Page 49 of Only Lovers in the Building

“Fair enough,” he said. “Hi there, pretty.”

Lily saw herself blushing in real time. “Hi.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“Me, too,” she admitted.

“Let’s not do that again.”

“Never,” she said. “I’d like very much for us to stay friends.”

All week, she’d thought of the men she’d dated and discarded, some whose names she could not remember, and wondered why she’d been so eager to add another log to that bonfire. Flings were fleeting, but true friendship could last a lifetime.

“Me, too,” he said.

“Good.”

“I just got around to starting Spring Fever,” he said, steering them back to familiar territory. “Work was more hectic than expected.”

“What’s so wrong with the first sentence that you felt the need to DM me in the middle of the night?”

“You don’t remember it, do you?”

“The first line? Ben, I’m on chapter thirty-five. I’m nearly done.”

“A first line should be memorable,” he insisted.

“Not everyone is Charles Dickens!” Lily protested. “It can’t always be the best and worst of times.”

“Read it again and tell me what you think.”

Lily picked up the paperback and flipped to the first chapter. “That spring day, the frosty air did not keep my soul from catching fire,” she read. “Perfectly fine. What’s your objection?”

“It should be obvious,” he said. “Souls don’t catch fire.”

“You’d have to have one to know for sure, wouldn’t you?”

“Are you implying that I’m soulless? How did you figure that out, and so soon?”

Those dark, soulful eyes made a liar out of him. With some effort, she focused on the words on the page. “It’s not exceptional, but it does the job. We know it’s spring, for one thing.”

“Spring has sprung,” he said agreeably.

“It gets the ball rolling. Something’s ignited a fire in our main character.”

“Could it be last night’s takeout?” he asked.

With a laugh, Lily tossed the book aside. “It’s not love! It’s heartburn!”

“There’s that laugh I missed,” he said. “It’s like wind chimes.”

The wind must have settled because they both fell quiet.

“We should talk,” he said softly.

“No, we shouldn’t.”

We should talk was the most dreadful of first lines. Nothing good would stem from it.