The Dead Romantics (31)

And I couldn’t believe I was doing this.

“Mr. Andor,” I said, because Benji or Ben sounded too informal, and I wanted to keep as much distance as I could. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not dead—”

I punched my fist straight through his chest.

“That tingles,” he murmured, frowning down at my fist that should’ve been massaging his heart in his chest if he were alive.

“See?” I pointed out. “Dead.”

“I can’t be. I don’t—I don’t feel dead.”

I removed my fist. Touching a ghost tingled for me, too. It felt cold, and a bit crackly—like my fingers had fallen asleep. “Not even inside? Not even a little?”

He ignored my very funny joke. “I can’t be dead because I don’t remember dying, thank you very much. And ghosts don’t exist. It’s scientifically proven.”

“Is it now.”

“Yes.”

“Then, buddy, I’m not sure what to tell you.”

We came to the roundabout in the middle of town. There was a green park in the middle with a white gazebo, and a man who looked like my old orchestra teacher on the steps practicing a rousing rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’?” on his cello. He was really tearing up the strings.

“If I’m dead,” Ben proposed smartly, “then how can you see me?”

What a question.

One that Lee Marlow never asked as I told him all of my ghost stories. He simply suspended his disbelief as I weaved my memories into his fiction. Did he ever find a reason for why I could see ghosts? Did his editor ask how? Did Lee finally have to make something by himself?

I didn’t know—and I didn’t want to know.

But leave it to an editor to ask the questions that burn into plot holes.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but what I do know, Ben, is that you’re dead. Very dead. Dead-as-a-doornail sort of dead. Ghost dead—”

He held up his hand to stop me, his other massaging the bridge of his nose. “Okay, okay, I get it. I just . . . I want to know why. And why you.”

“That makes two of us, then.” I crossed the street, back toward the bed-and-breakfast, and he followed slightly behind me with his long, leisurely legs. “The only thing I can think of is that manuscript—but if you’re dead, I don’t have to turn it in anymore.”

“Not that you had it finished to begin with,” he muttered.

I opened the wrought iron gate to the inn—and froze. “Wait . . .” I turned back to him. “You knew?”

“That you were Annie’s ghostwriter? Yes,” he replied, a bit perplexed. “I’m her editor—of course I knew. I just didn’t expect . . . well, it was a surprise when you walked in.”

I blinked. “Oh. Well then.”

“No, wait, that’s not what I meant—”

I whirled around and marched up the front walk to the veranda. “No, no, I definitely get what you meant. Me, the failure that I am.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me you ghostwrote for her?”

“Would it have changed anything?” I challenged, and he pursed his lips in reply. Looked away. Because I was right—it wouldn’t have changed anything. “See? It didn’t matter anyway. Whether I told you or not, you knew I was a failure.”

“That’s not what I think of you,” he stressed somberly.

I wanted to believe him. Wished I could. But I knew myself better than someone who had talked with me for thirty minutes and kissed me behind a hipster bar, and I knew exactly what I was—who I was.

A coward who ran away from the only home she ever knew. A gullible idiot who fell for guys who promised her the world. And a failure who couldn’t finish the one thing she was good at.

Suddenly, a strange look crossed his face. Confusion. Then curiosity. He cocked his head. “Do you hear th—?”

The next second he was gone, and I was left standing on the veranda alone.





12





Emotional Support


THE PHONE RANG four and a half times before Rose picked up.

“Oh thank god you called. I was beginning to worry the town swallowed you up,” she said. In the background, I could hear bathroom noises, and realized that she must’ve been . . . at work?

I checked my watch. “What’re you still doing at the office? Isn’t this your lunch?”

“And Saturday,” she said with a tragic sigh. “But ohmygod, I have some news—but first, I want to ask how you’re doing. How’s the family? Is everything . . . well, not fine because of course not, but is everything fine?”

“As fine as it can be.” I flopped onto the bed in the Violet Suite. It creaked loudly. I would’ve hated to be in one of the neighboring rooms if any honeymooners ever got this suite. The hinges needed some WD-40 and duct tape. “Alice is rearing for a fight, but I figured she would be. We haven’t really seen eye to eye in a few years.”

“Yeah, my money’s on Alice—no offense.”

“You haven’t even met her! And I’m your best friend!”

“Yes, and I love you, but you’re about as threatening as a chipmunk.”