The Dead Romantics (14)

I could feel it in my bones.

I just wanted to talk to him, to breathe in his words, to understand what made his brilliant mind tick.

I was, as the French say, une putain d’idiote.

“Florence Day.” I took his hand.

And that was how I, the girl perpetually used as the backup date, who would rather hide in a burrito of blankets and watch trashy reality TV on a Friday night, began to date one of the hottest men I had ever met in my entire life.

But as I got to know him, as the dates turned into months, turned into anniversaries and sweet kisses, I thought it was the kind of love story worthy of my family’s legacy. A romance novel in the real world. It had the perfect meet-cute, the most charming love interest, and the most beautiful setting—a brownstone in Park Slope with a rooftop garden where I would sneak out and write chapters upon chapters of whimsical words.

Sometimes he would find me up in the garden and ask in that smooth tenor of his, “What’re you doing up here, bunny?”

And I’d close my laptop or my journal or whatever I was using to write that evening, and smile at him, and say, “Oh, just thinking up stories.”

“What kinds of stories?” He’d sit down on the bench beside me, between a busy azalea and a pot of curling devil’s ivy. “I hope they’re naughty,” he said as he burrowed his face into my hair and kissed the side of my neck at the tenderest spot.

It always made me shiver.

“Very,” I’d laugh.

“I could take a peek. Make them better.”

“Bold of you to assume they aren’t already perfect.”

He laughed into my hair and murmured, “Nothing’s perfect, bunny,” and kissed me so softly, I would’ve called him a liar if my lips weren’t preoccupied, because this was damn near perfect. The way the evening light crept over the rooftop, orange and golden and dreamy, and how his fingers were gentle as he cupped the sides of my face.

This was perfect. He was perfect.

Even so, I kept my ghostwriting secret.

There was never a right time to tell him, I felt, because every time a book he edited hit the list, I had been on there for a few weeks more. It felt like lying, even though I had signed NDAs and bundled myself in cautionary tape.

And so, because of that, I told him everything else. I laid my heart bare to him because I wanted to make up for the one secret in my life I didn’t know how to vocalize. I told him all of my other secrets, and my nightmares, and finally—after a year of kisses and dates and promises we always intended to keep—as we sat on the couch watching Portals to Hell, I confessed, “They don’t really like people yelling at them to appear.”

“Hmm?” He looked up from a book he was reading, his glasses perched low on his nose. Years later, I realized he didn’t actually need them—a small lie, being built on. “What was that, bunny?”

“The ghosts. They really don’t like it when people yell.” I was half a bottle of pinot grigio into the night, so I was a little braver than usual. I’d never talked about ghosts with anyone other than my father and Rose, and I thought—stupidly—that if I exchanged one for the other, my secret ghostwriting with a story of actual ghosts, it would make up for it.

He gave me a strange look over his black-framed glasses. “Ghosts? Like the haunting kind?”

I nodded, swirling my wine around in my glass. “Dad and I’ve danced with them in the funeral parlor.”

“Florence,” he chided.

“Most of them just want to talk, you know, to have someone listen. It’s not as creepy as it looks in the movies. I wasn’t always able to see them, but it started when I was eight? Nine? Somewhere in there.”

He took off his glasses and turned to me on the couch. “You . . . you’re saying you saw ghosts? Like actual spirits. The”—he wiggled his fingers in the air—“wooooo kind?”

“I see ghosts. Present tense.”

“Like—right now?”

“No. Not now. Sometimes. I don’t talk to them anymore. I haven’t since I left home—”

He was chewing on the inside of his cheek, as if to keep himself from laughing, and I felt my heart sink then. Some things you just couldn’t tell even the people you loved the most. Some things no one would ever understand. Could never understand. And Lee was giving me the look I’d seen every day in high school, that pitying look, verging on curious, wondering if I was crazy.

I grinned then, and kissed him on the mouth. “Ha, what do you think of my story?” I asked, shoving down the part of me that began to fracture. The part I could never—would never—share with anyone again. “It’s a book I’m working on.”

More lies. But close to the truth. Truer than I’d ever been with anyone outside of Mairmont. But somehow, it still made me feel ashamed. And alone. I drained the rest of my glass and started to get off the couch, but he took me by the wrist and pulled me back down onto the cushions again.

“Wait, bunny. It’s really interesting.” And then, very softly, he asked, “Tell me more?”

I paused. “Really?”

“Absolutely. If this story means something to you, I want to listen.”

Always the perfect words at the perfect time. He was good at that. He knew how to make you feel important and cherished.