31. A Plunderful Life #2
Chloe leads Louise and me through the maze of the store, around the back of the shop, and up a set of stairs. A few people in line recognize me and wave, and I force a closed-mouth smile before hurrying up the last few steps. I scan the crowd, recognizing a few people near the front, but not him.
I can’t help but feel disappointed. Was I really expecting to find him here?
“Lasz? Laszlo?” I blink and refocus. The store associate is gone, hurrying to the front as she picks up the microphone, but Louise stands to my left, watching me with that same concern she’s had for the last six months. She takes my coat, slinging it over her arm.
“I’m fine,” I whisper, my vision going blurry.
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to talk about this book or the man who saved me. I want to curl into a ball, press my face into Sir’s fur, and cry.
Chloe introduces herself and thanks the audience for coming.
As the crowd applauds, I hang my head and curl my hands into fists at my sides.
I should be happy to be here, surrounded by people who wish to celebrate me and my new book, but there’s only one person I want to see right now, and he’s been dead for three hundred years.
“And here’s the man of the hour, Laszlo Morgenstern!”
The crowd whoops and claps as I make my way to the stool.
I smile numbly and wave to them as I squint against the bright lights they’ve set up, the heat of them already making me sweat.
Louise settles into a seat in the second row, and I can see her hands are clenched in her lap, her worry only seeming to worsen.
“I apologize,” I say with an awkward laugh into my microphone. “I haven’t been to one of these in some time.” I glance at Louise, and she smiles encouragingly, tilting her head toward me as I struggle to find the words.
“Tells us about this book,” Chloe asks when I don’t go on. She holds up her advance reader copy. The paperback is battered and worn, several tabs sticking out from between the pages. “You did a lot of research for this one. Can you tell us a bit about what inspired you?”
My mouth goes dry, and I squirm in my seat. If I close my eyes, I’m there on the deck with my crew, in the mess at the swinging tables, in the bed nook with his head resting on my chest. If I breathe in deeply enough, I can taste the tobacco in my mouth and the salt on my skin.
Home. These things are home.
I look out into the audience, the faces blurred by the lights. Would anyone believe me if I told them?
“It started out very different. My editor had only seen the first four chapters and a synopsis, so imagine her surprise when I sent an entirely new manuscript. I was worried at first, but the team ended up loving it, and I’m so grateful that we got to move forward with it.
The beginning didn’t change a lot; it was the rest of the story that fell into place. ”
“What changed for you? How did you decide to rewrite it?”
I wanted him to be immortalized. I wanted to see his name on the page, to know that I hadn’t made it all up. I wanted to squeeze our story between two covers like a permanent hug and wrap my arms around it.
“Laszlo?”
Clearing my throat, I blink against the bright lights and refocus on Chloe.
“It all started with a coat,” I say. My hand tightens around the microphone.
“And?” Chloe asks eagerly.
In the blink of an eye, I’m there on the sand, looking up at the night sky. My pinky brushes his, and I want to hold him, to pull him close, to kiss him.
“And a man.” I lick my lips, tasting salt. I can almost feel it, the warm breeze of a hot, Caribbean day.
“Now, we have to know,” Chloe says after a moment. In her hands is my book, and it’s opened to the dedication. It’s the first one I’ve ever truly meant, the first that brought me to tears when I wrote it. “You dedicated this book to Silas. But isn’t that the name of the very captain in this book?”
I swallow and turn to the display on the table between us. I gently lift one of the copies and open it. The spine cracks as I flip to the dedication page.
To Silas
For showing me that there is so much more to life than sitting still.
As if I can ignore the words, I slam the book closed. I fight back tears, biting the inside of my cheek, and I don’t know how much longer I can last up here. I’ve been holding them back long enough.
Chloe clears her throat. “W-why don’t we jump into some Q and A?” she offers, shuffling through her notes.
Another bookseller appears from the side of the stage, handing a mic to someone in the audience.
“Hello,” I say into the mic.
A silhouette in the back asks, “Hi! Do you plan to write any more books in this world?”
“No, I think I’m done writing about pirates.”
They shift awkwardly. “Okay, well, thank you.”
The mic is shuffled to the next person, this one closer to the front. It takes them a moment to stand, and try as I might to squint against the bright lights, I can’t make out who it is.
“Hello. What’s your question?”
“I never got an answer,” a deep voice starts, “but I was wondering how you feel about adventures?”
The person almost sounds familiar, and something in me aches. I swallow down the thought and hold up the book. “I like them enough to write about them.”
“But is that enough?” they ask.
I frown, blinking as I try desperately to see their face. “I’m sorry, who are you?” I ask, angling my head.
They take a step closer, still haloed by the light. “I think you know who I am.”
And I desperately want them to be who I think, but that soaring hope in my chest has been there before when I mistook strangers in the street for him, only to be disappointed.
I stand from my chair, losing the book somewhere in the process as I stumble forward.
My pulse is in my throat, and my ears are ringing as I scramble to the edge of the stage.
“Turn on the lights,” I whisper.
“What?” Chloe asks, still holding her microphone.
“Someone turn on the lights!”
The fluorescent lights of the bookstore flick on one by one. I blink away the spots in my vision and ignore the rest of the audience as I step down from the small stage. It shouldn’t be real, it can’t be real, but it’s him.
It’s him.
“How?” I’m sure I’m crying, but I don’t care if everyone here sees me, because it’s Silas.
And he’s standing there in a strange, mismatched set of clothes, a blue jacket but not his jacket thrown over his shoulders and dripping with rain.
His black hair peppered through with gray and white is plastered to his skin, those deep brown eyes I’ve been lost in countless times before staring back at me with a glint in their depths. He looks no different, and yet …