Rachel Gibson: Not Another Bad Date

“Because God is a loving God, you will be given a chance to earn your way up.”

That was a relief, and Devon began to feel a bit optimistic. She’d earned a place on the University of Texas cheerleading squad. Compared to that, this was going to be a breeze. “How?”

“You start by righting those you have wronged.”

Devon thought hard. She was a good person. Practically perfect. “I’ve never wronged anyone.”

Mrs. Highbarger looked over her shoulder at Devon and a memory floated in front of her face. A memory of blond curly hair, turquoise-colored eyes, and unicorns. “Oh.” With a swipe of her hand she waved away the memory. “She was all wrong for him. He didn’t love her. Not really. He loved me. I did both of them a favor. She’s probably married with a bunch of weird kids.”

“She never found love again.”

Devon figured God wanted her to feel bad about that, but she didn’t. That girl had almost stolen Zach, and everyone knew that Zach belonged to Devon. The girl had been out of her league and gotten exactly what she deserved.

They continued downward, and Devon’s optimism popped like a soap bubble. “What do I have to do?”

“Make it right.”

“Like give her three wishes?” They reached the bottom of wherever they were going and stood in the middle of slightly darker clouds.

“More like a gift.” Mrs. Highbarger held up one finger. “You get one chance to make it right. If you don’t mess it up, you move to the next level closer to heaven, where you will receive one more chance and so forth.”

So she had to make things right with what’s her-name with the curly hair. The girl she’d hated since grade school. That really did bite. Hard.

“You don’t have an eternity,” the old teacher warned. “If she finds someone to love before you’ve fixed the past, your chance of moving up is over.”

Devon smiled and thought of the perfect gift. “There,” she said, as Mrs. Highbarger shook her head.

“You just don’t learn.” The teacher took a step back through sliding glass doors that suddenly appeared. The doors whooshed closed, and the gray mist formed solid walls, and for one terrifying moment, Devon thought she might be in some sort of prison. Her skin tingled, and she looked down at herself as her beautiful Chanel suit wafted and shimmered and turned into a horrible gray sweat suit with Tweety on the front. “Where am I?” she called out, as Mrs. Highbarger was swallowed up by the mist.

She turned and gazed at rows of shopping carts and endless sales signs. A little old lady in a pink housecoat and a blue smock with a yellow smiley face stood before her.

“Welcome to Walmart.”

“Kiss me, babe.”

“No, really.” Beneath the light of a sixty-watt bulb on her porch, Adele Harris placed a hand on the chest of her latest date. “I’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

Investment banker and former nerd turned world-class jerk, Sam King mistook the hand on his chest for a caress and took a step forward, backing Adele against the front door. Cool October air slipped across her cheeks and between the lapels of her coat, and she watched horrified as Sam lowered his face to her. “Baby, you don’t know excitement until I fire you up with a kiss.”

“I’ll pass. I don’t thi-urggg-” Sam smashed his lips against Adele’s and silenced her protest. He shoved his tongue into her mouth and did some sort of weird swirly thing. Three quick circles to the left. Three to the right. Repeat. She hadn’t been kissed like that since Carl Wilson in the sixth grade.

She forced her free hand between them and shoved. “Stop!” she gasped as she reached into the small purse hanging from her shoulder and pulled out her keys. “Good night, Sam.”

His jaw dropped and his brows lowered. “You’re not inviting me in?”

“No.” She turned and unlocked her front door.

“What the hell? I just spent a hundred and twenty bucks on dinner and I don’t get laid?”

She pushed the door open and looked over her shoulder at the moron standing on her porch. The evening had started out okay, but had began a downward descent with the salad course. “I’m not a prostitute. If you’d wanted a sure thing, you should have called an escort service.”

“Women love me! I don’t have to pay a prostitute,” he protested a bit too much. “Women are dying to get some Sammy.”

By the time the dinner plates had been cleared, the date had nosedived into the third level of hell, and for the past hour Adele had tried to be nice.

“Of course they are,” she said, but failed to keep a bite of sarcasm from her voice. She stepped into her house and turned to face him.

“No wonder you’re thirty-five and alone,” he sneered. “You need to learn how to treat a man.”

For the past hour she’d pretended interest in his narcissistic ramblings. His nonstop bragging and his presumption that he was quite the catch and she was very lucky. She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t his fault. That lately she’d begun to suspect there was something about her that made men insane, but he’d just crossed the line. Poked at a very sore spot. “And you need to learn to kiss like a man,” she said, and slammed the front door in his stunned face.

“What the hell is going on in my life?” She pushed one side of her thick curly hair behind her ear and leaned her back against the door. This was getting ridiculous. Every man she’d dated for the past…what?…two or three years had been a jerk. If they hadn’t started out as jerks, they’d quickly turned into jerks. At first she’d thought she was just a jerk magnet. That she attracted idiots, but lately she’d begun to wonder if there was something else going one. That there was something about her that turned otherwise-okay men into morons. Because really, how many jerks and idiots were there in this world? And how likely was it that she just happened to date every last one of them? Repeatedly? Without a break?

Not likely . Adele flipped the dead bolt and pushed away from the door. For the past few months, she’d begun to think that she was cursed. Cursed with perpetually bad dates.

She hung her coat in the front closet and moved into the living room. She tossed her purse onto the green sofa and reached for the remote control on the glass-and-iron coffee table. A couple of months ago, she’d mentioned to her friend Maddie that she thought she might be cursed, but Maddie had laughed it off and Adele hadn’t brought it up again.

There were some people who thought she was a little different-maybe a lot different. Growing up she’d believed in magic; in fairy dust and unicorns and pots of gold. As a child, she’d believed in cracks in time and life on distant planets. Ghosts and alternative realities. In endless possibilities. As an adult, though she never ruled out anything completely, she no longer believed in endless anything anymore.

She turned on the television and sat on the arm of the couch. These days, she might not believe in endless anything, but she did make a good living off her imagination and the possibilities she’d believed in as a child. To date, she’d published ten science-fiction and fantasy novels. Researching those books had taken her to some truly bizarre places, and she’d personally witnessed too many instances of paranormal phenomena that could not be explained away by science to casually dismiss anything out of hand.

She flipped through the TV channels and paused on the ten o’clock news. Out of the many books she’d written, she’d never researched curses, and she didn’t know a lot about them. She didn’t know how curses worked, if they had to be cast by means of witchcraft or black magic. If just anyone could curse anyone else, or if there had to be a certain knowledge of curses, spells, and hexes?