Page 17 of The Dead Romantics

“Ugh,fine,” she said as someone caught her eye in the crowd inthe living room. “Oh! Ohmygod, that’s him. That’s the author. Mr. Brown!” she called, hurrying back into the fray of people.

And then we were alone again.

He watched her go, setting his drink on the mahogany bookshelf—that should’ve been my first warning sign, a blatant disregard for someone else’s books—and came over to me. I felt my chest constrict; I wasn’t sure if I’d rather be left alone with my painful feet or if I wanted him to stay.

“So,” he asked, “do you have anywhere to be tonight?”

“Here.”

He snorted a laugh. “Anywhere else?”

I inclined my head. “Are you asking?”

“Are you saying yes?” He arched a very pointed eyebrow. It was the kind of arch a feature writer would callbelletristicwhen they sat down to pen his profile inGQ.

I should’ve told him to leave. I should’ve said I needed to stay and keep an eye on Rose. But I didn’t know, and he looked at me with this genuine sort of curiosity—who could this girl be, in Louboutins and a discount black dress? And he was a mystery, too, in his red Vans and his loose brown suit and his wild blond hair.

He outstretched his hand to me, as if wanting me to take it. “I’m Marlow—Lee Marlow. C’mon, let’s go somewhere shoes aren’t required.”

I smiled at him, and I knew then—I justknew—that this was something special. I felt like a star that had come unhinged from the night sky and started to fall, and I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to.

This was the moment. The one we’d tell at dinner parties. Of how we met, and fell in love, and knew we’d grow old together, and even when we died it wouldn’t be the end. Because if there was one thing more powerful than death itself, it was true, undeniable love.

I could feel it in my bones.

I just wanted to talk to him, to breathe in his words, to understand what made his brilliant mind tick.

I was, as the French say,une putain d’idiote.

“Florence Day.” I took his hand.

And that was how I, the girl perpetually used as the backup date, who would rather hide in a burrito of blankets and watch trashy reality TV on a Friday night, began to date one of the hottest men I had ever met in my entire life.

But as I got to know him, as the dates turned into months, turned into anniversaries and sweet kisses, I thought it was the kind of love story worthy of my family’s legacy. A romance novel in the real world. It had the perfect meet-cute, the most charming love interest, and the most beautiful setting—a brownstone in Park Slope with a rooftop garden where I would sneak out and write chapters upon chapters of whimsical words.

Sometimes he would find me up in the garden and ask in that smooth tenor of his, “What’re you doing up here, bunny?”

And I’d close my laptop or my journal or whatever I was using to write that evening, and smile at him, and say, “Oh, just thinking up stories.”

“What kinds of stories?” He’d sit down on the bench beside me, between a busy azalea and a pot of curling devil’s ivy. “I hope they’re naughty,” he said as he burrowed his face into my hair and kissed the side of my neck at the tenderest spot.

It always made me shiver.

“Very,” I’d laugh.

“I could take a peek. Make them better.”

“Bold of you to assume they aren’t already perfect.”

He laughed into my hair and murmured, “Nothing’s perfect, bunny,” and kissed me so softly, I would’ve called him a liar if my lipsweren’t preoccupied, because this was damn near perfect. The way the evening light crept over the rooftop, orange and golden and dreamy, and how his fingers were gentle as he cupped the sides of my face.

This was perfect.Hewas perfect.

Even so, I kept my ghostwriting secret.

There was never a right time to tell him, I felt, because every time a book he edited hit the list, I had been on there for a few weeks more. It felt like lying, even though I had signed NDAs and bundled myself in cautionary tape.

And so, because of that, I told him everything else. I laid my heart bare to him because I wanted to make up for the one secret in my life I didn’t know how to vocalize. I told him all of my other secrets, and my nightmares, and finally—after a year of kisses and dates and promises we always intended to keep—as we sat on the couch watchingPortals to Hell, I confessed, “They don’t really like people yelling at them to appear.”

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