The Dead Romantics (98)

I laughed, because of course he would flag that in this story. “Then I’ll say it first,” I said as I sat up and leaned close to him, my hair falling in a curtain around us as I pressed my forehead to his. “I love you, Benji Andor.”

He smiled so wide it reached his brown eyes, and turned them ocher, as if that were the happiest thing he’d ever heard. “I love you, too, Florence Day.”

“Then I think we should most definitely be platonic friends who swap video streaming service passwords and only see each other once a year at holiday parties.”

He gave a long sigh and sank farther into his pillow. “Okay, we can do that—”

“I was kidding!” I exclaimed, sitting back again. “I didn’t mean it!”

“Too late, I’ve already lost my will to live.”

I playfully shoved him in the shoulder. “Fine. Let’s be bunkmates, then.”

“Only?”

“Gym buddies?”

The light began to leave his eyes.

“Pocket pals!”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And maybe partners. In the romantic sense,” I added, our hands still intertwined, and I squeezed his tightly. “A suitor. A paramour. My courter. My second-best friend.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Second?”

“Rose will always be number one.”

“Fuck yeah I am!” came a voice from the doorway as I realized a split second before my sister and Rose burst into the room that I had forgotten to lock it. Alice screamed and covered her eyes while Rose took a long drink from a champagne bottle. Clearly, they’d started the party early.

“Wow,” Rose noted, giving a thumbs-up. “We sure have good timing. Great sesh, bestie.”

“We’re leaving!” Alice added, grabbing Rose by the arm, and pulling her back out the door. “Put a sock on the door next time!”

I thought Ben was going to die—again. When the door was closed, he pulled the covers over his head and disappeared beneath them. “Please kill me,” his muffled voice moaned. “End my misery.”

Grinning, I pulled the covers off him again, and he looked dejected and mortified in the deathbed of pillows. “Absolutely not, sir. If I have to live with them, so do you.”

“It’ll be a quick death. Just suffocate me in your perfect breasts.”

“They aren’t that big.”

“But they are perfect.”

“So you keep saying.” I combed my fingers through his hair a few more times because, poor guy, he really didn’t know how to handle mortification, and then I kissed him on the lips. “Let’s get dressed and go help Mom keep those heathens in line.”

I began to crawl out of bed, when he grabbed me by the arm and swallowed me up underneath the covers with him. “Just a few more minutes,” he said, his breath hot against my neck as he held me tightly.

“Only a few,” I agreed, though in my heart I knew I would’ve been happier with forever, but just this moment would do for now.





39





Ghost Stories


WE DID NOT end up catching either of the bachelor parties that night, but I was very certain neither Carver nor Nicki remembered the night very well anyway. From what I heard, there’d been an impromptu concert where Bruno almost threw out his back howling the laments of Dolly Parton, Carver accidentally lit the bar counter on fire, and Alice mooned Officer Saget right in the middle of Main Street. Sad that I missed that part, but I was glad we didn’t end up going. Someone had to be coherent on the wedding day.

I busied myself with final wedding preparations, rearranging the flowers in the parlor rooms while sneaking tastes of desserts in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how Carver talked Alice into letting them have it in the funeral home for free, so I made a mental note to ask him what sort of blackmail he had on Alice for her to be so agreeable about it all.

The Days Gone Funeral Home looked like it was decorated in a flower crown, with large sunflowers on the porch and white ribbons draped across the old wooden roofbeams, and the once-suffocating floral-and-formaldehyde smell was replaced with the scent of bright and beautiful sunshine. The windows were open, as were the doors, and every so often a clever, happy wind raced through the old Victorian house, and the foundation creaked and groaned in hello.

Ben looked so at home in the red parlor, helping me arrange the sunflowers in vases kept from Dad’s funeral, as if he’d been here all this time.

Alice elbowed me in the side and said, with all honesty, “Good catch, sis. Not my type, but good catch.”

“Yeah, I think so, too.”

“That does it for the flowers,” Ben said, finishing up the vase he was working on. He wiped his hands on his trousers and said to Alice, “Nice to formally meet you.”

Alice gave him a once-over. “You take care of my sister, you hear?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And no more cheating at cards.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“Mm-hmm.” Her phone vibrated and she took it out of her back pocket and quietly cursed. “The caterers are here—ugh. Can you two finish setting out the decorations?”

I gave her a salute. “Aye, aye, boss.”