Page 16 of The Dead Romantics

It was the universe telling me that I couldn’t forget. That if love was true, then love was a lie. That I had been happy once, happy then, but not happy forever. Because that wasn’t my story. That even my stories weren’t mine.

Perhaps they never were.

5

Dead Serious

THE FIRST TIMEI met Lee Marlow, I was at a party with Rose and Natalie, our other roommate, who had since moved to South Korea. The party consisted of a lot of publishing people, though it wasn’t a mixer. There were authors, editors, quite a few assistants, and agents. It was for some milestone, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what. They all blended together after a while, party after party, book launch after book launch, swanky bars after rooftop restaurants after extravagant apartments in Midtown.

I had grabbed Rose by the upper arm and brought her close. “Oh my god, four o’clock. Red Vans. Itoldyou I could’ve worn my Converses.”

“But those Louboutins make your ass look amazing,” she replied.

“I can’t feel my feet, Rose,” I complained, envying the guy in the red Vans. Then he turned around and my breath caught in my throat. “Oh.”

“He’d look better in a nice pair of Gucci leather loafers.”

“That sounds so pretentious.”

“Says the girl wearing her best friend’s Louboutins.”

“Youmademe!”

She inclined her head. “And I don’t regret it for a second.”

I did, however, regret it a few hours later when my feet had gone from numb to stabbing pain. The party was in someone’s swanky Midtown apartment, and while most people were in the living room or on the balcony, I had hobbled my way into the library and sank down on the leather high-back chair that probably cost more than my NYU tuition, and taken off those priceless Louboutins, and I never felt more relief in my life. I leaned back in the plush leather chair and closed my eyes, and basked in the quiet.

Rose thrived on parties, on the energy, the loudness, the people. I liked them sometimes—on special occasions, like at concerts or Comic-Cons, but there was nothing quite like the silence of a well-loved library.

“Guess I’m not the only one looking for a little quiet,” came a good-humored voice from the other side of the library.

My eyes flew open and I sat up straight—only to find the man in the red Vans sitting on one of those ridiculous bookshelf ladders, the autobiography of some dead poet in his hands. It was like a scene from one of those cheesy nineties rom-coms—light streaking in between the dark velvet curtains, painting his face in angles of pale moonlight.

I felt myself blushing even before I registered how picturesque he looked. It was his eyes, I think. When he looked at me, the world around us blurred. All I saw was him, and all he saw was me. And hesawme. It felt like one of those moments I wrote about in romances, one of those destiny-calling feelings, where like called to like. And I knew—Iknew—I was the exception to the rule.

He noticed my shoes abandoned by the chair. “Bold of you to take your shoes off in a stranger’s house.”

“These aren’t shoes, they’re torture devices,” I argued, feeling myself go rigid in defense. “And I don’t see it bothering you.”

He studied my shoes. “They do seem to be rather pointy.”

“Great for stabbing men alone in a library.”

“The pretty girl with the blond hair and the Louboutins in the private library?” He grinned. “No one’ll see that coming.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are we flirting or is this a game of Clue?”

He did that thing—the thing people did sometimes when they ran their tongue over their teeth, just under their lips, to hide a smile. “Which do you want it to—”

“Marlow!” A tall woman with strawberry hair strode into the library, two drinks in her hands, immediately breaking the spell with her soft honey voice. I quickly looked away, down at my bare feet, as he greeted her. “There you are. I thought I left you by the head editor from Elderwood.”

“Youtry holding a conversation with that guy,” the man in the red Vans replied, and accepted one of the drinks the woman handed to him.

“I’ve had to talk to worse.” She then took him by his coat sleeve and tugged. “C’mon, there’s still a lot more people to meet.”

I wondered who she was. His girlfriend, perhaps? Fiancée? She was beautiful, with blunt-cut bangs and a loud yellow jacket, paired with high-waisted tartan-print trousers. I later came to find out that she was his assistant editor before he left Faux, where he had steadily climbed the ladder for years.

If the man in the red Vans had gone with her, things would have been so, so different. But he glanced back at me, a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth, and said, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

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