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Ghost Stories
WE DID NOT end up catching either of the bachelor parties that night, but I was very certain neither Carver nor Nicki remembered the night very well anyway. From what I heard, there’d been an impromptu concert where Bruno almost threw out his back howling the laments of Dolly Parton, Carver accidentally lit the bar counter on fire, and Alice mooned Officer Saget right in the middle of Main Street. Sad that I missed that part, but I was glad we didn’t end up going. Someone had to be coherent on the wedding day.
I busied myself with final wedding preparations, rearranging the flowers in the parlor rooms while sneaking tastes of desserts in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure how Carver talked Alice into letting them have it in the funeral home for free, so I made a mental note to ask him what sort of blackmail he had on Alice for her to be so agreeable about it all.
The Days Gone Funeral Home looked like it was decorated in a flower crown, with large sunflowers on the porch and white ribbons draped across the old wooden roofbeams, and the once-suffocating floral-and-formaldehyde smell was replaced with the scent of bright and beautiful sunshine. The windows were open, as were the doors, and every so often a clever, happy wind raced through the old Victorian house, and the foundation creaked and groaned in hello.
Ben looked so at home in the red parlor, helping me arrange the sunflowers in vases kept from Dad’s funeral, as if he’d been here all this time.
Alice elbowed me in the side and said, with all honesty, “Good catch, sis. Not my type, but good catch.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
“That does it for the flowers,” Ben said, finishing up the vase he was working on. He wiped his hands on his trousers and said to Alice, “Nice to formally meet you.”
Alice gave him a once-over. “You take care of my sister, you hear?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And no more cheating at cards.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her phone vibrated and she took it out of her back pocket and quietly cursed. “The caterers are here—ugh. Can you two finish setting out the decorations?”
I gave her a salute. “Aye, aye, boss.”
“Weirdo,” she muttered and left out the front door, shouting at the caterers to move the van around back—“No, not through the grass, you heathens.”
When she was gone, Ben took a sunflower out of one of the vases and tapped me on the nose with it. “Your sister’s doing a great job with the business.”
“She is, isn’t she?” I looked around at the parlors, strewn with colorful flowers and pearly white ribbons, and I wished Dad could have seen it. A wedding in a house of death. I kissed Ben on the cheek. “Thank you for being here.”
“Thank you for inviting me. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than beside you.”
I rolled my eyes and playfully shoved him away. “Stop being so sappy,” I complained, hoping he didn’t notice my reddening ears. If he talked like that much more, I was going to be in a permanent state of blush.
He liked me; it was still so hard to believe.
Benji Andor adored me.
And for the first time since Dad passed, everything felt almost perfect. The sky was this almost-perfect crimson—the color of Dad’s suit when we buried him—and the sweltering July heat had abated to a soft humidity that still felt sticky, but it was as close to perfect as you could get in the summer, and the entire town had come to watch my brother and his husband say their actually perfect vows.
They slipped on each other’s rings and professed their love under the ancient rafters that had echoed more sobs than cheers, and the purpling light of evening eased softly in through the windows, painting everything in shadowy hues of rose, and it was a fitting wedding for a funeral home.
Dad would have loved it.
After the wedding we popped champagne and played Dad’s favorite burned CD and danced through the parlors to all the good goodbyes, because endings were just new beginnings. And right now, we were happy, and Carver and Nicki were dancing with each other, and Rose and Alice were flirting in the kind of way that would lead to something else.
(What kind of romance writer would I be if I didn’t see how they fell?)
Because the same look was on my face, too, every time I looked at Ben. When he left to get us a refresher of champagne, Mom slid up beside me and gave a hard sigh. “Would it be frowned upon if, during the couples’ dance, I danced, too?”
I offered out my arm to my mom. “I’m not Dad, but I can dance with you.”
“I’d love that, sweetheart, but I was referring to your man.”
And just as she said that, Ben swooped in and offered his hand to—my mom. I gasped, scandalized. Ben said, “Patience makes the heart grow fonder.”
“What charm!” Mom cackled and wiggled her eyebrows at me as she let Ben lead her into the throng.
He winked.
(Ugh, this was for saying I’d put googly eyes on his washboard abs, wasn’t it?)
I moped about on the edge of the parlor like a lonely island, swilling the red punch that was most definitely spiked. Everyone had someone to dance with—even the mayor. And here I was, left to lean against one of the tall tables with the owner of Bar None and Bruno. They were smoking cigars that reminded me of the ones Dad liked—strong and sweet.
Bruno nudged his chin toward Ben and Mom dancing. “I haven’t seen your mom so happy in ages.”
“He’s a catch,” the owner agreed.
I bit the side of my cheek to hide a grin, watching Ben trip over his own feet. He and Mom laughed, and it pulled at something deep in my chest. It ached, but not in the way I’d felt when Dad died. It was a good sort of pain. The kind that reminded me that I was still alive, and there was still life to live and memories to make and people to meet.
“How’d you meet him?” Bruno asked.
I tilted my head. The song ended, and I wondered how to explain it. He was a ghost who haunted me after I failed at turning in his grandmother’s last manuscript—“I met him at work,” I finally supplied. “I thought he was an absolute stuck-up asshole at first.”
“And she was a chaos gremlin,” Ben replied, surprising me. He put his hand on the small of my back. “I didn’t think I stood a ghost of a chance.”
“You were so deadly serious.”
“And you were too much of a free spirit. But I think I love that the most.”
I turned around to him. “Is that what you love the most?”
His lips twisted. “That I can say in current company.” Then he offered his hand to me, and I took it. He spun me around, away from the table and onto the dance floor.
“I didn’t know you danced,” I said, tongue in cheek, because we’d danced before.
A lifetime ago.
He laughed and brought me closer to him. “What love interest doesn’t?” We danced across the ancient oak floorboards, around Mom and Alice, and Seaburn and his wife, and Karen and Mr. Taylor, though I only knew that later, because all I remembered was Ben. The music was a little dampened, and the evening light slid through the open window in lazy hues of oranges and pinks, and he looked so perfect painted in it.
We danced slowly, his hands soft on my hips, swaying to a slow song that I didn’t know, but I liked it. It was sweet, with violins, with lyrics about want and yearning and everything that you really needed for a good love song.
A glimmer in the corner caught my eye. I glanced over.
An old woman with beautiful wide brown eyes stood in the doorway to the parlor, her hand outstretched to an elderly man in an orange sweater and brown pants, who took it tightly and kissed her knuckles. They shimmered in that star-glitter way spirits did. Ben glanced in the direction I was looking.
“Can you . . . see her, too?” I whispered in wonder, looking from him to the elderly woman and back again. She had gardening dirt under her nails, and a content smile.
“Now he can give her lilies himself.”
“You can.” I curled my hands tightly around his jacket. Because he could see them. He was one, and now he could see them, and that meant—
It meant I wasn’t alone.
When I looked back toward the couple, they had already melted into a brilliant flash of sunlight, and Heather walked through the doorway, arguing with her husband about their babysitter, as if nothing had been there at all.
“Would you like to go on a walk? In the graveyard?” he asked, drawing me from my thoughts.
I gave him a surprised look. “You’re asking?”
“It’s not night yet so it’s technically not illegal,” he replied dutifully. “And it’s a bit stuffy in here, and besides, I’d like to see your dad.”
“I’d like that, too.” I laced my fingers through his, and we slipped out of the reception and down the front steps of the old and sure house of death. And life.
Life happened in old funeral homes, too.
The cemetery was warm and quiet in the summer evening. The iron gate was already closed, but we knew the perfect little broken bit of wall to climb over, and we held each other’s champagne as we did. My family had been busy, it seemed, since Dad’s funeral. Almost all of the tombstones were washed, gleaming like bone shards sticking up from the hills of bright green grass.
Dad was waiting for us on his favorite hill in the cemetery, in a nondescript shaded plot close to his favorite old oak tree, easily lost in the sea of stones. His marker was pristine and the weeds plucked out. Mom had put fresh orchids in the vase, and I picked out the spoiled leaves with care. His plaque only had a single word—beloved. Mom said it was because there were so many things Dad had been to so many people—“Beloved son, beloved parent, beloved husband, beloved pain in the ass . . .”—but secretly I knew Mom had requested only that word because it was her word to him. Her soft I love you.
Her beloved.
I brushed a ladybug off the plaque.
It still felt like he was here some days, like the world still turned with him in it. And parts of him still were.
Ben crouched down beside the tombstone, and I let him have some privacy as I followed the path up to the bench under the oak tree and sat down. The night had cooled off, and the wind whispered through the trees, and a murder of crows cawed in the distance. I closed my eyes, and I could imagine Dad sitting beside me like he used to, chatting about rates of flower arrangements and the cost of coffins and Carver’s newest chair he built and Alice’s latest chaos. I breathed in the sweet scent of freshly cut grass.
And things were okay.
Ben came over to sit down beside me after a while.
“So, what did y’all talk about?” I asked.
“This and that,” he replied, rubbing his father’s wedding ring on the chain around his neck. “Told him to give Annie a hello. And a thank-you. If she hadn’t asked you to ghostwrite for her . . .”
“A ghost asking an author to ghostwrite, that has to be a first.” I sighed, and leaned my head against his shoulder.
“What’re you going to do next?” he asked, folding his fingers through mine. He began to rub circles on my thumb knuckle thoughtfully. “You turned in Annie’s last book. Her contract’s up.”
“Well . . .” I debated my answer. I still had to get through line edits of Annie’s book, and copyedits, and pass pages, but those were all things Ben already knew. I also still had to accept Molly’s offer of representation, but I’d do that on Monday. “I think . . . I’m going to write another book.”
“What’ll it be about?”
“Oh, the usual—meet-cutes and high jinks and grave misunderstandings and conciliatory kisses.”
“Will there be a happily ever after?”
“Maybe,” I teased, “if you play your cards right.”
“I’ll be sure not to cheat.”
“Unless it’s to help me win, of course.”
“Always. I’m yours, Florence Day,” he said, and kissed my knuckles.
Those words made my heart soar. “Ardently?”
“Fervently. Zealously. Keenly. Passionately yours.”
“And I’m yours,” I whispered, and kissed him in a cemetery of immaculate tombstones and old oak trees, and it was a good beginning. We were an author of love stories and an editor of romances, weaving a story about a boy who was once a little ghostly and a girl who lived with ghosts.
And maybe, if we were lucky, we’d find a happily ever after, too.
Eccentric Circles
IN THE DAYS Gone Funeral Home, in the back corner of the largest parlor, there was a loose floorboard where I once kept my dreams. I kept them locked tight in a box, storing them like treasure, until the day I could take them out and brush them off, like old friends coming to greet each other.
I didn’t store my dreams in a small box underneath the floorboards anymore. I didn’t need to.
But there was a girl who was a little bit tall and lanky for her age, dark hair and wide eyes, who wrote her dreams on spare pieces of paper and put them in a jar like fireflies, and when she found her mother’s old metal box and its smutty, smutty X-Files fanfic, she decided to store her dreams there, too.
And the wind that whistled through the old funeral parlor sang sweet and soft and sure.
Like love ought to be.
Acknowledgments
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it took a village to raise Benji Andor from the dead. The Dead Romantics couldn’t be possible without a lot of people, most of whom I will probably forget in these acknowledgments, but you know who you are. Thank you for giving Florence and Ben a ghost of a chance.
This book wouldn’t be possible without the tender love and necromancy of my agent, Holly Root; my phenomenal editor, Amanda Bergeron, and assistant editor, Sareer Khader; my copyeditor, Angelina Krahn; my wonderful publicist, and the whole team from managing to production to marketing, Christine Legon and Alaina Christensen and Jessica Mangicaro and everyone else. And to my critique partners—Nicole Brinkley, Rachel Strolle, Ashley Schumacher, Katherine Locke, and Kaitlyn Sage Patterson—for being the Rose to my Florence and encouraging me when I was at my lowest.
Speaking of lowest, I would also like to give a very enthusiastic fuck you to my anxiety. Thanks for, as always, being the worst.
And finally, to anyone who has proclaimed drunkenly at a bar that love is dead—I’ve been there and trust me, love is not dead. It’s simply sleeping off a raging hangover. Give it two Tylenol and tell it to call you in the morning.
Thank you for reading this book. I hope you find a little bit of happiness wherever you go.
READERS GUIDE
The Dead Romantics
• • • • •
BEHIND THE BOOK
I SEE DEAD people.
Kidding. I really don’t, and if I did I would probably:
One, talk to my therapist and—
Two, schedule an exorcism.
Joking aside, I do kind of see dead people. We all do. We see them in family photos, when we remember the way your grandma used to talk to her flowers; and the way your granddad happily sat in his favorite rocking chair on the porch, watching lightning arc across summer storms; and the way your aunt used to have a laugh so infectious she would light up a whole room. We read about them, all the time. English class is full of dead people. Jane Austen? Dead. Shakespeare? Doth be dead and buried. Charles Dickens? A tale of two deads. We listen to them on the radio, we watch them in films, without really thinking that they—you know—caught the midnight train already.
But, honestly?
Death scares me.
That’s the crux of it. Death itself, in all its ferocious unknown, scares the living crap out of me. So why—why god, why—do I gravitate toward ghost stories? And if there’s a ghost romance? You bet your ass I’m going to be up all night reading it. Death and ghost stories go hand in hand, like peanut butter and getting it stuck to the roof of your mouth.
I don’t understand my fascination whatsoever, and you know? I’m not the kind of person to think too much on it, because if I do my anxiety is going to start to spiral and then all I will think about is my unknown, eternal end.
Which is probably why I write.
There’s this illusionary permanence to writing. My books will be here long after I’m gone. I mean, hopefully.
Forever. (Usually.)
People write for different reasons—to feel less alone, to understand their own feelings, to tell stories that make them happy—and people read books for different reasons, too.
For me?
I read because I want to be held. Not like, literally, by a book. (That’d be weird.) But metaphorically. I want to sink into a novel. I want to be romanced by the possibility of sunsets too pretty to describe and kisses that you feel all the way in your toes and love stories too wide and wild for you to ever feel alone.
If anything staves off the creeping unknown of death, I propose that it’s a good book.
Maybe not my book—I mean, I hope it’s my book. Or at least my book is a stepping-stone for what will be your favorite book. I hope I can write one for you. I hope I can write one for me, too.
I didn’t start writing The Dead Romantics to explore my feelings on an author’s legacy and what the dead end up leaving behind. I just wanted to write a fun ghost story! A chaotic gremlin of a woman meets the stern ghost of a man (who, secretly, has a cinnamon roll-flavored heart of gold)! They have sexy high jinks! Everything turns out fine in the end!
Well, I was the fool, apparently, because little did I know, I had the talent to do both.
Somehow.
It might be a one-time deal, so I am relishing in this moment. I managed to do something I didn’t realize I could. (Well, two things. I didn’t think I’d be able to write anything in 2020 but I showed myself that anything is possible with a few healthy coping mechanisms and nowhere to go during a pandemic.) Most of the time, I talk around my own insecurities and make fun of them until the person I’m talking to gets fed up with my turtling and tells me to just write a happy novel.
Well, I did! So joke’s on them! It’s also sad! And a little sappy!
But you know? I like a little corny in my life and I hope that you do, too.
I think, as readers, we all have a comfort read, the one book that protects us in the exact ways it needs to—whether it is a romance or erotica or a thriller or a crime story or a fantasy. A book that we find ourselves in, like looking in a mirror. Oh, you, too? It will ask, as it fills that soft, hollow place in your heart that nothing else dared to touch. I think we all deserve a book like that, whatever yours is.
It’s not about how many books are sold or whether they are turned into films or re-released with different editions that makes a book’s legacy. I think it is the readers, whether there are only seven of them, or seventy thousand. You’re the legacy, you’re the life beyond the story I give you.
Florence’s dad said that the people we love are in the wind, and I believe it. I think that the people we love can be in the pages of books, too.
I hope you find yourself in a book someday.
And I hope that book lives forever.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Florence is a ghostwriter for Ann Nichols. Do you think books written by ghostwriters are just as important to an author’s legacy as those written by the author themselves?
Usually, keeping secrets can shake a person’s trust in someone else. But Florence’s dad kept the secret that he knew who Florence ghostwrote for and had read all of those books. Do you think some secrets can actually build trust once revealed?
Throughout the novel, Florence struggles with trying to write the perfect ending. If you could write any sort of happily ever after, how would it go?
Both Ben and Florence find comfort in romance novels. What are some of your favorite comfort reads?
There are many depictions of afterlives in the media—ghosts, reapers, spirits—from all different cultures. Why do you think the theme of death is so universally explored in stories and the concept of life (or some semblance of it) after death?
What is a book you loved that you believe more people should read? What did you love most about it?
Death, and how a person handles it, is a big part of the novel. If you could leave a list behind for your loved ones, like Xavier does in the story, what would be on it?
If Ben and Florence were put in a punderdome, who do you think would win? Kidding—but in truth, do you think humor and tragedy go hand in hand? Why or why not?
Do you feel Lee Marlow was justified in writing When the Dead Sing? Do you think original ideas exist? Or do we all pull inspiration—knowingly or not—from the experiences we’ve had and the people we’ve met throughout our lives?
If Ben and Florence had a sequel, what do you think it would be about? How do you think Ben will handle his newfound power of seeing dead people?
What do you think Florence will write next?
ASH’S COMFORT READS
Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones.
Beach Read, Emily Henry.
Dragon’s Bait, Vivian Vande Velde.
The Proposal, Jasmine Guillory.
Dating You / Hating You, Christina Lauren.
Well Met, Jen DeLuca.
A Winter’s Promise, Christelle Dabos.
Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall.
The Princess Bride, William Goldman.
[That one fanfic that will never be named], Unknown.
Photo by Ashley Poston
ASHLEY POSTON writes stories about love and friendship and ever afters. A native to South Carolina, she now lives in a small grey house with her sassy cat and too many books. You can find her on the internet, somewhere, watching cat videos and reading fan fiction.
CONNECT ONLINE
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