Page 46 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

That is either the worst line ever conceived or the best. The distinction, I suppose, is entirely up to me. Maybe I love him for the attempt alone: a man who shows up with flowers, lies perfectly still while I dissect his soul, and when cornered, answers with the only thing he knows how to give—truth, as sharp and clean as a knife.

“You want to stay for dinner?” I ask, aiming for casual even as my stomach somersaults.

He hesitates only a moment before nodding.

“If you haven’t already made plans to poison me.”

I arch an eyebrow.

“You can’t poison Death. Unless he’s allergic to shellfish.”

“It’s possible. I haven’t tried.”

He watches while I rinse out the old mug, a gentleness to his attention that makes me suddenly self-conscious.

“What’s on the menu?”

“Whatever’s in my fridge and not courageously evolving new penicillin.”

I inspect the shelves.

Two eggs. A heel of sourdough. A regretful amount of leftover beet salad. Half a clutch of scallions. And the remains of a funeral cake, now beginning to ooze suspiciously inside its cellophane wrap.

Grim leans against the counter, barely seeming to disturb the air around him. I hand him a knife and, without comment, he picks up the scallions and begins slicing them into perfect, even rounds.

It occurs to me then that he is really here.

For all his talk of centuries and endings, he moves with the careful appreciation of someone who expects everything to disappear eventually and has decided to admire it while it lasts.

I make pancakes.

It turns out even Death likes them with too much butter, too much salt, and an alarming amount of hot sauce, which he drizzles over the top with unexpectedly civilized restraint. We eat at my tiny kitchen table, our knees bumping beneath the thrift-store wood, while he tells me stories about the strange late-night life of Blackthorn Bay—the first time he tasted pineapple, which he declared overrated, and the one and only time he attempted karaoke, a disaster so spectacular the entire bar simply stopped singing.

I want to ask him what comes after.

Not for people.

For him.

But somehow it feels too soon.

Instead, we do the dishes together, accompanied only by running water and the clink of plates. He is spectacularly bad at drying them, which annoys me far more than it should.

“You're hopeless,” I inform him.

He lifts the dish towel in surrender, shoulders creeping toward his ears.

“I suspected as much.”

I laugh.

Somewhere between handing him another plate and stealing the towel back, I punch him lightly in the arm.

He staggers backward with theatrical conviction, clutching his chest as though I've shattered one of his ancient ribs.

“You're ridiculous.”

He bows.