Page 8 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

And then just Sloane.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had a piece of my parents to ease the sting of my solitary state, but I didn’t. No part of them—their arguments or affection, their concern or their curiosity—was mine to hold. They were too wrapped up in each other to care about me. It was touching, in a way, these two people who lived and breathed and fought together, who every day enacted their own broken version of a happy ending.

See, that was the thing they never told you about happily ever after. Sometimes, there was no happy. Other times, there was no forever. Only theafterremained. I knew that better than anyone. Theafterwas what I’d been living for the majority of my life, and it wasn’t even close to the fairy-tale promise I was fed as a kid. Literature was full of lies like that.

Tennyson’s “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?False.

Dostoyevsky’s “The darker the night, the brighter the stars”?Nope.

Even J. K. Rowling didn’t manage to get it right. “Those we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch.”Not even close, J.K. You’re wrong about so many things.

It was why I felt so determined to hunt down a spare bridesmaid even if it killed me—which, if the shattering of a vase from behind the door was any indication, it very well might.

“Iwillmarry Dr. Brett Marcowitz,” I said aloud, the words giving me the strength I needed to make it down the hallway to press the elevator button for the basement. “Ourswillbe the perfect wedding. Wewilllive in quiet, peaceful accord every day of our lives.”

And if a certain grouchy someone with wire-rimmed glasses, a gold-tipped cane, and a hole where his heart should be thought that made me naive, so be it. Other people could have their big and bright lives.

I could make do with much less.

***

I barely managed to get my key in the special basement access slot before the elevator started moving down, called by someone on the floor below. As soon as I gave the key a quick click to the right, the doors slid back open and I was joined by a tall, broad-shouldered man who made my parents look like the Cleavers. He radiated simmering annoyance in a way that had my back up and my instincts on high alert.

“Five,” he said as the doors closed us in. Scowling, he added, “I can’t take this another minute.”

“Oh, um, I already turned the key.”

“What key?”

I held up the offending item. “The one that takes us on a straight shot to the basement.”

“What?” He whirled and started pushing elevator buttons at random, but none of them lit up. “Can’t you make it stop?”

I shook my head and pressed against the wall of the elevator, my hands behind my back. Something about my posture—meek, small, and only trying to make myself smaller—forced the man to take a deep breath and wipe the scowl from his face.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said as he scrubbed a hand over his jaw, which bore just enough scruff to make a scratching sound. “It’s the people who live in the condo above where I’m staying. I’ve never heard so much noise in my life. I was heading up to ask them to stop.”

Even with the milder expression, there was something about the man that made me hesitate to expand my presence. He was around my age and dressed in a rough, understated way, but I could tell right away that he was the kind of person who couldn’t enter a room without changing it.

Mateo was like that. The Marcowitzes, too. It was one of those attributes that fascinated and repelled me in equal measures. Under no circumstances did I want to attract that kind of attention, but I couldn’t help wondering what it must be like. To be so present in the world, so much a part of it, that it had no choice but to shift and make room for you. I was the sort who slid in like a lizard darting into the water, determined not to make a ripple.

This man, with his heavy brow and his dark brown hair worn too long, a nose that looked as if it had been broken more than once, made ripples.

“It won’t do you any good,” I managed as the elevator lurched to a halt on the bottom floor. The doors opened to allow a blast of damp, musty air that smelled like what it was—the haze of unwanted belongings. “They won’t stop. The noise, I mean. You’re talking about 512, right?”

The man’s hand shot out and held the elevator doors open above my head. He glanced down at me, a look of scrutiny sparking his deep-set brown eyes. Something about that spark felt familiar, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. “You know them?”

“Everyone in this building knows them,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, so my conscience allowed it to slide. “Why do you think your Airbnb was so cheap?”

“Ghosts,” he muttered and released the doors.

My heart thumped in unexpected alarm when he stepped out and followed me into the basement. I wasn’t sure why he was sticking around to chat, but I’d read enough thrillers that my imagination—overactive on the best of days—immediately came up with a pretty convincing story-line. There were several good hiding places down here, and the man didn’t seem notice when I slipped my key between my fingers with the pointy side poking out, but I still didn’t like my odds.

“You don’t believe in ghosts?” I asked, since it seemed like the most logical response.

He laughed, a short, barking sound that was almost as familiar as that flash in his eyes. “Of course not. What Idobelieve is that people who live in a communal building should at least try to keep it down. I think they’re throwing plates now.”

That didn’t surprise me. My parents had never physically hurt each other, but they enjoyed the act of destruction too much to give up on the threat of it. It was why I didn’t like loud noises. Or thunder. Or being trapped in a basement with a man who looked like an act of destruction was just another day on the books for him, too.