting way.
And that sort of happiness, even bittersweet, made my heart so full it might just burst.
I squeezed his hand tightly. “Thank you for fitting me into your schedule,” I replied, smiling. “I’ve got to get to Newark, so I won’t be staying long.”
“Going somewhere?”
“Home!” I replied happily. “My brother’s getting married this weekend.”
“Congratulations! Well, then by all means, let’s get to it. Please, sit,” he said, and motioned toward the IKEA chair facing his desk, and I sank down into it. The last time I was here, I had all but begged him for another deadline extension. I had even argued that
love was dead
in order to write a different genre. Nothing worked.
The Swell of Endless Music
would have been a damn good revenge fantasy.
But it was a better romance.
To my surprise, he had kept my apology cactus. It was sitting on his desk beside his monitor, and it was still alive. He’d made room for it, on his tidy desk where everything had its place.
I had changed so much in these last few months, and I wondered how much he’d unknowingly changed. If somewhere deep down beneath his flesh and bones there was an echo of moonlit walks in graveyards and screaming in the rain and dandelion fields and funerals.
Or were they my secrets now? I held them close either way, though not as close as I held my purse right about then.
“So, Miss Day—”
“Florence, please,” I corrected, tearing my eyes away from the cactus.
“Florence, then. Sorry,” he added. “I was just rereading Ann’s manuscript when you walked in and compiling some final notes for her. We’ll probably do a small round of edits and send it off to copyedits—it’s really quite solid already.”
“See what Ann could do with a few more months?” I joked, tongue in cheek.
He smiled softly. “You were right. And the title?
The Swell of Endless Music
is so lyrical and soft. It’s great. I think we might use
it—where’s my manners? Would you like something to drink? I’m sure the break room has tea or burnt coffee, if you’d prefer that?”
“Battery acid at noon? Oof, I’ll have to pass.”
He grinned. “Might be for the best. Your zoom-zoom juice might backfire on the flight.”
I gave a start. “My what?”
“Oh—um, your coffee,” he corrected himself, his ears turning red with embarrassment.
We sat for an awkwardly quiet moment.
Then he cleared his throat. The redness of his ears was inching down toward his cheeks now, and he checked his watch. “Anyway, there’s a reason you wanted to meet with me?”
Yes, but I didn’t want to leave after this, and go on about my life. I wanted to stay in this uncomfortable chair as long as humanly possible, because I knew when I left, I would never be coming back again.
Dad once told me that all good things came to an end, eventually.
Even this.
I opened my purse and took out a book-shaped present wrapped in brown paper. “I wanted you to have this. As a thanks. Or—I don’t know—a get-well present? I was thinking about getting you a card, but it just felt weird to write, ‘Glad You’re Not Dead!’ on it, you know?”
He laughed—
actually
laughed. It was deep and rumbly. “Apparently, I was pretty close to dead for a few days. I dreamed that I was.”
My throat began to constrict. “Well, good thing it was just a dream.”
“It felt real enough,” he replied, accepting the gift. He opened it very meticulously, one edge at a time, barely tearing the paper. His eyebrows furrowed when he finally unwrapped it and read the title. Books didn’t always find success, but they found where they
needed to go, like Dad had said. Ben flipped open the book to the title page and ran his fingers along the black Sharpie I used to sign it. I’d only signed a handful of books before, so I didn’t really have a signature or a certain way to sign. It was just my name, plain and simple, next to his.
He was quiet for a long moment, too long.
Oh god, had I become the weirdo who gave him a cactus
and
a book now? This was a terrible idea. I knew it was from the beginning. I was going to put googly eyes on
all
of Rose’s vibrators for
ever
suggesting this.
“Oh, look at the time!” I gathered my things and quickly popped to my feet. “I really have to go. Hope you enjoy the book, you know, assuming you haven’t read it, because why would I assume you’ve read it, right? No one’s read that book and, um, it’s definitely a different Florence Day and—”
“Florence,” he whispered, his voice cracking, but I was already at the door. “Wait—
Florence
—please. Wait.”
I stopped in the doorway, and steeled myself with a breath, and turned to face him. He was staring at me strangely. Then he was on his feet, brown eyes wide, and the way he looked at me, I could have been the ghost.
Maybe I was.
“What would this scene be like?” I began, hope making my chest hurt, knotted tight. I might’ve just been that weird girl who gave him a cactus and a book, but maybe—just maybe—I was
more
. “A refined editor from a prestigious romance imprint and—”
“A chaotic ghostwriter who takes graveyard walks at midnight and shouts in the rain and unironically orders rum and Cokes and bites her thumbnail when she thinks no one’s looking.”
“I do not,” I lied, my voice cracking, as he stepped closer still, and suddenly he was in front of me, and cupped my face in his hands, the
recognition in his eyes blooming like dandelions, and the ache in my chest turned into something warm and bright and golden.
“I knew you once,” he said so ardently, it made my heart flutter.
“I think you still do,” I whispered, and he bent and pressed his lips to mine. They were warm and soft, and tasted vaguely of ChapStick, and I wanted to savor it. Because he remembered me. He
remembered
me. And I just wanted to kiss him forever, because he smelled like fresh laundry and spearmint gum and his hands were so warm cupping my face and he was
kissing me
. Benji Andor was kissing me. I was so happy I could die.
Metaphorically.
“It wasn’t a dream,” he whispered against my lips.
I shook my head, and my heart was beating so bright I could barely stand it. “I’m one hundred percent real. I think. But . . . maybe kiss me again to see if I’m actually here?”
He laughed, deep and humming, and kissed me again in the quiet corner office of Falcon House Publishers. “I’m sorry I made you wait. I’m sorry I didn’t realize.”
“Wait, wait.” I eased away from him a little, thinking. “Does this mean I’m
literally
the girl of your dreams?”
He scrunched his nose. “Wouldn’t that be a bit cliché?”
“You’re right, you’d probably flag it for being too unrealistic.”
“Especially considering one of us thinks love is dead,” he agreed.
“Okay, to be fair, you
were
mostly dead.” I ran my fingers across his face, his stubbly jaw and red scar, and twined into his raven-soft hair. “But you aren’t anymore, and I was wrong.”
“I’m glad you were,” he agreed, and bent his head down to kiss me again. His stubble brushed across my cheek, rough and real, and I wanted to drink all six-foot-whatever of him in like one of those stupidly large cowboy-boot beer glasses at roadside bars. Then he anchored my head and kissed me deeper, and for a moment I knew
I was still in Falcon House Publishers, but I felt like I was shooting through the stars, infinite, with my heart beating brightly.
Until my starry-eyed ass came back to earth like Armageddon. “Oh—oh god,” I gasped, pulling away. “What about Laura?”
He snapped his eyes open and gave me a strange look. “
Laura?
She just wanted my Nora Roberts books if I kicked it, I assure you.”
I unwound with relief. “That must be one hell of a collection.”
He chuckled. “I’m proud of it. Do you want to get dinner tonight?”
“I would love t—” I froze, remembering myself. “Oh—oh
shit
, what time is it?”
Ben glanced at the analogue clock on his desk. “Almost twelve thirty—wait, didn’t you say you had a flight?”
“Definitely. At three, and if I miss that flight, Alice is going to
kill
me, so I can’t do dinner tonight because I’ll be in Mairmont but I—”
I didn’t want to say no. I didn’t want to leave. And then I found myself thinking about what came next. Dates, and movies, and holidays, years passing in a single blink. He’d keep his hair floppy, and I’d cut mine short, and we’d be somewhere else in the story, or maybe secondary characters in someone else’s. And I thought about years after that, when he’d gotten used to my chaos and I his caution and the world was a little blurry. I didn’t know where we would be, or if he would get tired of me, or if I would break his heart—
But I thought—I thought I wanted to find out.
I said, “Come home with me.”
He didn’t even think. He didn’t weigh any odds. He didn’t pause to find his words. They were there, as sure and certain as his smile. “Can we swing by my apartment first on the way to the airport?” he asked.
“Only if I can meet Dolly Purrton.”
“She’d love that,” he assured, and kissed me again.