The Dead Romantics (93)

And I was in what I felt best in, an oversized blouse and straight-leg jeans with a hole in the left knee, and red Converses. I didn’t look like I fit in here, but looks were deceiving, and best of all?

I didn’t really care anymore. It didn’t matter. What mattered was where I was going.

I wasn’t scared of the looming floor number that we rose to meet. Executive editor Benji Andor had been back in the office for a little less than a month, though I was beginning to suspect he had done more than a little work from home before that. He apparently still had a lot of catching up to do, from what Erin told Rose. Then again, when did editors not have a lot of catch-up work to do? As long as I’d known Lee, he’d been majestically behind on every deadline. But I had a feeling that, unlike Lee, Ben actually wanted to catch up—but then why would he agree to entertain a meeting with me?

I was nervous. What if he thought I was some sort of weirdo who wanted to give him his favorite book? Couldn’t be any worse than a weirdo giving him a cactus, I guessed.

Because it had been three months, and I wasn’t going to lie, quite a few of those nights I spent drowning in a bottle of wine, wondering what happened with Laura. Wondering if she stayed. If he wanted her to. If they decided to try anew.

I was alone by the time the elevator stopped at the floor for Falcon House Publishers, and I stepped out into the clean white lobby. The glass-cased bookshelves looked exactly the same. Ann Nichols’s bestsellers sat on a shelf all to themselves, and the glass reflected me, freckled cheeks and dry lips and messy blond hair pinned up into twin buns.

Erin was reading a book as I came up to the front desk, but she quickly put a sticky note on the page and closed it. When the Dead Sing by Lee Marlow.

It came out this week.

“Florence! Good morning!” Erin greeted. “How’s Rose? Is she alive?”

“You two really need to stop going to that wine bar,” I replied, remembering Rose stumbling into the apartment last night and immediately passing out on the soft shag rug in the living room.

Erin gave a pout. “But they have such a good cheese plate.”

Rose wasn’t going to work today; she’d already caught her flight to Charlotte, where Alice would pick her up to drive to Mairmont. After this meeting, I’d be on my way, too. I asked if I could stash my suitcase behind Erin’s desk, and she happily agreed. “I’ll ring Benji and tell him you’re here.”

“That’d be great, thanks.”

As Erin called Ben’s office phone, I leaned against the front desk to get a better look at Lee Marlow’s novel. The cover was decent, I guessed. A bit too much like The Woman in the Window for my liking. It wasn’t as if I could forget that Lee’s book came out this week. It had been everywhere in the city—on subway ads, in magazines, an entire article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, and even in my favorite indie bookstore. It wasn’t something I could quite escape, but I no longer felt under the shadow of it, either.

Lee ended up not filing a police report after I’d punched him at the hospital. Probably for the best, because I had secrets that could make his life very uncomfortable for a while, and he didn’t need that sort of bad press before the release of his instant bestseller.

After a moment, Erin hung up the phone and said, “That’s odd, he didn’t answer, but he should be in his office. You can head back there, if you want. His door should be open.”

So took a deep breath, and I went.





37





The Dead Romantics


I REMEMBERED THIS walk three months ago. I remembered how terrified I was, how I hoped whoever this new editor was would give me a little slack. I did end up getting the extra time I needed, but it didn’t quite go the way I had planned. I passed meeting rooms separated by foggy glass, and assistant editors and marketers and publicists working diligently to make the machine that was publishing run.

It really was a miracle that anything came out on time. Well, a miracle and way too much caffeine.

At the end of the hallway, Ben’s office door was open like Erin said it would be, and there he sat as if he’d always been there. As if he hadn’t been a spectator during the worst week of my life. His hair was a little longer and wavy, not gelled back like the last time I’d met him, and curling gently against his ears. His sleeves were rolled up, and the slightest hint of his father’s golden wedding ring peeked out from beneath his collar. There was a shallow scar running slantwise across his left cheek, still a little red and tender, but healing. He wore large thick-framed glasses, though they didn’t seem to help him see any better because he was still squinting at something on his computer screen, a pen hanging out of his mouth.

It was a snapshot of his life. I wanted to take a photo of it, memorize how the door framed him in a perfect setting, the window behind him with midday light flooding gold into his office.

I steeled myself—and my heart.

Even if he didn’t remember me, it was okay. It was going to be okay—I was going to be okay.

I rapped my knuckles against the doorway.

He gave a start at the noise. The pen dropped from his mouth, but he caught it and shoved it in an accessory drawer in his desk. “Miss Day!” he greeted in surprise, and quickly stood to welcome me in, knocking his long legs on the underside of his desk. He winced at the pain. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”