The Dead Romantics (66)
I could feel Ben staring at the back of my head at that comment.
Heather asked me with a fixed smile, “What was that one book you wrote, Florence? We’d love to read it for our book club next month.”
I returned the smile, and it was a real one. “Seaburn said you already read it when it came out.”
“Oh? Must’ve forgotten . . .”
I was sure she hadn’t. I took a deep breath. Wrestled my emotions under control. I was an adult, and I wasn’t running anymore. “I know you don’t like me, Heather, and I know it was you who spread those rumors about me in high school—that I was crazy or a devil worshipper or whatever.”
She went rigid and darted her gaze around the rest of the book club. A few of them went to high school with us. They knew. The others had a passing, vague recollection of what happened. It was a small town, after all. “It was hardly just me. It was Bradley and TJ and—”
“I forgive you.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“And I forgive me, too,” I went on. “I was so wrapped up in what everyone else thought of me I didn’t recognize that I actually did something good.”
“You found a body, Florence,” she said dismissively, rolling her eyes. “It wasn’t like you solved the case of what’s his name—”
“Harry. His name was Harry O’Neal.” My mouth flattened into a thin line. “He was in our grade. He sat right behind you in math.”
She narrowed her eyes. Did she remember? Probably not. She probably hadn’t thought about the boy murdered on the Ridge in fifteen years.
“The thing is, Heather,” I went on, “I believe people. Even if it’s weird, even if it doesn’t make sense, I want to believe them. I want to see the good in them. I give my heart to everyone I meet and I put it in everything I do. And sometimes it hurts—often it hurts, actually . . .” And I glanced back to Ben, wishing I had taken that moment on the porch and trapped it in a jar. “I can’t ever control how someone else treats me, but I can control how I choose to live and how I choose to treat others. And I’d worried about what other people thought and what other people wanted from me for years because I actually thought it mattered.” My eyebrows furrowed as I realized that I wasn’t just talking about Heather now, but Lee, too. People who had taken what they wanted from me, twisted my good intentions, and turned them into something sour.
“Florence, I don’t know where this is coming from,” Heather said, feigning shock, but the rest of the book club was quiet. Some had opened their books; others were scrolling through their phones. I didn’t know what they thought of me, but I realized I didn’t give a single fuck.
“So I forgive you,” I said to her, “because you don’t understand, and I’m not going to explain it to you. He liked you, though. Harry. Right up until the end.” Then I stood and took one of the cookies from the coffee table, and bit into it. “Have fun, y’all,” I added, and left the lounge area.
Dana gave me a weathered salute as I climbed the stairs and mouthed, “Holy shit.”
Holy shit indeed. I didn’t let myself pause until I was almost at the top of the stairs. My hands were shaking.
I let out a solid breath and dug around in my satchel for my room key.
Ben came up the stairs behind me. “Harry? He’s the boy you helped?”
“Yeah. When I was thirteen, Harry—his ghost—came to me one evening like you did, but I didn’t think he was dead because, you know, I’d just seen him that day at school. But he was. We didn’t know why he was still around. He couldn’t remember how he died, either. So I . . . helped him find out.” I tried not to think about that year, the police investigation, the national news coverage, the rumors at school where people called me crazy at best, an accomplice at worst. “You know the rest.”
He said, a bit sadly, “You liked him.”
“I always have had to learn things the hard way.” I tried at a joke, but it fell a little flat.
He reached out, but then stopped himself and crossed his arms over his chest. His biceps strained his tailored shirt, not that I was looking. Because I wasn’t. Because he was so very off-limits.
The lock clicked and I shouldered the door open. “And anyway, thank you for tonight.”
“Sweet dreams,” he replied and pushed off the wall to leave.
A thought occurred to me as he made his way back down the hall. “Where do you go?” The question surprised him because he turned back around on his heels toward me. “I mean—ghosts don’t sleep, so . . .”
He shrugged. “I wander. Until I disappear, then I usually just come back somewhere near you.”
“And you still don’t know where you go?”
He shook his head.
“Well, you’re welcome to . . .”
Sit in my room, but that sounded weird. It was weird. For all I knew I was inviting him to stare at me while I slept á la Edward Cullen. He said he was a romantic, so it was really a coin toss on whether he’d be flattered to role-play Twilight or aghast that I’d remotely consider it. I shook my head and said, “Never mind. Have a good night, Ben.”
“You, too, Florence.”
I closed the door and pressed my back against it, because I felt my heart beating—so fast it felt like it wanted to jump right out of my chest. He had been so close to me, so close I noticed the thin scar under his right eyebrow, and the beauty mark above his lip, and the fine black hairs on his arms and—