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.”
He held out a hand over his desk, and I took it. His was warm and calloused and I thought I had prepped myself for this sort of meeting, but at that moment I realized how woefully underprepared I actually was. Because he was alive. When so long he had been a specter that faded in and out of my life, first a ghost and then a memory and now—
Now he was standing in front of me and no matter whether he remembered me or not, he was here. The feeling of his hand in mine made me happy in a strange and comforting way.
And that sort of happiness, even bittersweet, made my heart so full it might just burst.
I squeezed his hand tightly. “Thank you for fitting me into your schedule,” I replied, smiling. “I’ve got to get to Newark, so I won’t be staying long.”
“Going somewhere?”
“Home!” I replied happily. “My brother’s getting married this weekend.”
“Congratulations! Well, then by all means, let’s get to it. Please, sit,” he said, and motioned toward the IKEA chair facing his desk, and I sank down into it. The last time I was here, I had all but begged him for another deadline extension. I had even argued that love was dead in order to write a different genre. Nothing worked.
The Swell of Endless Music would have been a damn good revenge fantasy.
But it was a better romance.
To my surprise, he had kept my apology cactus. It was sitting on his desk beside his monitor, and it was still alive. He’d made room for it, on his tidy desk where everything had its place.
I had changed so much in these last few months, and I wondered how much he’d unknowingly changed. If somewhere deep down beneath his flesh and bones there was an echo of moonlit walks in graveyards and screaming in the rain and dandelion fields and funerals.