The Dead Romantics (54)

“That’s going well.” This time it was not me who said it, but a voice to my side that made me jump. Ben sat on the stool next to me, leaning over just enough to read my screen.

I slammed my laptop shut, cheeks burning. “Rude!”

Dana leaned forward over the check-in counter to give me a puzzled look.

I smiled politely at them and said quieter to Ben, angling my face away from them, “It’s rude to look at someone else’s work.”

Especially when it’s as bad as mine.

He sat back with his arms crossed over his chest. “I have a feeling you are writing from a very raw place right now.”

“No shit,” I deadpanned. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

He visibly winced at that one, and looked a little ashamed of himself. “I thought you were working on your father’s obituary. I didn’t mean to spy on your writing.”

I narrowed my eyes.

He held up his hands in defeat. “I promise, darling, nothing more.”

Darling. A knot caught in my throat and I quickly looked away. I thought I hated all kinds of pet names. Dear, sweetie, honey, but I guessed I hated it when Lee called me bunny, because he said I looked like a startled rabbit when something caught me unawares. He said it was endearing.

It wasn’t.

But then why did the word darling get my heart racing?

“And,” he added, “I wanted to apologize for earlier. I snapped at you, and I had no right to.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I replied. “I had no right to judge you or your life when mine’s a mess. Clearly,” I added, motioning toward my laptop. “I’m so fucked up I can’t even write a kissing scene.”

He tilted his head, debating quietly. He was choosing his words. I liked that about him, that when words mattered, he thought about them before he said them. “It was . . . nice, actually, to have someone tell me it wasn’t my fault. Even if I don’t agree.”

“I hope you change your mind someday.”

He smiled a little sadly. “I don’t think it matters anymore.” Because he was dead. I opened my mouth to say something, to console him, to tell him it still did matter, when he said, “So, what has you stuck? Remember: I said I’d help if I could. I’d like to.”

He didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

I drained my rum and Coke. “Okay, so: Here’s my problem. I haven’t been able to write for about a year now. I don’t see the point anymore. I used to believe in love, but I really don’t now. Every time I try to imagine it, I can only think about how mine ended.”

“One relationship doesn’t—”

“One?” I shook my head with a soft laugh. “If it was one, Ben, I’d be lucky. Dad said I had a string of bad luck, but I don’t really think that anymore. Guys just . . . don’t want someone like me. Or maybe they do, but they just don’t want me.” My eyebrows furrowed as I stared at the condensation on my glass, but all I could see were the times I’d been dumped, broken up with, left outside in the cold April rain—literally. “Maybe I’m the problem.”

He pursed his lips together, not knowing what to say.

But the worst part?

Dana slid me a shot of something clear with a sad sort of nod and said, “I feel you, sister.”

And I realized that they thought I was talking to myself. Commiserating with myself. Throwing my own solo pity party. And what was a party without a shot or two?

“Thanks.” I threw back the shot of—oh god, vodka. Straight vodka. I set the glass down with a cringe and swooped my laptop into my satchel.

I needed to go for a walk. Get out of here. Do something—anything—else, because clearly writing wasn’t happening today. No kind of writing. At all. I used to write my way out of utter despair, but now I couldn’t even write myself out of a sex scene.

It was embarrassing.

But as I turned to leave, Ben was there.

I jumped.

“I didn’t even startle you!”

“It’s been a long day,” I said, fumbling for my phone. I gave Dana another pleasant nod on my way back up to my room, and Ben followed me like a vulture waiting to pick my carcass clean.

“I have an idea, if you’re willing,” he proposed when we were out of Dana’s earshot.

“Oh, this should be good.”

“It will be.”

I looked him up and down. He was such a conundrum. Too tall and too broad and too neatly organized, he didn’t fit into any of the boxes in my head reserved for leading man material. He was doggedly smart, and insistent, and somehow he always ended up being so very polite to me even when he was angry (and I began to tell when he was because a muscle in his jaw would twitch).

I unlocked the door to my room and motioned for him to go inside, and I closed the door after him, and pulled off my NYU pullover. While the night had gotten chilly, the heater in my room definitely worked well.

“Okay, shoot,” I said, turning to him. “Let’s throw all the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.”

He smiled, and there was a glint in his brown eyes that turned them almost ocher. “Meet me in the town square. Tomorrow at noon. Don’t be late.” Then he turned on his heels, and departed right through the closed door, and I was left in the quiet room, baffled and a little bit—okay, a lot—intrigued.