The Dead Romantics

I’d always written how grief was hollow. How it was a vast cavern of nothing.

But I was wrong.

Grief was the exact opposite. It was full and heavy and drowning because it wasn’t the absence of everything you lost—it was the culmination of it all, your love, your happiness, your bittersweets, wound tight like a knotted ball of yarn.

Every person has a secret. Every secret has a story.

“What would this scene be like?” I began, hope making my chest hurt, knotted tight. I might’ve just been that weird girl who gave him a cactus and a book, but maybe—just maybe—I was more. “A refined editor from a prestigious romance imprint and—”

“A chaotic ghostwriter who takes graveyard walks at midnight and shouts in the rain and unironically orders rum and Cokes and bites her thumbnail when she thinks no one’s looking.”

“I do not,” I lied, my voice cracking, as he stepped closer still, and suddenly he was in front of me, and cupped my face in his hands, the
recognition in his eyes blooming like dandelions, and the ache in my chest turned into something warm and bright and golden.

“I knew you once,” he said so ardently, it made my heart flutter.

“I think you still do,”

All I wanted to do was take his face in my hands and kiss him, but as I reached out to try, his eyes widened. He sucked in a short breath.

As if he saw something past me. Something I couldn’t see. Something I never would.

And then he was gone.

Forever this time.

And the wind that whistled through the old funeral parlor sang sweet and soft and sure.

Like love ought to
be.

And maybe, if we were lucky, we’d find a happily ever after, too.

I shook my head fervently. “No—no way. I—I had unwashed hair! And I wore my Goodwill tweed coat! And my scarf had coffee stains on it!”

“And you were sexy as hell. But you couldn’t meet my gaze,” he said with a laugh. “I thought you hated me.”

“And the author is tired. And maybe she was never good at writing to begin with. Maybe she never really understood romance. Maybe she’s not cut out for love stories—”

He leaned in close to me—so close that if he were alive, I would be able to smell the cologne he wore, the toothpaste he brushed with, the shampoo he used—and he said in a low voice, “Or maybe she just needs someone to show her that she is.”

The tips of my ears began to heat up. They were turning red. I was turning red.

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.

He jerked his attention to me. His eyes were red rimmed. “W-What?”

For a moment.

“Yes,” I decided, and reached up—because he was so damn tall and I was very much not—and took his face in my hands and pulled him down to crush my lips against his.