The Dead Romantics (89)

“Good things don’t wait, and neither should you,” Mom had said.

Perhaps this wasn’t my grand romance, but this was my story, and whether I was the rule or the exception, I didn’t care. I just wanted to see him. I wanted to make sure he was okay.

Rose’s phone pinged with a few texts. Probably all from Alice. They had gone on a date last night to Bar None, and Rose hadn’t been able to shut up about my sister since. I loved it—and hated it. My chaotic best friend and my smart-ass younger sister? It was a recipe for trouble.

What were Ben and I? Were we anything? I wondered. I didn’t know. I thought back on my last conversation with him, and I was filled with mortification all over again. His grandmother was Ann—he’d read all of my sex scenes! He’d seen me naked!

I wasn’t sure which was worse.

They were all pretty bad.

Though, did he remember any of that? Or when he woke up, was it like waking from a dream? Erin had told Rose that his injuries were minimal, and the doctors hadn’t known why he wasn’t waking up. Because he wasn’t there. His soul—spirit—whatever. I wasn’t sure what made us tick. The memories in our electrons? The wind in our lungs? The echo of our words? Whatever it was, he was awake now, and even though it felt like an eternity since I sat in his office and gave him a cactus, it had only been a week to everyone else.

“Oh, hey.” Rose elbowed me in the side. Passengers were beginning to file out of the plane and onto the jet bridge. “Erin texted me while we were on the flight. He’s taking visitors now!”

“Oh.”

I wanted to puke.

Leaving the airport was always a lot easier than coming, but LaGuardia made it hard no matter what. It was like whoever designed the place wanted everyone who came through it to suffer as much as they could. All of the open gates were on one side of the airport, but the line for the taxis was across the parking garage, down an incline, through a construction zone, at the far end of what was probably once a bus stop. It took thirty minutes to get there, and calling a car would’ve taken just as long because the pickup area was right next to the taxis.

But we finally managed to nab one, and Rose told our driver to take us to New York Presbyterian in Lower Manhattan—and take the shortest route possible. Because of the layover in Charlotte, we didn’t actually manage to get back to the city until rush-hour traffic, so a drive that usually took thirty minutes took an hour and some change. That was one thing I didn’t miss about the city. At least in Mairmont, there weren’t enough people for an hour and a half’s worth of traffic.

By the time we pulled up at the hospital—and the right building—I just wanted to go home, but Rose was nothing if not stalwart.

“Don’t you want to see him?”

Of course I did. That wasn’t the question. It wasn’t if I wanted to see him but—this last week had been strange, and otherworldly, and who was to say that he wanted to see me?

Rose paid for the taxi and dumped her duffel on the sidewalk beside a fire hydrant, out of the way of most of the people. “I’ll be out here,” she said, waving me inside. “I don’t really like hospitals.”

“I don’t, either—you know, the whole ghost thing,” I hissed.

“And one’s waiting for you upstairs. Five thirty-eight. Don’t forget!”

As if I could. I’d been repeating the number over and over in my head for the entire taxi ride, but a small voice, one that I had been trying to ignore, trying to shove away, kept asking, What if he doesn’t remember you?

What would I do then?

I didn’t know, but I didn’t think about it, either, as I got into the elevator and hit the fifth floor button. A moment later, an older woman stepped in with me. She had on the loudest sweater I’d ever seen—every color of the rainbow vomited onto it and knit together. I’d seen a sweater like that only once before.

“What floor?” I asked.

“Oh, I think it’s finally time to head to the top.”

“Sure thing.” I pressed the highest number.

The older woman leaned toward me. She smelled like lilac perfume and dumplings. “Thank you, Florence.”

“You’re welc—” But when I glanced over, she was gone. A chill slithered down my spine. I could’ve sworn she was here, just a moment ago.

And that sweater—she looked like—

She looked like Ann.

The elevator doors dinged and opened to the fifth floor. I stepped out and glanced back one more time to make sure that the woman wasn’t there, but of course she wasn’t. She was dead. Five years dead.

I didn’t have time to think about Ann, because as the elevator doors closed, I heard a familiar voice say my name. And it wasn’t the voice I wanted to hear.

“Florence?”

I turned around, and standing there in the lobby, with blond hair and a trimmed beard, was Lee Marlow. He was holding a bouquet of yellow flowers in his hand with a card stuck in them that read Get Well Soon!

I felt myself go clammy all over. “Lee—h-hi.”

“What a surprise!” He seemed confused. “What’re you doing here?”

“Um—I’m here to see Ben.”

He frowned, as if trying to puzzle out exactly how I knew him. And I didn’t know where to start. Though I should’ve known better, because it turned out, Lee didn’t much care. “?’Course he’s popular with the ladies.”