Page 113 of The Dead Romantics

“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 readGet 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 knownbetter, because it turned out, Lee didn’t much care. “ ’Course he’s popular with the ladies.”

Ben?Right. I’m sure he told himself that because no one came to see him when he had his appendix out on our two-year anniversary.

“It’s nice to see you made some connections at all those publishing parties I took you to,” he added.

He really couldn’t think about a world beyond himself, could he? Charming and suave, of course he was, and the world he knew danced around him like planets around the sun.

I forced my lips to smile as my hands balled into fists. Just one punch. Just one—

No, Florence.

You’re better than that.

“I just asked the nurses,” he went on, and pointed down the hall. “He’s right down this way. We can walk together.”

I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to do this alone, either. My chest was beginning to feel tight. This wasn’t how I pictured seeing Ben again, with Lee Marlow to witness, but I began to care less and less abouthowwe met again and just that we weregoingto. Because Ben was here, and the panic in my veins was slowly, with each step, transforming into excitement.

He was here. In this building.Alive.

Ben was alive. Ben was alive.

Ben was alive.

Hospitals didn’t look so different from publishing houses—at least not Falcon House. Glass walls separated patients from everyone else, sometimes frosted but never private. The cacophony of beeps coalesced into this jagged sort of rhythm that had no rhyme or reason, and my heart was louder than all of them, beating in my ears like a funeral march.

Lee never knew how to do anything in silence. He didn’t likequiet. He had to be either talking, or listening, ordoingsomething. So, as we went together down the hall, he talked. “It’s good to see you—are you going somewhere?” he added, once he noticed the suitcase I was rolling with me.

“I just came back from visiting home.”

“Home? No shit. You always hated home.”

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