“Oh. That explains the big spooky portrait of Devon.” But sooner or later they would have to change. Keeping things the same couldn’t be healthy for either of them.
“You think it’s spooky?”
“Oh, yeah. You don’t?”
He shrugged. “I’m used to it, I guess. I don’t really even see it anymore.”
“The first time I was in your house and saw that portrait of Devon, I about had heart failure.”
“I bet.” He laughed and scratched his bare chest. “When I came home and saw you standing under the portico, I thought maybe I was hallucinating. You were standing there with your wild hair and white sweater, and you didn’t look very happy to see me.”
She turned to face him, and her bare knees slid between his denim-covered ones. “I was shocked. First by that enormously freaky portrait of Devon, then by you.”
He reached for her hand and kissed the backs of her fingers. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you after that day.” He flipped her hand over and kissed her wrist, sending warm tingles up her forearm to her elbow. “I know you’re only in Cedar Creek to help out your sister, but I’m glad. I’m a selfish bastard, and I’m glad you have to stick around for a while yet.”
After he finished eating, he made love to her again. He didn’t demand food afterward, and Adele drifted to sleep wrapped up in his arms. When she woke the next morning, she was alone.
Like all good one-night stands, Zach had left without so much as waking her. No empty promise to call her later. No awkward good-bye.
Those were the rules of sex without love. Those were the rules of two people hooking up. She was fine with it, even if it did feel a little hollow.
She turned onto her back and looked up at the patterns on the ceiling. Yes those were the rules, but she couldn’t help wondering where Zach was and what he was doing.
For some reason, the curse didn’t seem to zap him. At least not yet, and she wouldn’t mind using his body a few more times before the curse kicked in, and she had to kick him to the curb.
Chapter 11
From across the shoe aisle, Devon Hamilton-Zemaitis eyed the new shipment of Metro7 dresses. From where she stood, she could see the choices were black, gray, and hot pink. Devon would never be caught dead, even when she was dead, in hot pink. Hot pink was vulgar, and gray washed her out.
To her left, she caught sight of her competition for the black jersey dolman. Her name was Jules Brussard, an upstart Junior Leaguer from New Orleans.
Devon jumped over a stack of shoe boxes, did a roundoff into a back handspring, and finished with a left-side hurdler, accidentally landing her foot in Jules’s ample chest. Jules flew backward and knocked over a rack of Hanes Her Way thigh slimmers.
“Sorry,” Devon said, hardly winded as she grabbed the black jersey from the rack.
Since getting sentenced to Walmart three years ago, Devon had learned a few things. First, that just because she’d been reduced to wearing Walmart couture didn’t mean she had to let herself go. Being dead hadn’t changed her fashion sensibilities. Naturally, she was envied by the other associates.
The second thing she’d learned was that she had the energy and stamina of a teenager. She could do herkies and pikes and back handsprings like no one’s business, just like when she was on the UT squad. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one with her former body. There was a woman in Beauty who delivered a mean karate chop to the throat if you got too close to the lip liner.
The third thing she’d learned was that behind the smiley face logo lived a lot of severely pissed-off dead people who, like herself, had been unjustly charged, unfairly sentenced, and doomed to a life of Muzak.
She’d been assigned to an eternity of shelving shoes. Which should have thrilled her, but just made her long for the days when she’d sunk her feet into Prada, Manolo Blahnik, and Valentino. Cheap shoes just didn’t smell like Fendi.
She supposed it could have been worse. She could have been sentenced to the kitchen, where she’d have to churn out cole slaw and chicken nuggets for eternity.
She moved into the changing room and shed the print chiffon she’d wrestled from the grasp of a woman from home appliances just yesterday. She pulled the black jersey over her head, and it clung to her body. As she gazed at herself in the full-length mirror, she smiled. She was beautiful and perfect, as always.
But unlike always, the image wavered and dissolved in front of her eyes. The racks of clothes shimmered like a mirage, then disappeared. She stood in a gray mist, and her skin tingled. She looked down at herself and gone was the black Metro7. In its place was her Chanel boucle tweed and Mikimoto pearls.
“There you are. You never did stay where you were supposed to.”
She looked up. “Mrs. Highbanger?”
“High
Devon shrugged.
“Come along.” Without moving her feet, Devon slid along through wispy clouds behind her old teacher. “You have earned another chance to move up.”
“I have?”
Mrs. Highbarger inclined her head slightly. She still wore that hideous purple suit with the gold buttons, but Devon supposed it wasn’t her fault someone had buried her in that fashion-hell-no. Although it must have been hanging in her closet when she’d died.
“I’m going to heaven now?” she asked.
“The choice is yours.” As if they stepped onto an invisible escalator, they moved up through the clouds.
“Okay. Let’s go.” After the hell of Walmart, she was ready for heaven.
“Not yet. The gift you granted the woman you wronged in your life has righted some of the harm you caused while you inhabited your earthly body.”
“Huh?”
Mrs. Highbarger looked back over her shoulder at Devon. “In the long run, your gift actually helped more than harmed.”
“It did?”
“Surprised?”
Shocked. Hadn’t she cursed what’s-her-name with bad dates? Which the woman had richly deserved for trying to steal Devon’s man. “Of course not.”
They stopped, and the clouds gathered and formed a filmy television screen. Images of a football game played out across the surface, and Devon recognized Zach standing on the sidelines. He looked as handsome as she remembered.
“What’s he doing?”
“Watch.”
He called a few plays, made some hand signals, then stood on the sidelines as the Cedar Creek Cougars snapped the ball. “Is he a coach at my old high school?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he took a job with ESPN.”
“He stayed in Cedar Creek for your daughter.”
“Oh.” Devon was glad. Tiffany loved her home and her friends.
The image cleared and re-formed and a silver Cadillac Escalade’s headlights cut through an inky night and burned up the flat Texas highway. Zach sat inside, his thumbs tapping the steering wheel. She recognized the
