Page 67 of Only Lovers in the Building

“Oh no,” he said. “You want insight into my black soul, you’re getting it.”

It was a classic case of careful what you wish for. Whatever was in the box, it was possible she wasn’t meant to see.

He dropped the box onto the table and opened it. She peered inside. It held a collection of leatherbound notebooks, a stack of letters wrapped in ribbon, and a watch.

“Are these his notebooks?”

“His journals,” Ben replied. “He spent the last decade jotting down memories. He was working on a memoir. It’s all here, all the twists and turns of an incredible life.”

“Wow.” That was all she managed to say.

“He died alone.”

“Alone or just . . . alone?”

Although her question didn’t make sense, she was confident Ben would tease out the meaning.

“Alone,” Ben said. “He had no one.”

“He had you.”

“No, he didn’t. I visited him twice,” Ben explained. “The first time, he was asleep, drugged up on morphine. The second time, he was dead.”

“Ben, I’m so sorry. No one deserves that.”

“He might’ve,” Ben said evenly. He reached into the box for a notebook and thumbed through the yellowed pages. “He married for money and pushed away anyone who truly loved him.”

“Including you?” she asked.

“I didn’t know him enough to love him, and the little I knew I didn’t like.”

“I see.”

“He was alone in the end,” he repeated. “I’m trying to avoid a similar fate.”

“You?”

He laughed. “Yes, me!”

Dying alone—corpse consumed by cats—was the scare tactic peddled by the patriarchy to push women into marriage. Why should Ben have to worry about that? He was loved by everyone.

“My track record isn’t very good, and you know what they say. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“I don’t accept that. You are your own apple.”

He drew the stack of letters from the box and dropped it on the table. “See this?” he said. “Letters from women he screwed over, explaining how much of an asshole he was.”

“They didn’t have Block and Mute buttons back then,” Lily said.

“My last girlfriend left me a voice memo listing everything I’d done to push her away.”

“You mean Bella?”

He didn’t answer.

“What went wrong there?” she asked, guided by naked curiosity.

“We’d agreed from the start to keep it casual. A while later, I stupidly believed that agreement was still in effect.”