The Dead Romantics (91)

Then I left down the hallway, back toward the elevators.

And I didn’t look back.

Even as he shouted at me to stop, told me he’d call the cops, file a report—I didn’t care.

It felt good, and he deserved it.

And I was never going to think about Lee Marlow again.

Rose was still waiting for me outside, and the look on my face must’ve said it all. Her eyebrows knit together and she shook her head. “Oh, honey,” she whispered, and pulled me into a tight hug.

I told her I couldn’t do it. I didn’t tell her why, but it didn’t really matter anymore anyway. It wasn’t my move to make, and this wasn’t my part of the story to tell. I had helped him get his life back, and he had helped me through mine—and if that was it . . . then it was. He was happy, and so it was time that I was, too.

I went home with my best friend in the entire world, to our small apartment in New Jersey, and I finished writing a love story.





36





Lovely Meeting



Amelia Brown stood in the rain, and she knew she didn’t want to be alone.

“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, and he met her gaze and held it. His eyes were the deep blue of a summer sky back home, and however angry or sad she was at him, she still found herself yearning for those skies whenever she looked into his eyes. “I was a shit, and I shouldn’t have lied to you about Miranda—it just hurt. And I thought if I just forgot about her, the pain would go away. But I was wrong. And instead, I hurt you in the process. I was afraid.”

“Of what?” she asked, making herself stand her ground. In the dim lights from the house behind her, he looked like a specter from her dreams. Come to haunt her. She had wanted him to return, but she didn’t think he would. “Did you think I’d use your past for a little money and fame?”

“Didn’t you try?”

She winced. “I never sent in that article. I couldn’t.” Because she had realized over quiet dinners at the kitchenette and saving dogs and running from paparazzi—she realized she didn’t want that. She didn’t want a loud life.

She just wanted a good one.

He said, “I know. Thank you.”

She hugged herself tighter. “We’re even, then.”

“You rented the house for another week, I hear.”

“I love the weather,” she replied, shivering in the cold.

“It’s quite good. Would you . . . want the company of a messed-up, burned-out musician?”

She cocked her head. “Depends. Is the guitar included?” She motioned to the guitar slung on his back.

“I was going to serenade you if you wouldn’t listen,” he admitted a little sheepishly, and wiped his eyes. He was crying, though he’d tell her it was the rain.

She took a step toward him, and they were close enough that all she had to do was reach out her hands and take his, and pull him into the warmth of her house on the Isle of Ingary. “What would you play?”

He reached out slowly, softly, and took her hands in his. “Don’t worry,” he replied, “it would be a song with only the good notes.”



I wrote. And I wrote. For three months, as April turned to May, turned to June and into July, I polished and I edited and I cleaned the draft as I sat in front of a fan and drank sweet tea and fell in love over and over with Amelia and Jackson and their magical Isle of Ingary. I checked my texts, though they were mostly from Rose checking in on me, and Carver asking about plans to propose to Nicki, and even Alice a few times! Though whenever she texted it was mostly about Rose.

I could see that trouble coming from a mile away. My best friend and my little sister? God help me.

I ate takeout Thai from the restaurant down the block and went to bed too late and woke up at noon to fix myself a pot of coffee I would take one sip of before abandoning it as I fell into the story again.

I hadn’t written like this in years, not since I first began writing for Ann.

It felt like everything over the last year, all of my pent-up frustrations, all of my failures, all of my wants and hopes and dreams, they all came tumbling out of me. On the page I could make sense of all of them, mold them into a beginning, a middle, and an end—because all good love stories ended.

And then, just like that, I was no longer in the dark night. I was stepping out into the daylight, into the happily ever after, and it felt good and whole and bright.

And something to be proud of.

One evening, Carver called to tell me, “He said yes,” on a video chat with Nicki, showing both of their golden engagement bands. “And we’re gonna have the wedding in a few weeks at the funeral home. I figured since Alice basically owns it now, she could bump a wake or two and give us a family discount. Bruno is officiating.”

“Elvistoo?” I asked, surprised. “I didn’t know he did weddings, too.”

Three weeks later, on the hottest day of July on record, I finished the last book I would ever write for Ann Nichols.

And it was good.

I sent the novel attached in an email to Molly, who then forwarded it to Ben’s new assistant editor, Tamara, the one who had done a lot of the heavy lifting while he was away on medical leave. Tamara knew I was Ann’s ghostwriter, too. I wasn’t expecting to hear back. It had been three months, and if Ben remembered me, if he missed me, then he would’ve found me. He knew how.