The Dead Romantics

by Ashley Poston

Nothing said Netflix and chill quite like an orthopedic pillow and a wineglass of Ensure.

Publishing was all very romantic until you found yourself in publishing. Then it was just another kind of corporate hell.

He was . . . enormous. So tall I felt like I’d suddenly been transported into a retelling of “Jack and the Beanstalk” where he was a very hunky beanstalk that I really, really wanted to climb—

He was a bullet journal guy, and I was a sticky note kind of girl.

“Why don’t you believe in love anymore, Florence?” Because when you put your hand in the fire too many times, you learn that you only get burned.

“Do you go often?” “Absolutely, there’s even a squeak-easy.” “Wow, you’re a real mice-stro of puns.”

I shoved my panic into a small box in the back of my head, where everything else went. All of the bad things. The things I didn’t want to deal with. The things I couldn’t deal with. The box was useful. I shut everything in. Locked it tight. I pressed on a smile. “Oh, no. I’m fine. It’s a lot to take in. And—and you’re right. Of course you’re right.”

Last time I tried to write that scene—the reconciliation one, the one where they face each other in a cold Scottish storm and pour their hearts out to try and repair their damage—lightning struck Jackson dead.

the rest, they say, was history. They’d been married for thirty-five years, and it was the kind of romance that I’d only ever found again in fiction. They fought and disagreed, of course, but they always came back together like a binary star, dancing with each other through life. It was the small moments that tied them together—the way Dad touched the small of her back whenever he passed her, the way Mom kissed his bald spot on the top of his head, the way they held hands like kids whenever we went out to dinner, the way they defended each other when they knew the other was right, and talked patiently when they were wrong.

“Do you even know what happens in Jane Eyre?”

Second book in a row referencing Jane Eyre lol

I can’t wait until he gets to your sex scenes. Seriously, they’re some of the best I’ve ever read, and I read a lot of smutty books. And fanfic,” she added as an afterthought.

FF being an afterthought ... As if

“I tried publishing once. It didn’t work out. And I definitely did not make millions.” He had barked a laugh. “Well, that’s because you wrote a romance.” “What’s wrong with that?” “Oh, bunny, you know you can do better.” I faltered. “Better . . . ?” “No one’s remembered for a romance, bunny. If you want to be a good writer, you gotta make something that lasts.”

I’d never snooped before—I never wanted to. I trusted him. I was a fool. Because he’d taken what he’d said to me to heart. That if I didn’t write the story that I wove for him, then someone else would. I just didn’t think . . . I didn’t think it’d be him.

It was all there. All of my secrets. All of my stories. All of me. He used me as inspiration, and then he just used me.

“H-He had a heart attack. We tried . . . the ambulance . . . it was during his poker game and he was winning and . . . Alice and I followed the ambulance but—” Her words were sporadic, trying to piece together an evening of horror while I had gotten tipsy on Dickinson martinis. “They couldn’t—he was gone. He was gone by the time we got there—by—he was . . . he’s gone, darling.” Gone.

Reading this on father's day hits different

“What’re you doing up?” I had asked, and he’d laughed. “Listening to the dead sing. Do you hear them?” I shook my head, because all I heard was the wind howling, and the bushes outside scraping against the side of the house. And it was terrible. He hugged me tighter. “Your grandma—my mother—told me once that the wind is just the breath of everyone who came before us. All the people who’ve passed on, all the ones who’ve taken a breath—” And he took a breath himself, loud and dramatic, and exhaled. “They’re still in the wind. And they’ll always be in the wind, singing. Until the wind is gone. Do you hear them?”

“He died,” I said. “Ben?” “Dad.” I felt a sob bubble up in my throat, like a bird wanting to be set free, and then I gave a wail and buried my face into my best friend’s shoulder, on the curb of an empty street, while the world spun on, and on, and on, without my dad in it. And the wind did not sing.

What do they feed you in New York—lettuce and depression?”

It always struck me how different Carver and Nicki were—like a square peg and a round hole—but I guess they were like pieces in a puzzle.

Gay

“Alice is rearing for a fight, but I figured she would be. We haven’t really seen eye to eye in a few years.” “Yeah, my money’s on Alice—no offense.” “You haven’t even met her! And I’m your best friend!” “Yes, and I love you, but you’re about as threatening as a chipmunk.” “Rude,” I said, but I didn’t say she was wrong. Because she wasn’t.

“Well, you can come with me,” I offered. “Can I?” He perked, like a golden retriever who’d finally been asked to go for walkies.

When someone was in pain, I wanted to fix it. And I couldn’t. Which made me frustrated. And when I was frustrated, I cried. If I was not already mortified enough. This had to stop—now. I tried the only way I knew how. “A-At least you’re still kinda hot,” I sobbed.

QUEEN YOURE A MESS

“D-Drop-dead g-gorgeous, really.” “I . . . I don’t—are you—?” “I b-bet you s-strike a k-k-killer silhouette.” “You’re crying and trying to hit on me?” “I’m trying to make you laugh so you stop crying, because then I’ll stop crying,” I lamented, but it sounded more like I’mtryingtomakeyoulaughsoyoustopcryingbecausethenillstopcrying, and it was a miracle he even understood me at all.

“And,” I added, unable to stop myself, “he made her a bad kisser. Like, pathetically bad. And I don’t know about you, but I think salty bitches kiss great.” He nodded, agreeing. “In my experience, women with sharp tongues usually have soft lips.” “You kiss sharp-tongued girls often?” His gaze lingered on my lips. “Not often enough.”

Mairmont’s local celebrity. Well, I guess I was. “Hi, Mrs. Holly,” I greeted. “What’re you in for?” Have you seen a ghost float through, by any chance? Six foot sexy, with just the slightest hint of nerd? I wanted to ask, but instead went with, “Just looking.”

Rose always told me that I was a goblin. I did my best work between ten at night and five in the morning, when most normal people were either asleep or getting down to business (to defeat the Huns). (Sex, I mean sex.)

“I drink the battery acid juice so I can go zoom-zoom,”

Everything. I wished I could tell her about Ben. I wanted to. About the strange, muddled feelings in my chest. I was mourning, but I was blushing. I was so fucking sad, and yet there were moments when the tide would go back out and I wasn’t drowning anymore in it—and they were all moments, I realized, with Ben. Because of Ben. He took my mind away from my sadness, when all I wanted to do was burrow myself in that sadness, make a nest of it, live there clinging to what was left of my dad. Even though Dad would’ve rather me fall in love than fall into a depression.

Dad looks great. Pop him back in the fridge and go watch some anime or something.”

I was quiet as I tried to think of the right words, afraid to open up. To tell him my story. Ben and I were strangers, and he never knew Dad. Never would. And even though Ben was being decent, and kind, and made me feel like my hurt was worthy of this wasted time— I was still afraid.

Talking about him out loud felt like a relief, in a way, as though I were slowly dismantling the dam I had built, brick by brick, memory by memory, until I could feel again.

He laughed, and I really loved the way he laughed. Soft and deep and sincere, and it made my uptight muscles and my rigid bones relax. It was endearing. I mean, for a dead guy. He leaned against my chair, his head resting on the armrest, eyes closed. I clenched my hands because I wanted to run my fingers through his thick black hair. And I couldn’t.

“I never wanted to create words, I always wanted to bury myself in someone else’s. But to be honest, I became an editor because I’m chasing this feeling I felt when I read my—” He quickly stopped himself and cleared his throat. “When I read my first romance.”

clarified. “I was caught off guard. Here was a beautiful young woman declaring that romance was dead.” I shook my head. “I’m not that pretty, Ben.” He gave me a strange look. His eyelashes were long, and the ocher flecks in his brown eyes glimmered in the dim evening light. “But you are.” My breath caught in my throat. Because here, sitting in the dark with both my mascara and my nose running, he thought I was beautiful? At my worst, selfish and needy and cold?

Now, I feared the sadness in my soul was sopping up the silence like a sponge. I felt heavier with each breath. It was no longer a soft silence, but a still one.

“I’m glad you’re home,” Mom began, looking ahead of us. “The occasion I could do without—but I’m glad, nonetheless. Xavier said he’d get you back here one way or the other.” “I doubt he’d have planned this.” “Certainly not! But it does suit his style,” she said with a soft laugh. “Oh, he was gone too soon, Florence. Gone much, much too soon.” “I wish he was still here.” “I do, too, and I will for the rest of my life.” She squeezed my arm tightly. “But we’re still here, and he’ll be with us long after the wind is gone.”

Weighed down by sadness—but held together, still, by hope.

“I hear there’s a new one this fall,” said another woman. She was older, with curly gray hair and in a leopard-print sweater. “Haven’t heard anything about it yet, though.” I could feel Ben staring at the back of my head at that comment.

“I can’t ever control how someone else treats me, but I can control how I choose to live and how I choose to treat others. And I’d worried about what other people thought and what other people wanted from me for years because I actually thought it mattered.”

“I am in so much trouble,” I said under my breath as I opened my laptop. And not just because I was falling for— I wasn’t falling. I couldn’t.

He quirked an eyebrow. “Fine, then what would the author wish for?” “World peace,” I replied smartly because I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. That I’d wish that this moment in the field would last forever. That we never had to leave, that we could freeze time and live in this moment where the sun was high and warm and the sky was a crystalline blue and my heart beat bright in my chest and he was here. I wanted a moment that never ended. This moment.

“Does it? Get better?” He nodded. “Bit by bit. I lost my parents at thirteen in a car accident, and my grandmother adopted me. This is my dad’s ring,” he said as he took off his necklace, felt the ring between his fingers. “I keep it with me so I don’t feel so alone. She told me that you don’t ever lose the sadness, but you learn to love it because it becomes a part of you, and bit by bit, it fades. And, eventually, you’ll pick yourself back up and you’ll find that you’re okay. That you’re going to be okay. And eventually, it’ll be true.”

I undid my hair from its tight bun and shook it out, because the wake was over, and began to sing along to the Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup.”

:(

before I could stop myself I reached out to try to take his hand, to get him to dance with us—when my hand fell through his. He gave a sad sort of smile, and outstretched his hand. “We can pretend.” “I like pretend,” I replied, and reached out my hand again, hovering it over his. Then I mimed taking his other hand and he played along— And suddenly we were all moving and singing. He twirled me out, and back in, and I laughed in a way I hadn’t in years. And Ben was smiling. Really, truly smiling. It sent a shock straight through my core because he’d never smiled like that before. At least not for me. He was beautiful. It made my heart skip at the thought, and then the music, rattling in my bones so brightly, and I recognized—quite suddenly—this feeling. It was the kind I wrote about years ago, the kind he talked about, the kind that itched just beneath my fingers, lost on the doorstep of some Brooklyn brownstone—or so I thought. It was the answer to a question, soft and subtle, but it was there—the kind of feeling, this hope, that had just been hiding, waiting for some specter to take my hand and dance me across the floorboards. It felt, for a moment in time, like happiness.

Sometimes when he leaned over me to point at a card, muttering low and quickly, a shiver would crawl down my spine because I loved the way he talked softly, pinpoints on the edges of his words— Loved. Oh.

THE OH

Perhaps in another life.

He rolled onto his back, and stared at the popcorn ceiling. He swallowed hard, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in trepidation. “I wish . . . I had closed my office door after you walked in and kissed you until you saw stars.”

worth wasn’t dependent on someone else’s love for you, or your usefulness, or what you could do for them. “It’s not her who deserves better. It’s you, Ben.” He swallowed thickly. “How come when I told myself the same thing a thousand times I didn’t believe me, but when you say it, it feels true?”

what the hell could you have been writing to attract her?” he asked, though I got the feeling that he wanted to ask something else. I poked my head out of the bathroom. “Guess.” “Had to be something off the cuff. Alien barbarian erotica?” “No, but I’d read that.” “Omegaverse?” “Anyway,”

His mouth hovered beside my ear. “Romance isn’t a sprint, Florence. It’s a marathon. You start slow.