The Dead Romantics (78)

30





Strange Bedfellows


MORNING LIGHT POURED in between the violet curtains as I woke up, and I rolled over to check my phone. Eight thirty. Thursday, April 13. Today was my dad’s funeral. I hugged a pillow tightly to my chest, and buried my face into it—when I remembered Ben.

He was lying beside me, eyes closed, still as stone. Ghosts didn’t breathe, and they didn’t sleep, either, but there were the beginnings of dark circles under his eyes. There was a bit of stubble on his cheeks, too, and I thoughtlessly reached to touch it when he opened his eyes.

I retracted my hand quickly. A blush crept up my face. “You’re awake—sorry. Of course you are, you don’t sleep. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he replied softly. “Sleep well?”

I nodded, and hugged the pillow to my chest tighter. “I don’t want to go today.”

“I know. I’ll be there.”

“Promise?”

He nodded. “Though I don’t know how much it’ll help.”

“More than you think,” I replied, pressing my mouth into the pillow, my words muffled. He looked doubtful, so I pushed the pillow down and added, “I don’t feel so sharp or raw with you around. I feel . . . okay. I haven’t felt that in so long—like I don’t need to put on any masks for you. I don’t have to pretend to be cool or cute or—or normal.”

His eyes softened. “I like being around you, too.”

“Because I’m the only one who can see you.”

“Yes,” he replied, and my heart began to sink into my chest, until he added, “but not because I’m a ghost, Florence.” Then he reached to brush a strand of hair out of my face. When his fingertips passed through my cheek, it felt like a bloom of cold. I shivered—I couldn’t help myself. He retracted his hand, his lips pursed together. “I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I haven’t finished that manuscript. I don’t know when I will. I—I feel like I just keep failing you.”

“There’s more to life than work, and you are grieving for your dad right now. Asking you to do that . . . no. I don’t expect you to kill yourself trying to finish it.”

“Says the workaholic.”

“I wish I wasn’t. I wish I’d taken a vacation—done something.” He rolled onto his back, and stared at the popcorn ceiling. He swallowed hard, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in trepidation. “I wish . . . I had closed my office door after you walked in and kissed you until you saw stars.”

I let out a squeak. “You do not!”

“Oh yes I do,” he replied. “I would’ve asked first.”

I could imagine that, in some alternate timeline. Where he stood, and shut the door behind me, and knelt down beside where I sat, clutching a cactus, and asked me in this exact soft, growling voice—“May I kiss you, Florence Day?”

And I would’ve said yes.

I shook my head fervently. “No—no way. I—I had unwashed hair! And I wore my Goodwill tweed coat! And my scarf had coffee stains on it!”

“And you were sexy as hell. But you couldn’t meet my gaze,” he said with a laugh. “I thought you hated me.”

“Hated you? Ben.” I pushed myself up onto my elbow to look him in the eyes, and said very seriously, “I wanted to climb you.”

He barked a laugh, loud and bright. “Climb me!”

“Like a goddamn tree,” I moaned regretfully. Let me die of mortification here, I thought. At least then I wouldn’t have to attend the graveside service today. “I couldn’t look at you because I was having a minor crisis in my head over you. I mean—here you were, this gorgeous new editor, and I had to do the one thing that no author in the history of books wants to do: admit that I hadn’t finished the novel.”

“To be fair, I did know that the ghostwriter would be coming to meet me,” he pointed out as I rolled over to the edge of the bed and pushed myself to sit up. He followed me with his eyes as I went over to my suitcase and began digging through it for today’s clothes. “A woman named Florence Day.”

“And there I was showing up with a cactus.”

“Which you promptly told me to stick up my ass, basically, when you left.”

“I know, I feel bad about that. It was a good cactus.” I cocked my head. “I don’t remember you at many publishing functions, though. Didn’t you go to any?”

“Not many, but I did go to the publisher of Faux’s party for the release of Dante’s Motorbike.”

I picked my dress out of the suitcase and froze. “Wait—a few years ago?”

“Yeah. You had on those heels with the red bottoms? You couldn’t walk in them to save your life.”

“Louboutins,” I corrected absently, hanging the outfit over me as I judged whether I needed tights or knee-highs, but my mind was years away—back in that cramped private library, feet throbbing from those shoes. “You were there? That was the party where I met . . .”

Lee.

He nodded at the unspoken name, his hand absently going to the ring around his neck. He rubbed at it thoughtfully. “You were in the library and I can’t remember how many times I told myself to just go over there. To talk to you. This stranger whose name I didn’t even know.”